Apocalypse Machine

by Robinson, Jeremy

  Earlier in the day, when she had set out to survey the damage along with her two dogs—Bruno, a black Labrador and Ottis, a yellow Labrador—the air had felt rich and saturated with moisture. Refreshing. But then she had reached Basedow, another small town like Büchen, but no longer standing. Homes and businesses had been crushed or swept away to be bundled at the base of various hills. And the bodies... Some could be seen amidst the debris, torn apart, hanging limp, baking in the sun. Others had been strewn across the landscape, their clothes torn away by the raging waters, their bodies gleaming in the morning sun.

  That had made it real.

  That had broken a part of her mind.

  While others in town had rushed into neighboring communities, looking for survivors, Margret, Bruno and Ottis had walked home. The early morning light that had warmed her face felt like a gift.

  But it didn’t last long.

  A mile-high wall of darkness slid through the atmosphere, following the tsunami’s path. It crossed over the town and spread in every direction until the sun, and any trace of blue sky, had been replaced. Flecks of gray ash fell from the sky like hell-scented snowflakes. With every passing hour, the land grew darker, descending into a kind of blood red twilight.

  Margret turned her head, looking at the clock. It was 4:00 pm, but it felt more like 9:00 pm. Through the bedroom window, the thick soupy sky swirled, endless and featureless. When a hiss scratched against her window, she realized that the ash and smoke weren’t just filling the sky above her, but stretching all the way to the ground.

  Her bed groaned as she slid to the edge. Both dogs stood, tails wagging, waiting to see if they were going to be petted, fed, walked or played with. Without looking, Margret reached down for both dogs’ heads and rubbed her hands over them, scratching behind their ears, eliciting delighted grunts.

  The dogs started licking her fingers when she stopped. But Margret didn’t respond. She didn’t coo to them, call their names or crouch down to kiss their noses. She stood still at the window, unable to see much beyond her own yard. She could make out silhouettes of buildings, including the town’s center, just a mile away, but the view she was used to, being on the second floor of a home built atop a hundred foot hill, was gone. It was replaced by a sea of dark red haze.

  She didn’t turn away from the monotone view until the dogs stopped licking her fingers. Bruno and Ottis were notorious lickers. Some people enjoyed it. Some people detested it. Margret was simply accustomed to it in the same way she didn’t notice her home’s dog scent. But its absence was noticeable. She looked down at the dogs. Both were craning their heads from side to side, ears perked up, eyebrows twitching. In dog body language, it was the equivalent of pondering a mystery.

  But what mystery? Certainly not the volcanic smog. It’s the smell, she thought, noting the scent of rotten eggs for the first time.

  Ottis tilted his head in the opposite direction and whined. Bruno joined in.

  “What is it?” she said, reaching for the dogs.

  Both dogs snapped back to normal, tails wagging, tongues flapping. She crouched down, and the dogs assumed their positions on either side, her arms wrapped around their necks, scratching their backs.

  “What’s with you two?” she asked, and the dogs responded by licking both sides of her neck. The pair was back to normal, but a little too excited. Like they’re relieved, she thought.

  Both dogs went still. Tongues withdrawn, ears lifted, eyes shifting back and forth.

  “Seriously, Ottis...” No response. “Bruno...”

  Her hands stopped scratching their backs. Trusting their heightened senses, she closed her eyes and listened.

  A thunderous boom drew a high-pitched shout from her and sent both dogs cowering to the floor.

  The din’s source was revealed a moment later, when a streak of orange lightning cut through the red haze, letting her see the distant town a bit better. Shapes moved on the roofs of some of the flat-topped buildings. People, she realized. Why are they outside in this mess? What are they looking at?

  Thunder followed the lightning, and the dogs took up defensive positions under the bed. Margret would never tell anyone, but she hated thunderstorms and she sometimes hid under the bed with the dogs. But this wasn’t a typical storm. There was no rain to begin with, and there was something else...a kind of energy. Is that what the dogs were feeling?

