by Wallen, Jack
Without a word, Nicco left the room. Mikko made a soft moan and turned over. Her eyes batted open. The second she saw me, a smile painted her lips. “Just what I want to see when I wake up. Why don’t you climb in bed with me for a bit?”
A flood of hormones washed through my system. This very moment might well have been the single biggest challenge I’ve faced in the apocalypse. My lesser brain begged me to slip under the covers and play a rousing game of Seven Minutes in Heaven with my girlfriend. I glanced at my watch. “Crap,” I whispered. “It’s too close to midnight for smooching.”
For the first time in my short life, I felt utterly cheated. But then, I had a rather important meeting with fate that couldn’t be avoided.
Mikko nodded. “Go figure. I just had to fall in love with the hero. It’s a lonely life, but someone has to do it.” She reached and arm toward me and wiggled her fingers.
I caught the hint and took hold. She pulled me down to the bed and giggled. Before we could lock lips, the door swung open and the film crew stepped inside.
“At your service, big guy.” Kubrick stuck out a hand for me to shake. The gesture was out of place, but I played along. “Nicco told us you needed our assistance.”
I nodded.
“We’re all yours,” Fay said with a nervous smile.
I filled them in on the plan, shocked when neither of them cringed at the idea of getting that close to madness.
“So who’s gonna have the barrel ready?” Kubrick asked.
Mikko stood; the covers slipped from her body to reveal a pair of Sailor Moon jammies. Had I not already been crazy in love with her, I would have fallen hard at that very moment. She stepped off the mattress and over to a corner of the room. She gave a sheet a yank to reveal a barrel strapped to a dolly. “Voila!”
Kubrick clapped. “Nice reveal.”
Mikko curtsied. “I’ve been practicing.”
The sound of the double-tap rap sounded from the other side of the door. I grabbed the handle and turned to see Frenzy grinning wide. He held out his hand to reveal an odd, steampunk-looking device.
“What the hell? You getting your Jules Verne on?” I asked, stifling a laugh.
“What do you think? It’s a clockwork heart to be plugged into my time-traveling car. Ready to head on over to Steamtown and fight crime with a corseted sex bomb?”
“Sounds good to me,” I answered…only to get slugged by Mikko.
I swallowed the pain and checked my watch. “We’ve got fifteen minutes before this goes down. Anyone have questions?”
Frenzy raised a lanky arm. “Aye. Who’s driving the rat bastard to the Wasteland?”
Everyone’s gaze instantly fell upon me. I nodded and sucked in a dry bit of air. “I’ll do it,” I replied. “It’s my plan, I may as well be the one to finish it off.”
Mikko grabbed my arm and turned me to face her. She shook her head fiercely. “No. No, no, no, no, no. I won’t let you drive him out there.”
“It’s okay, Meeks. It’ll only take me an hour or so. Besides, he’ll be trapped in the barrel, so there’s no way he’ll get to me.”
“It’s not him that I’d be worried about. You’ve been at the edge of the Wasteland. It’s a freakin’ cannibal holocaust out there.”
“We don’t know that for sure, Mikko,” I insisted.
Mikko huffed. “And we don’t not know it.”
“If it makes you feel any better, I’ll take Frenzy with me. He’s our best fighter.”
Frenzy’s eyes rounded and his jaw dropped open. “Oi, I’m not some lame-ass pawn in your game…oh, who am I kidding, sounds fekking awesome. I’m in.” He held out an uncharacteristic fist for me to bump. Under normal circumstances, I’d make a sarcastic joke about the act. Given what was going on, however, I figured it best to simply give in to the moment and bump away.
“We’re so gonna rock this Casbah,” Frenzy nearly squealed with delight.
ten | and action
Everything was set. The barrel, the smoke bomb, the cameras…the kids. We were ready to finally escape the tyranny known as Crowbar.
My watch read 11:58. My nerves said, “Oh crap!” I took in a few deep breaths to center myself. It didn’t work. I never understood why all the Namastites swore by breath. It only ever managed to make my heart pound harder.
11:59.
