Terminus: A Novella of the Apocalypse

by Huff, Stephen Donald

  Five minutes later, I hear footsteps in the char and cinders of the windswept ruins. I open my eyes to find her tromping along the street toward me, her arms laden with canned goods and a plastic-wrapped six-pack of TP.

  Instead of approaching my chair, however, she stops at a nearby pew from the church, which someone has long ago dragged onto the curb opposite that now defunct structure. Sitting, she deposits the TP at her feet and then arranges the food beside her. Methodically, she selects a can of something she likes, uses an opener drawn from a designer purse to cut away its top, and then extracts a spoon from the same voluminous bag to begin eating.

  Curiously, I size her. She is tall. Well made. Muscular and fit. Her sandy blonde hair is long but tied severely into a bun. She wears expensive athletic attire, which I know will breathe well and keep her warm without encumbering her, should she need to fight or flee. Indeed, she has pressed her feet into a pair of cross-trainers that look rugged enough to hike the wilderness yet light enough to run a marathon. The bag is the only anomaly. It is huge and gaudy. Before Terminus, it might have been expensive. She probably pilfered it from a boutique somewhere. I guess it has everything she needs within it, including multiple weapons. In fact, I note the knife is nowhere to be seen on her person.

  Her face is pleasant. Placid. Her eyes are green. Brilliant. Disinterested. She is beautiful in a plain yet perfect way, save for a savage scar etched across her cheek from her left ear to the left corner of her mouth.

  “Well?” I demand harshly, my voice strange in my ears. “Bring me breakfast.”

  She continues eating. She does not ignore me, exactly, since her flat gaze remains fixed on me, but neither is she compliant. She simply eats and stares.

  Exasperated, the grumble of my stomach drives me up and out of my easy chair. Moving stiffly for the abuse of my former endeavors, I hobble along the sidewalk to the bench. As I near, she drops her spoon into the can of soup and then gingerly places the can onto the seat beside her. Reaching into her massive, brilliant bag, she extracts the knife. This, she lays across her left thigh. Then she once more fetches the can to continue eating.

  I get the message. This can be a pleasant morning repast, or it can be a fight to the death.

  “Relax,” I growl. “I’m hungry. Nothing more.”

  Approaching the bench, I loom over her. She remains nonplussed and unconcerned. She eats. The knife balances on her thigh. She stares up at me without fear, anger, concern or interest. I shift my gaze from her pleasant yet abused face to the toilet paper. It’s the brand I prefer, ‘Extra-Strength’.

  “The good stuff,” I remark, “just what I need.”

  I take it and turn to depart. Behind me, she knocks something against the top of the bench, and I turn to see her holding a box of pre-moistened towelettes. Her intentions are obvious. Taking the cue, I retrieve the box and disappear for a time into the house behind the bench. When I return, I am refreshed in more than one way. Facing her once more, I wait for permission to join her, because this is the last thing we take for granted Post-Terminus, and then I ease onto the opposite side of the bench, which she has left clear for me

  Pointedly, I move my eyes to the canned goods she has selected. Tepidly, she nods. She continues eating, the spoon working methodically from the opened can to her mouth and back again. Strangely, it makes no noise inside the can, and I admire the precision of her movements. Cautiously, I tear my eyes away from her vaguely pretty face to read the labels on the cans. I select a soup. Curiously, I note it is the same flavor she is eating.

  Holding the can in my lap, I watch her eat. She watches me not eating.

  Then she once more returns her spoon to the can, the can to the bench, and she reaches inside her king-sized kit to retrieve an opener and a spoon. These she offers to me with a ginger stretch of her left arm.

  I accept them, use the opener and return it, and then begin eating with her. Because she seems ill inclined to speak, we pass the meal in silence, her eyeing me and me examining the ruins of the little cathedral.

  With improving light of the morning, I see how the fire has burned through the church and into the neighborhood surrounding it. Several empty homes have gone up, too. Nobody needs them. Nobody will miss them. Nobody cares. I glance left and right along the debris-strewn avenue, but find no emergency vehicles come to the rescue. No fire trucks. No police cars. No ambulances. I shrug.

