Pursuit of the Apocalypse
(A Duck & Cover Adventure Book 3)
Benjamin Wallace
Copyright © 2016 by Benjamin Wallace.
All rights reserved.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. Especially if you’re anything like Willie and Coy.
Table of Contents
Copyright Page
Pursuit of the Apocalypse (A Duck & Cover Adventure, #3)
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To my family
Prelude
- THE END -
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OTHER WORKS
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
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To my family
Prelude
We probably should have seen the end coming.
As a species, we were practically begging for it.
We had stopped being social creatures long before the world blew up and stopped working together to solve anything that mattered.
There was too much division for that. The gray area had disappeared, and one side refused to listen to the other. There was right, wrong, and no other option. Common ground had become scorched earth in the name of pride.
Everything became black and white. Everything was absolute. If you were pro-life, you were against women voting. If you were pro-choice, you wanted all babies dead. If you wanted more accountability on social programs, you hated the poor. If you tried to help the poor without approval, you were arrested.
If you had money it was because you were greedy and you exploited the workers. If you drove a car, you wanted the world to burn. If you were concerned about icecaps, you were condemned for having a home.
If you thought some people shouldn’t have guns, you wanted the criminals to kill and rape everyone. If you wanted a gun, it was because you had a small penis and the other side had run out of arguments and resorted to third-grade tactics.
Every belief was labeled as extreme. Every ideology was decried as far this or far that.
Everyone else was either a racist, a misogynist, or a homophobe, Islamophobe, or ammophobe.
And everyone was Hitler.
Part of the problem was that everyone was an expert on everything so any chance for debate was quashed by superior credentials such as, “I read it on Wikipedia,” or “the TV station that thinks like I do agrees with me and told me everyone else was too stupid to understand.”
Opinions were treated like concealed weapons, and every time one was offered it was a showdown. Words turned to sticks and stones and hurt people everywhere. People grew afraid of someone who didn’t agree with them. Friendships were called off, family was ostracized, and we all went to our separate corners to gloat and pout.
But even that didn’t help, because the rules of acceptable beliefs within each group became so complex they began to conflict with one another, and it became a choir-to-choir shouting match. Even atheists were trying to prove they were holier than thou.
Irony went completely unnoticed.
There was no pleasing anyone.
In the end it was best if you just didn’t feel anything at all.
- An entry from the journal of the Post-Apocalyptic Nomadic Warrior dated “after”
ONE
The Niagara River poured over the falls outside their window as April stood tucked in his embrace. She kissed him gently on the lips for a long moment. She was happy but exhausted. Never, in all her daydreams or wildest fantasies, had she imagined her wedding being so tiring.
“Won’t you excuse me for a moment?” she asked as she backed away slowly across the hotel room.
He just nodded and smiled at her. It was the same adorable, goofy grin he had worn since he had seen her walking down the aisle earlier that day.
She slinked back across the room, moving slower and more seductively than she ever had before, holding his gaze in hers until she backed into the bathroom doorframe with a clunk.
She shot him the “don’t laugh” look she’d been practicing for married life but had a hard time keeping a straight face herself. He didn’t laugh at all, but his smile grew broader and showed a few more teeth.
She giggled nervously and shot him the look again, but she made it the sexy version as she ducked into the suite’s bathroom. She hugged the entryway and watched his expression as she placed a stocking-clad foot against the frame. She’d seen this move before, and she dragged her foot slowly up the frame like they had in the movies.
In the movies, the woman’s stocking rarely caught and tore on a splinter, ruining the effect. But this was no movie. She cursed and shut the door harder than she intended.
Turning towards the vanity she saw herself in the mirror, and she was beautiful. The dress had been worth every penny. The hairdo had been worth every minute and every painful tug beneath the harsh comb.
Unpinning the do let her dirty blonde hair cascade past her bare shoulders and she grunted. It was going to take some serious brushing. She looked at the door and imagined her new husband waiting on the other side. He could wait.
She had discreetly stowed an overnight bag in the bathroom when they arrived. Now she unzipped it, pulled out a brush, and went to work for several minutes.
Once done, she studied the dress in the mirror and smiled. So much focus had been put on finding the right one. She had searched everywhere for it, she had starved herself to fit into it, and it had taken a team of two to help her into it. She took one last look at the gown in the mirror, smiled, and tried to reach the zipper. She spun around three times before finally finding it with her fingers.
She pulled off the dress revealing the most perfect body she had ever possessed. Dieting. Exercising. Waxing. It had all been for today. Her stomach had never been tighter, her breasts had never been perkier, and he’d better damn well appreciate it because all that crap was over with. She was married now.
