He has a point. He knows it. She knows it. She nods.
Ultimately, I nod. The Guide retrieves his forgotten cigar, which has charred a hole in his leather blotter, and then he returns to the controls of his murder-system. Immediately, he finds the pinky splint awkward. He motions to me.
“Push that thing around to select that control,” he instructs, pointing with his bandage-fat pinky to a computer display, “and that one. Then that one. Good. Okay, here we go. Hey, esteemed protégé, get the door, would you? We don’t want anybody falling out or climbing in. Lock it, too.”
As he speaks into his microphone and listens to his own earbuds, The Clan starts to move. The truck rumbles to life, backs up, and drives up the street the way it had come hours earlier. The Terminal cases and their keepers trot alongside until we return to the burned-out cathedral, where a handful of similar trucks await. These are The Clan’s long range transports for its foot-soldiers.
Thereafter, while our tidy little convoy rolls along, The Girl and I join our host at his dinner table. The food and drink are excellent, but I am careful to make certain everything opens fresh and new. As we eat and converse, I find myself bordering on caring, again. I wonder if I should trust The Guide and instantly know I should not. Yet, I force myself into it, if only to court the same kind of nihilism that once drove The Clan to do its dirty work… that once drove me to implement my own version of the same labor.
THE VILLAGE
Hours later, just before early fall sunshine declines to darkness, the convoy rolls to a halt. Through the camera monitors, we see in all directions. From the trucks before and behind ours, The Clan falls-out to swarm the nearby landscaping, buildings and streets. Down the road, I can see the guardhouse of a gated community. Previously well-kept and now overgrown and ramshackle, its most recent inhabitants have nonetheless reinforced it considerably. Despite the distance, I can see the bristle of firearms amid scrolls of razor wire.
The Guide pans the cameras, chuckling, “The wire is new. Probably because of me.”
“Will they want you back, again?”
“Would you?” he asks sincerely. “This still ain’t the old world, Scientist, for all its modern conveniences. They don’t care much more for life than you or me. We all did the same things… committed the same crimes… ha ha ha, that’s a big part of my problem, isn’t it? When everybody is a murderer, nobody is.” He zooms the main forward-looking camera until we can see a handful of armed people milling around behind the gate, apparently waiting for our approach. “I bet I could roll in there tonight with my garrotes in hand and get no resistance. Again, that’s a big part of my problem. It’s no fun when they want to die!”
“So what’s next?”
“This,” intones the little man, reaching for his keyboard to strike a particular key. When he next speaks, his voice amplifies through the loudspeaker, emcee bold, “Greetings, hopeful ones! I have returned, your prodigal son! I and my amazing Clan of the Immaculate Strangulation have done the impossible! We have nabbed the brass ring! Belled the bull! Bagged the cat! Buried the-.” Here, his voice cuts short on a knock and a whine, and the microphone thumps about noisily as he adds off-mic, “Hey, cut it out! This is all part of the show, you know! What am I supposed to do? Just drive up and.... Okay! Okay! I’ll cut it short, if you promise not to cut another part of me short!” Now his voice returns to its former gameshow luster, as he prematurely concludes, “You have asked and I have answered! Behold! The Scientist-ist-ist-ist.” Again, distracted, softer now he adds, “Yes, I have to add my own echoes. Look around this place, man! There are no high walls to make one naturally!”
For final measure, I clout his ear and back away from the table. He kills the microphone.
“Let’s go,” I intone, motioning to The Girl.
“Wait a minute, Scientist,” beckons The Guide, spinning in his swivel chair. “I’m going to sit this one out for now. Me and the Clan don’t do so well in there, what with all the murderous interactions and what not. I don’t care, myself, but those civilized types tend to get upset over random strangulations. They don’t mind if you come to do it on purpose, you understand, but for some reason they don’t like for it be just a pastime sort of happenstance. Go figure.”
My initial reaction is to beat him to death where he sits. I can see The Girl mulling the same prospects. Then we both apparently decide he offers continuing utility, since we might need to use his trucks again.
