The Post-Apocalyptic Tourist's Guide to Louisville: a novella

by Stephen Lawson

  When he was done, and his stomach had given up after a bout of dry-heaving, he lay on the floor panting.

  “In the time before,” Filson said, “this wouldn’t have been an issue. They had hospitals and medicine for things like this.”

  “I know that,” Thursday said weakly.

  “This is going to kill you though, if we don’t do something about it. I’m taking you to Cornelius, little brother. I don’t think you’re strong enough to fight with me anyway.”

  Thursday’s stomach spasmed again, trying to force out things it no longer contained.

  “Okay,” he said finally.

  ~~~

  “I let Hunter know he’d have to adjust the watch schedule,” Filson said. His voice echoed in the dark tunnel that had once been a sewer. Thursday trudged slowly next to him in the light of a tallow candle. They passed a side-tunnel that had been filled in to prevent infiltration.

  The tunnels flooded occasionally when it rained, but even forty years of rain runoff hadn’t washed away the stench of human waste.

  “Can you imagine people flushing away fertilizer?” Thursday asked. He trudged along, his feet dragging and sloshing in the shallow water. “They must’ve had it good.”

  “They had problems, I’m sure,” Filson said.

  “Like what? Boredom?”

  “No,” Filson said. “They had an Internet, remember?”

  “I wish we could talk to people on the other side of the world still. I’d love to see how they live.”

  “Talk the swarms into not eating you, and maybe you can power the computers back up, or a ham radio at least.”

  Thursday laughed weakly.

  “I don’t think the swarms are much for negotiating,” he said.

  Even in the dim glow of the candle, Filson could see the sheen of sweat that clung to Thursday’s ashen skin.

  They turned a corner and the tunnel ended abruptly with a steel ladder leading up through an uncovered manhole. This led into the baseball stadium’s maintenance tunnels and the smaller, more fortified farm above.

  “Go up first,” Filson said. “I’ll catch you if you slip.”

  ~~~

  “Well, why’d you open it?” Cornelius asked. He held the crumpled note in his hand.

  “I didn’t think it would—” Thursday started to say.

  “You didn’t think at all,” Cornelius said. “Even before the ships came, nobody gave strangers anything nice for free. Back then they wanted money. Now they just want the protein off your bones. Anything that comes from outside the wire wants you dead.”

  “Perhaps we could—” Filson said.

  “Perhaps you could let me finish,” Cornelius said. “Your dad, God rest him, was always interrupting too.”

  He looked between them, waiting for them to test him again.

  “We could send someone else to get this cure from the people in Seattle, but you’d be dead by the time they got back,” Cornelius said. “You’re just going to have to go yourself, once this ‘We really mean it’ bug has run its course. I’d go with you, boy, but I’ve a flock to tend.”

  “I’ll go,” Filson said.

  Cornelius studied him for a moment, then nodded.

  “North of here—past the University of Louisville campus and the Victorian houses in Old Louisville—that’s Seelbach clan territory.”

  Filson and Thursday both knew this, but neither of them dared to interrupt the old man again.

  “They live differently than we do,” he continued. “The Seelbachs live in the top floors of those gargantuan buildings you see when you look toward the river. They moved dirt onto the rooftops and that’s where they farm—on top of the parking decks and in the skywalks that go over the streets. Being up high makes it easier to drop hot oil and sharp metal on the packs when they show up at your door. The Seelbachs have strung rope bridges from one building to the next, too, so they may go years without ever setting foot on the ground.

  “Their leader, if he’s still alive, is Oliver Lawrence. He’s the descendant of this pretty actress who used to make movies. The Seelbachs are a lot stronger than we are, and they control most of the river traffic. Oliver can get you to Seattle if anyone can.”

  “Why would he help me?” Thursday asked, when he was sure his grandfather had finished. “Everyone outside the wire just wants the protein off my bones, like you said.”

  “I said strangers just want the protein off your bones.”

  Cornelius went to the corner of the room and picked up a wooden bat. He held it up for Thursday to read.

