Terminus: A Novella of the Apocalypse

by Huff, Stephen Donald

  According to our need, then, we drive back to The Village gateway in our electric carts, and there we call for The Clan via the gatehouse loudspeaker. The Guide has moved their trucks off the road, but they linger nearby. Only the razor wire has kept them out during the interim.

  As I expect, he has fixed at least a few of his cameras on the village perimeter, because one of the trucks roars down the two-lane to meet us almost immediately. When the brightly-painted panel truck squeals to a stop, its driver crow simply sits and stares at us from the shadow of his or her black hood. Naturally, we are reluctant to exit the compound without some assurance of safety.

  After several minutes spent just staring back and forth, the truck makes a U-turn in the roundabout installed before the guardhouse for just this contingency. Once faced away from us, the door installed in the rear panel opens. This is our invitation.

  Climbing inside after passing through the razor-entangled barricade, I find The Guide sitting at his cramped desk, as always. He beams psychotically to greet us.

  “Ah,” he gushes, “you’re back again! I knew it! Another adventure! Come on in, folks!” he spouts to Chief, Engineer and The Kid, “I’ve declared amnesty for the duration! Unless, of course, you want us to choke you out. That’s a service we’re always happy to provide! Anybody want to check-out? Anybody?” Upon spying The Kid’s horrifically disfigured face and neck, The Guide grimaces and shudders. “I bet you do, huh, Kid? You know, I have some experience with that kind of mess you got there. So much scar tissue can be a problem. It’s like wearing a leather collar. Still… we can manage it, I think, although we might be better off just bleeding you. What do you say?”

  The Kid blinks owlishly, but, to his credit, he seems not to care so much. Does anybody?

  I growl and flex my fists, while the girl sets her left hand meaningfully on the pommel of her knife. Upon seeing this last display, The Guide tosses his hands, pinky bandage apparent, and drops his head submissively.

  “Alright! Alright! Alright!” he declares. “I was just trying to be hospitable, is all. No need to get your panties in a bunch. Actually,” he chuckles blackly, “there’s no need for you to wear underpants at all, esteemed protégé! Anybody else here for a thong check?” The Guide raises his hand with such enthusiasm that Chief and The Kid join him absent-mindedly. He laughs.

  I growl, “Knock it off. We got shit to do.”

  “Oh, yeah? What kind?”

  “Traveling kind,” replies Chief, extracting a chair from a tethered stack leaned against one wall of the makeshift office.

  “Of course. So you need the Clan to carry you there in style. I get it. Here’s the part where I would normally ask what’s in it for me. Only, I got everything I could possibly need!” Here, he swivels left in his office chair to pull open a drawer on the right side of his desk, causing all of us to stiffen expectantly. The Girl instantly unsnaps the binding on her scabbard, and The Guide flinches to hear it. Without pausing, however, he scoops his right hand into the open drawer and then lifts a fistful of cut diamonds, sapphires, emeralds, pearls and gold coins, letting it all pour through his fingers like grains of sand. “Holy cow, Batman! I’m rich!”

  “We’re not going to pay you,” I hiss, standing over him in a menacing swell.

  “Please,” begs The Guide unhappily, spinning to face us, “you got to understand. I’m a businessman. I can’t do anything for free. What would my crew think of me, if I did? They’d see I’m running a charity and they would lose all respect. All respect!”

  My head turns the camera monitors, where I see his crows milling about from the perspective of another truck parked somewhere back in the landscaping. They seem brain dead and adrift to me. I can’t imagine them losing much of anything they haven’t already lost.

  To humor the man, I ask, “What do you want?”

  The Guide fixes a sly smile on his face and licks his lips. “Well,” he hedges coyly, “when the mayor hired me to fetch you, she paid me with a toss and tumble. Man, those were some ta-tas!”

  I frown pointedly. “Forget it. I’m not going to screw you.”

  “Not you! The Girl!” Immediately, he raises his hands, palms faced outward. “Relax! Relax! I know you’re not going to share her below the waist. All I want is a peek and a pinch. That’s it.” He glances expectantly from one of us to another, ending with The Girl. “It’s not too much to ask, is it? One squeeze now. One when we get where we’re going. One when we start back. And a fourth installment when I get you safely back home again. How’s that for a deal?”

