Apocalypticon

by Clayton Smith

  “They got wood instead!” the younger kid boasted, hefting the wooden club in his hand.

  “You men are heroes. Keep up the good work,” Violet said as she reached out and touched the captain’s muscled arm. “What is it about a man in a Lower Wacker Guard uniform?” she winked. The captain blushed, and they were off.

  “So wait, is she a concierge, or a prostitute?” Patrick murmured once they’d put a bit of distance between themselves and their escort.

  “A constitute?” Ben suggested.

  “Ah, yes. The elusive constitute. A favorite among post-apocalyptic skeezes.”

  When they reached the Civic Opera House, Violet and Simon Phoenix’s doppelganger stopped short. “Wait here,” she said.

  “Why? Where are you going?” Ben asked.

  “To get your Units,” she said, “as promised.”

  “Oh! We’ll take coffee. Ben, tell her to bring coffee!” Patrick said, jumping up and down.

  “Coffee? Is that his word for drugs?” she asked. Ben nodded. “Hm. He’s pretty far gone.”

  “Croke ain’t no joke,” Ben said solemnly. Patrick exploded with a laugh and covered it with a cough.

  “I’ll be right back. Don’t move.” She went in through the revolving door, leaving the man with the dyed blonde Mohawk to watch them. But he grew immediately bored with that task and wandered off to go talk to a group of Lower Wacker Guards, leaving Patrick and Ben alone under the massive Opera House overhang.

  “What was all that ‘Bradford’ stuff?” Patrick asked.

  “You think I’m gonna give her my real name? Are you nuts?”

  “What was she going to do, write it on a voodoo doll and stick needles in your junk?”

  Ben’s face grew serious. “You never know.”

  “Pffft.”

  “How about you stop worrying about my self-preservation and start worrying about how we’re gonna manage our way onto that train?”

  “I imagine we’ll climb the steps.”

  “Har, har. We’re gonna be climbin’ the stairs to Nowheresville if we don’t figure out how to pay our way.”

  “Nowheresville? Is that walkable? Is it south? We’re headed south.”

  “Don’t think I won’t kill you. I will, I’ll kill you.”

  “Relax. We’re going to be fine.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because we have something to trade for passage.”

  “What’s that?” Ben asked.

  “A white slave,” Patrick said.

  Ben opened his mouth to speak, but stopped. Had he heard that correctly? “I’m sorry, did you say a white slave?”

  “Hmm?” Patrick asked.

  “Did you just say we would trade a white slave?”

  “Just now?”

  “Yes. Just now.”

  “Is that what you think I said?”

  “Yeah, it is.”

  Patrick shook his head and cleared the tension with his hands. “Look, I don’t want you to worry about this. I have a plan, and all I need from you is trust. Which you’re contractually obligated to give me, since I am, in fact, in charge.”

  “That’s true, you’re in charge,” Ben conceded, “but if you recall, I’m the one who got us across the bridge.”

  “Yeah, and in doing so, you lost us my coffee, didn’t you?” Patrick demanded.

  “I don’t think you can call that coffee anymore. Chemically speaking.”

  Patrick sighed and placed a hand on Ben’s shoulder. “You’ve proven to me that, if all else fails, I can rely on you to come up with a somewhat mediocre plan. That’s a skill that may come in handy before we’re done, but until I give you the sign, just leave the plans to me.”

  “What’s the sign?”

  “You’ll know it when you see it,” Patrick said. “But it’ll most likely involve screaming and running, and probably the flailing of limbs.”

  Just then, the revolving door spun, and Violet reappeared holding a paper bag. “Gentlemen, your Units.” Patrick snickered. Violet rolled her eyes. She pulled out a fifth of Smirnov vodka. “20 Units.”

  Ben grabbed the bottle and inspected it sadly. “No Grey Goose?”

  “And 15 Units,” she said, ignoring him completely. She reached into the bag and produced a one-pound bag of ground Sumatra. “Actual coffee.” Patrick instantly burst into tears.

  “Oh my God!” he blubbered. “How did you--you can’t possibly even--I don’t know how to--oh my God, coffee!” He sank to his knees and lurched forward, grasping for the bag. Violet, startled by his sudden, awkward movements, dropped it. It fell to the sidewalk and burst open at the corner, sending coffee spilling across the cement. Patrick fell to his face and began scooping the coffee into his mouth, rubbing it into his gums.

