Abandon All Hope

by Dick Denny

  Go big or go home, right? Dick-deep in stupid.

  “You know, this is all well and good,” Gretchen said warily, “but we still don’t know where? I mean, we can’t just make the rounds of the parks hoping.”

  I nodded, knowing she was right but not knowing what to do about it. I walked to the Ferrari and hopped in. Gretchen slowly pulled out the A-Team van with the caution of a driver who had little idea what she was doing and I pulled the Ferrari into the storage spot. I took the HK UMPs with a few fresh mags and tossed them in the van, too, before locking the storage space.

  The annoying thing was that it felt like I knew. Like when you know the name of the movie with the guy about the thing but just couldn’t remember it at the moment. I climbed behind the wheel of the van. Jammer had it set up with not just GPS but with a full internet-capable computer system, like what you’d see in a cop car but just connected to the internet.

  “Do me a favor,” I said quietly. I felt a thread and started tugging on it with my mind. “Pull up a city map.”

  Gretchen started clacking at the keyboard. “Okay.”

  The Real Rock Station played, the DJ talking how there were reports of riots starting to break out in the city. I turned up the volume and listened, but it made sense. I figured even if the populace couldn’t see the flash of teleporting angels and demons there had to be some kind of psychic bleed. The animal part of the brain reacting to the coming calamity?

  “Got it,” Gretchen said as she looked up from the screen.

  “Okay.” I bit my lip. “Can you pull up the original city plan and overlay it?”

  Gretchen nodded and started tapping away at the keys. “Gimme a second.”

  After reporting about the growing number of riots, the rock station started playing Judas Priest’s Breaking the Law—someone had a sense of humor or was just really oblivious to circumstance.

  “Got it,” Gretchen proclaimed and then turned the computer screen.

  It hit me, and I really hoped I was wrong.

  I let my fingers trace along the lines of the streets until they came together, right at the entrance of Memorial Park. I sighed. “It’s there.”

  “You sure?” Gretchen’s head was almost lying on my shoulder as she leaned over and looked at the map on the screen. But she hadn’t gotten it yet.

  “Yeah, I’m sure.” I wished I was wrong, I wished the end of the world was more than an hour off. I was tired. Then again, either way, this was almost done.

  I pointed to Veterans Avenue. “In the original city plans, this road was Megiddo”—I then pointed to Hill Street—“and this Blues-y route has always been Hill Street.”

  Gretchen smiled. “I see what you did there; that was cute.”

  “Thanks.” She was focusing on the map but I was looking to her. “In all that crap Megatron gave us, the first page…”

  Gretchen interrupted, “All you read was the first page, wasn’t it?”

  “Shut up.” But she was right. “The first page broke the word down. Armageddon was really two words originally. It’s Greek from Har, meaning hill.” I tapped Hill Street. “And Megiddo, some place in Israel.” I tapped Veterans Avenue, Megiddo on the original city plan. I put my finger to Memorial Park, setting at the corner of Hill and Megiddo. I looked away from the screen. Gretchen turned the screen to study it more intently.

  “Gretchen, Armageddon isn’t a damned event.” I put the weapon loaded A-Team van in gear with a fatalistic determination. “It’s a mother fucking address.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  SHUT THE FUCK UP, JEREMY BENTHAM, I’M BUSY DOING ANTI-HERO SHIT!

  “Shoot to Thrill“ AC/DC

  It would have been really nice if we could have just gotten on Hill Street or Veterans and just taken it to the entrance of Memorial Park. But the stupid rioters made us take a route that, on a map, would have looked like it had been drawn in crayon by a drunken preschooler whose art would go on the refrigerator door to prove mommy loves them and not because it had any artistic merit.

  The radio kept putting out news updates about the riots and their spread in between playing songs that were probably inappropriate due to the circumstances.

  “This is bad, isn’t it?” Gretchen asked, cradling the AA-12 in her lap.

  “It’s not good,” I admitted as I pulled through an alley to get off the road.