  Rather than comply, I contemplate turning out his lights. I wonder if the crows would follow just anybody, or if he truly has some superior connection to them. Before I can decide, however, she lifts her skin-tight athletic blouse and the underlying sports bra to bare her ample but perky breasts, nipples peaked.

  The Guide licks his lips obscenely. He stands, grabbing himself. Gingerly, his eyes initially focused more often on the knife than the tits, he crosses the little office to stand before her. He wiggles his fingers delightfully, and then he checks with me to get final permission. I nod.

  Only then does he notice the crucifix-shaped scars that slice raggedly between those wondrous globes down to her hidden pubis and then again underneath the double-curve of both breasts. The thickness and texture of this tissue matches the gash on her face. The Guide pales. He surprises us all when tears well atop the lower lids of his eyes.

  Rather than grope her, he moves in close to embrace her gently, laying his head on her shoulder. Softly, he whispers, “I’m sorry for what happened to you.”

  Then, head hung, he returns to his desk. Stunned, The Girl turns the room, wondering if she has done anything wrong. I shake my head, and she reseats her bosoms, straightening her clothing once more into place. Her deeply green eyes sparkle a dampened sense of shame.

  “Don’t worry, baby,” I assure her softly, “you’re still easily the most beautiful thing on this planet.”

  “It’s just that…,” tries Chief. He hangs his head.

  The Engineer finds something interesting in the carpet beneath the toe of his loafers. He clears his throat and sniffles, as though experiencing allergies of some kind.

  The Kid mumbles, “Yeah. What he said.”

  To break the spell, I clap my hands together, “Alright. Now that’s settled, let’s get this circus on the road!” They jump.

  The Guide smears his right forearm across his eyes, shakes his head, straightens in his chair, and asks, “Where to?”

  On a nod, The Girl extracts something from her massive purse, lays the now folded golden foil on his desk, and then activates it. Once it opens up, she points to the map, which we have scrolled to our current position. Having quickly mastered the technique, she reorients it along our intended route of travel until it displays our ultimate destination.

  Cocking his head curiously, The Guide guesses, “That’s Nevada. Why the hell do you want to go there? It’s nothing but tumbleweeds, sand dunes and vulture shit, because Las Vegas is closed for the duration, baby!”

  Chief demands incredulously, “The map doesn’t intrigue you?”

  “Yeah, so what? You’ve been to a spaceship. Everybody knows about them. They’re all over the place.”

  We exchange owlish blinks. Stupefied, Engineer asks, “They are?”

  The Guide shrugs. “A few, anyway. I hear they got one over to Pasadena. Another one up in Portland. They a got a huge one stuck in a football field in Fresno. What’s the big deal?”

  “This one,” I announce authoritatively, turning to fetch a pair of chairs for me and The Girl, “crashed with this thing dialed into Groom Lake. Like a destination.”

  “Groom Lake?” parries The Guide. “What the hell is that?”

  “It’s not a lake, actually,” responds The Engineer, also fetching a pair of chairs for himself and The Kid. “It’s more of a military base. Or it was. A secret military base.”

  “Oh, right!” gasp
s the sly Asian, snapping his fingers. “Now I remember. You’re going to that conspiracy place. What did they call it? Area forty-two?”

  “Fifty-one.”

  “Right. Area-51!” The Guide makes an eerie, high-pitched noise, waggling his fingers freely. “Okay, so that’s it then. You’re all shit out of your minds crazy, just like me and my Clan. Welcome to the club and let’s get going!”

  Spinning in his chair, The Guide viciously punches his keyboards, despite his splinted pinky finger, and then speaks low and evenly into his microphone. The truck lurches forward almost immediately.

  As we roll along, gathering the remaining seven trucks and most of The Clan as we go, The Guide announces, “We’re going to have to stop for diesel in an hour or so. That’s alright, though, ‘cause I know a place. It’s managed by a group calling themselves ‘The Clan of the Happy Rabbit’, but we have an arrangement. Shouldn’t be any trouble. Much.” The Guide cackles madly. “We might have to throw them a bone, though. One of you. Maybe the big guy, there. Ha ha ha! Just kidding. Maybe.”