I nodded to Frenzy. He leaned down and ran a bit of flexible tubing under the door and stood upright. He turned a dial on the device and then pressed a button. Instantly, a puff of acrid smoke wafted from the tiny machine. It quickly dissipated, leaving me to wonder if the device had failed. Frenzy gave me a knowing glance and mouthed, “Hold onto your butts.”
The foul stench grew worse and an off-white smoke started to roll under the door. Frenzy ripped off his shirt, rolled it up, and stuffed it between the door and the carpet. The smoke ceased making its exit.
From the other side of the door, the sound of uncontrollable coughing spilled. After a moment, a desperate rattling shook the walls. The sound of Crowbar’s voice shortly followed.
“What the hell!” he shouted from the other side, and then pounded on the door.
Everyone steeled themselves for the grand exit. I caught a glimpse of Frenzy nodding his head. Mikko was ready to rock.
Without warning, the door to Crowbar’s room was flung open and the stumbling, bumbling man fell into the hallway. Beyond him, Butterfly lay, spread eagle, on his bed. There was no way to know if she was alive, dead, drugged, or in some post-coital coma. I didn’t care. Before Crowbar had a chance to react to what he saw, Kubrick and Fay jumped him. He pressed against the weight of the two kids, but the time spent inhaling Frenzy’s secret weapon was a bit too much for the barrel-chested man. In the tussle, Crowbar managed to toss Fay from him. Kubrick, on the other hand, was going nowhere.
Crowbar attempted to stand, but Kubrick’s weight prevented the action. I grabbed one of Crowbar’s arms and bent it behind him in a painful configuration. The man screamed in agony as I lifted the arm upward.
“Let’s go, Frenzy. Legs!” It took Frenzy a moment to understand what I was getting at. He eventually caught on to the directive and scooped up Crowbar’s legs. The man’s life was no longer part of the destiny he’d had planned for himself. In fact, this was a life-defining moment…one he was completely unaware of. He coughed and sputtered, his breathing still ragged. Whatever Frenzy had used for the gas had some serious punch.
Frenzy and I heaved with everything we had and the hacking, wheezing man tumbled into the container. Before I could ask for it, Mikko slammed the lid down on the barrel and landed blow after blow with a mallet onto the metal retaining ring. After two laps around the ring, I stepped back to enjoy the work. For a few seconds, the barrel tilted and tipped…to no end. The barking complaints fell to silence.
Mikko tugged at the webbed strap and gave the barrel a bit more security.
All the while, Nicco filmed. He hadn’t said a word during the entire fight.
The hall fell into a discomfiting silence. I scanned the faces to each of them, awash with the slightest fear.
“We didn’t kill him, did we?” Mikko asked in a whisper.
Frenzy chuckled nervously. “No. Huh. No! I used the same formula I’d used for…something else.”
All heads turned to the last bastion of punk rock…Frenzy. His face reddened with incredulity. “No. No. No! It was nothing like that.”
“Like what, Fren?” I asked.
“Like I did something disgusting.”
“What did you do, Frenzy?” Mikko asked.
“Son of a…I used that gas once to knock out Intake so I could cheat on the collection chart. I was starving that day, and didn’t have a bloody head to my name. So I knocked her out, tallied up a massive kill, and raked in the chow. That rat bastard’ll be out for a couple of hours, and then he’ll wake up pissed as hell.”
Mikko slugged Frenzy.
“What was that for?” Frenzy squealed.
“For nothin’,” answered Mikko.
I stepped behind the dolly and began the trek to the exit. The last challenge was to make our way outside without getting busted by one of the other Asylum adults.
“Frenzy, keep your steel at the ready.” I whispered.
“When is it not?” Frenzy said and then added, “Don’t answer that.”
We reached the stairs. I lowered the dolly down one step. The clatter and clang of the wheels was only outdone by the two hundred or so pounds shifting on the metal platform. I turned back to the gawking crowd. “We have to carry this fat bastard down the stairs. The last thing we need is for this thing to fall apart and Crowbar to splash down to the first floor.”
Nicco handed the camera to Fay so that he and Kubrick could hoist the bottom of the dolly. Together we descended the stairs, one slow and careful step at a time.
When we reached the landing, as soon as the wheels touched ground, I took off. At the end of the hall, I took the requisite right turn to find Intake staring back, arms crossed, ready to bring the mission to a halt.
