by Jim Heskett
She waved a hand, not taking her eyes off the screen. Zach stepped to the desk.
“Name?”
“Zach.”
“Do you have keys? Car keys or anything like that?”
A little strange that they’d care about designated drivers now, but Zach wasn’t bothered. “Just the keys to my aunt’s place.”
The woman held out her hand, beckoning. Zach dropped the keys into her open palm. From somewhere deep in the walls came a moaning sound, something pleasurable. Then, it intensified. Loud, orgasmic moaning.
The woman smiled at him. “Victor will show you around.”
A little strange how calm she had seemed. The whole of the world was on edge, for good reason. But this woman had not a care in the world.
Zach felt a hand grip his arm, and he resisted the urge to ram his elbow back.
“Follow me,” said pasty Victor.
“Wait a second,” Zach said. “Those guys at the bar said this was going to be a party, like with drinks and shit like that. How come I don’t see any people around? What’s going on here?”
“Victor will explain everything,” she said, then waved them toward a door.
Victor started first, and Zach followed. The door opened into a long hallway with art hung every few feet. Weird, abstract stuff with tons of color splatters.
A small table with two chairs sat beside a door halfway down the hall. Victor eased into one of the chairs and pointed at the other one.
Zach sat. “When can I get a drink?”
“Soon. We need to talk a little first.”
“This is the strangest party I’ve ever been to.”
Victor smiled. “We do things a little differently. Zach, are you a religious type?”
“No, not at all.”
“But you do have faith, or else you wouldn’t have come here tonight.”
“I guess. I dunno.” Zach leaned forward. “To be honest, I just wanted to guzzle some drinks and get my dick wet one last time. The world’s going up in a ball of flames, so why not?”
Victor smiled with one side of his mouth. “What if I told you that you didn’t have to burn up with the rest of the world?”
“I’d say you’re as nutty as my friend who thinks he can climb Windham and get above it.” A creaky moan came from behind the door. Zach started. “What was that?”
“That,” Victor said, nodding his head at the door, “is a young lady who is anxious to meet you.”
“Me? How is that possible? Nobody knew I was coming.”
“Zach Mettenberger, originally from Boonton, New Jersey, moved to Queens to live with his aunt four years ago after the death of his parents.”
Zach jumped up, knocking the chair back. “How the hell do you know all that? Were you following me? Those freaky ravers at Coochie’s the other day, they were there looking for me?”
Victor nodded.
“Okay, fuck this. I’m outta here.”
“Please wait,” Victor said, his expression remaining unchanged. “You are free to leave any time you wish. You know what’s outside, and you know there’s nothing but ruin and desolation. If you stay, however, and you go through this door with me, we can offer you something much more genuine. We are Infinity, and we have the answers.”
Zach looked at the varnished wooden door. He noticed a small design carved into the wood, like a cross but with two horizontal lines, and the sideways-8 of the infinity symbol underneath it. The drawing felt familiar for some reason, but he couldn’t place it. Like blurred graffiti on a subway car.
“Why me?”
“Your parents used to be part of our number. Since they’re no longer with us, we wish to offer their spot to you.”
Spot?
Another low moan came from behind the door. “This is an incredible gift we have offered you, Zach. But you must choose to accept it.”
Zach rubbed his hands together. As weird as all this was and as much as he doubted this promise of surviving the apocalypse, Victor was dead-on that the rest of the world had nothing left to offer. Plus, his parents knew these people, so how bad could they be?
“Fuck it. I’m dying to know what’s in that room.”
Victor smiled with both sides of his mouth this time. “Very well. You have chosen wisely. Follow me.”
He stood and placed a hand on the doorknob. “Are you ready?”
“Yeah, Jesus, just get on with it.”
Victor opened the door and stepped into a small room, something like a sitting room. Inside was a hospital bed with a teenage girl resting on it. An IV drip ran from a stand next to the bed. A wiry-thin woman with curly black hair and bushy eyebrows stood next to the IV drip, poking at the bag.
But what startled Zach was the man in the back corner of the room, leaning against a bookshelf built into the wall. He had burn marks on most of his face and bare chest, and what remained of his hair jutted out from the top of his head like a wisp of smoke. The same odd cross symbol from the door had been branded on his chest.
The burned man crossed his arms and leered at Zach as Victor exited the room and shut the door behind him.
The wiry woman bowed to Zach. “Welcome. We’ve been waiting for you.”
The lump in his throat made speaking impossible for a few seconds. “What kind of shit is going on here?”
The burned man picked up a machete from the bookshelf. Zach pinwheeled his arms and turned to the door.
“Wait!” the woman said. “No one is going to harm you.”
“Then why the fuck does this weirdo have a machete?”
The burned man tossed the machete into the air and grabbed it by the blade. He held the handle end out to Zach and crossed the room.
Up close, the burn marks marring his skin were even more grotesque. Zach turned his eyes away. “What do you people expect me to do?”
“The only way to save a life is to take a life. Yvonne here,” the wiry woman said, waving a hand at the girl in the hospital bed, “is willing to give her life so you can survive the meteor.”
