Apocalypse

by Nancy Springer

  Shirley didn’t care about any of this. “Cally—”

  “If only I could turn it forward again.…” Cally’s voice trailed away like a torn cloud, and she had gone very still, and somehow transcendant in her stillness, her wide eyes fixed not on Shirley’s face but on something—beyond.

  “It was stopped,” Cally whispered. “Like Hoadley. It was all the fun, all the venturing, all the growing up and leaving home and going forward, and they stopped it and locked it up in the dark. If we—”

  “For God’s sake, shut up!” snapped Elspeth. “Hoadley’s wrecked, and so is your carousel. The problem now is—”

  “Cally,” Shirley interrupted, “Mark’s coming.”

  Elspeth swiveled her head like a hunting cat and stared. That was not the way she had been going to state the difficulty. To her the problem was one of getting away. The horses were gone, goddammit, and the beast—

  “He’s been looking for you,” Shirley added.

  Cally said, “I see.” And watching her thin, rapt face, noticing the way she turned toward the forest where her husband would appear, they knew that even with smoke-blinded eyes she did, indeed, see.

  “Cally,” Elspeth demanded, “are you going to use your horse? Because if you’re not …”

  “No.” Tranquilly. “I’m not going to use him.”

  “C’mon, Shirl.” Elspeth grabbed Shirley’s hand and pulled her toward the black horse, the four-legged means of transportation big and strong enough to carry both of them.

  From down the hillside where the windfall blocked the trail, not far away, came a hollow roar and a shriek of splitting wood. At the sound, Devil flung up his head with a snort of terror and plunged off to disappear over the hilltop. Gone for good.

  Shirley and Elspeth froze where they stood as the dark destroyer entered view, as the beast came to the trolley park. But Cally walked to meet him.

  The beast—he stood twice as tall as she, bulky, grimily furred as if with coal fiber, and in the fur, clinging, keening, rode hundreds of the human-faced cicadas, perhaps six hundred sixty-six—but these were old-news horrors, were nugatory, as nothing, to Cally’s eyes, compared to those other living things, the protuberances, the—she did not know what to call them. Some were horns, some clawed limbs, some the busy heads of snakes or frogs or lizards or reptilian birds, some were feelers or perhaps stingers, like catfish whiskers—it was because it was so many things, mixed, schizoid, unclassifiable, that the beast was a monstrosity. Yet overall, it reminded Cally of nothing so much as the louse she had once seen under an elementary school microscope. A big thing with far too many legs and antennae. A louse, she thought. I guess I did call him that, or think it. More than once.

  “Mark,” she said.

  He lumbered toward her. He had no human eyes for her to look into, no human face for her to study; in no way could she know what were his intentions for her. Yet some of what he felt she did know.

  “You are hungry,” she stated.

  He lifted his forepart—evidently his head—and bawled hoarsely like a bull, so that amid smut-colored fur his mouth appeared, a red-gulleted rictus big as a grave. Seeing that gape, Cally nodded.

  “I understand hunger,” she said. “I am always hungry. I used to eat, but no matter how much I had there was something inside me always crying for more, more, like a baby crying for the moon. Insatiable. Until I wanted to kill it. So I stopped eating.”

  Bawl darkened to a roar. The beast leaped. Shirley wordlessly shouted, Elspeth screamed, and Cally squeaked more in reaction than in fear—there had been no time to be terrified before the thing was on top of her, knocking the breath out of her—it made a reedy oboe-squeak in her throat. She noticed subliminally, as the beast sent her staggering backward, that the creature did not smell bad, not bad at all, no worse than a tweed-dressed pipe smoker. Then she noticed that it had not hurt her. Was not hurting her, rather. Its forelegs drove her back toward the flaming carousel, then bore her down to the ground, but their claws had not opened to tear. Breathless, unable to move, she lay flat between those great clawed legs, far too near the fire, far too near the soft soot-colored fur of that huge underbelly, but the beast did not pin her to earth with his great weight. Like the water tower teetering spider-legged on the brink of hell he hesitated over her.