Frenzy leaped into action, his sword brandished before him. Intake laughed and withdrew a pistol from her lower back. Before she had a chance to take aim, from out of nowhere, Mikko swung a right hook that connected squarely with Intake’s jaw. The woman’s grip loosened and the gun clacked and clattered to the ground.
“Get her!” Kubrick shouted.
Everyone within earshot–and not on a mission–spilled from the shadows to dog-pile Intake. With the woman under a mound of teens, Frenzy and I bolted for the truck. Frenzy’s long stride allowed him to arrive at the destination well before me. He opened the tailgate and lowered the ramp. I picked up enough speed to allow me to wheel the dolly up the ramp and into the truck bed.
I lowered the dolly into a horizontal position, jumped out of the truck, closed the tailgate, and slipped into the driver’s seat.
Before I could pull away, Mikko banged on the window. I rolled down the glass and accepted a quick, hot kiss. She winked, waved, and raced away. I punched the gas and sped off toward the Wasteland. I took a quick glance into the rear view mirror to see Fay filming our great escape.
“Oi, that was better than boobs, Jingo. Better than boobs.” Frenzy had a grin splashed across his face the likes of which I’d never before seen.
“And we couldn’t have done it without you, Fren.”
“Hells no, you couldn’t. I am the shiz, yo.”
“Frenzy…um…that was decidedly un-British.”
We laughed…a lot. The feeling of laughter escaping my lips was the best thing I’d felt in a very long time. I wanted it to last…to the Wasteland and back.
“You know where you’re going, right?” Frenzy broke the spell.
I nodded.
“How do you know where this place is, anyway?”
I snaked my hand into the cargo pocket on my right thigh and retrieved a folded piece of paper. “Take a look at this.”
Frenzy snatched the paper and quickly unfolded it. “What the hell is this?” He fell silent as his eyes pored over the contents of the stained and tattered sheet. “Holy hell, Jingo. Where’d you get…”
“I was following Crowbar one day. I think he was drunk—or something—and he dropped it. I had no idea what it was, but I grabbed it anyway. Turns out, it was pretty important.”
“Pretty important? I’d say this is effing gold. It’s not only the map of the Wasteland, but the location of every Asylum within, what, one hundred miles?”
“Five hundred, actually.”
“What do the numbers below each Asylum represent?” Frenzy asked.
“Based on our location, I’d say they’re number of teens and adults. I have yet to figure out what that third number represents.”
Frenzy scanned over the map for a bit before speaking up. “That number might be exactly what we need.”
“Need? For what?” I asked.
“To free every damn kid in every one of those bloody Asylums.”
“When we get back, I say we sit down with everyone and come up with a plan,” I responded.
“After a long-ass nap,” Frenzy added.
We drove in silence for a bit. Frenzy shifted his gaze from the map to the road ahead and back to the map. He finally spoke. “Up ahead, Jingo. This intersection, take a right. Two more miles and we’ll be on the edge of the Wasteland.” Frenzy folded the map with a touch of reverence. “Please tell me we aren’t going into that place, are we?”
“Hell no! The Wasteland is nothing but chaos. We’d survive maybe two minutes on our own in there.”
I took the right turn and punched the gas. I wanted to dump the cargo and return home to Mikko and her Sailor Moon jammies.
“Look at the bloody sign,” Frenzy whispered, and pointed.
Ahead of us, painted over a standard Welcome to Smalltown, U.S.A. sign, was a message that read, “Abandon hope all ye who enter here.”
Beyond the sign, it seemed the air roiled with dust and smoke…as if the very laws of nature and physics no longer applied. I stopped the truck just at the edge of the boundary and shut off the engine. The newly acquired silence gave birth to some of the most heinous and frightening sounds I’d ever heard. Wailing screams, moans, and an indescribable clacking sound rose and fell from the chaos.
“Holy mother of Moses,” Frenzy proclaimed. “I cannot imagine what lives inside that dirty soup.”
“And I have zero interest in finding out. Let’s dump the cargo and turn tail.”
“I like the way you think, sailor,” answered Frenzy.
It took us no time to roll the dolly out of the truck. Together, Frenzy and I popped the lid to the barrel and rolled Crowbar just a few feet within the boundaries of the Wasteland.