  “Louisville Slugger,” Thursday read aloud, “Cornelius Forrester—the best best man I could hope for—Oliver Lawrence.”

  “Take the bat with you when you go,” Cornelius said. “He’ll recognize it—I can promise you that.”

  Thursday turned the flame-tempered ash bat in his hand.

  “Why is it blood-stained?” Filson asked.

  Cornelius’s brow furrowed, and he looked between his two grandsons again.

  “Neither of you would be here if it wasn’t,” he said. “Sit down, and I’ll tell you about how Oliver and I survived the invasion.”

  ~~~

  “We had television back then,” Cornelius said. “It was like the photographs in books or in the Derby Hall of Fame—except they moved. It had sound, too. It was sort of like the Internet, except you couldn’t change anything but the channel.

  “When I was twenty-two, I worked in the limestone Mega-Cavern, doing tours to help pay for college. After I graduated, I went to work for the new owner as his operations manager.

  “We’d moved into a house just above the Cavern, so I walked to work every day. I came home from the office one night, and Meryl was glued to the TV. She ate cereal for dinner a lot, but her bowl was just sitting on the counter with the milk carton next to it.

  “‘Babe?’ I said—that’s what I called her most of the time—but she didn’t answer me. She just jerked her chin toward the TV, and I saw a picture of this ship behind the anchor’s face. The ships were still in orbit then, but they’d just destroyed the GPS satellites with lasers.”

  “What’s G-P-S?” Filson asked.

  “Global positioning system,” Cornelius said hurriedly, annoyed at the interruption. “Everybody used it back then. They had this system called just-in-time delivery so truckers could get food and stuff to stores just when it was needed. Nobody knew how to get anywhere anymore, though, because they had this GPS, so most of the orders didn’t make it that day, or ever again. Airplanes used it, oil tankers used it, even ridesharing taxi-drivers used it to pick people up. So in one day, the aliens took out our rapid transit. I didn’t see what came after—when they pounded the ionosphere with electromagnetic pulse weapons and waited two weeks for us to turn into savages again.

  “I turned off the TV, and grabbed Meryl by the shoulders. ‘We have to get to the Cavern,’ I said to her.

  “‘The Cavern?’ she said. ‘Are you sure?’

  “She knew what was coming next, because she’d been there when Oliver had pitched the idea to me.

  “Before the aliens melted all our highways with their high-powered lasers, those roads were made partly out of limestone mined from those caverns. A guy named Ralph Rogers started mining it in the 1930’s, and it went on for the next forty years. They carved out four million square feet of underground living space in that time, with five times the number of support pillars needed to be deemed ‘safe.’

  “Before they stopped, though, folks found another use for that underground space. There was a different war in the 1960’s—a ‘Cold War’—and a leader named Kennedy decided to blockade this little island called Cuba. The Cubans had Russian missiles that were even more deadly than anything the aliens threw at us—though not quite as well thought-out, since nukes have global side-effects that come back to bite you.

  “Anyway, the whole country had these designated ‘fallout shelters’ for people to go to in case the Russians or the
Cubans launched nuclear missiles at us. So the limestone Mega-Cavern was the largest fallout shelter in Kentucky. The plan was to put fifty thousand people—soldiers, doctors, scientists, local people who thought they were important—to put them all in this cavern for two years. Fifty thousand people in a cave, together, for two years. They loaded rations and everything—enough to feed all these people until everyone on the surface was dead and the flames died down a bit.

  “Well, the Cuban Missile Crisis ended after three days, and the Cold War ended in the late eighties, so the cavern lost its necessity as a shelter. Three other guys bought it after they stopped mining limestone, and they backfilled most of it to make roads through the place. They opened it up to secure storage and as a high-security business park, since people were afraid of terrorists after some of them blew up some buildings with some airplanes.

  “These three guys decided to make even more money off the open space in the cavern, so they put in underground zip lines for people to ride on, a mountain bike park with hills and jumps for the extreme-sports kids, and they put up Christmas lights for people to drive through and see.