  From the side of my mouth, I say, “You must have been, what? Fourteen? Thirteen?” I shake my head. “I can’t imagine how you survived it. Not many so young did. I’m impressed.”

  When I turn to face her, I expect her to take some pleasure from the compliment. Instead, having finished her meal, she simply sits at her end of the bench, watching me. The knife remains balanced on her thigh.

  I open my mouth to ask if she had help, but stop myself. No, I guess. She had no help. None of us did. Nobody helped to save us. Nobody helped us murder. Everything we did… everything done to us… was truly a one-on-one proposition. For some strange reason, Terminus was an individual endeavor. No families. No clans. No gangs. No armies. Just me. And her. And them.

  Because I have had no one to listen for some time, and because I know she will not last, since none do, I decide to practice the forgotten art of speech before her. I hope doing so will clear my mind, perhaps order my thoughts. For a few moments, at least, the act might dispel incessant visions of dangling ropes, ready handguns, bottles of pills, and jars of poison.

  I declare, “It wasn’t natural, you know.” I lift a spoonful of cold soup to my lips and eat it without really chewing. “It happened too fast. It was too precise. Too exact. Since it was obviously some kind of artificially-induced madness, it must have worked in the brain, but what was it?” I shake my head, taking another mouthful of my meal. “Disease? If so, bacterial or viral? Chemical? If so, gas or liquid? To have affected everyone all at once the way it did, it could only be in the water or the air… maybe in the food.”

  Having scraped the last spoonful from the can, I glance down at it sickly and my hunger fades instantly. Rather than eat it, I sling the spoon clean, wipe it with thumb and forefinger, and then offer to return it to The Girl. After she accepts it to finish cleaning it with one of the pre-dampened tissues drawn from her kit, I toss the empty can into the bushes behind the bench.

  “No,” I continue, unscrewing a plastic container of sports drink, “It wasn’t the food. It wasn’t the water. Too many people drink… drank… exclusively from packages like this one.” I raise the bottle as though making a toast, and then finish half of it in a single throat-bobbing guzzle. “Since Terminus hit everybody at the same time in the same way, it had to be present everywhere and available all at once. That leaves only the air. Therefore, an organism? Or a gas? If it were the former, then I would expect more variation in the effect. If the latter, overdose due to uneven dispersal.”

  As ever when I engage this debate, I shake my head, because these suppositions always end the same way. Ambiguously.

  I turn to The Girl, who is still simply watching me, silent and flat. I ask, “What do you think?”

  She shrugs. She refuses to care.

  Instead, she reaches into her bag again to extract the pre-dampened tissues and a first-aid kit. Pushing the remaining canned food aside, she slides along the bench seat to approach me, and then she labors to clear the dried blood from the cuts on my brows and cheeks and lips. She pries into my unkempt clothing to clean the matched horizontal traces of fingernails, where The Priest has raked my skin to scabs.

  Because her touch is pleasant and comforting, I lay back and let her work. During the course of an hour, she cleans me from head to toe until I recline against the bench, naked. Then she resorts to more pleasant ministrations yet. When I next open my eyes, I find her working me with her head. I can scarcely contain myself. My eyes press tightly shut again.

  When this sensation stops and my wits return, I glance up to see her naked. Lithe and athlet
ic, her body traces the same abuse with the same scars as does mine. From head to toe, literally, the only difference between her flesh and mine is fifteen years of age and the individual patterns Terminus has wrought upon each of us.

  She straddles me, her face flat as always, her green eyes sparkling but not with pleasure or malice, rather with life. Simple life. Because we are alive, we can. We do.