  “My God,” Violet breathed. “I’ve never seen someone so far gone! Does he realize it’s not even croke?”

  “It’s hard to know what he realizes,” Ben said. “Listen, I don’t want to be a girl about this, but I’m pretty sure your menu said a pound of coffee was six Units. Not fifteen.”

  Violet frowned, her face turning an angry shade of red. “That was for Folger’s. This is Kona. Take it or leave it.” She snapped her fingers, and her fellow escort trotted back over toward them.

  Ben glanced down at his companion, who was patting the spilled coffee grounds onto his tongue. “Looks like we’re taking it.”

  “Good choice. Well, gentlemen. We hope you enjoyed your brief stay in the Loop.”

  “Aren’t you escorting us to the train?” Ben asked. “That was the deal.”

  “Cumo will see you the rest of the way. I’ll be taking my leave here. The next block is the Mercantile Exchange. Those Day Traders give me the creeps.”

  •

  Patrick literally could not be happier. Maybe it was their quick progress, maybe it was the three grams of snorted coffee grounds setting off his brain cells like Pop Rocks, but everything felt right with the world. He had fresh coffee in his mouth and half a plan in his head. He was going to get them on that train, and while he had started the day gravely concerned about the missing half of that plan, his fear was melting away like nuclear snow on a smoking pile of rubble. Nothing would stop them now.

  Then he got smacked in the head by a rock.

  “Ow! What the shit?” he screamed, plastering a hand to his temple. Blood began oozing through his fingers. “What was that?”

  “Oh my God,” Ben said, pointing to a building on the right. His eyes grew wide in horror. “Patrick. Look. It’s douche bags.”

  Patrick whirled around and squinted through the fog. Sure enough, up ahead, a few dozen twenty-something men and women in once-trendy (but now torn and ratty) business suits hung from the windows of a pair of massive towers. The men all wore their hair spiked up in front with some sort of stiff but pliable product, and some of them appeared to be wearing brown shoes with black suits. Most of the women seemed to be clad in tight skirt suits and thick-rimmed black glasses. Ben was right. These people were douche bags. “Day Traders,” he muttered.

  Word of the Day Traders had spread north some time ago; Patrick had first heard about them just a few months after M-Day. Rumor had it they had once been hot-blooded up-and-comers on the financial floor, once considered demigods among their own kind, but they were now disillusioned husks who still clung desperately to the old ways. One of the stories said that they had a generator in the CME building that they used to watch Boiler Room on loop, a very Clockwork Orangeian practice that had twisted their perceptions of reality in untold, dangerous ways. Money was their deity, despite the reality that legal tender was now worth less than the paper it was printed on. Supposedly they hassled everyone who walked through their turf for money, but they weren’t beggars. If you h
ad cash, they didn’t ask you for it, and they didn’t murder you to get it. If you had money, they worshipped you. They brought you into their towers and made you their king. They begged you to toss them some leads, tried to impress you with their cold calls. But if you were broke, you were less than nothing to them. You were target practice.

  Clearly, Patrick and Ben weren’t even being given the benefit of the ask. The Traders were just assuming that they were penniless, probably going off the way they were dressed. The Traders always judged someone by the way he was dressed. Confirmation of their opinions came in the form of a second rock, which went whizzing only inches from Ben’s nose.

  “Wesley Snipes! Do something!” Patrick hissed.

  The large man only turned and shrugged. “I got no beef with the Traders,” was all he said. The feeling was reciprocal. A flurry of stones flew toward them, but only at the them. Cumo just watched from a safe distance, looking bored.

  “You’re supposed to protect us,” Ben said, shielding his face with his hands.

  Cumo shrugged again. “They’re not murderers. They ain’t gonna kill you,” he said, as a small piece of concrete pinged off Ben’s shoulder.

  Patrick let loose a string of expletives and dove for shelter behind a piece of building rubble lying in the middle of the road. Ben followed suit, diving headfirst over the concrete pylon as rocks pelted it from the west. “Well, fearless leader?” he said, scrabbling back toward the cover of the cement, his gigantic knapsack making him look like a turtle who had survived a horrible, mutating nuclear accident. “Got a plan?”