  “My tour, though—the one I’d made minimum wage showing to people—took folks through the whole cavern. I showed them the zip lines, the mountain bike track, and some remnants of the fallout shelter. We drove past the secure storage units and through the dark recesses of nearly-forgotten history.

  “It was on one of these tours that I reunited with an old high school friend—Oliver—and the girl he was taking on a date. He asked a lot of questions about the cavern’s current owners, and about how much I knew about the sections I couldn’t show to tourists.

  “After the end of my shift, I picked up Meryl, and we met Oliver and his girl, whose name was Evette Simmons, for dinner. There was this neat little gem of a place called Selena’s, which had once been a dive bar called Willow Lake Tavern—so the sign said ‘Selena’s at Willow Lake Tavern’—and they made the best Italian and Cajun food you could get in Louisville. It was off Lagrange Road before you got into the rich part of town—Anchorage—and it wasn’t too far from where Meryl and I lived back then. Other places were more famous—like the Captain’s Quarters on the river, or Pat’s Steakhouse on Brownsboro, or Jeff Ruby’s downtown—but Selena’s had always done good by us and they weren’t so steep as to break the bank. Louisville was a ‘foodie’ town back then, and you could’ve filled up a book with all the great places to eat. We liked that one, and the Village Anchor nearby.

  “‘I need you to do something for me,’ Oliver said, near the end of dinner. Meryl’s eyebrows went up at this, since I’d told her about Oliver’s habit of feeling entitled to other people’s time and efforts.

  “‘What’s that?’ I asked him.

  “Oliver leaned in then, with his arms folded on the table, and took on a hushed tone.

  “‘You probably wouldn’t figure me for much of a doomsday prepper,’ he said. ‘All the ones they put on TV are fat hillbillies desperately hoping the world will change so that they can claim some new leadership role with their AK-47s and their cans of beans. They’ve failed at life in our current society and a mixture of hope and paranoia leads them to a certain lifestyle. They’re mostly deluded idiots, of course, but I’m with them on the efficacy of preparing for extreme circumstances.

  “‘You’re not a doomsday prepper, are you?’ I asked. I looked at the $500 polo shirt he was wearing, and the ‘flown’ Omega watch on his—”

  “Flown watch?” Thursday interrupted. “What does that mean?”

  “It means it’d been in outer space. Apollo astronauts’ families used to sell them at auctions for lots of money,” Cornelius said. “Anyway, I looked at all the money he was wearing, and figured he didn’t look like a paranoid hillbilly survivalist. But what does someone who survives a crap-hit-the-fan event look like? Nobody knew back then. Oliver only stared at me, with this knowing smile spreading on his face. He never smiled with his eyes, though—it was a bit scary to watch.

  “‘So what’s the ask, then?’ I asked him, even though I was starting to put the pieces together in my head.

  “‘I need to know how many people it would take to secure the cavern,’ he said. ‘I just need your best estimate. I’ll do my own calculations later, and upgrade the doors. I just need some data for a spreadsheet.’

  “‘Secure it with what?’ I asked.

  “‘Use your imagination,’ Oliver said. ‘I have a budget for the project, but I’m fairly certain you won’t put much of a dent in it.’

  “‘Sounds like you have a plan,’ I said, ‘but I want to make sure you’re including me as part of it. I want spots for Meryl and me if you do this.’

  “Oliver nodded like he’d expected my demand.

  “‘You’ll get four slots if the plan goes to Phase 3,’ Oliver told me. ‘The other two are for your children.’

  “Meryl and I looked at each other. ‘But I’m not—’ she said to him.

  “‘Not yet,’ Oliver said. ‘I plan pretty far ahead. I don’t want too many conflicts if we’re ever inside together.’

  “Oliver’s plan was better than the US Government’s was during the Cuban Missile Crisis. They’d wanted to stick just the soldiers, doctors, and what-have-you in this shelter, but they all would’ve had to leave their families outside to die. It was one slot for one important person—so fifty thousand people grieving the loss of their immediate families, and probably tricked into leaving them outside to burn. I tell you if that had been me, there woulda been one dead Grandpa Cornelius or forty-nine thousand, nine hundred ninety-nine bodies between me and the door to get Meryl inside.”