  “This the time to come clean about everything?” she asked, her head facing away as she looked out the window, not that she needed to, but to avoid eye contact.

  “Come clean about what?”

  “There are things you don’t know about me,” she confessed.

  “Hit me then.”

  She bit her lip and even with her olive complexion, you could tell she was blushing. “My favorite musician is Dolly Parton and my favorite actress is Sally Field, but I hate Steel Magnolias—I tried to make myself like it but I just couldn’t.” She looked at me apologetically, lip quivering. “I just couldn’t.”

  I couldn’t help but smile. “I’m not gonna bitch. I hate that movie.”

  She wiped a tear from her eye. “Dylan McDermont deserved better.”

  “After Hamburger Hill, hell yes he did.” I reached over and took her hand in mine. I squeezed it and she wiped her other eye with her free hand. “It’s not that big a deal.”

  “I just felt like I was hiding something from you is all.”

  I pulled onto a road that ran parallel to Hill; so far, it looked relatively clear. “I hate Barry Manilow, but I love the Me First and the Gimmie Gimmie’s version of Mandy.”

  “That’s not that bad.” She smiled. “I got thrown out of a performance of The Phantom of the Opera.”

  “Why?”

  She sucked on her lips then bashfully confessed, “I stood up and yelled at the stage.”

  “What the hell did you yell?”

  “I’d rather not say.”

  I laughed. “Well, now you have to.”

  She waited, the embarrassment growing before finally sprouting, “You dumb bitch, he gave you everything.”

  I laughed; she slowly smiled. Then I told her, “I hate musicals.”

  “That’s not shocking.” She squeezed my hand this time. “I like working at Sharky’s because I don’t feel like I have to work as hard as I would if I worked at Titanium Lightning.”

  I laughed even more.

  “What?” she asked with a voice filled with concern.

  “I’m probably not supposed to find laziness attractive.”

  She smiled, and that made it all worth it.

  The closer we got to the park the weirder things got. It wasn’t just rioting. Sure, there were plenty of people looting, plenty of people fighting. But there was also odder stuff. There were people just outright fucking there in public. There were whole orgies taking place on the hoods of cars that were not built or engineered for those kinds of stresses. There was a swarm of people latched to an abandoned hot dog cart like iron filings to a magnet, just gorging themselves. I saw two women fighting over a jacket they were both trying to pull off a shop dummy; one of the ladies literally shanked the other with a nail file and that still didn’t stop the other lady from trying to win that ugly ass jacket.

  We passed the scene of a sorority-looking girl finger banging herself while watching a dude in a clerical collar going to town all mouth happy on easily the largest piece of meat I’d seen outside a porno.

  “This all seem a bit odd to you?” Gretchen asked with understated curiosity.

  “A bit,” I admitted.

  A group of raged-out assholes ran up and started banging on the van, blocking the road. I grabbed one of the modified Glock 17s with the cool German sears and a thirty-two-round magazine in my right hand as my left hit the button to roll down the window. I pushed the pistol to the guy at the window’s screaming face and squeezed the trigger. Five hollow point 9mm rounds barked in a blast of fully automatic fire blowing out the back of the man’s head. I heard Gretchen firin
g what sounded like one of her single-action .357’s from the other window. I switched the pistol to my left hand and aimed it out the window blasting a woman banging on the front of the van. At the same time, I punched the gas. The van bumped as it shot forward, and I didn’t wonder if I ran anyone over but I did wonder how many people I ran over.

  There was a little voice flirting with the back of my head telling me I should feel bad about that. But the voice of Jeremy Bentham screamed in my inner ear You have bigger fucking things to worry about right now!

  “This is crazy,” Gretchen said with glorious understatement as she started reloading her revolver.

  “Maybe,” I was totally guessing, “the End of the World is bringing out the crazy in people. Cranking all the suppressed shit up to eleven?”

  “Maybe,” she agreed as she slid the pistol back in the holster. “But why isn’t it affecting us?”