Still pondering the bizarre turn of events that replaced a public transit service with a band of psychotic stranglers, I push through the truck’s door to lead The Girl toward the community’s front gate. Halfway there, I suffer another sick realization. I had assumed they would not shoot me based on the assertions of a lunatic. Even for Post-Terminus life choices, this is a strange one. Unfortunately for me, I have come too far to turn back. While Clan Stranglers scatter from their trucks to mill about doing whatever it is Terminal cases do to fill their time, and then with all those rifles confronting me, I feel caught between the veritable rock and a hard place. At the least, I believe we are safer with rational recoverees than we are with a mercurial and homicidally inclined Clan.
Minutes and perhaps a hundred meters later, we stand before the lighted gatehouse. A mobile barricade wrapped with razor wire blocks the double two-lane entrance to the community. Pre-Terminus, this was one of those wealthy enclaves with its own private police force, governance committees, and golf course. Now the same walls that kept out old-world riffraff serve to keep out the new-world Clans, but they won’t do much of a job of it. Those murderous crows can be surprisingly canny and capable when they want to be, as The Guide’s previous breach of the perimeter has already established.
“Hold there,” commands a gruff voice, also broadcast through a loudspeaker. “Carefully, slowly, do as I say when I say to do it. We’ll shoot on the slightest deviation. Nod if you understand. Good. First, we need the girl to remove the strap of the purse from around her neck, drop it to her feet, and kick it away. Then the knife.” When The Girl hesitates, the voice shouts, “Do it!”
Pursing my lips, I hiss for her to comply. I hope I haven’t made a mistake keeping her around, as I expected her to be smarter than this.
Reluctantly, she complies. She seems naked without that huge knife and gaudy bag. Smaller, somehow, and less fierce.
The voice continues, “Both of you, using both hands, lift your shirts. Still holding the shirt above your waistbands, slowly turn around. Good. Now, drop the hem of your shirts, lean forward, and lift your pants legs. The girl can simply stand for now.” She is wearing skin-tight exercise pants, but I’m wearing denim. “Good. Remove your boots and kick off your shoes. One by one, turn them upside down and shake them. Fine.” Without the bullhorn or whatever, we hear the voice tell someone else, “They’re clear. Send the kid out to fetch the bag and their footwear.”
Without opening the gate, a young man of approximately twenty-five scrambles through the tumble of wire and obstructions. In the half-light of evening and the glare of electrics, we see he is horribly disfigured by excessive scar tissue, which contorts his face and scrawls his neck to his shoulders and beyond. Fire, I think, or acid.
Silently, he collects The Girl’s bag and both pair of shoes. He retreats behind the barricade again.
For several long minutes, we stand there uncomfortably with our hands raised, flatfooted and expectant. Behind us, we hear the Clan stirring restlessly, which forces us both to keep our heads on swivels, wary of what The Guide called “pastime happenstance”.
When the process takes too long, I demand, “Hey, just give us back the shoes and the bag and we’ll leave. Okay? Anybody in there? Yo!”
They continue to ignore me until a female voice calls gently without the bullhorn, “Are you the one they call ‘The Scientist’?”
I shrug. “I suppose I am, though I never picked the name.”
“Are you scientifically educated?”
Anot
her shrug, “I was. Then the world fell apart and I murdered my wife and three children in their sleep. Now, I just am. That’s all.”
“What discipline?”
“Biology. Chemistry. Computer science. A bit of mathematics.” Without lowering my hands, since I can still look directly into the black holes of half a dozen rifle bores, I snap my fingers and add, “Oh, and I have an MBA, too. Does that do anything for you?”
“Do you have a terminal degree?”
I know what she means, but I find this question humorous. Nobody has asked me about my doctorate for five years or so, and I have not previously juxtaposed that sense of the word ‘terminal’ with its newer connotation. “Give me a break, huh, lady? It’s getting cold out here, we need a touch-up, and The Girl keeps her makeup in that piece of luggage she calls a purse.”
She exchanges a sharp glance with me. Again, I shrug.
Abruptly, the mobile barricade rolls open. Those rifle barrels retract into the darkness on the far side of the gate.