  “Mark.” She struggled to speak. “Mark. Not hungry for food only. I was—hungry for you. Hungry for—love.”

  “You ass-tucking sap,” came a bitter voice out of the fire, “don’t talk to him that way!”

  At the sound of the words Cally moved, scrambled out from under the beast’s belly and staggered to her feet. She knew that voice, or thought she did.… Between the beast and the blazing carousel she stood, so close to both that the heat of the fire drove her back nearly into the bosom of the beast, as if for comfort. But her frightened stare was on the fire. And out of the flames, but unscorched by the flames, walked the great devourer, the locust, the cicada with the tail of a scorpion and the head of the Prince of Darkness—and the face of Death, Gigi’s face. Horrible on black bone-hard legs, the thing came and stood beside Cally as if beside an old friend and comrade in arms, and Cally could not retreat to avoid that unwelcome intimacy, for the beast stood at her back.

  “Stop the bullshit,” complained Gigi—if it was Gigi. “Tell him what you really think of him.”

  Cally shook her head. “No bull,” she said, “Just the truth. I love him. I want him back. I have forgotten what it was we were fighting about.”

  “Then remember! Have you forgotten what men are like? The tyrants, all they want, all they attempt, is to master us. Turn, look! There’s one right behind us. You can see what he is.”

  Cally did not move. Her gaze remained unwavering on the speaker, the Gigi-thing. “I can see what you are,” she said.

  The carousel creature hissed; its orange eyes blazed like the flame from which it had come.

  “What Mark is, I have made him, for the most part,” Cally said. “What you are, you have made yourself.”

  “Apocalypse!” Death’s voice grew terrible. “Obey your destiny!” And listening, the beast opened its huge mouth and bayed, or belled, a fearsome and melancholy sound. Cally shivered, feeling the hot wind of that howl on her back.

  But she said, “Destiny? Do what you say, you mean. You want me to obey you, is all. There are no destinies.” Her steady gaze took on a visionary sheen. “There are only decisions and dreams.”

  “Fool!” The cicada creaked forward on armored legs.

  “Yes, I am a fool!” Cally’s words crackled out angry, hot as orange fire, hard as black bone. The menacing insect-king swayed back a moment in surprise, and Cally spoke on. “I am an idiot: I listened to you far too long. Your way is the way of hatred and despair and death, and I followed it. Now look at me!” For the first time her gaze lowered; she scanned herself, holding up her own clawlike hands in disgust. “I am hardly better than a skeleton. I let myself become nearly the same as you.”

  “How dare you speak to me that way!”

  There was more, but Cally did not listen; deliberately she turned her back on Death.

  She heard the snake-hiss of rage, heard the rattle of the scorpion tail raised to sting, but she did not look at her enemy. She looked at the beast, so near, so huge that she had to tilt back her head to see him, or as much of him as she could encompass. She saw other things: beyond him, a young couple in tight, frightened embrace—Barry and Joan. And off to the other side, another pair of lovers, holding hands, just as frightened and staring—Elspeth and Shirley. She saw many things: the hungerbabies in the beast’s fur, the shadow of a passing bird, the slow wheeling of the sky. But what were the feelings of the beast, she could not tell.

  “I choose the way of life,” she said softly to the beast. “I have put away my hunger. I intend to eat. I want to feast of life.”

  “Apocalypse!” The bitter voice spat like fire.

  She ignored it, speaking only to the beast.
“And I know now. I have seen. The way to find nurture is to sow it. The way to receive is to give.”

  “Apocalypse!” Death’s breath seared her shoulder, panting with passion at her neck. “I, too, can give. I give you one last chance—”

  “Go to hell,” Cally commanded.

  Something or someone shrieked. The beast trumpeted and reared.

  “I love you, Mark,” said Cally starkly, tenderly as he leaped.

  Gigi, struggling with the mob, had seen Elspeth and Shirley ride away and had reacted to the sight with a screech of outrage; the sword of War had not been bloodied to defend her! They cared nothing for her. No one did. Even War, Famine and Pestilence shunned Death.

