The Last Donut Shop of the Apocalypse (Kelly Driscoll Book 2)

by Nina Post

  “How about the Gorgon sisters?” Kelly asked. “Ever see them around?”

  He burped. “‘Scuse me. Yeah, Stheno’s got a place just around the way, by the entrance.”

  “She lives there?” Kelly looked down at her buzzing phone. I’m COLD!

  She texted back, put your sweater on. It would be a lot more convenient if he could talk. She’d have to look into getting him changed back.

  “It’s more like a vacation cottage,” the bartender said. “She, ah” ―he leaned on the bar and lowered his voice―“takes a lot of men there.” He straightened and put out one of his upper legs on the bar. “Which is her business. And all of ours.”

  “Which cabin is it?”

  “Thataway.” The bartender flicked his gaze to the left. “No number, but hard to miss.”

  Stheno’s wood cabin had an angled roof and no front porch, two red stained glass windows and a glass Gorgon head above the door―a transparent face with red, orange and yellow snakes and spooky blank eyes.

  Her phone signaled a new text. Swearing under her breath, she unclipped it for the millionth time.

  I’m too hot!

  She responded with you’ve been activated.

  “Firiel, could you take Stringfellow for a second?”

  Firiel held out his arm and she took off the carrier. She pulled Stringfellow out, and he sneezed on her arm. “It’s a good thing you’re a ferret.” She wiped off the residue.

  She rummaged around in the bag, pulled out a tiny pack of tissues, and strapped it to Stringfellow’s back.

  Stringfellow took a slug of his liquid medication using a spill-free liquids container the size of a pillbox. He looked at Kelly and Firiel as though he had never seen them before, and let off a groan of existential discomfort.

  Kelly tapped on the keys. Go into this house and look for archie driscoll. She held out the photo and the ferret rolled his eyes and shook his head. She amended that. Look for anyone.

  Stringfellow squinted at her. I can’t smell right now. also, who are you?

  “I’m Kelly, this is Firiel.” She took the ferret’s sudden neurological symptoms in stride, blaming it on his medication. A ferret probably shouldn’t be guzzling anything that shade of green, except for Cluck Snack Kold n’ Floo (‘For Ferrets and Hamsters’)… or Tang. She should have looked at the label.

  Just get in there, get a good look around, and get out, she sent.

  Stringfellow made a sound that indicated his state of discomfort. She put him on the ground, pointed in the direction of the house. “We’ll be right here when you come out. Wait! Install this at the highest point you can get to. Maybe the living room.”

  She added a small camera to the ferret’s load.

  He glared at her.

  hen Stringfellow wobbled out of Stheno’s vacation cabin, he wandered over to a nearby red maple tree and tried to shake its hand.

  Kelly walked up beside him.

  “Feeling OK?”

  His tissue pack and phone were still strapped on to his back, but askew. She reached over and lined them up. Stringfellow launched into a paroxysm of sneezing, blew his nose, and pawed at his phone, which had papers strapped to it with a rubber band. She unlatched it and put it on the ground in front of him.

  “Did you see anything?”

  He gave a look that said, “Duh,” and tapped on the papers.

  “Was he in there?”

  Stringfellow shook his head. He blinked tired, watery eyes and sent her a text. smelled like aftershave. game of solitaire on table, rice pudding left on stove.

  She took the papers. “Was the rice pudding cold? Congealed?”

  Yes

  “Any sign that anyone was in the house?”

  No

  She unfolded the papers and read the note out loud. “This is what family is to you? Something to undermine and stab in the back? I don’t even know who you are anymore.”

  Kelly looked at the back of the note. “It’s not signed. Nice handwriting, though. Cheerful, lots of personality.”

  The other paper was penned in a different, loopily elegant handwriting. “Hamlet: Send communique to lab manager. Possible workaround is to have lab analyze chemical composition of samples; assemble a panel to inspect, taste, and compare CS product to perfect reference product for that particular nutritional and flavor schema.” The letter was signed with a stylized ‘A.’

