Apocalypticon

by Clayton Smith

  They picked themselves up and sprinted on, already breathing heavily under the weight of their packs. “I changed my mind,” Ben gasped as they leapt over a shallow gully. “I don’t want to go to Disney World. I want to stay in Chicago.”

  “Okay. You go back. I’m going this way.”

  They pushed on blindly through the darkness for several miles, stopping every few minutes to listen for footsteps; sometimes they heard them, sometimes they didn’t. Whatever the auditory outcome, they plunged deeper and deeper into the woods.

  Almost a full hour after they’d fled the ranger station, they broke into another clearing. Right in the middle of it stood a house, a single story Ranch with candlelight flickering in the space between the window boards. They stopped at the edge of the clearing, wheezing and sweating.

  “One, solitary house in a clearing in the middle of the zombie-infested woods? How can this go badly?” Ben asked between breaths.

  “I think it’s better than the alternative,” Patrick said.

  “Better than running until we find a military base where we’ll be protected by overbearing men with crewcuts and AK-47s?”

  “Better than running the four more feet until my heart explodes, then getting ripped apart by Tokka and Rahzar,” Pat said, nodding at a couple of injured man-creatures clawing their way out through the woods. Ben sighed. So it was settled, then. They huffed their way to the front door and knocked.

  “Who is it?” sang a sweet female voice from the other side.

  “Please, we need help!” Ben cried. A small group of remarkably uninjured runners burst into the clearing just then and sprinted toward the house. Ben pushed forward and pounded on the door. “Please! Let us inside!”

  The voice behind the door mumbled something they couldn’t understand. The slathering savages were closing in, quickly. Patrick pulled Ben away from the door. “Amateur,” he muttered, shaking his head. He cleared his throat and pressed his palms together. “Ma’am? We hate to disturb you, but it’s rather urgent.”

  They heard a lock slide back, and the door cracked open. “Yes?” asked the woman on the other side, pressing her eye to the slit.

  “Let us in, let us in, let us in!” Ben cried, absolutely frantic. He moved to enter, but she held the door in place.

  “I don’t know you, do I?”

  “No! Lady, look! There are man-eating zombies right behind us, for the love of God, please let us in!”

  The woman peeked over their shoulders and saw the wild humans sprinting toward them. “Your friends certainly seem rambunctious,” she said cautiously.

  “Rambunc--? Lady, they’re trying to eat us!” Ben screamed.

  “Mary, who is it?” asked a man’s voice from somewhere inside.

  “Two boys who want to come in,” she said.

  “Do we know them?”

  “No, dear, they’re strangers.”

  “Did they say what they want?”

  Ben slapped the door with his palms. “Lady, please!”

  “No, they just said they want to come in,” she said, unperturbed.

  “They’re probably just Jehovah’s Witnesses, dear. Go on, let them in.”

  “They’re not Jehovah’s Witnesses, darling, they’re dirty.”

  “For crying out loud!” Ben screamed. “I did not come all this way to die on a porch!” He lowered his shoulder with the aim of driving it through the door, but suddenly, the lead runner was on them. The madman dove forward, knocking into Patrick, who collided with Ben, who fell into the door, which flew open under the combined weight. “Oh!” the woman cried, pinwheeling back into the foyer. The three men went down in a heap in the entryway, Patrick scrabbling for the runner’s throat to hold his teeth at bay, Ben floundering under their weight. Patrick managed to get his feet planted on the runner’s chest, and with a strength he’d never known he had, he pushed off and launched the creature back through the doorway. It crashed into two others just jumping onto the porch, and the three of them went down like bowling pins, screaming and snarling. Patrick scrambled for the door, slammed it shut, and threw the locks just as the monsters outside came smashing up against it.