  “As a matter of fact, I do,” Patrick said. “Let’s just hope I can still speak the language.” He peered over the rubble and waited for an opening in the rock barrage. When it came, he jumped up, threw up his hands in surrender, and shouted, “If you’re not inside, you’re outside!” Every Trader with a rock froze, wondering if they’d heard him right. They mumbled to each other up there in the windows. “It’s working,” he whispered down to Ben. “Keep your mouth shut and follow me.” He took a step away from the concrete shield, hands still raised, and shouted, “I look at a hundred deals a day! I choose one!” The mumbling overhead increased, and some of the Traders started nodding their heads. Patrick continued. “I mean, it’s easy to get in. It’s hard to get out. Am I right?” A few of the Traders shouted their agreement. Patrick took a few more steps down the road. Ben followed closely behind, using Patrick as a human shield. Cumo followed at a distance, amused. “’Cause money is a bitch that never sleeps!” Patrick cried. A couple of soft cheers went up in the windows. He was on a roll. “Bulls make money! Bears make money! Pigs? They get slaughtered! And parents are the...the...what are they? The...oh! Bone on which children sharpen their teeth! Huh? Huh?” One of the women on the third floor shouted, “It’s true! Only the strong understand!” Several of her fellows agreed.

  Patrick and Ben were almost down to the halfway point between the two towers. There was still half a city block to go. “That’s the one thing you have to remember about WASPs. They love money and hate people! Hell, I don’t throw darts at a board. I bet on sure things! Read Sun-Tzu, The Art of War. Every battle is won before it’s ever fought. A fool and his money are lucky enough to get together in the first place. Because what’s worth doing is worth doing for money! It’s a zero sum game! Money itself isn’t lost or made, it’s simply transferred from one perception to another!” Random cheers of “Yeah!” and “He’s right, he’s right!” echoed along the otherwise empty street. Farther and farther down the block they crept, Patrick now pumping his fists in the air triumphantly. He was screaming the words now. “I’m talking about liquid! Rich enough to have your own jet! Rich enough not to waste time! Fifty, a hundred million dollars, buddy. A player, or nothing! Because greed captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed is right, greed works! The point is, ladies and gentlemen, that greed, for lack of a better word, is good!” The entire Chicago Mercantile Exchange burst into wild applause. The men high-fived in excitement, the women fanned themselves with phone message sheets. The roar of the Traders was deafening. Patrick had never felt such a rush. Now they weren’t throwing stones, they were throwing money, their money. “Teach me how to spot a ripe IPO!” “Show me impressive returns!” “Help me roll my IRA!” “Take me down to nothing and rebuild me!“ The cries of delight and need fell upon them, on and on, until Patrick and Ben reached the next block. Then they turned tail and ran like hell, Cumo ambling casually after them.

  “What the hell did you just do?” Ben asked, incredulous.

  Patrick beamed as he ran. “I gave them every Gordon Gekko quote I could remember.”

  “That was genius.”

  “And we didn’t lose the coffee,” Patrick said, hefting the bag in his hand. “That’s why I’m in charge.”

  3.

  Horace toed at the gore stuck to the plow shield. Here and there, small clumps of hair matted together in dark red clots fell from the blade, exposing tiny white bone fragments that peppered the bloody spray. Jesus, those lumps of brain matter were really stuck on there.

  “Christ. I hate when this happens.”

  “When you hit someone with the train, or when they get stuck?”

  Horace glanced sharply at his second-in-command, a grave young man with somber grey eyes, a gristly black beard, and a bald head under his Amtrak cap. He was an able conductor, but often spoke too freely for Horace’s taste. “Both,” the older man muttered. “Find someone to clean this up. I want it sparkling by the time we pull out.”

  He turned and strode toward the station, noting with disgust the blood and grey matter that had exploded onto the engine windows. Christ, this was a messy route. You wouldn’t think it--most of the last 300 miles of rail ran through open space, what used to be farmland--but between the suicides, the goddamn loose cattle, and the occasional near-sighted refugee, the entire Lincoln Service was a bloodbath.