  Kelly sighed, put the papers in her pocket, and picked up the sleeping Stringfellow. She carried him over to Firiel, placed him in the carrier. When he started shivering, she pulled on his sweater. She wrapped the blanket around him and partially closed the see-through plastic cover without zipping it.

  Firiel gave her a questioning look.

  “He was there, and left suddenly,” she said. “I know it. Let me work the area around the house for a while. Why don’t you go―”

  Firiel ran off, away from the house.

  “―play with those mushrooms.”

  Kelly examined the ground in a grid at the front of the house, studying footprints, guessing the sex and height of the person who left them, and determining when people had last been there, based on the bent grass, insects, and snapped twigs. There hadn’t been anyone at the cabin for at least three hours. Recently, there had been a woman, smaller and shorter, and a man, just a bit taller.

  She went inside. It had certainly helped to have Stringfellow go in first. Stheno’s cabin lacked charm―no knickknacks, no books, no art. Just some furniture and a TV.

  Kelly checked on Firiel and gestured for him to come back over, before heading farther out on the grounds toward a few cabins in the distance.

  After a quarter of a mile, she reached a smaller cabin with flower baskets under the windows, a glider and tiki bar on the porch, and a glass Gorgon head above the door. This version had an enigmatic smile and snakes colored blue, white, and green.

  Medusa’s cabin. She kneeled to examine the front grid. The same people who had left Stheno’s entered here around the same time.

  She jimmied the lock and went in, not wanting to wake Stringfellow, and feeling more comfortable with Medusa anyway. The Gorgon sister’s cabin smelled like donuts, of course, and had the same 1940s-style Cluck Snack posters that decorated the walls at PCD.

  The kitchen’s wall was dotted with copper molds in various shapes, including a rooster and a lobster. At the old stove, a man made what smelled like rice pudding. Her hand automatically went to her back waistband.

  The man turned, a large spoon in his hand, a trusting and kind look in his eyes, so she brought her arm back to her side. He had a solid but not overweight body and brown and white hair, and wore gray pants, a collared chambray shirt, a cardigan, and slippers.

  “Oh, hello there. I’ve made some rice pudding. Would you like some?” He held up a bag of Cluck Snack Dry Mix.

  Kelly knew if she could find out where Archie lived, others could too. Tecumseh could be plied again with Medusa’s Cluck Snack Steak-Flav’r Pudd’n donuts. Others could press human weak points in his layers of obfuscation.

  He held out a spoon filled with rice pudding. “Try it.”

  She gave him a look, but took the spoon. It was amazing rice pudding: creamy, flavorful, with hints of nutmeg and… cardamom?

  It reminded her of the Mennonite Butler’s flummery, not far from a pudding, back when she tracked down monsters faster and more stealthily than anyone else. She had lost her center after that job.

  But her anger quelled when she thought of Tubiel and the rest of the SPs. Were they her purpose now? And hadn’t she found Archie? And wasn’t it time to move on already? In her mind, Jay Vanner sat on his desk, arms crossed, and told her, Kelly, your adaptability has helped you achieve your goals, but at the expense of knowing your true values.

  She rolled up her thoughts in a red bandana and gave them to a hobo to use as a bindle to take on his travels. The hobo tipped his shabby hat to her and went on his way, at a nice clip for a hobo. Maybe he could ma
ke sense of what Jay Vanner said.

  “This is good rice pudding,” she said. “Are you Archie Driscoll, president of Clucking Along Holdings?”

  He chuckled, but it had an underlying tone of sadness and anxiety. “That’s me.”

  “Why were you in jail?”

  He gave her a mild look of surprise. “I have no idea. Some men came and arrested me one night.”

  “At home?”

  “Yes.”

  So whoever they were, maybe the Impostor’s goons, they already knew where Archie lived. Archie hadn’t been back since and couldn’t go back now. Was Jerry Shanks, the bond agent who hired her, associated with the Impostor? Her gut told her no.

  “Who took you from jail?” she asked.

  “Stheno and her boyfriend.” Archie cocked his head and gave her a look like she seemed familiar. “Who are you?”

  Kelly hesitated. It was safer, and her inclination, to go with a different identity. “Clementine Hawk,” she said.