  The troupe exchanges concerned glances. All save me and The Girl. We still have her big knife, after all. We’re not worried. Much.

  From there, we roll through the countryside. The Guide takes the scenic route, he claims for purposes of safety, since the interstates are “eat up with unreliable dipshits and unpredictable amateurs”. Our view is limited to his high-def camera displays but, given the scenery, we’re all okay with this limitation. Because occasionally our gaudy little procession passes through the abandoned remains of one formerly peaceful hamlet or another, places where humanity had been contently concentrated Pre-Terminus. Post-Terminus results are invariably macabre and, often, quite unexpected.

  We pass through one town that initially seems to have escaped the general ravages of apocalypse, because all the buildings are intact, cars remain parked neatly where former owners left them, and few mummified corpses litter the yards. Then we turn onto its main street. For perhaps six miles, it’s lined along both sides by crucified corpses, all bound by barbed wire to the light posts, street signs and telephone poles. Each wears a crown of the same barbed wire and each is stripped naked save for loin cloths fashioned from pillow cases. This gruesome display includes a cross-section of the townsfolk. Indeed, it might represent the whole population, including elderly, invalids, and, most disconcerting of all, its children.

  “This is one of my favorite places,” announces our host like a maladjusted tour guide. “Whoever did this spent a lot of time at it. Notice the injuries and wounds on the bodies. None of these guys died up there. No. Somebody strung them up after the fact. Some kind of statement, I guess. Probably a Bible thumper. Know what I think?”

  Speechless, eyes wide and mouths agape, several of us shake our heads. No.

  Presently, as he addresses the possibility, our caravan passes the town square with its gothic, castle-like courthouse. “I think that’s the artist right there.”

  The Guide pans a camera as the truck rolls along. He fixes it on a sprawling black oak tree with a thick central trunk that initially branches perhaps five meters off the ground. Since one of the primary branches has been long ago cut away, the street-facing side of it makes a sort of natural cross. There, nailed to the trunk with massive framing spikes, hangs the desiccated body of a once robust middle-aged man. He is also naked, save for a loin cloth, and he also wears a headdress of barbed wire.

  Before we can ask, The Guide informs us, “Notice how his feet and left hand are spiked to the tree, while his right arm is merely tied to it with the barbed wire. I think he nailed himself up there, making his last act the insertion of his free right hand into the wire. Maybe he took poison or drugs or something to finish himself off,” muses the morbid Asian wistfully, “but I think not. I think he simply hung there until he died. For days, maybe. Imagine the will. The determination. Cool, huh?”

  “Yeah,” I grumble, “cool. Like a fresh turd. Everybody sees it, but nobody wants to look. Except you.”

  The Guide shrugs in a self-deprecating manner. “I guess I’m just special that way. It’s my artistic side, I think.”

  “Is that what it is?” asks Chief sarcastically.

  Between there and the refueling stop, the mayhem seems more generalized. More haphazard and in tune with the random violence of Terminus. Of course, rarified corpses litter the landscape wherever we turn, but similar statements writ in bodies are few and far between.

  Perhaps an hour into the trip, our caravan climbs a low hill. From the roadway bridging its summit, we can look down on a desolate interstate exchange. It’s one of those highway stops surrounded exclusively by farmland, where the yokels once went for everything they needed. Gas. Groceries. Dinner. At each corner of the exchange, we see the sprawl of a large and once prosperous truckstop. Signs boast of low fuel prices, good food, hot showers, and clean beds.

  Post-Terminus, someone ringed the entire complex with a barricade of abandoned semis, tractors and trailers. To plug the gaps beneath the trailers, someone wedged small cars there. Then they piled refrigerators, washers, dryers and other large appliances into the gaps between the trailers and the cabs. After so many years, the perimeter is complete, save for two gates aligned with the road we currently travel, which cross beneath the highway through a pair of overpasses.

  As a gruesome deterrent, the occupants have nailed human hides all along the outside aspect of the cargo containers. Each hide is accompanied by a spray-painted placard.