  The Monkey piss didn’t help matters. Visibility in the fog was never any better than half a mile, and it wasn’t safe to blast the horn. It’d be like calling starving children to Thanksgiving. A train, even a train as stripped down as Bertha, would still be considered a cornucopia of resources for the average survivor. Horace’s men were capable of protecting the train to a point, but it’s not like they could beat a retreat if they were swarmed. Best not to draw any unwanted attention, which meant no horn. Oftentimes, between the fog and the silence, people just didn’t see the train coming, unlikely as it sounded. A lot of refugees followed the tracks when they had no compass. Maybe they didn’t figure the train was still running. But they didn’t know Horace Stilton.

  He stopped halfway down the platform and pulled an antique gold watch from his pocket and examined the time. Most people weren’t concerned with time these days, but a railroad man knew better. There was always a schedule to keep, even if the world had given up its timetable. He watched the second hand make three complete rotations, and when it struck the 12 on the fourth time around, the time was precisely 3:00pm, Central Standard Time. He tugged on the chain around his neck and drew the long, thin whistle from inside his shirt. He blew four short, sharp blasts. “Departure in four hours!” he hollered.

  Horace had been with Amtrak for almost thirty years. He had started as a lowly part-time ticket clerk at a time when low gas prices and a good economy meant the near death of the passenger train industry, and slowly moved up the ranks, to full-time clerk, then Service Assistant, then Lead Service Attendant. Then, around 2008, the economy tanked and things really picked up at the Blue Lady. Horace rocketed up to the coveted position of Assistant Passenger Conductor Trainee and completed the training program in record time. Somewhere in D.C. there was still a plaque with his name on it. But for all the promise he’d shown, Horace had stagnated in that position. He’d shown decades of dedication to the company, but when all was said and done, it was s
till an Old Boys’ Club, and Horace didn’t fit the profile. He wasn’t well connected. He wasn’t a blood relative of anyone on the Board of Directors, he hadn’t knocked up the company president’s daughter, and his father hadn’t gone to school with the VP of This or That. He was stonewalled at every Lead Conductor position that came available. He jumped service lines, from the Acela Express to the Texas Eagle to the Pacific Surfliner to the Illinois Zephyr to the Empire Builder back to the Texas Eagle, leaving his family, friends, and any semblance of a normal life behind in a desperate attempt to show his worth in the right place at the right time. But for every Lead Conductor opening, there were six less deserving “friends-of-a-friend” winking at each other in the bullpen. Horace lost traction, his resentment festering within his heart like an open sore.

  Until M-Day, that is. The apocalypse marked a significant turning point in Horace’s life. The Flying Monkeys wiped out over 80% of Amtrak’s staff, including all but three commissioned Lead Conductors, all three of whom abandoned their posts after the Great Genocide. As far as Horace was concerned, that was just the latest proof that they had no right to be called conductors in the first place.

  The day after the apocalypse, no one showed for work. No one except for Horace. He arrived at Los Angeles Union Station as if it were any other day. In truth, he hadn’t quite grasped the enormity of the attack. With no friends or close relatives to worry about his safety, his phone hadn’t rung once, and there wasn’t a single person he could think to call to get more information on the rumblings outside. He knew there had been a serious, multi-target attack on the United States, of course. It was on every channel. L.A. had even been one of the twenty-six targets, and he could see the yellow dust drifting by his window in thick clouds. It had scared him at first--it was early spring, the first truly hot Californian day, and he, like so many others across the country, had his windows open for the first time that year, giving the mysterious yellow plague easy entry into his apartment--but it hadn’t affected him, and though he heard screams and sirens out in the streets, he thought what most Los Angeles survivors thought at the time: another impotent terrorist threat. His apartment was located only a few blocks from the station, and, sure, there was chaos in the streets on his way to work the next morning, but, Christ, this was L.A. When wasn’t there chaos in the streets? To top things off, most of the news broadcasts had gone off the air sometime the night before. He thought the attack must be clouding the airwaves, obstructing the signals, something like that. How was he to know that 99% of the anchors, producers, writers, cameramen, make-up artists, and interns were lying dead with their bodies half melted in pools of their own excrement, pus, and blood, with that crazy, viscous yellow gel oozing out of their pores?