She yawned. Thank God the day was almost done.
The bag contained the vestiges of the final wedding tradition. The white satin negligee came in several pieces and she laid them out on the counter to identify them. There were so many straps. Why were there so many straps? Why did the panties need straps?
She picked up the garter belt and pulled on the elastic fastener. It slipped from her finger, snapped back and popped her in the breast.
She yelped.
“Everything okay in there, honey?” her new husband asked through the door.
“Everything’s fine, sweetie,” she said, rubbing the red mark on her breast. “Just give me a minute.”
April looked at the set on the counter and sighed. It seemed like a lot of work for something that wouldn’t be on for all that long.
But, that’s how weddings went. Even the ceremony felt like a blur now. Had it really happened? They had been married overlooking the falls and that had made the ceremony last a little longer than she had expected, but it still seemed quite quick in her memory.
A poet at heart, if not in practice, she had always de
scribed their love as a force of nature, and Niagara Falls seemed a fitting metaphor and therefore a suitable backdrop for the exchanging of their vows.
April had even written her vows to correspond to the setting. “My dearest,” she had said. “When I met you I was adrift in a great lake of loneliness. But when I found you I was swept up in a current more powerful than I could ever imagine. I’ve fallen for you completely.”
It had all seemed so perfect in her mind. She had rehearsed it over and over until they escaped her lips as sultry whispers from her soul. But the reality was, appropriate metaphor or not, four million cubic feet of water a minute crashing over the falls created a hell of a racket, and she had to replace the sultry whispers with a more or less loving screaming.
The soft and sincere “I do” that she had rehearsed turned in to a shouting match between her and the preacher who kept asking her to speak up.
The falls weren’t really her idea of the perfect wedding in the first place. She could think of at least a dozen beaches that would have better fit her childhood fantasies. But it wasn’t too long into the planning process that she discovered her special day wasn’t hers at all.
Family had to be accommodated, and the falls were close enough that extended members could make the drive. And there was certainly no shortage of hotel rooms in the area.
She and her husband had chosen to stay on the Canadian side of the river allowing them to tell everyone they knew that they had an international honeymoon, even if it was only a few hundred feet to the north. It was a technicality, but one she would forever exploit.
Aside from the shouting, the ceremony hadn’t been that bad. It was still her special day. And if it hadn’t been for the jackass in the barrel going over the falls at the precise moment she and her husband had shared their first kiss, it would have been a perfect memory.
She had no idea if the man survived the fall, and she didn't want to know. To find out that a man had died at that exact special moment in her life would tarnish it. But she kind of hoped he was dead. Well, maybe not dead, but in traction for a few months, at least. She shook her head. Wishing that kind of pain on anyone was cruel. So she changed her mind back to hoping he was dead but that he didn’t suffer too much.
April stepped into the garter and pulled on the white stockings. She bent over to attach the elastic strap and lost her grip once more. The strap popped her other breast and she swore. She should have practiced this before tonight.
April held up the underwear that came with the set. She turned them around several times and wondered where the back was. She made her best guess and started to put them on before she realized they were supposed to go under the garter straps. Or were they? Under seemed like it would cause a lot of work undoing and redoing things. But, over just seemed weird.
She dug back through the bag. These things should have come with instructions. A simple diagram would do. Step A. Tab B. Furniture came with instructions and it wasn’t nearly as complicated as all this.
She made her decision with the underwear, picked up the corset and held it out in front of her. “What the hell?” This thing was a two-person job at least. There was entirely too much ribbon and it seemed she’d need a degree in crochet or cross-stitch to make it look the way it was supposed to.
She messed with it for only a few minutes before admitting that if she couldn’t figure out how to put it on, he’d never figure out how to get it off. She let the ribbon hang free instead of trying to perfect some sort of bow.
She studied herself in the mirror and had to admit that she looked incredible. She had killed herself to get into the best shape of her life for this day, and it showed.
She also looked incredibly tired. The idea of going to sleep was more seductive than the idea of seducing anybody. But, she had to try. This was important. It was the last thing on the perfect wedding checklist.
It wouldn’t be their first time. But it would be their first time as husband and wife and it was a crucial symbol of their commitment to one another. And, he’d better damn well appreciate it.
The bathroom door opened without a sound and she dangled a leg around the doorframe, minding the splinter. She ran it slowly up and down, cooing in a seductive voice. “Before we do this, you should know I’m a married woman.”
She slinked around the door. The corset ribbon swayed back and forth in rhythm with her hips. One of the garter straps in the back popped free of the stocking and snapped her in the ass.
