Exit Zero

by Neil A. Cohen

  Virgil’s thoughts drifted beyond tanks and trains and news. He looked in the rearview mirror at his daughter. She caught his gaze and wrinkled her nose and stuck out her tongue. He smiled and made a funny face back at her.

  Virgil had little choice but to follow in the family business, as his father Carmine’s business was La Familia. Carmine Ganado had ties into all the trade unions, as well as garbage collection, gambling, strip clubs and prostitution. It was not long after high school that Virgil’s father received “early retirement” over a disagreement with a rival boss, and was found in the marshlands off the New Jersey Turnpike near the old WMCA radio transmitter across from Newark Airport.

  Virgil assumed the role his father left vacant, and a nickname given to him in high school, Big V, as a result of his girth and ability on the football field, soon would be the nickname that was given to him in local New York and New Jersey newspapers when they would later report: “Jersey Girls Gentleman’s Club was raided by DEA agents last night after a drug bust. The strip club, rumored to be the base of operations of mob boss Virgil ‘Big V’ Ganado, son of executed mob boss Carmine ‘The Horse’ Ganado. The site was the scene of several arrests by Atlantic City police over the past year…”

  While Big V had always been large, the stress of taking over the family business, along with a traditional New Jersey Italian wife who loved to cook pasta, contributed to Big V becoming REALLY Big V. By the time he was in his late twenties, Virgil was over three hundred pounds. He managed to maintain his relationships with some of his non- connected gang from his high school years, but it was strictly under the radar, as he had a new gang that he needed to keep closer tabs on.

  His attention came back to the current moment and his daughter was still counting the passing tank transport rail cars, now numbering in the 40s, but he could see the end of the train in the distance. Virgil took a long drag on the cigar and exhaled, making sure to blow the smoke out the car window and away from his family. Big V always kept the smoke away from his family.

  Chapter 10

  Hollow Point

  Pat Callahan sat in the back of his taxi on the phone with his wife. After the cursory “I miss you and the kids,” he let her know he would be back down to D.C. shortly, and she should focus on getting the new apartment in D.C. squared away. Several large trucks passed by him with the U.S. Air Force logo on the side of the cargo hold.

  “Why the hell is the Air Force part of this exercise?” he murmured to himself, quickly realizing that he was still on the phone. “What? No, sorry dear, wasn’t speaking to you. Okay, I am pulling up to the hotel now, call you tomorrow, love to you and the kids.”

  He hung up the cell and glanced at the newly installed HELP app on his phone. He smiled and folded the newspaper he’d brought with him from D.C., not noticing the news article headline under the fold that read: Federal Protective Service awarding multimillion dollar contract to Berretta for purchase of 500,000 hollow point 9mm rounds to be used for training.

  Chapter 11

  Work That Pole

  The Access Entertainment anchor spewed her vacuous gossip from the plasma flat screen, her face frozen from rat poison injections and a forced a smile on her silicon injected lips as she announced her ‘scoop’ with all the excitement as if she were announcing the cure for cancer:

  “Tonight on Access Entertainment, we take a look at one of the most unique ‘cribs’ ever featured on our program. New Jersey based rapper Camden has purchased his very own condo in a doomsday bunker. We have the exclusive look at his custom built room tricked out in his own signature style, including one feature no one can live without in a post-apocalyptic world: a stripper pole. Yes, he plans to choose one lucky lady to survive the end of the world with him.”

  A quick b-roll shot of Camden showed his class and sensibilities. “Yeah man, you know, if I’m going to bring a shorty with me, she better be able to work that pole, son, know what I’m sayin’?”

  The announcer reappeared. “Camden gives us an up close and personal tour of his private room within the underground shelter, an apocalyptic abode, that was designed specifically for the rich and paranoid, where this celebrity survivalist will be secured against any national disaster. But sorry folks, this facility is in an undisclosed location, so if you were hoping to get an address to run to on judgment day, we won’t be providing any directions. Exclusively tonight, only on Access Entertainment.”

  Chapter 12

  Third Row, Center Pew, Left Side

  Reverend Bob stood on the front podium and looked out upon his empty church. Empty except for the sole parishioner, an attractive woman sitting alone; third row, center pew, left side.

  Reverend Bob thought about how much he had loved his church. He loved his God unconditionally; he loved his parish faithfully; he loved his parishioners wholeheartedly; and he loved his sex rough.

  Many times over the years Reverend Bob had felt lust in his heart for a parishioner, but he never once acted upon it. He had never once approached a woman in his congregation.

  “It’s like spitting into a fan,” he was once told by Reverend Barry, whom he met on a clandestine internet chat room for clergy to share their secret desires. “Ya spit into a fan, it’s gonna blow back on you,” Rev. Barry would say.

  Then again, Rev. Barry’s secret fetish was to have women spit on him, so Rev. Bob took this particular advice with a grain of salt.

  Never before had he felt for a parishioner what he felt for Melissa. She sat in the same place every Sunday; third row, center pew, left side.