Glancing backward at the brilliantly painted convoy of circus trucks and the small army of crows meandering through the landscaping abutting the road, I am grateful to get inside the camp, whatever it might contain. Nothing these days is more uncertain than the fickle will of a hundred lunatics and their psychologically damaged keepers.
Standing in front of the gatehouse situated between the twinned set of double lanes as the gate closes behind us, I spy a well-made middle aged woman, her hair gone prematurely gray, her mocha eyes deeply troubled, her face careworn, and the corners of her lips laced by fine lines of sorrow, as though she has spent the last five years continuously frowning. Haven’t we all?
She stares us up and down as we approach. Once the barricade rolls shut again, she asks, “Who’s the girl?”
“Just that. The Girl.”
“Is she useful?”
Smiling ruefully, lowering my arms at last, I reply, “Lady, you have no idea.”
Pointing to a pair of benches positioned along the broad sidewalk that surrounds the guardhouse, where we find our shoes and her purse waiting, the woman instructs, “Get dressed. We searched the bag.” Upon seeing The Girl’s body stiffen anxiously, our host assures her, “Don’t worry, child. We left the machete, or whatever that huge thing is. And everything else. The only contraband that concerns us are machine guns and explosives.”
Sitting to pull up my boots, I grunt, “I suppose garrotes cause you no concern.”
“Perhaps you think I should apologize for sending a Clan to fetch you,” returns the older woman, “but I won’t. He offered. We accepted. As you can probably guess, nobody much cares how things turn out, anymore. Nevertheless, we thought you might help. Can you?”
Standing again, I retort, “That depends. What sort of help do you need?”
Extending her hand, she announces, “Darling.” Like so many hands, it writhes with scar tissue and it twists from broken bones. I shake it. The Girl refuses. “Follow me,” she offers with a toss of her arms, leading us across the street to a holding lane where pizza delivery drivers once waited for permission to enter into that hallowed village. Now, a large electric cart waits for us there. “I don’t know what that one told you about this place,” she says, indicating for us to climb inside the car, which she immediately jolts away from the curb and up the winding lane, through an overhanging arch of tree boughs that must have been beautiful back when beauty was a thing, “but this might be the only functional community on the entire coast. Of course, functional is a relative term. Though we have a fraction of The Village’s old-world population, our suicide rate is probably many times higher. Is this so surprising?”
It’s a rhetorical question. I abstain from answering.
Instead, I admire the massive houses, ivy grown walls, weed infested tennis courts, algae filled swimming pools, and sprawling lawns gone to seed. It must have been some place back in the day.
Darling continues, “We have most amenities now. A bit of wind- and solar-powered electricity. Hot water. Refrigeration. Television, if you don’t mind recorded reruns. Fresh meat. Fresh fruits and vegetables.” Driving along at a surprising pace for such a small vehicle, our host runs over a fat squirrel, which expires beneath the cart’s little rubber tires with a shocked squeak. The woman never flinches or swerves. “If you decide to stay, you can have your pick of locations. Most of the houses are available. Or you can live in one of the communal facilities. Some prefer it. They have nightly orgies there. Nobody cares much about diseases anymore, so all the fun is bareback. Both genders. All ages.”
I grin. “You sound as though you’re experienced.”
It’s her turn to shrug. “It’s something to do. It fills the holes.”
Exchanging another sardonic gaze with The Girl, who occupies the rear bench seat and is busy rearranging the disturbed contents of her bottomless purse, I wonder if Darling has made a pun. The older woman seems not to have noticed, though. She refuses to belabor the point.
“We have a community government, of sorts. I’m president or whatever, but only because nobody else wants the job. I don’t do much, really.” Now the lane opens up as we turn right onto what must be a major thoroughfare within the enclave. “This is the main street of The Village. It’s circular. Think of the place as three concentric rings. The outer ring, we just left. It’s mostly expensive single-dwelling homes. They’re nice enough, I guess, but you have to remove the bodies, yourself, and then clean up the blood and guts. That’s not much fun. The middle ring is stores, churches, and the communal properties. Townhomes and a few apartment complexes. I guess this is where the help lived. A golf course occupies the center, but nobody plays golf now, although a few old farts have taken to bow hunting the squirrels there. It’s become a kind of unofficial sport, I guess. They call it ‘Critter Darts’. Do you play?”