  A subtle vibration moved through her feet. She’d heard that people about to be struck by lightning sometimes felt a tingling sensation before it happened, so she leapt onto the bed with a yelp, and both dogs started barking. But the lightning didn’t come. Instead, a distant peal of thunder, long and rolling.

  “We need to get out of here,” she told the dogs, their snouts peeking out from under the bed, sniffing wildly. She had planned to head south in the morning, but if the ash grew thicker, she wouldn’t be able to drive. Maybe not even breathe. A mental checklist began to form in her mind: clothes, toiletries, food, water, dog food, leashes.

  The dogs started whining again, despite the lack of thunder and lightning. Margret got on her hands and knees, looking both cowering dogs in the eyes. “What? What is it?”

  A vibration moved through the floor, stronger than the last and coupled with a vibration moving through her hands and knees.

  “It’s thunder,” she said, looking out the window, waiting for more flashes of lightning. There was a flash and a boom, and that was it. The home didn’t shake. Her eyes remained locked on the window, watching for flashes, distant or close.

  The dogs whined.

  The floor shook.

  “It’s not the thunder,” she said to the dogs. “Is it?”

  She walked to the window again, craning her head in both directions, seeing nothing but endless dark red haze. Her fingers tapped a beat against the glass, while her forehead created a smudge.

  There’s nothing out there. Nothing I can see.

  Her bare feet slapped against the bedroom’s hard wood floor. Back and forth. What to do? Where to go? I should have left earlier. I can’t leave. I have to. Fear and anxiety bubbled past her shaking lips as a barked sob that drew both dogs from beneath the bed.

  Margret sat on the mattress as both dogs flanked her, tongues back in action, comforting their master, like they did when her son Carl had passed, and a year later when Louis had left her. “You two will never leave me, will you?”

  The house around her seemed to leap in the air. The cushion pressed against her, lifted her up and then dropped away beneath her. She landed on her back, staring at the ceiling once more, each breath a shallow, panicked gulp.

  What was that?

  All around the house, precariously balanced items cascaded to the floor. Pans fell in the kitchen. Dishes followed. Something tumbled in the closet. One of the dogs peed.

  Go outside and look!

  I can’t see anything! What good would it do?

  Drive away! Now!

  But I can’t see.

  The house shook again, groaning as a wave of energy rolled beneath it. More dishes broke. A window shattered. Car alarms filled the air. Neighbors shouted.

  “It’s an earthquake,” she told the dogs, wiping away tears and remembering hearing that it was an earthquake that had kicked off the tsunami. She tried the television, but its screen remained black. The power had kicked off six hours ago. What the hell is happening?

  Panic rose, a demon from hades, sinking its talons into her chest, dragging her down. Confused and broken, she tried to think about what to do, how to save her boys. Where was the safest place during an earthquake? Nowhere near it, she thought, and then she considered the closet again. A doorway? The tub? Under a table? It was one of those. Maybe all of them.

  She decided on the dining room table. It was hardwood, had survived English bombs in World War II and was large enough to accommodate herself and the dogs. As the shaking reduced, she took one last look out the window and stood still.

  A new kind of darkness sl
id into view. It looked like a tree trunk, but with joints. For a moment, she thought it was close by and moving slowly. Then she realized that she was seeing something far away, moving very fast. Night fell so suddenly and completely that she wondered if she was losing consciousness. Hands on the cool glass for balance, she watched the unfolding scene, unable to turn away.

  Darkness surrounded her home, for as far as she could see, except for dead ahead, where a blood red horizon showed the moving limb.

  Limb...

  The word resonated.

  It’s like an elephant’s leg, she thought, but covered in plates. And big. Far too big to be believed.

  I’m hallucinating, she decided. She was being poisoned by the sulfuric stench now wafting into the house through the broken window. Just like those people in Scotland.