  “What is the meaning of this?” the woman demanded, stamping her foot. They could see her easily despite the night’s darkness; candles burned everywhere, on every tabletop, in converted wall sconces, even in the stately chandeliers above. The entire house was as bright as dawn. The woman herself practically glimmered. She was a little shorter than medium height, and slim, wearing a sleeveless blue-and-white polka dotted dress cinched at the waist and poofed out in a wide skirt. Her yellow hair framed her thin, pretty face perfectly, with well-coiffed ringlets pinned back over her ears. Her dark blue eyes, her full, red lips, and her small, pointed nose completed the package of a 1950s middle class housewife to a T. She had her fists planted firmly on her hips, scowling down at the two men on the floor. Even looking angry, she was uncommonly attractive. And exceptionally clean.

  “Well?” she said, tapping her heeled shoe on the hardwood floor.

  They struggled to their feet. “Those things, they were—“

  “Miscreants, from the look of them,” she finished sharply. “Barging into my house like animals. I should have you arrested! In fact, I think I’ll do just that. Warren, ring the sheriff!” she called over her shoulder.

  A man in an argyle cardigan appeared behind her. He wore dark slacks with a sharp crease and a crisp white shirt under the sweater. His black hair was perfectly parted over his left eyebrow, rising in a slight wave in front. “Now, now, Mary,” he said, patting his wife on the shoulders, “let’s not be so rash. Look at them, can’t you see how scared they are? Something’s got them in a tizzy. Nothing a good meal couldn’t fix, am I right?” He leaned in conspiratorially. “Or if not that, a stiff sip from the bar,” he said with a wink.

  “Not until the children are in bed,” Mary said hotly. “Please excuse me while I have a word with my husband.” She took him by the elbow and led him back down the hall. They spoke in hushed tones, hers frantic and punctuated by quick, sweeping hand gestures, his calm and, they hoped, soothing.

  “This place gives me the creeps,” Ben whispered. The entire house was spotless; the floors were scrubbed and polished, the furniture was dusted, the stairs were vacuumed, pictures still hung evenly on recently painted walls, little knickknacks were organized perfectly on their shelves. Aside from a few necessary post-M-Day renovations, like boarded windows and padlocks on some of the doors, the house looked like it was ready to be photographed for a pre-apocalyptic issue of Home and Garden. It was eerie as shit. Ben said as much. “And what’s with Betty Draper and Astronaut Darrin? Did we just walk onto the set of Leave it to Beaver?”

  “Stop mixing your references,” Patrick said. “It’s confusing.”

  Their hosts finished their discussion. Mary marched off in a huff. Warren walked back to the entryway, giving the two men a broad, easy smile. “I apologize for my wife. She can be a little...high strung sometimes.”

  “No, no, no, it’s completely fine,” Patrick said, waving his hands in the air. “We barged into your house; she has every right to be upset.”

  “It’s just that we were about to be savagely eaten by mutants,” Ben added helpfully.

  Warren laughed. “We’d be happy if you boys would be our guests tonight. We’re just finishing up dinner, but there’s some soup leftover, if you’re hungry. We’ll keep it warm for you, why don’t you go clean up? The guest bathroom’s just down the hall there. You’ll find plenty of water. We draw it from our own well,” he said with a proud wink. “When you’re all cleaned up, join us in the dining room, right back down this way, the last room on the left, right back there. All right, now? Welcome to our home.”

  •

  The soup was easily the best thing Ben had ever
tasted; carrots, celery, onions, kale, white beans, basil, and thyme, seasoned with healthy amounts of pepper and unhealthy amounts of salt. The flavors danced together in a symphony of flavor unlike anything he’d tasted in the last three years. Even the fresh venison of the night before couldn’t compare (especially not in hindsight). Paired with the fact that he’d just had his first hot bath in over three years, thanks to his hosts’ well and well-stoked fires, he now felt perpetually on the verge of grateful tears. “The soup is amazing,” he managed to say between spoonfuls. Warren grinned.

  “The vegetables and herbs are grown right here in our own little garden. Mary’s got a heck of a green thumb, a heck of a green thumb!”

  “Oh, stop it,” she said, blushing.

  “It’s true! Isn’t it true, kids?”