Now I’m beginning to wonder if Darling is all here. Rather than antagonize her with the obvious questions, I tip my head and reply, “Not today.”
She shrugs again. “Maybe tomorrow. By now, they’ve staked a couple of hundred of the little bastards down all over the course. They’re really thick right now, what with the seasonal fall of acorns, walnuts and chestnuts. Yard rats. Tasty, though. So, anyway, like I said, we have a village government, kind of but not really. Sometimes we meet. Sometimes we don’t. Sometimes we talk about meeting and never do. Sometimes we meet without talking about it. Did I tell you I’m president or mayor or some shit? Yeah, I did. Mostly, nothing gets done.”
This time, Darling deliberately swerves hard left to squash one of the fat, acorn-fed squirrels, and I nearly topple out of the little cart’s open door onto the street. Immediately, I wish for a helmet or a safety belt. I feel along the crevasse in the seat beneath me, but fail to find one. The Girl hangs onto the overhead canopy supports with both hands, her face flat, as ever, and her eyes sparkling gleefully. This is great fun, I suppose.
“Then, about six months ago, something came up. Well, to be more precise, something came down.” Darling points with her right middle finger straight up through the cart’s canopy. We both look up, only to find the dome light and not much more. For the first time, I notice a bullet hole there and a black splatter, which can only be the dried remains of someone’s brains. “We thought it was a meteorite. It landed about ten kilometers west of The Village near a little lake, but just short of its shoreline. We think the soft, sandy loam there cushioned the fall somewhat. It made a helluva bang, though. Three people killed themselves that night, just because.”
Darling suddenly yanks the little wheel again, and I’m looking for squirrels. This time, though, she has merely steered us left into the entrance of a small hotel. Over the awning that once kept rain off loading or unloading guests, the villagers have hung a hand-painted sign. With uneven lettering, it announces, “TOWN HALL”.
“This is it,” intones Darling, as she slings the electric car under the awning, and then onto the ramped curb. With a screech, she s
tops it just short of punching through the plate glass, which sounds gong-like at the tap of the cart’s fiberglass bumper. “Did I mention we have most amenities by now? Including some really quality pharmaceuticals. Consequently, I drive better in the morning. Come on, kiddos. Follow me.”
She jumps out of the driver’s seat to lead us through the little hotel’s double doors, which swish open and shut around us. Long unaccustomed to powered anything, I jump at the sounds of it, both coming and going. A bored middle-aged man sits behind the reception desk clearly ogling hardcore pornography on a computer screen while apparently pinching his penis through the crotch of his shorts.
“Howdy, Bob!” gushes Darling with a salutary wave. “Say hello to The Scientist and some girl. They’re going to save the world.”
‘Bob’ groans and rolls his eyes. Smoothing back the comb-over atop his thinning pate and grinning at The Girl, he growls, “I told you a thousand times, lady. The name is Jerry. Jerry, god-damn it!”
“Fine, Bob. Fine.” Darling waves him away as she leads us through the lobby to the right side corridor. Over her shoulder, she whispers, “His real name is Bob, but he hates it when I call him Jerry. So I do. I think.” Louder, she asks, “Hey, Bob, did The Engineer stop in?”
Jerry-Bob growls again, but makes no reply. Inside, the hotel is tidy enough, I suppose, but it appears to have seen numerous parties and very little of a vacuum or broom.
Darling pushes through the heavy doors leading into its first small meeting room. Waiting inside, a handful of grimacing recoverees confront us. Continuing her attempt to sell us Jerry-Bob, she concludes, “He’s as bald as a bowling ball, you know, and that half-assed toupee ain’t fooling nobody. Fortunately for Bob, though, he’s hung like a horse. I highly recommend the ride, if you get down to the orgies sometime. It’ll loosen you up deep inside. Yes, sir.”
Terminus: A Novella of the Apocalypse Page 6