  His face wrinkled as he said this, and Thursday saw a fight-to-the-death desperation he’d never seen in the old man’s face before. It was a thing remembered from Cornelius’s youth, when feelings were sharper and less worn by experience.

  “The other really dumb thing the government did was not think about air. They loaded rations, but if you stick fifty thousand oxygen breathers in a cave for two years—let alone the cooking fires they planned on burning oxygen with—and you seal the entrances to keep out intruders and fallout, well you’re probably going to kill them all in the process. Their deaths will just be slower. Oliver thought about these things, and he planned his numbers a bit more carefully.

  “So fast forward about six years,” Cornelius said, after choking down the long-forgotten emotion. “Your Grandma’s pregnant with your dad, Oliver and Evette are married (with me the best man at their wedding), and the aliens have come to kill all of us.

  “‘We have to get to the Cavern,’ I said. Your Grandma rubbed a hand over her belly, took another look at the TV, and went into the bedroom.

  “‘We don’t have time to pack clothes,’ I said to her. ‘We already have boxes with everything we need in the cavern anyw—’

  “‘I know that,’ she said. ‘I’m getting my makeup bag. If I’m going to survive the end of the world, I’m not going to be hideous when I crawl out of the limestone.’ I just laughed then, grabbed this Slugger with my name on it, and took my wife—makeup bag and all—to walk a quarter-mile in a nightmare.”

  Thursday turned the bat in his hand, and ran a fingernail through the fire-branded grooves of the logo.

  “That’s not the side you want to hit a baseball—or a human being—with,” Cornelius said. “See where the wood grains look like V’s coming down through the brand?”

  Thursday studied the flame-tempered grain and nodded.

  “If you hit something hard enough with the branded side, you have a higher risk of shattering the bat. It’s ash wood—good and hard, and with a larger sweet spot than maple or birch, but you want to hit a ball (or skull) where the grains are straight.”

  “What’s the ‘sweet spot?’“ Thursday asked.

  Cornelius smiled. He’d given up on not being interrupted.

  “It’s where you get the most energy transfer to what you’re hitting,” he said. “You als
o get the least vibration in your hands when you strike with it, so you can find it by hitting the barrel of the bat with another object and listening for the change.”

  Cornelius held a small metal file out to Thursday, who tapped the bat several times before finding the place where the pitch changed.

  Thursday also noticed that only this area was stained with blood, which had changed from bright red to dark gray with sunlight and time.

  “Anyway I told Oliver it wouldn’t take more than eight people per shift to secure the entire cavern, since it only has four entry points, and they all face the main parking lot,” Cornelius said. “With a day and night shift, that put it at sixteen.”

  “‘You’re sure there aren’t any access tunnels up to the zoo?’ he asked me. The cavern was right under the zoo, you see.

  “‘No. It’s a mine, not a natural cave. You don’t necessarily have the same inflow for water through the limestone like you do at Mammoth Cave,’ I told him.

  “So he bought eight M240B machine guns from the Knob Creek Class III gun dealers near Fort Knox, and he stowed them away—two guns with overlapping sectors for each entry point. Then he bought a bunch of surplus Russian AK-104’s and a bunch of ammo from a guy in Poland, in case the world was different when we came out of the cavern. After that, he put two-inch-thick steel sally port gates on each entry, but he continued running tours outside of the secure storage areas. At night, he had contractors come in and find where the underground water flowed the strongest, and they excavated a stream through the limestone until the flow was strong enough to power a small hydroelectric generator. Then he—”

  “I think you skipped the part where he bought the cavern, Grandpa,” Thursday said.

  “He bought it cheap for what it offered, I’ll tell you that,” Cornelius said. “The three guys he bought it from paid two million dollars at an auction, and they didn’t know if they wanted to make a hospital or a mall out of it. Secure storage and tours were a bit less than they’d hoped for after they looked at clean-up fees. He paid them four million with future value relative to the stock market assessed, and they were happy to take it.”