She squealed and grabbed for it. Halfway through she tried to turn it into a sexy squeal by adding a little giggle to the end, but there was no doubt in her mind that she was tossing this entire getup away when this was done.
He didn’t laugh at her squeal so she assumed it must have worked.
“Well?” she asked. “What do you think? Are you glad you said, ‘I do’?”
His only response was a deep breath followed by a tired snore that she knew would haunt her for the rest of her life.
April stomped next to the bed and snapped on the table lamp that cast a gentle light across half of the bed. There he lay, facedown, asleep in his tuxedo.
She wanted to be angry with him, but she was too tired and only sighed. She would be angry tomorrow. She stepped to the window and looked out over the falls.
Lit in a horrible rainbow of lights, the falls roared on. Placing her hand on the window she could feel the sound vibrating in the pane. She watched in wonder. They were an unstoppable force of nature. Just like she had wanted. Long after she and her husband were gone, the water would rush on.
“They really are amazing,” she whispered to herself.
The colorful lights snapped off and the night swallowed the falls.
“Oh, well,” she sighed. “Time to wake the asshole up.”
# # #
The Great Lord Invictus stood in front of the mirror and lifted the ceremonial armor of Alasis into place across his back. He pulled the strap across his chest to fasten it into place. The elastic strap slipped from his fingers and snapped him in the nipple.
He cursed the armor and rubbed at the red mark that it left. Why did it have to be so complicated? He wished he could have the designer executed, again, but one could only be thrown over Niagara Falls so many times.
He spun around trying to find the strap that had disappeared behind his back before groaning that this was really a two-person job.
His fingers finally found the strap and he fastened the plate into place. The chest plate went on next. Polished to a high sheen, it reflected the mirror’s image back and produced a thousand versions of him that shrunk off to infinity. The army in the mirror danced as he shifted the plate back and forth trying to find some degree of comfort within the metal shell. It caught a hair on his chest and ripped it free. He grimaced and sighed.
Invictus picked up the helmet and studied the bloodstain across the temple. The rust colored smear that trailed behind the bullet hole had started to fade again. He would have to have someone touch it up. It was too important to go unseen. It marked his day of ascension. The day he first stood before his people as their Great Lord. The day they tried to kill him.
The assassin’s aim had been perfect. She had struck Invictus in the temple and pierced the helmet. It should have killed him, but the metal slowed the bullet enough that his head was able to stop the round.
His men had wrestled her to the ground and, as blood ran from his head and down the helmet, he gave his speech to an astonished and fearful crowd. Since that day he had refused to have the helmet replaced or repaired. Instead he insisted on retouching the trail of blood whenever it began to fade. It was an important reminder to his people that he was as unstoppable as the falls.
He set the helmet on his head and backed into the cape. The cape was ridiculous. Crimson fabric draped from armored shoulders twice as broad as his own. He pulled the clasp around his neck and studied his appearance in the mirror. Terrifying. Monstrous. Imposing and perfect. He was the perfect image o
f power and fear. The Great Lord Invictus turned sideways and shuffled through the bathroom door into the Honeymoon suite.
Lackeys, toadies, aides, and assistants leapt to their feet and showered him with platitudes as he strode across the room. He ignored their flattery. He trusted none of it. Their words were weakened by overuse and drowned out by the roar of the falls below.
Invictus stepped up to the shattered window and listened to the mighty current that swept the river over the falls in the darkness. They crashed in a thunderous mist more than a hundred feet below, their impact made all the louder as the falling Niagara River beat against the hulls of a dozen derelict ships that had succumbed to their power.
He could feel the sound a dozen stories up and he closed his eyes to take it in. This was his true power. The world had come to an end, but the river still flowed, and because of him the generators still turned. He was the man at the switch controlling the comfort of the people of Alasis. Thanks to him, the lights still worked. But, they only worked when he said.
“Light them up,” Invictus said to no man in particular.
Several men in the room shouted his order repeatedly. It was relayed several times to the lighthouse down the river, and the multicolored lights lit the breadth of Horseshoe Falls.
The panoramic illumination showed the true power of the water as it plunged more than one hundred eighty feet into a mist that masked perilous rocks and dangerous eddies. But everyone could see the boats.
In the years since the end of time, the captainless ships had been at the mercy of the wind and weather of the Great Lakes. Pulled by the powerful force of the river, hundreds of ships left adrift would each one day find their way to the base of the falls in a pile of twisted metal.
An even dozen had fallen in the past, and one more now teetered on the edge waiting to join the others in the pile below. This is why they were here.
“How many ride the falls tonight?” Invictus asked.
“There are one hundred and thirty-six, Lord Invictus.”
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