  The four horsewomen had scattered; she was alone. (The thought caused her rage more than heartache.) Or, rather, left behind, fighting fifty people to keep her seat and her horse—and losing. She felt herself pulled off balance, falling; she screamed—some who heard might have thought they heard fear, but it was fury. She hit the ground, indignant, and a hundred hands grasped at Snake Oil. But these were not horsepeople. They did not know how to catch a frightened horse. Their clutchings and importunities sent the gelding into a frenzy. By the time Gigi had struggled to her feet, cursing, ten people lay flattened, and Snake Oil was a pale, high-tailed blur disappearing into the smoke, with a straggle of men running after him, pitifully slow by contrast.

  “Assholes!” Gigi vehemently yelled. “You’re scaring him!” Her shouts had no effect, as she had known they would not, but the men would soon tire and give up the chase. And maybe Snake Oil also would tire and stop after a while, and graze; it had been an exhausting day. With not a glance for the trampled people groaning on the ground, Gigi trudged off to find her horse.

  An hour later, Death was in tears.

  She had followed Snake Oil’s trail clear out to the old garment factory, and it looked as if the horse had disappeared into the woods behind it. He might catch his bridle on a snag and strangle himself or starve before she ever found him.… Doom hung heavy as the smoke in the air that day, and Gigi gulped and wept and fretted like the mother of a lost child. Up at the trolley park at that moment Shirley and Elspeth were watching their mounts whisk away, more concerned with Cally, Joan Musser, Mark. And when Cally saw Devil snort and take off toward the sunset a few moments later, she accepted his desertion without even a shrug. Devil owed her no affection, no loyalty, no love; people were for love. But to Gigi, losing Snake Oil was as if that overinflated sonofabitch, God, had reached down from his high horse in the sky and taken away the only thing she cared for.

  Besides, it was humiliating trudging around when a person was used to riding. They had brought her low, those mobbing Hoadley yokels, and they knew it; they were probably laughing at her.… And her new riding boots, so spit-polish swaggering on horseback, were torture to walk in. Her heels were blistered, the backs of her knees rubbed raw by the stiff black leather.

  Nevertheless, limping and weeping, she rounded the corner of the abandoned factory—that yellow brick corner, yellow as the Hoadley sky—and then she stopped weeping. Things had just gotten bad beyond the reach of weeping.

  Between yellow brick wall and scrub woods lay the appaloosa, still saddled and bridled, flat on his side with his head stretched out and a tinge of blood in his nostrils. Dead.

  Just beyond Snake Oil, with leveled rifle, stood Homer. “Always wanted to kill that horse,” he said.

  Gigi wished death on him with her look. Her nostrils—nearly as gray as her steely hair, from shock or her long sickness—her nostrils flared in time with her hard breathing. Nearly within her arm’s reach, the rifle bore faced her chest like a devil’s eye, so that she could not help looking at it. So black. Intensely, implodingly black, that hole. Like a dead coal. Like her soul.

  “Disappointed, wasn’t you,” Homer jeered, “not to find me at home.”

  Gigi knew what besides her horse he had for a long time wanted to kill. Her chest hurt as if someone had cut out her heart.… But she did not even think of pleading with him. Heedless of pain, she drew herself erect. “Beast,” she averred. “Tyrant. Monster.”

  Homer smiled. “Yep,” he agreed, and he pulled the trigger.

  The beast leaped.

  Atop the hill, by a carousel’s dying fire, the beast out of the pit roared and attacked, hurtled, lunged to kill the one who had angered him. Cally fell nearly into the flames. On the air, along with the smoke, rose a scream—but not Cally’s scream. Not at first.

  Then she screamed.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  I’m a God damn coward. Maybe if I wouldn’t of been so scared I would’ve understood what was going on, I would’ve knowed like everybody else did, maybe I could’ve helped somehow, and maybe none of it would’ve happened.