  Two young children, one boy and one girl, sat across from Patrick and Ben. The boy was older, maybe by a year or two, and was dressed like his father, in a red cardigan over a white turtleneck. His hair was parted the same way, too, left to right with a gelled wave in front. The girl wore a pleated jumper over a light blue blouse. Her dark hair was pulled back and tied with matching ribbons that streamed down her back.

  “Your father asked you a question,” Mary said sharply.

  “Yes, father,” they answered in unison. The boy rested his head on one hand and drew imaginary pictures on the tablecloth with the end of his spoon. The girl wriggled uncomfortably in her seat, which had been boosted up with dictionaries so she could reach the table. “May we be a’scused?” she asked.

  “You may not be,” their mother said. “It’s not polite to leave the table while others are eating.”

  “Oh, no, please, we don’t mind,” Patrick said through a mouthful of kale.

  “It’s not polite,” she repeated firmly. “Nor is it polite to speak with your mouth full.”

  “Mary,” Warren said, “these men are our guests.”

  She frowned. “I’m glad you’re enjoying the soup,” she said.

  Ben stole a questioning glance at Patrick, but his companion was taking a passive approach to their host’s tone by ignoring it completely and hurrying up with his dinner. Ben did the same.

  “Now you may be excused,” Mary said when Ben had finished slurping the dregs from his bowl. The children beamed and exploded out of their chairs. They scampered out of the dining room with squeals of delight.

  “Help your mother clear the table!” Warren shouted after them, but they were already bounding up the stairs. He shook his head and chuckled. “Kids these days, eh?” He stood and began clearing the dishes from the table. Patrick and Ben moved to help, but he shooed them away.

  “It’s impossible to teach them any sort of decent value in today’s television culture,” Mary said, shaking her head. Warren agreed.

  Television culture? Ben mouthed to Patrick. Even televisions run on generators were useless; the stations had almost all stopped broadcasting. The only active channels they knew of were the ones set to blast pre-recorded emergency information on loop. The information was completely useless, advising people to take shelter in their basements, as if those vulnerable to the Monkey dust could have survived by hunkering down in a cellar. And even those emergency broadcasts were probably dead by now. It was hard to imagine someone keeping them powered this long. There sure as hell wasn’t any “television culture” infecting the youth. That was an extinct concern. Patrick just shrugged.

  Warren reappeared in the dining room. “I hope you don’t mind, I moved your bags and things over to the guest room. That’s, uh...that’s quite a little arsenal you boys have,” he said, more with curiosity than concern. “I suppose you must be...what, some sort of bounty hunters?”

  “Uhm...not exactly,” Ben said.

  “What an exciting life that must be!” Warren continued, his eyes growing glassy with imagination. “Dedicating yourself to tracking down all manner of miscreants and ne’er-do-wells. Sleeping under the stars, traveling to exotic locales, all that excitement and adventure, bringing criminals to justice. I do envy you boys.”

  “Well, it’s not all it’s cracked up to be,” Patrick said, his voice dropping a whole octave. “It can get pretty dangerous out there, but we like to think we do some good.” Ben rubbed at his temples.

  Warren shook his head and smiled. “Mm. I do envy you,” he said again. “Come on, why don’t we head down to the study?”

  He led them to a small, comfortable room at the corner of the house. The dark leather of two overstuffed couches matched the stained oak bookshelves that lined the walls. About half of the shelves were full of books; the other half held family portraits, various plaques and awards, and polished woodcarvings of horses, sports cars, and contemplative Native Americans. “Have a seat,” he said, gesturing to the couches. They plopped down and sank into the cushions.

  “Oooooo!” Patrick said, bouncing a little. “Very nice.”

  Warren lit a fire in the hearth. Its light still paled in comparison to that given off by the plethora of candles spaced around and above the room, but the warmth was nice. He crossed over to a bar cabinet against the far wall. He pulled three glasses and a bottle of Four Roses small batch from inside. “I’m afraid our ice maker’s on the fritz just now. Do you fellows mind taking it neat?”