  “You were lost and gone forever, now I’ve found you, Clementine,” Archie sang, a smile spreading at the end.

  She turned away from Archie and opened the white Philco icebox refrigerator and freezer, stacked with stacked towers of Cluck Snack P’nut Butt’r Koffee Drink, Cluck Snack Meal’n a Box Totez, Cluck Snack Frozen-Like Dess’rt Bars, and Cluck Snack Drinkable Cake Flav’r Pudd’n 2-Pack.

  She opened the pantry doors, revealing similar stacked towers of Cluck Snack products.

  “Mind if I take one of these P’nut Butt’r Chunks?” Kelly asked.

  “No, young lady―you take whatever you want.”

  “I’m not here to rob you. You know that, right?”

  “I know.” He waved her on.

  She took a P’nut Butt’r Chunk from an open box, put the backpack on a chair, and shook Stringfellow awake. He blinked, looked around, and then practically clawed off his sweater in his urgency to remove it.

  “OK, OK! I’m getting it off you. Stop freaking out.” He panted while she removed his sweater and blanket. She gave him the P’nut Butt’r Chunk. He chewed on it, and leaped out of the carrier.

  “It’s working!” Archie said, delighted. “Is that your pet?”

  Stringfellow clucked angrily at this from the floor.

  “He’s an associate. Did Medusa take you here?”

  He stirred the pudding and tasted it again. “Mmm, fantastico! Yes, she picked me up from her sister’s and brought me to this delightful cabin. I have to say, I feel much better here.” He flashed a big smile. “Less worried.”

  Stringfellow hopped up on the counter and stood up. Archie held outsome rice pudding from the spoon.

  “Wait! He has a cold. Use something else. Just in case.”

  Archie widened his eyes, but took out another spoon and gave him some from that.

  Kelly sat in a chair by the rejected carrier, retied her ponytail, and rubbed her eyes with the inside of her wrists. Firiel came in and took the other chair. She noticed that the cheery yellow wallpaper had a donut pattern on it, and that Archie wore fuzzy moose slippers.

  The man who could be her father, though she had absolutely no proof of this (she indulged in the possibility), fed a ferret rice pudding right in front of her.

  “I lied earlier,” she said, surprising herself.

  He looked over his shoulder. “This ferret really is your pet?”

  “No, he really is my associate. I lied about my name. It’s not Clementine.”

  “Oh? What is your name?”

  “Annie.” Her mother.

  Archie was still. She waited, breath suspended.

  “I knew an Annie once.” He looked at the floor.

  “Oh yeah?” She tried to sound nonchalant. “What did she do?”

  Archie moved his mouth as though he were about to speak, hesitated, glanced at Kelly, then Firiel, and turned his attention back to his pudding. “She―I guess you could say she was in the import business.”

  Another way of saying thief. He seemed so distraught that Kelly dropped the topic, as much as she wanted to find out more, and turned the conversation in another direction. “I want you to move into my place.” She surprised herself again. “Just until we can get you back to work.”

  Stringfellow made a hitching sound, then hopped back down to the floor to sneeze.

  “But my lab…” Archie tasted the pudding and took it off the burner.

  “We’ll move it, in the middle of the night.”

  “I had planned on going back home!” Archie said.

  “You can’t,” she said gently. “Not yet. You’re not safe there. And you’re not safe here, either. Stheno doesn’t know that Medusa took you here, but she’ll figure it out soon enough.”

  “My lab has some very sensitive equipment.” Archie sat in the third chair, compressing the yellow seat cushion.

  “We’ll take care of it.”

  “What about Medusa?”

  “She works two blocks away from my place.”

  He appeared to be considering the offer. “Will there be breakfast?”

  “There’s a soda fountain right across the street. And an automat where I work. Not to mention a donut shop.”

  “Well.” Archie spooned out the pudding into a storage container. “I suppose we can do that. Let me give you a list of things I’ll need from the house.”

  Her phone buzzed, indicating a call, not a text from Stringfellow, busy taking all the small shiny things he could see―spoon rests, salt shakers, tiny ceramic elephants, magnets―and rolling them between the old stove and the door.

  “Hello?” she said.