  When The Guide zooms a high-def camera to the signs facing us most directly, we read a long list of crimes. Kicking dogs. Eating cats. Stomping rats. Cutting trees. Trampling bushes. Shooting birds. Teasing deer.

  “What the hell is their problem?” demands an exasperated Chief.

  “Tree-huggers,” returns our host. “Environmentalists.”

  “It’s okay to skin a human being,” declares The Engineer, shocked despite his post-Terminus experiences, “but it’s not okay to ‘harass ducks’?” He quotes from one of the more prominent claims, if the height and thickness of the lettering indicates prominence. “How the hell does anybody harass a duck?”

  The Asian chuckles, “I don’t know. Throw rabbit butts at them? Get it? Hare. Ass. Get it?”

  “Shut up,” growls Chief.

  “To each his own. We need fuel, right?” I ask, focusing on business. “That’s where you intend to get it?” When The Guide nods, I add, “Why there?”

  He shrugs. “’Cause it’s an interesting place. Don’t you think?”

  “I’d rather go somewhere else.”

  The Guide sighs, tapping keys and reading from his monitors. “Too bad I committed us, then. We’re too low on fuel to go anywhere else. You should have thought of that before I drove us here.”

  I know better than ask the obvious, but Engineer gasps, “How the hell could we know about this place before we got here? You told us nothing!”

  Another shrug. “You didn’t ask. Besides, I did tell you something. I told you this place was managed by The Clan of the Happy Rabbit. That should have told you everything you needed to know.”

  “The Clan of the Happy Rabbit?” sputters Chief. “What does that tell anybody? It sounds like… like... like a daycare center!”

  The Guide turns his head, rolls his eyes, and grins to patronize his less-worldly guests. “Daycare? Post-Terminus? Really?”

  “Alright,” I drawl, motioning forbearance with both arms, “calm down. The choice is made. We’ll just have to deal with it. What’s the process?”

  “The process? The process? There ain’t no process. We just drive down there and fuel up. They don’t care about the diesel or the gasoline. In fact, they don’t care about anything except the animals.”

  “Then why cordon off a bunch of truckstops?” from The Kid.

  Chief answers, “Read the signs.”

  “What?” demands Engineer. “All the crap about punching bunnies and kicking dogs?”

 
; “No, the old-world signs. This was one of those roadside zoos.”

  “Right,” supplies The Guide, “they even had a baby giraffe once, but somebody snuck in one night and ate it. Everything except the head, the hooves and the guts, you know. That really pissed them off, let me tell you!”

  Now we watch through the cameras as one of our trucks rolls forward down the hill and toward the closest guarded gate in the makeshift perimeter wall. Presently, the vehicle stops. Its cargo bay door rolls open. A half-dozen non-Terminals drop out, all carrying large sacks by pairs. These, they deposit before the gate, one-by-one, until they compile a small mountain of the stuff.

  “What is it?” asks The Kid.

  “Kibble. Different kinds. Dog chow. Cat chow. Rat chow. We even tossed in a bag of dried bananas for the gorilla.”

  “Gorilla?”

  “I think it’s a gorilla. A little one. Or a big monkey. Sounds like one, anyway, but I’ve never seen it.” When the Rabbit Clan appears to accept the payment, our host punches more keys and says, “Here we go. When we get inside, be on your best behavior. Hold the rats. Stroke the cats. Let the chinchillas crawl all over you, if that’s what they want to do, but be careful. Don’t get hostile, even if something shits on you. You’d be surprised to know how many brain-fried Terminal cases are animal lovers. Every time I come here, in fact, I lose four or five turncoats, and there’s nothing I can do about it!”

  “Couldn’t we just stay inside the truck?” squeaks Engineer.

  The Guide blanches, shaking his head as our truck starts downhill with the rest of the convoy. “Oh, no. No, no, no, no, no. They won’t allow it. No, everybody has to get out. Everybody has to pet the animals. Oh, and you have to make smooching noises and kissy faces, too. Just talk to the fur-wrapped poop-balls like they’re babies. That’s what I do. Little babies that like to hike their legs and piss on your shoes when you’re not looking!”