Yvonne seemed sedated, but she was still alive, given how she squirmed every few seconds. She had long blonde hair, high cheekbones, and a pair of perfect tits pushing against a green shirt. No hospital gown. Instead, she was fully-clothed.
He looked at the machete handle. “I can’t kill some girl I don’t even know. Survive the meteor? This is about the nuttiest thing I’ve ever heard.”
The wiry woman took the handle of the machete from the burned man and leaned within a few inches of Zach’s face. “You accepted our offer.”
“That albino freak Victor said I could leave anytime I wanted.”
“That was before. We’ve already started, so now it has to be finished. A life for a life, Zach. She is willing and ready to trade hers for yours.”
Yvonne stirred and Zach looked at the IV sticking out of her arm. “If that’s true, why is she sedated?”
The wiry woman said nothing, only poked Zach in the ribs with the machete handle.
Zach took the blade in his hands. He felt a little faint, as if the world was shaking around him. With a step toward the hospital bed, he had to blink several times to focus his eyes.
Yvonne woke up, then looked down at the blade. She screamed.
Zach panicked. He grabbed the IV stand and swung it at the wiry woman, smacking her in the head and toppling her to the floor. The burned man lunged for Zach and he swung the machete, connecting with nothing but air.
Zach ran around the hospital bed, shielding himself behind it. The burned man growled on the other side as Yvonne sat up and ripped the IV from her wrist. She was babbling something about Hoboken, but it made no sense.
Zach and the burned man stared at each other. The burned man flexed his arms.
Zach flung the blade across the room, and the man easily dodged it. While the burned man’s body was off balance, Zach put both hands on the hospital bed and pushed with all his force, and drove the bed into the burned man. The man smacked h
is head against the wall, then slumped forward over the bed.
“Get up, now,” Zach shouted at Yvonne.
She got to her feet and rubbed her hands up and down her shoulders. She was crying, but Zach had the crazy notion that she was beautiful. Reminded him of a girl he’d had a crush on in third grade.
The wiry woman stirred, and Yvonne screamed again, then kicked her in the head. “You bitch,” she said as she kicked the woman a few more times.
Zach grabbed the blonde girl by the arm. “Stop that. We have to leave, right now.”
The room had two doors. The one he came in from, and one on the other side. He knew Victor would be waiting for them back in the hallway.
He pointed at the back door. “Let’s go this way. Got to be a back door out of the house.”
She shook her head, tears streaming down her face. “No, we can’t. You don’t want to see what’s back there.”
“Okay, then, out the front door we go.”
He took her by the hand and flew across the room. The burned man was waking, but the woman was unconscious, or dead. He opened the door and stepped through.
The hallway was empty.
“Are you okay?” he asked Yvonne.
“I’m a little woozy, but I guess I’m okay.”
They crept down the hall. Her hand trembled in his. Through the walls came the sounds of screaming and laughing, and some kind of machine with a rhythmic ka-churg ka-churg ka-churg.
The girl shuddered. “I don’t understand why they did this to me.”
“These people are some kind of cult or something. Don’t worry, I’m going to get you out of here.”
And it struck Zach that he didn’t know why. They’d all be dead within a day. Why was he swinging machetes and escaping mansions?
Halfway to the door at the end of the hall, it swung open, and pasty-faced Victor stood there with his arms crossed. “You disappoint me.”
“I don’t give a shit how you feel, you freak. You can get out of my way right now because we’re leaving.”
“I can’t let her go. And now that you’ve broken the pact, I can’t let you go either.” He lifted a cell phone to his mouth and mumbled something into it. “I’ve known you since you were a baby, Zachary. I’m sure you don’t remember, but you were blessed in our church when you were very young. We expected you to embrace your destiny, and instead you want to embrace this false hope of the foolish secular world. Our mistress will be very disappointed.”
Three of the doors behind them opened. Zach turned to see the burned man and five others emerge, all of them carrying machetes and baseball bats. Trapped between Victor and the burned man, Zach did the only thing that seemed reasonable: he threw his shoulder into the closest door to break it down.
The doorframe splintered and the door swung open. Inside, a kid about Zach’s age was kneeling next to another hospital bed. In his hands, he held a goblet, and blood dribbled into it from the veins of a woman strapped to the bed. Nothing but a few candles lit the room.
The young man bared his teeth at them, his face smeared with blood.
Zach grabbed Yvonne by the wrist and tugged her into the room, then toward the back door. They rushed through the door as commotion followed them.
On the other side of the door, they found themselves in a kitchen. Zach grabbed a massive steak knife from a wooden block and jammed it between the door and the door jamb. Maybe it would keep them out, maybe not.
“How do we get out of here?” he said.
Yvonne gulped air, then she stumbled and hit the ground as her eyes rolled back into her head.
***
He didn’t know how hard to slap her, but he kept increasing the power of each smack until she stirred. Hovering above her, he looked into her eyes as a bead of sweat dripped from his nose onto her forehead.
She grimaced. “What… did you…”
“Yvonne, you have to wake up.”
Something smacked against the door. The steak knife jiggled but held firm.
“Up, now, damn it.”
She opened her eyes all the way and pushed herself up onto her elbows. He pulled under her shoulders to raise her to her feet.