  After taking five objects, Stringfellow collapsed on the Mexican tile floor. Kelly scooped him up and put him back in the carrier, and reminded herself to not let him run around so much.

  “This is Hamlet Gonzalez.” Hamlet spoke rapidly in hushed tones. “You said that the man I assumed was Archie Driscoll was actually not Archie Driscoll.”

  “That’s right.”

  “He’s here right now, at the headquarters.”

  “Fake Archie Driscoll?”

  The real Archie looked at her expectantly. She waved it off.

  “Yes! What do I do?” Hamlet said. The acoustics of his voice suggested he called from a broom closet.

  “Go along with it. You’d be in danger if he knew you knew.”

  Archie switched his expression to one of alarm. Stringfellow moaned in unrelated self-pity from the carrier, head in one paw and a tissue pressed on his nose with the other paw.

  “But he’s already sent out all kinds of memos to the departments and higher-up employees about phasing out Cluck Snack production!” Hamlet approached John Lithgow-in-Buckaroo Banzai levels of mania, and justifiably so.

  “Can you send me those memos?”

  “Yes. Yes, I can do that.”

  “I’m going to do my best at getting him out of there as soon as possible. On your side, do what you can to hold him back.”

  “Like what?” His voice lowered to a furtive whisper.

  “Stealth incompetence. Lose things, misroute things. I’ll be in touch soon.”

  Kelly hung up and let her head hang back for a moment as she stared at the ceiling. She pictured Jay Vanner, with his tan, wrinkled face, his navy windbreaker, his glacier blue eyes. Kelly, don’t lose sight of your game plan. Her real father could be sitting across the table from her, and she was still taking guidance from an imaginary football coach… who was probably so much more useful in most situations than Archie.

  “All right.” She inhaled and straightened. “Let’s go.”

  Kelly knew angels could serve humans in many different ways. They could be guides, guardians, interpreters. They could fix small appliances, HVAC systems, and people. They could protect water insects, fungi, and fruit trees. They could find lost things (small birds, memories), foretell the future, open doors, punish crimes. Destroy. They could do virtually anything.

  They could also help you move.


  A few of the available SPs, including Dave, the angel in charge of the protection of water insects, went to work moving Archie’s lab and other important items from his yurt to the top floor of the SSI building.

  They did it quickly and stealthily using Archie’s unused, unmarked black van, after they removed the pilates equipment from the seat-less cargo area. The only trouble Kelly initially had was persuading the SPs to leave the yurt.

  Soon, Archie’s lab set up in Mr. Yellow’s office, a little-used room next to Mr. Black’s office. While Archie and the SPs worked out the details, Kelly sat at Mr. Black’s massive curved metal desk and opened her laptop.

  She balanced her checkbook, and opened her feeds―locations where she had installed cameras―and started another Cluck Snack order.

  In the top left corner she could see the main camera feed for Murray’s office in hell lodge number six, where she had rerouted him with AngelRoute Pro―Roger’s angel rerouting software.

  The office was packed tight with creatures, including a fiery wheel with hundreds of eyes playing a card game at a table. Murray had passed out on the floor again, and the fallen angels and monsters that had been bound or rerouted there watched TV.

  Next, she checked camera feeds from Pothole City Donuts, which looked like a warm, fun place you would want to be; from United Donuts Co., which looked like a condemned tenement; from the lobby of Amenity Tower; and from Stheno’s vacation cabin.

  Stheno paced furiously around the living room. She stopped and threw pillows and candy jars at the wall.

  Kelly closed the laptop and went to check on the lab, packed with at least fifty angels.

  “I’m doing this for you,” Archie said in a pleading tone, “so please―”

  “Requests!” Kelly said. “I’m putting in an order.”

  The SPs extricated themselves from under Archie’s desk, around his lab table, and elsewhere in the room, and ran into Mr. Black’s office. Archie shot her a grateful look.

  She handed the SPs Cluck Snack product checklists. All they had to do was check off what they wanted, and she would handle the rest. While the diminutive SPs obsessed over the task, she went back into Mr. Yellow’s old office. Archie’s lab, she corrected herself.