“Let’s get the bloody hell out of here, Jingo.”
“I have no problems with that, Frenzy.”
We hopped into the truck, turned around, and squealed out.
Frenzy let out the biggest sigh I’d heard in a very long time. “First off, what the hell?”
“What the hell what?” I asked.
“Doesn’t that strike you as odd, Jingo?”
“What?”
“That damned invisible barrier back there!” Frenzy shouted. “What’s keeping that nightmare from spilling beyond the boundary? It’s the frakking apocalypse, not Mordor!”
“Dude, zombies are roaming the damned planet. I’d say anything is possible.”
“You know what I say? It’s time we heard some damn music!”
I punched a right-handed devil horn into the air and Frenzy manned the radio. He scanned up and down the bandwidth until the last refrains of an unfamiliar song spilled from the speakers. Soon after, an odd voice rose.
You’re listening to WZMB, Zombie Radio—your personal soundtrack…to the end of the world. That was September Mourning with their amahzing metal anthem, Eye of the Storm. Ladies and gentlefreaks, it doesn’t get more metal than that. I have to say, though, listening to that killer track makes me long for my younger days. You remember…back when the only care you had was who you were going to be seen holding hands with at the basketball game and whether or not collars were popped, not popped, or ripped to shreds. They say that youth is wasted on the young? I disagree…the young are the only ones of us who are physically and mentally capable of handling youth. When I was a strapping young lad, I could muster up the gumption for just about anything that was thrown my way. Hell, I’m fairly confident that the apocalypse itself wouldn’t have taken down this DJ when he was in his teens. I was invincible…or so I thought. Truth be told, I was vulnerable, frightened, and ready to kiss my younger days goodbye. Now? I’d give anything to return.
You know what, my loverly ladies and scrappy gents…this takes me back to a song from my youth. When anyone heard this song on the radio, it was to be immediately cranked to eleven, and those glorious waves of sound would beckon us to dance and celebrate all that was youth. So I would implore you
…anyone capable of turning your radios up to maximum listening intensity…crank it while Steve Perry and Journey power ballad the hell out of the song Only The Young.
Frenzy howled an approving laughter and cranked the volume. The unfamiliar song danced from the speakers and filled both Frenzy and me with life. I punched the gas to put as much distance between us and the Wasteland as possible.
It was time to return to life, return to love…return to youth.
epilogue | the gathering and the mission
Eyes. Hundreds of them blinked and stared up toward me…as if I’d somehow magically become this all-knowing, all-seeing prophet. Or leader…I couldn’t be sure. Truth was, I was neither. How could a teenage kid, someone whose life experience extended barely beyond second base, lead a collection of homeless and frightened teens through the Wasteland? I had no tricks up my sleeve, no superhuman powers, no…
Mikko tugged at my sleeve and whispered, “They need you, Jingo. Say something.”
I swallowed the largest lump of dread down my throat. Sweat collected at the base of my neck, and my pulse raced to a double kick drum beat. I slowly raised my hands toward the crowd. A blanket of anxious silence wafted over the courtyard.
This was it.
I took in a deep breath. In that precious moment, I remembered the song the DJ played…its melody and hopeful sentiment filled me with inspiration. I sang out what I hoped would be a mantra to carry us through the new world order. “Only the young…survive.”
Cheers rang out and fists pumped the air. Mikko wove her fingers into mine and squeezed…hard. “Keep going,” she whispered.
“Out there, thousands more just like you are trapped in similar situations…where adults have forced teenagers into an apocalyptic slavery to serve an unnecessary and dangerous purpose. We have the location of every Asylum in the state, and I say it is our job to free those kids from the torture and abuse we have only just escaped.”
Another wall-rattling cheer rang out, quickly followed by chants of my name.
“Jingo! Jingo! Jingo!”
I raised my voice above the din in a vain attempt to silence the crowd. “No…we live and die as one. I am no hero. I am no saint. I am a teenager on the outskirts of the Wasteland, who will stop at nothing to ensure the survival of those I love.” I lifted mine and Mikko’s hands into the air. “Our lives and our spirits will not go wasted. We will survive and we will thrive.”