  I thought about it, and at the same time, I could feel the Wrath barely contained. It wanted to be unleashed. In that split second that occurs every time I blinked I saw myself, burning Blade in my hand giving the world its just desserts. Some of it was actually gratifying. Using the Fiery Sword to chop off the cock of every child molester. Taking the Burning Blade to behead every producer of reality TV and dismember the executives who canceled shows like My Name Is Earl, Community, and Firefly while shows like Teen Mom continued to pave the way for porno people who weren’t talented enough for porno. I could see myself taking the unbridled Wrath of God and feeding the glutton, sating the lustful, working the slothful, satisfying the greedy, contending the envious, humbling the proud, and drowning the wrathful in more than they could possibly fucking imagine.

  My knuckles were white on the steering wheel and I realized I was fighting to keep my shit together. “Maybe we’re just used to the bullshit?” I offered.

  Gretchen thought about it and didn’t even seemed fazed at I swerved to miss a crack-head skinny guy going to town behind a rascal-riding tubby. In swerving, I did hit and run over an asshole who had been swinging a tire iron.

  “Do you think the Sword is protecting you?” she asked.

  “I dunno…I’ll be honest I’m trying to not flip my shit right now.” I glanced at her and saw the concern in her eyes. “Plus, that doesn’t explain you being fine.”

  “You’re okay,” she offered, “and I am because of the soulmate thing?”

  “Sounds good,” I admitted as I gunned the engine and leaned half my head and left arm out the window, cooking off the rest of the full-auto Glock mag into a crowd of people fighting in the middle of the road. Some scattered, some fell, and some got slammed with a supped-up GMC Vandura doing damage to its grill. I pulled my arm back in and dropped the spent pistol into the floor between the seats. “Sounds good, but who fucking knows?”

  “It's not like it matters.” Gretchen nodded.

  “Huh?”

  She shrugged. “We’re still relatively okay, even in all this.” She gestured at the world falling apart. “The why of it all doesn’t matter. I know gravity works; understanding the science of it is just masturbation.”

  We were within a block of the park entrance. I glanced at the clock—nine minutes till when the imp demon said the world was ending. The road was blocked with cars and people in a surreal hodgepodge of fighting and fucking.

  I put the van in park and leaned back, grabbing the M-60 and slinging the heavy satchel with the belt over my shoulder. Gretchen slid the sawed-off double-barrel in the back of her belt and hefted the AA-12. Our eyes met. We didn’t say anything.

  If the time comes and you take the time to say all the things there is to say, the moment is going to pass. I unlatched the door and pushed it open with my foot and lead the way out the door with the barrel of the M-60.

  My feet touched the ground and I saw a cop aim an obviously empty Beretta 92FS at me, and confusion crossed his rage twisted face when the gun wouldn’t fire. Pointing an empty gun at me or not, I put six rounds into him, low into his hips and gut from the belt feed.

  See, a lot of people practice and preach two to the chest and one to the head. But that’s just silly. If you know your opponent might have body armor, two to the chest is silly. Then putting one in the head? The head is a target half as wide as the chest, so you double your chance of missing. The hips, on the other hand, are just as wide as the chest. They also have important veins running through them. And finally, you can’t stand on a broken hip, so even if you don’t kill the asshole he’s off his feet. Those six 7.62 x 54 rounds all hit and basically folded that cop in half.

  I started stepping toward the park. I stepped over a couple who had to be in their eighties laying in a disturbing sixty-nine. I brought the M-60 to my shoulder and sent a spray of brass as I raked a group of people lighting a car on fire. A guy wielding a bike chain spun it over his head and ran toward me in a mad rage, but Gretchen punished the dude with three shells of double-ought buck with finality.

  Gretchen got beside me and we moved together.

  There were at least fifty people, maybe more, between us and the entrance of the park. There wasn’t time. It was like I could hear Jeremy Bentham whispering, Your hands are tied, so fuck it, bro. Do what you gotta do.