  Lightning crackled, lighting up the town and the massive shape descending toward it. Thick flesh crushed buildings underfoot, enveloping half the town beneath its girth. The ground shook when it made contact, but the massive pad spread out, dispersing weight across the land. And then, all at once, something within the massive shape settled. The ash cloud swirled up into the air and outward, disappearing for a moment, and then it was lit up by a fresh streak of lightning. The billowing shockwave leveled the parts of town not yet crushed, and then moved further, racing toward Margret’s house.

  She didn’t have time to even think about what to do. The shockwave slapped the side of her house with a thunderclap that she heard for the briefest moment before both of her eardrums burst. Glass shattered, stabbing her arms, chest and face. The floor beneath her slid away, knocking her to the floor, where both dogs lay. She could see them, howling and terrified, but she couldn’t hear their high-pitched yelps.

  The house shifted around her, the walls canted at an angle.

  Get out, she told herself. You have to get out, now!

  She sprinted to the door and down the stairs. The dogs, injured but loyal, charged down with her. At the bottom of the stairs, she was knocked back when the slower moving shockwave coursing through the earth rolled beneath her home, cracking the foundation to dust and yanking joints apart. Margret pulled the front door open just before the house tilted back and collapsed behind her. She and the two dogs remained standing in the doorway, the open door framing them.

  We made it, she thought, looking for her car.

  The small vehicle, just large enough for the boys and her, looked undamaged, but the roads... She looked down the street, which was crumbling and crisscrossed with fallen street lamps. And her dogs. Both of them. Sprinting away like they were on a track.

  She called for them. “Ottis! Bruno!” But she couldn’t even hear the words, and given the dogs’ lack of reaction, neither could they.

  Just as a new kind of despair settled over her, she felt a wind pressing down on her. Pressure squeezed her. Air rushed past and away. The darkness above and around her became absolute.

  Solid.

  Heavy.

  Crushing.

  Her last thought was of Bruno and Ottis. Run, boys. Run!

  The weight pressing her into the ground was so intense that blood, bone and sinews were compressed to liquid and then separated at the microscopic level. Margret Dieter existed one moment, and then, in the next, was obliterated.

  12

  Abraham

  The White House feels like a beehive. People crawl over and past each other, buzzing information, shaking limbs as they talk, gesticulate, tap, swipe and shuffle. My sudden advancement from science writer to Assistant Science Advisor to the President of the United States came with an ID badge, Top Secret security clearance and a seat at the table for as long as the current crisis persists. I don’t think everyone here understands this yet, but that’s going to be a long time.

  My stomach clenches.

  A very long time. Ice ages don’t come and go like nations. They last hundreds of millions of years with intermittent periods of glaciation. Most people don’t know that we’re still in the midst of an ice age that began 2.6 million years ago. It’s end has been kick started by humanity, but nature is already reversing the damage done. By this time next year, an endless winter will start rebuilding the glaciers that retreated from North America 22,000 years ago.

  But who knows if any of us will be around to see it.

  I have no concrete reason to think this way, but the appearance of something unimaginably colossal, moving about beneath the ash cloud, has laced this catastrophic natural disaster with a sense of otherworldly apocalyptic doom. I really want to wave my hand and declare my footstep theory as hogwash, but I was there. I saw it. And the satellite images confirm it. Bardarbunga wasn’t just a volcano. It was a resting place.

  For something that defies logic.

  I try to find comfort in the books surrounding me. The smell of old paper is familiar and soothing, the writer’s essential oil. The uneven shapes dull the sound of nervous chattering filling and echoing around the building’s solid walls, floors and ceilings. The old book spines lining the shelves have titles like Lincoln, Ulysses S. Grant, Truman and Nixon. Actually, there are three books sporting Nixon’s name. Not a single Michael Crichton novel in the mix. I’m surrounded by historical texts covering the formation of the United States to the more recent past.

  Will any of this matter? I wonder. Will any of it be here in ten years?

  So much for comfort.