  Beneath her, I buck and groan. I rise and fall. Both hands slide along the curves of her body, from the gentle swell of her breasts, over the course of her delicate ribs, to the indentations of her waist, around the bulge of her hips, along the swell of her buttocks, to finally encompass her thighs and hasten her work with gentle urges that alternately push and pull. Despite my sensuous prodding, she refuses to hurry. The motion of her hips and legs is certain and timely. She will build it properly and end it perfectly. I cannot refuse. I am not in control.

  Afterward, she leans backward away from me, her liquid eyes searching mine. Not for meaning. Not with meaning. She wants to be certain I understand what she has done, but she is unconcerned for my grasp of reason. She doesn’t care if I know why she has done it.

  Then she lifts her left knee and slides sideways off of me with a hot, liquid gush. Before I open my eyes again, she has clothed herself and returned to her side of the bench. Her silent observation of me resumes.

  Naked save for the bandages and tape she has pressed to my flesh, I remain as I am for a time. Burning and hot, I revel in the chill autumn air.

  Then I feel an insistent nudge from her quarter. When I open my eyes yet again, she offers my boots and my clothing. She tips her head to indicate my attention. When I groggily turn my own gaze to follow hers, my eyes struggle to focus on what I am seeing.

  The Clan

  There, moving slowly along the street toward us, yet unaware of our presence for the distance, I identify the unmistakable presence of a Terminal Clan, which consists of several colorfully painted trucks and perhaps a hundred black-robed and hooded ghouls. Instantly, my heart skips a beat and my breathing hastens. I curse them for breaking the spell she has woven around me, but I do not resist the urge that rises within me as a result of discovering their presence. The urge is to run.

  She also feels it. She stuffs the remaining food and drink into her bag, knowing many days might pass before she can forage again, since Terminal gangs often settle into a place to clear it of remnant humanity unaligned with their cause.

  They are curious animals, the Terminal. Like us all, they experienced Terminus. Unlike most of us, they never fully recovered. Whether it be attributable to continuing effects of the Terminus agent or whether from psychological damage, either extant prior to Terminus or resultant from it, only one feature of the Terminal case remains constant: violence. It is their religion and their pastime. It is their vocation and their avocation. In its prosecution, they are avid and void of mercy, and because the world has run down to nothing they do it not for personal gain, wealth or fame. They do it for fun.

  By the time I finish thinking these thoughts, I have dressed. Without running, since rapid, panicked motion will only draw their attention, I turn to take the shortest route off the street. This leads me around behind the bench, through the landscaping of the homes fronting the church lane, and then into their abandoned rear lots. Rusting playsets and forsaken gardens greet us there to remind us of children long since slain and of happier times never to return.

  Indeed, in the backyard of the home on the right, its fence toppled by weather, I see a tall, sprawling oak tree. Nailed to its trunk so her arms splay wide along its lower limbs, a woman’s corpse desiccates. Shriveled and mummified, her head dangles from her shoulders, threatening to fall this year or next like a morbid apple left to rot where it hangs. This is one of the most disconcerting aspects of the mass murder that was Terminus. Too many corpses. Not enough scavengers. Where they are left in out of the way places, they linger, whole and unmolested, until they dry up and turn to leather. Not even the flies can devour them all before the sun preserves them.

  With a backward glance as I run, I verify The Girl’s continuing presence. For whatever reason privy only to her, she has followed, her large, gaudy purse wrapped around her neck and shoulder.

  Though she also glances behind her, she is not afraid. Like me, she doesn’t really care if the killers follow or not. Both ways, we are dead, and every survivor of Terminus knows dead-dead is preferable to alive-dead. That hapless woman staked to the tree might be innocent or she might be guilty as sin. She might have been a first to go, or she might have been slain by her neighbor after slaughtering her entire family. No matter. Her lifeless mind no longer squirms with the black, clotted thoughts of what happened during those dark days. For her, it has ended. For us, it goes on and on and on.

  I had hoped The Priest might kill me. That he failed only means I must find another.