  Joanie knowed all right. She screamed when she seen the beast jump. I thought it was on account of Mrs. Wilmore. For a minute it looked like the beast was going for her to kill her and maybe eat her or something, and I thought that was why Joanie screamed, and I wanted to run and help Mrs. Wilmore but I couldn’t because of Joanie. I had been cuddling Joanie in my arms till then, see, and she didn’t seem to mind, but when she screamed she pushed at me, she wanted me to turn her loose, and I was afraid she was gonna go and get herself hurt, and I couldn’t let her. I just couldn’t, even if Mrs. Wilmore died. I’d just then got Joanie back, the old Joanie I mean, ugly, like me, and I’d just got to finally tell her how I loved her, and it seemed to me if she stayed around a while and let me love her she might come to feel different about things. About her life and stuff. I couldn’t let her go tackle no beast for nothing.

  And it wasn’t Mrs. Wilmore the beast was after anyways. I seen it knock her down, but she must’ve just been in the way. The beast went over top of her and jumped that monster out of the carousel, that locust thing with the stinger tail, and Mrs. Wilmore rolled off to one side, away from the fire and the fight, then sort of half set up and looked, so I knowed she wasn’t killed or even much hurt. And I was watching—the beast had pinned that poison tail to the ground first thing, and all his snake heads and stuff were biting and hissing like fire, but they come up against that bug like it was made of sheet metal and they didn’t do no good. And the beast couldn’t do no good with them big jaws of his neither, because the other monster had hold of him with them black clawed legs—them things looked strong as iron struts. I didn’t know which one looked meaner, the beast or that bug thing, and I was hoping they’d both kill the other one, and I was so glad they was fighting each other and not none of us that I forgot Joanie might not feel the same way. And I forgot to hold her real tight.

  And then hell happened.

  Mrs. Wilmore screamed. And Joanie busted away from me and run straight toward the fight. And I’m so shook by what I see going on that it’s a second before I run after her.

  What’s happening is, the beast is changing, right then and there. Getting smaller, weaker. Snakes, claw, horns, all going away. Fur, smoothing out into skin. The beast was turning into a man. Just regular man not even as tall as me, and that other monster still holding him in its claws.

  “Mark!” came a scream.

  See, I didn’t know till I seed what was happening that the beast was Mr. Wilmore, or the God-awful danger he had put himself in, attacking the thing that was threatening his wife. But Joanie must’ve knowed all along. What the devil knowed, she knowed, she said. And I guess she just didn’t want no more bad things to happen. So she run like hell to help.

  “Mark!” his wife is crying and screaming, trying to get up and go to him. But she couldn’t. Seemed like she didn’t have no strength left since she got knocked down that last time. And even if she could get up, what could she do, skinny little starved thing like she was?

  And I was running too, more on account of Joanie than Mr. Wilmore—I liked him a lot, he was a good boss to me, but I ain’t sure I would’ve fought no monster just for him—anyways, Joanie was flying along in front of me in
that red dress of hers like wings and I was running fast as I could but I seemed to go slow, so slow, I would never catch her or get there in time, and that poison stinger tail was coming up, I could see it, Mr. Wilmore had his foot on top of it but that wasn’t no use, nobody could be that strong to keep that thing down with their foot. It was all hard shell and muscle and it was as big as him. And the locust had him around the neck with its black bone hands, and I seen a horrible grin on its old gray face, and its tail come up in a curve like a wrestler’s arm, in half a second it would have him—

  And Joanie thrown herself right on top of it.

  She took that hard sharp stinger and pressed the poison spine of it in between her breasts and hugged it there like it was—like it was her lover. And she rode the rest of it like she was riding a horse. And I knowed she’d killed herself as much as saved anybody else, and it drove me crazy that she’d do herself that way. I didn’t even try to stop running. I piled into that helldamn black murdering stingertail death king and tried to take it apart with my bare hands. I remember snapping off its wing like the cruddy thing come out of a cereal box. I remember ramming my fist into its creepy old face, into one of its hateful eyes. I remember breaking one of its black arms and kicking it in the gut. Other than that I don’t remember much until I was wore out and done being crazy. Then I stood there panting and I seen them other women standing beside me. They was holding tree branches they been using like clubs, they been helping me. And that goddamn killer locust was laying there good and dead.