They dashed through the kitchen to a set of double doors, and Zach flung them back. On the other side was a large ballroom with tall ceilings and maybe three dozen people. Most of them were naked, some of them covered in blood, some of them dancing. At least ten of them were in some kind of orgy puddle on a series of bearskin rugs in the center of the room.
When Zach and Yvonne stepped through the doors, about half the people stopped what they were doing to gawk at them.
Zach grabbed Yvonne by the wrist and they sprinted through the crowd. A few of the people laughed. Some called after them, but Zach didn’t pay any attention. He set his sights on the door in the back corner of the room.
When he reached it, he yanked on the knob. Standing opposite him was Victor, with a smug look on his face.
“Accept it,” he said and took a step into the room.
“Eat shit,” Zach said and slammed the door forward so it smacked Victor in the face. He fell backward and toppled down a staircase, rolling and thudding for a couple seconds.
They left the ballroom. Stairs down, and stairs up, and one more door to their right. Zach opened the door to the most glorious thing he’d ever seen in his life: grass. A wide open field that terminated in hedges.
He took Yvonne by the hand and they hustled toward those hedges, heaving big lunges to cross the distance. Behind them, the door opened and the sounds of voices echoed through the night air.
At the hedges, they had to wriggle to get through to the other side, branches scratching and scraping and tugging at them like little wooden arms. But then they found themselves staring at a healthy expanse of Red Bank woods.
He didn’t know how far they ran, but eventually she begged him to stop. She collapsed against a tree, then slumped down to the ground.
“Thank you,” she said, wheezing.
“I just… you know,” he said, kneeling and suddenly feeling bashful. He felt an insane desire to lean in and kiss her, but he couldn’t do it.
“We’re going to be okay now,” he said, and he wished he meant it. Free of Victor and his wicked cult or not, their fiery future was still set.
No Regrets
(BEFORE THE FALL)
In the streets, some danced while others tossed Molotov cocktails. Some did both. As the world disintegrated into chaos, the number of hours remaining to participate in either activity spiraled toward zero.
Coyle sat in the remnants of a dank bar, tracing his finger around the rim of a glass. The electricity still functioned, which was both a blessing and a curse. In the back corner of the room, one man had opened the gut of another man with a steak knife. Something about a card game or a wager over darts.
Coyle had heard things weren’t nearly as bad on the east coast, but what did that matter? Hell would open its doors to all in due course.
The lights on the television overhead flickered. An attractive but expressionless woman in a business suit sat at a desk, while below her, the text scrawl read:
Riots in Oakland escalate.
This channel was one of only two or three still broadcasting, and he wondered why they bothered. It’s not as if anyone still watched the news, for information, hope, placation, or anything else. The whole of the earth was either fucking its collective brains out, waiting in line for one more confession, or ticking off other pointless items on the bucket list.
I never got to see Japan, they’d say. I never got to say goodbye to my father, they’d say. I never got to sleep with a supermodel, they’d say.
Coyle closed and rubbed his smoke-reddened eyes. When he did, the image of his son’s face appeared again, for the thousandth time today. The look in the boy’s azure eyes… his fear transforming into flaccid acceptance. Coyle watched himself running down the stairs, firing his 9mm in vain. He envisioned his ten-year-old son’s fac
e tense and then relax as the life slipped away, blood turning his white shirt into a crimson mess.
Those blue eyes, the same as Coyle’s eyes. God have mercy on his soul.
Coyle pushed aside the glass, reached across the counter, and snatched a bottle of whiskey. Probably the last one in this bar. Last one in California, for all he knew. The bartender had died in a meaningless argument with an ax-wielding man two days before, so this bar was more or less self-serve now.
Someone tapped him on the shoulder. Coyle flicked his eyes up at Brenner, a man he used to call a friend. Not so easy to make those assumptions lately. Brenner’s face and hands were nearly black, covered with a mixture of what appeared to be dirt and soot.
“Hello, Coyle,” Brenner said as he nodded at the bottle. “I been up and down this street trying to find a drink. Can I trouble you to share that whiskey with me or are you going to finish it all alone?”
Four weeks ago, when three masked men had attacked and mugged Coyle in the park, one of them had a voice with the same gravelly tone as Brenner’s. Or maybe that was the paranoia talking. Coyle considered cracking the bottle against Brenner’s face just in case, but changed his mind and extended a hand. Didn’t have the energy to brawl any more today.
“Sure. Help yourself,” Coyle said, with no trace of sociability.
Brenner mumbled his thanks and sat down on the adjacent stool. He took a swig, wiped a grubby hand across his mouth, then passed it back. “How are you keeping yourself busy?”
A stray hunk of metal sailed into the room through an existing hole in the window. Neither of them turned around as it clattered to a stop beneath their feet. Coyle said, “My son died this morning.” The words hung in the air and then evaporated with the rest of the insanity of the end-times.
“How?”
“Vandals, looking for jewelry, maybe, or weapons. I was upstairs. Came down too late to stop it.”
Brenner winced as he examined a gash on the back of his hand. “I know what it’s like. My wife, she jumped from our roof two weeks ago. Some hoods from the East Side found her and they…”