  I look into the eyes of four American Indian chiefs, their paintings hung on either side of the men’s room. The men look regal, decked out in traditional garb—feathers, horns and beads. Three of the four look like good natured guys, the kind that wouldn’t make you feel uncomfortable if you bumped into them outside a bathroom. The fourth, Patalesharro—Generous Chief—looks like he knew what was coming, that the age of American Indian freedom was coming to an end.

  “Pawnee,” I say, reading his tribe’s name. One of the few American Indian tribes deemed ‘friendly’ by the U.S. government. Hence the painting in the White House...beside the men’s room. I stand face-to-face with Patalesharro, feeling like I’m looking in a mirror, not because we look alike, but because the sadness and anger in his eyes is a reflection of my own.

  Or maybe he just had gas.

  “Mr. Wright,” a deep voice says, turning me around. It’s a Secret Service agent I don’t recognize. His bulk is blocking the door, but I can see familiar faces peeking around him. “Your family is here, sir.”

  “Daddy!” both boys shout, shoving their way past the surprised agent, who’s looking at my sons like they’re a terror cell loose in the White House.

  I let out an “oof!” when Ike and Ishah reach me, wrapping arms around my waist and pummeling my gut with their heads. I rub their backs, missing when they were small enough to pick up. Granted, I could lift one of them, but at times like this, I like to give them equal attention. It doesn’t matter that they have different mothers. They’re both my sons, and I love them equally. I rub their heads, and look down into their faces, seeing very different reflections of myself. Ishah, like me, has curly hair, but the brown color matches his mother’s. Unlike my tight cut, his is grown out into a loose afro that looks almost bohemian. But his brilliant blue eyes look like mine. Ike’s sharper features are topped by smooth black hair and brown eyes, also like his mother, but the shape of his face reminds me of my father. For a moment, I see them grown up again, tall, stubbled and strong, and I wonder about the vision’s accuracy. Could my mind conjure up my future sons and picture them accurately? If science writing still exists in the future, that might make an interesting story.

  I kiss the boys’ foreheads and turn to greet their mothers. Bell is first. Arms reaching, smile broad, she seems to bounce across the room. Her hands clasp my cheeks, and she plants a kiss on my lips. “We’ve been scared.”

  “You don’t need to be,” I lie. “Everything is good.”

  She sees through it and gives me ‘the squint,’ but she must realize my falsehood was more
for the boys’ benefit than for hers. “We’ll talk later,” she says, stepping to the side.

  Mina glides across the room, her lithe body hardly moving vertically with each step. Her arms slide around my waist, and her head leans against my chest. From an outside perspective, the hug might look robotic and lacking the obvious affection of Bell, but I feel Mina’s body relax in my arms. She’s been carrying a lot of tension, and while she and Bell are great supports for each other, I still have a major role to play in both their lives—as strange as that might be. Mina tilts her head up, meeting my eyes. She looks near tears, but puckers her lips and invites me to kiss her, which I do.

  When I raise my head, the Secret Service agent’s air of unflappable authority has been replaced by a flabbergasted expression. I’ve seen it before. We all have.

  “It’s complicated,” Bell tells the man. “You’ll live.”

  When the man’s expression deepens, I sense the boys becoming uncomfortable, and that is something Mina, Bell and I do not want to happen. I step closer to the man, and say, “There are stranger things going on tonight, don’t you think?”

  His eyes flick to mine. “Uh, yeah. Yes, sir.”

  “You can go,” I tell him.

  “I, I can’t, sir. I’ve been assigned to your, uh, family.”

  Great. “Then can you wait outside, Agent...”

  “Huber,” he says.

  “Agent Huber, can you give me a minute to catch up with my family? In private?”

  He looks around the room, at the books, at the paintings and at the sabers mounted on the wall.

  “They won’t touch anything,” I tell him, my second lie in the last few minutes. He gives a reluctant nod and exits, closing the door behind him. I turn to my family. “Everyone okay?”

  “We flew in a helicopter,” Ike says.