  In a perfect world, we’d have worked our way around or used stealth to ease our way through. But we don’t live in a perfect world, do we? My nieces and nephews were doing what kids do nowadays, Jammer’s brother and sister were living their lives. Switch and Megatron were on the run. Yuri and Mary Jo were hiding at her sister’s. Phil the Destroyer and Tessa were being great parents to their daughters and son. The world was going to end, and fifty people who may or may not have had it coming stood between us and the Hail Mary possibility of saving it.

  I held the M-60 to my shoulder and pressed the trigger, cooking off rapid yet controlled bursts of three 7.62 rounds, five rounds then a tracer, over and over. I fired two or three aimed bursts with every slow methodical step. I dropped looters with the ease of stolen goods falling to the ground with a crash from their limp, lifeless arms. I put down people in the throws of passion for the simple combination of uncertainty and the sad fact that they were there. I gave a hell of jacketed lead to those who turned from attacking each other to try to attack us.

  I’d like to say I felt bad about it, but I didn’t. The sad fact is that people are statistics. The sad and glorious fact is I’d put down any number I had to for Phil the Destroyer and Tessa, for Yuri and Mary Jo, for my nieces and nephews, for Switch, Jammer, and every other brother I humped a ruck and crossed the wire with. I’d murder the world for Gretchen.

  She matched me step for step, and when she emptied the drum of the AA-12 she dropped it and drew her pistols. Her shots were controlled and aimed and filled with pain. Tears fell down her cheeks and she obviously felt everything I didn’t. I didn’t envy her that, but I did love her for it. Not because she did it, but because she did it anyway.

  Jeremy Bentham had said, The said truth is that it is the greatest happiness of the greatest number that is the measure of right and wrong. Gretchen and I put down at least fifty people to get to the entrance of the park. Just because someone in an instance is right doesn’t mean they can’t go fuck themselves.

  We got to the gated entrance and I dropped the satchel of ammo and the M-60. Gretchen looked at me curiously as she started reloading her pistols. I pulled out my flask and unscrewed the top and took a long swig of eighteen-year-old Macallan. “You remember the plan?” I asked and offered her the flask.

  She shook her head at the flask but muttered, “I do,” as she holstered her first pistol and started reloading the second.

  I gestured to the M-60 as I put my flask away. “Belt fed isn’t going to save the world.” I patted my pocket. “But this might.”

  She nodded, holstered her second pistol then wiped her eyes and cheeks. She made herself smile as she looked into my muddy brown eyes. She put her right hand in my left and squeezed.

  Hand in hand
we stepped through the gate into the park.

  “I love you,” she said softly with all the sincerity a man could ever hope to hear in the voice of an angel.

  I Han Solo’d her.

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Michael Bay’s Fourth Best Movie

  “My Way” Frank Sinatra

  …the end is here ….

  It is without any hint of hyperbole or irony when I say Frank Sinatra had one of the greatest voices of all time. Even through the small speakers of my iPhone, there was no mistaking the tone and timbre of Ole Blue Eyes himself. I had asked Gretchen to pick a song, a song for the End.

  When I say the End, again, it is without hyperbole or irony. The grass was soft and well-manicured under my sneakered feet. The wind was enough to tug at the edges of my jacket, exposing the pearl grips of the 1911 under my right arm and the wooden grips of the 1911 under my left. Even with the wind, it was a pleasant evening, and probably the last.

  Frank sang about living a full life and all.

  Gretchen stood next to me, and even here at the End she was a comfort. I wished she’d go but I knew she wouldn’t. I was certain dying was easy. Dying was easy and dying fighting was blood simple. It would be so much easier if she weren’t there.

  But dang it, Frank did it his way.

  Then again, it wasn’t like she was safe elsewhere. This wasn’t just a climax, it was the Climax. She would be no safer up on the International Space Station than she was right next to me. And at least here, she could die swinging. We could die together.

  Frank may have had regrets, but doesn’t everyone?