  They toasted to good fortune and sipped their drinks quietly in front of the fire. Warren seemed deeply lost in his own thoughts as he swirled the drink in his glass. “This is a pretty classy man cave,” Ben said, breaking the silence. “Put in a pool table and you’d never have to leave.”

  “Is billiards your game?” Warren asked. “I’ve never been much for it myself. Too mathematical, billiards. All angles and speed. I’m more of a links man, myself. Do you boys play golf?”

  “I hit a guy with a putter once,” Ben said. “Remember that, Pat?”

  “Yeah. I do. ‘Cause that guy was me, you jackass.”

  Ben smiled at the memory. “It sure was.”

  “I used to play,” Patrick volunteered. “You know, before everything happened.”

  Warren gave him a queer look. “Before what happened?”

  “You know. Everything. M-Day, the Flying Monkeys, and all that. The end of the world.”

  Warren grimaced and shook his head. “I’m afraid I’m not much for politics,” he said by way of apology. “I’ve always been of the mind that a man should do his duty to his family, provide for them by earning an honest paycheck, and let the rest of the world sort itself out. I don’t even bother watching the news anymore. It’s gotten so I don’t need to listen to a couple of talking heads to know how far the country’s fallen. Why, take a look around you. I’m sure you’ve noticed the board on our windows. The neighborhood kids have broken them so often, with their bats and their stones, heck, some of them just drive their fists right through the glass. I got tired of replacing them and just up and said, ‘Enough!’ Young hooligans running around screaming and destroying things like that, with complete disregard to a man’s private property...well, I ask you, what kind of world is that? Where’s the humanity? It’s gotten so we don’t feel safe sending the children to school anymore. Just last month, I walked the children to the schoolhouse myself. I wanted to discuss their progress with their teachers. William’s in third grade now, he has the sour-faced old woman, Mrs. Whatshername, Leidwenger? I tried to have a conversation with her about William’s lessons, just casual conversation, you understand, but she just sat there at her desk, ignored me completely, ignored the entire room! It’s no wonder the other parents have stopped sending their children to school. Even the teachers have given up on the youth. Of course, that’s why they’re all vandals and hoodlums. They’re not held accountable. There’s no discipline anymore. Mary handles the children’s education now, and I think she does a fine job, a fine job! We don’t leave the house much because of it, either. W
ell, they don’t, anyway. A man has to work, of course, but there’s not much cause for a woman and children to go wandering about the neighborhood, not with such reckless violence happening everywhere. Having two calm, rational boys like yourselves in the house is a comfort to me, a real comfort. Mary refuses to accept that the neighborhood teenagers have gone feral, some sort of motherly defense, I guess, but they have, oh ho, mark my words, they have. They’re the ones who were chasing you, and I knew you two were on the up-and-up. The ferals don’t chase each other. It’s dangerous times out there, I tell you. I don’t know what’s gone on with the world.”

  Patrick and Ben sat wide-eyed as Warren finished his speech and sipped thoughtfully from his glass. Patrick elbowed Ben. Ben elbowed him back. The unspoken message was clear: Holy shit.

  Warren finished his whiskey and smacked his lips, savoring the flavor. “Would you boys excuse me? It’s about time to put the children to bed. Make yourselves at home. Pour another drink, if you’d like. I’ll be back shortly.” He left the room and closed the door behind him.

  Ben jumped to his feet as soon as the door clicked. “What the fuck is he talking about?” he whispered hoarsely. “Neighborhood vandals? Watching the news? Dear God, he sent the kids to school up until last month? That teacher was fucking dead, probably rotted to a skeleton! These people are out of their minds!”

  “Yeah, but they have excellent refreshments,” Patrick pointed out, sipping his drink.

  “Are you out of your mind? We have to go!”

  “Go where? Back out into the woods? At night? With those man-eating psychopathic politicians running around? No, I don’t think so. You go right ahead. I’m gonna sit here by the fire and drink more whiskey.” He proved this by remaining by the fire and by drinking more whiskey.