  Sunday after Sunday, month after month, for two years, she came. Same time, same pew, same seat; third row, center pew, left side. She had skin so fair and white that it would hurt his eyes to look at her when the morning sun would shine through the windows. Her eyes were wide and clear and filled his soul. Her hair was black as sin.

  His lust for her consumed him, and he believed… no, he knew… that she shared his desire. But they never spoke, not a word shared, not even a goodbye after the sermon.

  Tonight, at midnight, he sat in his office reading the internet message boards filling up with tales of friends, neighbors, and loved ones turning sick, turning violent, turning feral and cannibalistic, and he heard her enter the chapel and assume her regular seat.

  As soon as he walked into the sanctuary, he could see she was one of them. Whatever was changing people had taken root within her, but she was not yet turned. She looked a little thinner than he last saw her, but not gaunt. Thin like the ‘heroin-chic’ models that were the all the rage a couple of years back. He knew the term, as he gave a sermon about the dangers of glorifying drug usage. She had a thousand yard stare, and her mouth opened and closed a bit, like she was trying to chew an imaginary stick of gum. He moved closer, and he noticed she was barefoot, and had a small bit of blood on her ankle.

  He walked to the back of the church and locked the door so no one else could enter. He opened the closet door, removed the cincture cord off of one of his vestments, and wrapped the ends around each fist, forming a firm bind.

  If the message boards were accurate, he had some time, a brief window, before she moved beyond gut instinct to simply filling her gut with flesh.

  The locked doors of the chapel started to rattle, fists pounding. The locks would not hold long.

  He proceeded towards her, towards Melissa; third row, center pew, left side.

  Chapter 13

  Apocalypse Condo

  Ivan Gold clicked on the microphone of his home broadcast studio, queuing up for one of his infamous late night public access radio shows. His chair creaked slightly as he leaned toward the microphone that would transmit his voice to the ears of perhaps several thousand insomniacs who listened to his show across New Jersey.

  “Thank you, Doctor Aspiras, some truly bizarre and amazing findings on the Brazilian ant fungus and how it could be potentially aerosolized into a WMD. Coming up, we are going to take your calls. I know a lot of you are calli
ng about this so called ‘exercise’ the military is conducting around the state. We have Ryan, who will be describing some of the bizarre scenes he observed at the Wal-Mart parking lot in Weehawken, and then we have Susan, who said an entire mobile hospital is being set up in that empty Costco over on Route 1 in Eatontown. Is this a prepositioning of troops for the ‘assault weapon’ roundup and confiscation that we predicted would happen right here on this very show? Are the Feds afraid New Jersey will try to succeed from the union like Texas is? We will discuss with you our listeners. And don’t forget, next week we will have as our guest the Gear Head Guys from Discovery Channel’s show ‘We Can Build It. The Gear Heads will take your calls on how they built my new luxury armored urban assault vehicle, which I have lovingly named Furio. That episode was one of their top rated shows and the Furio vehicle will be featured in next month’s Monster Truck Magazine. If you want your own apocalypse survival SUV, we will be offering up the blueprints to one lucky premium member of my website, so be sure to tune in tomorrow, and don’t forget to register for premium status on our website to ensure you get all up to date information on what the cowardly mainstream media won’t tell you.

  “Finally, I have one more show biz announcement. MTV’s CRIBS will be featuring a special on my apocalypse bunker. As you know, New Jersey based rap star Camden has purchased his own secured space here in the bunker. His personal luxury survival pod comes equipped with a stripper pole for the one lucky lady he decides to bring with him to withstand any natural or manmade disaster. As for other custom features he ordered, well you’re going to have to tune in to find out. Broadcasting from my secure location in the Jersey compound, it’s 1A.M. here on WPIX, back after these messages.”

  A pre-recorded commercial began: “Silver coins. They are tangible assets that will be valued after the cyber collapse….”

  Ivan Gold, like Virgil Ganado, had also followed his father into the family business. His father, the rarely seen Maxwell Gold, ran the large and controversial Post Conflict Restoration Corporation (PCRC). PCRC began as merger of several smaller companies when the senior Gold purchased and merged the Sullivan family construction businesses and one of the Senior Ganados’ waste management and debris clearing businesses back in the early 1960’s. He landed large state contracts to restore Jersey City after the race riots, which led to other restoration efforts such as restoring Newark and Philadelphia after similar riots.

  The elder Gold went on to exploit other cities ravaged by race riots and civil disturbances, and soon PCRC grew into a national and then international defense contracting firm. His son Ivan joined the firm after graduating from Princeton with a Marketing degree. His tenure there was short, only a few years, until a nervous breakdown led to a leave of absence and involuntary commitment at Marlboro State Hospital.

  Resurfacing a year later but with paranoid delusions still firmly in place, Ivan found his niche in the world by launching a website filled with links to conspiracy theories and rants about black helicopters, shadow government agencies, and apocalyptic predictions. He amassed a huge following of preppers, end-of-days believers, anarchists, anti-government types, Pentecostal Christians, and anti-establishment atheists. The website was accompanied by a midnight to three a.m. radio show which ran on weekends. He was accused by some of being as crazy-like-a-fox due to his raking in millions by marketing survivalist gear, food insurance, silver coins, and doomsday shelters, all the while telling people to prepare for the end of days. Yet he managed to straddle the worlds of fringe survivalists and respected businessman equally well. He purchased a large area of woodlands off of the New Jersey Turnpike and established a compound, where he sold access to his own custom built, luxury underground survival shelter, including guaranteed pickup from your home when disaster struck and transport to the shelter, all for only $250,000 per couple.