  Nevertheless, I do not prefer to end at the hands of a Terminal. This must be a last resort, if only because it would negate all the years I spent surviving the end of the world while laboring to negate the psychological damage it did to me. No, if I must go violently, then I want it to be done at the hands of a fellow survivor, someone who does it with a mind that is lucid and clear, with motivations that are pure and human and not borne of some unspeakable malady. I want my death to be purposeful, rather than a mindless accident.

  So I run. So she runs.

  Behind us from the street, we hear a loudspeaker. “Little bird, little bird, where have you flown? Have you squandered the sun’s riches? Have you your nest firmly sewn? Are you flitting in laughter from morn until eve, with no concern for what comes after all the hours you deceive?” Now we hear the trucks’ motors roaring and transmissions grinding as they roll along the avenue before the burned-out cathedral. “Little bird, little bird, what will you do? Have you prepared for tomorrow? Is it God’s work you pursue? Or do you make wing for Satan to foreshadow his crawl, from one black heart to another, then from damnation to fall?” We hear the press of booted feet hastening atop the pavement before the transports now. Next, they stir through autumn’s rustling leaves in the yards we have just vacated to kick doorways and search for survivors within the attached homes. “Little bird, little bird! How I love you, you know! You are both destination and byway! You are the place I must go! I seek you in sorrow, and I seek you in pain! You are a crush of my palms until your blood falls like rain!”

  After cautious glances both directions along the next street, we dash across, then through the final row of housing until we cross the next backyard to emerge on a long, straight train track now overgrown with weeds. Another cautious check both ways, and we charge across this open space and into the dense line of saplings grown up on its far side. Beyond this, we enter into an industrial sector of the city. From the vantage of this low ridge, stretched before us we see an endless maze of warehouses and manufacturing plants, all fallen silent post-Terminus, but filled with shadows, cobwebs, and vermin.

  Glancing backward just before we take the plunge into the tree-line, I see the lead truck idling in the gap between the first rows of dwellings, while the remaining vehicles park along both sides of the street. The first one backs and turns, preparing to drive between the yards and follow our invisible footsteps. I suspect they are using thermal technology to track us. Before the vehicle, a horde of crazed monsters pours forth to give chase. We might have a one minute lead on them.

  I growl, “Hurry!” I push her forward.

  From the truck’s loudspeaker, a pinched male voice declares, “We are seeking The Scientist. We know he came here last night to kill The Priest. We know he is close. The Clan offers a one-time amnesty for any miserable one of you who will betray him. This means one passage through our ranks in any direction you want to go.” The voice chuckles blackly. “Of course, if we catch you again on another day, you will not be so fortunate. Still, this is a promise. A promise of life, and the Clan never breaks its promises!”

&nbs
p; As I run, my spine tingles. I know this bunch, if only by reputation. They call themselves The Clan of the Immaculate Strangulation, because this is their preferred method for dispatching their victims. They are of the pseudo-religious type. Some Terminal gangs are of an artistic type; music, sculpture, painting or graffiti, like that. Some have adopted a pre-Terminus style; steam punk, heavy metal, new age, whatever. Still others make no claims, at all. Regardless of their color and chosen methodology, they all have one thing in common: they love to kill.

  I believe this to be an aftereffect of the Terminus phenomenon. Though it must have been a generalized, if engineered, affliction, its originators could not tailor it to consistently accommodate ten billion divergent physiologies, hence the randomized rejects. Most of us recovered in the aftermath. Those who did not remain locked in its embrace, albeit in a semi-lucid state. They can be guided and controlled and they better understand their condition than before, but they cannot break the synthetic psychosis that spawns a murderous bloodlust within them.

  Dressed all in black, the horde moving on foot before the wildly-illustrated truck are the Terminal cases. The guy behind the loudspeaker is not. He is a recoveree, rational yet constitutionally psychotic. Most likely, that one was a killer before the great affliction. The world must seem like Candyland to him now, and this must be his vision of paradise. Accordingly, he thrives within it.

  Though I cannot guess why they have come here searching for me, I know I must kill the Clan Guide. As with The Priest, this is a ‘him-or-me’ contest.