  Ivan leaned over to his computer to update his website, which was not much more than news feeds from around the globe that justified his fans’ most paranoid fever dreams. He glanced over at the recent articles he had collected, read them over one last time.

  The first article was about South Korea cracking down on vitamin pills coming in from China that contained ground up human fetuses. These human flesh capsules were smuggled into the country as supposed stamina boosters.

  The next clippings were a series of bizarre cannibalistic attacks that had been popping up in recent days. A homeless man eating another homeless man’s face and then charging police; another eating the family dog; and a third running naked through the street and taking off a chunk of another man’s arm before finally being put down by gunfire after Tasers had no effect. These recent attacks had been blamed on a drug called Bath Salts that had been hitting the streets.

  A couple of articles were regarding Genetically Modified Organisms in the food supply. For a fan base that never passed by a fast food restaurant they didn’t like, they had a lot of paranoia about the food supply. They worried about GMOs but no one asked what was in a Twinkie or a Chicken McNugget.

  He reviewed his aggregated articles, determined he hit all the current fears and paranoia, and hit Post.

  Chapter 14

  The Man With Two Brains

  Autopsy-blog:

  Macktheknife415:

  All time showstopper tonight, which is all I can say! All Time Showstopper!

  The Man with Two Brains!!!!

  A few years ago, I autopsied a woman and found a tumor in her ovary that was over 20 pounds. That was not what kept me awake and dry heaving for the next two days. It was the fact that the tumor had grown so big, and gone undetected for so long, that it had actually started to grow hair and teeth.

  Now, I thought this was an anomaly, but thanks to the contributions to this Autopsy Fan Blog, I realized I was not the only one to encounter such an oddity.

  Well, now I have another one for you, and I honestly don’t know if I would be happy to hear that others have encountered the same thing that I did tonight, or if I would prefer to know that I am alone, and that I will be the first and last person in history to ever witness this abomination. Even for South Jersey, where all sorts of freaks run wild, this is a new one.

  9:15 PM, I had 5 cadavers brought in for autopsy. I should say 4 and a half, as one of the bodies did not have much “body” left of it.

  The male was your garden variety gunshot victim (GSV) but looked as if he’d been attacked by dogs post mortem and used as a chew toy. The woman and kids were a different story. My first examination was of the woman, late thirties, emaciated, and appeared starved.

  She was also a GSV, but it seemed as if the shots were fired into her after she had expired. Since the meat wagon did not provide me any info on the deceased, I always try to come up with the backstory as to what happened to the visitors on my slab.

  My initial thought was the scumbag guy kept the woman and kids prisoner, starved them to death, and then died in a shootout with cops and attack by police dogs.

  But even in the woman’s gaunt, almost skeletal condition, she sure put up a fight. There was flesh under her fingernails and between her teeth. In her stomach, I found three severed fingers that she must have bitten off of the other guy brought in. Why she swallowed them, no idea, but in the heat of the fight, and with the diminished condition of her brain, who knows what was going through what was left of her mind?

  But the fingers were not what I found most disturbing in her stomach as, God knows, those of us on this blog have posted a collection of the most bizarre contents of stomachs and rectums that probably were ever assembled outside of hospital emergency room lore. What I found in her stomach, and I hesitate to even call it a stomach, was something that resembled a nervous system. Well-formed, and connected via nerves throughout the body, it almost resembled a brain stem, right there in her gut.

  And I know that it was late, and I was tired and a little freaked out, but I swear to you that, although this gal was dead, dead, dead, the nerve endings in her belly still had a
ctivity, flinched, is the only way I could describe it.

  I was about to remove this stomach and brain stem looking thing to weigh it and get some photos, when suddenly my lab was filled with pissed-off cops and soldiers who burst in screaming at each other.

  First the local cops came in and took over the scene, followed by some guys in suits, and then some friggin’ military guys. And they’re all yelling at each other. They tell me the investigation had changed and they did not want me touching the body any further.

  Next thing you know, I don’t even have time to remove my gloves when I am pushed out the door. I try to tell them I just want to get my lunch, but two goons are standing there, guarding the entrance like a pair of nightclub bouncers.

  This shit happens once in a while here. They bring in a whacked mob kingpin or some wannabe who was actually a snitch to the cops. When these types are on the table, I end up having an audience with me while I slice and dice. Sometimes I get halfway through my job and get chucked out of the room, like when I find balloons full of heroin hidden in the most unusual places.

  But this time as soon as I started really examining that stomach, or whatever you want to call it, the army dude gave a look to the two suit goons and I was escorted out of the room so fast I don’t think my shoes touched the floor.

  Shame, as I wanted to open up the others cadavers she came in with, but at least it gives me some time to catch up with my fellow late shift morgue bloggers.