Pursuit of the Apocalypse

by Benjamin Wallace

  Five minutes later, Jerry dropped a bloody belt buckle to the ground and crossed the street to his truck. He tossed a bag full of steaks into the passenger seat and handed one to Chewy.

  “They got caught here in the storm, girl. They’re only an hour ahead of us.”

  FOUR

  The four-stroke engines whined as Willie and Coy rode hard out of Bomb City. Keeping to the roads for only a short time, they soon veered off on to well-worn trails they both knew well and made for the rendezvous point. Or, as Coy called it, the Meetin’ Place.

  Coy knew what rendezvous meant. To him, it just didn’t sound like something he wanted to be doing with another man. It didn’t matter what it really meant. He got uncomfortable when anything French was talked about. It was how he was brought up.

  Suffice it to say, Coy wasn’t that bright. And Willie wasn’t much brighter. A great many horrors were unleashed on the world when it ended with a bang. Entire stockpiles of weapons were thrown about. Everything from biological agents, experimental chemicals, and good old nuclear fallout drifted in the winds of the new landscape. Some caused plants to grow wild and become sentient. Others stripped the land of its vegetation altogether. Some even turned dumb animals into brilliant tacticians. But, there never was such a thing as a dumb bomb. Their lack of intelligence had nothing to with the apocalypse. Willie and Coy were simply not that bright to begin with.

  If anything, mankind’s decimation had been a boon to their relative intelligence. Once the dumbest men in most any room, they now found most rooms to be much less crowded. By their logic, this increased their odds at being the smartest person in a room as well as making it more likely they would find a seat.

  Contemporary conversation also contributed to their newfound intelligence. Prior to the bombs, intelligent conversation had required the participants to have knowledge of current events, political and economic theory, or the latest scientific breakthroughs. After the bombs, one only had to have an opinion of whether or not a rock formation looked like a dog sniffing another dog. And Willie and Coy certainly had an opinion on that.

  The two had been friends since they could remember, and they used to spend their days doing a lot of nothing and enjoying every minute of it. They weren’t big on the idea of work. It seemed almost every job they had taken came with a boss that thought he had a right to tell them when to be there, what to do, what to wear, what to say to customers, to wash their hands, or to cover their tattoos and open wounds. That wasn’t the America they were promised. That wasn’t freedom. So instead they went into business for themselves making meth.

  At least, that was the plan. They never actually got around to making the meth. Or even learning how to make meth. They did get as far as stealing a bunch of frying pans, but they stole a PlayStation at the same time and never got around to cooking anything.

  Just as the bombs had made them smarter, they had also grown more ambitious. The new world was full of opportunity for those willing to go out and grab it. And now that the PlayStation no longer worked, there was no real reason to stay in. So Willie and Coy had gone to work. But they were going to do it their way.

  Working eight hours a day to earn a couple of hundred dollars a week was just crazy. Only an idiot would work for that. The smart thing to do was work a few minutes each week to earn hundreds. A little hustle went a long way in the apocalypse. And opportunity was everywhere.

  Just the day before, opportunity had appeared before them dressed in a stupid white suit and wearing a stupid white hat. Opportunity called itself Mr. Christopher and had knocked while Willie and Coy were out looking for new career options.

  Technically, they were painting a naked woman on a billboard outside of town, but the man in white obviously recognized them as men of ambition and offered them employment. And it wouldn’t have happened if they’d been holed up somewhere instead of out in the world shaking things up.

  That’s what hustle was. Making things happen.

  Mr. Christopher had hired them to go to the Steakhouse in Bomb City and wait for a man called the Librarian. The boys jumped at the offer. They knew it was a job they could handle. Sitting and eating steak were two of their favorite things. And waiting took hardly any skill at all. This was their dream job.

  Hiring the others had been Willie’s idea. He was full of them. He reasoned that if they subcontracted the part of the job that required them to stop the Librarian, then they could focus on the part of the job they were more qualified for—sitting and eating the steak. It was called “delegating,” Willie had said. And it was what all big shot business people did.

  Of course, the plan had fallen apart once the Librarian started shooting everyone, but that could hardly be blamed on management. It was a failure on the subcontractors’ part. Every other part of the job had gone smoothly.

  The only thing that remained was to meet Mr. Christopher at the Meetin’ Place and collect their money. It was a good thing, too. Because, like all men of ambition, the pair wanted things and they needed money to buy those things.

  Coy’s bike, The Coy-o-te, could use a radio. He’d spent the last windfall on a paint job instead, but he didn’t regret it. It you brushed all the dust and mud off you could see that it was brown, just like a coyote. He loved the paint scheme, but some tunes would be nice.

  The pair rode for several hours, on-road mostly, but off-road wherever it was either required or something offered up a sweet jump. They pulled off the interstate and followed the rusted signs for a state highway until they saw a grain mill. Willie pointed the landmark out to Coy. Coy nodded back and the pair pulled off the road and rode around the back of a large steel building.

  They found the loading door open and rode inside until they reached the middle of the warehouse floor and dismounted their rides. They were alone.

  Willie put a hand to his mouth and shouted. “Hey, Chris! The job’s done.”

  There was no response from the darkness.

  “You think he skipped out on us?” Coy asked.

  “He’d better not. He owes us money.”

  “I don’t see a body.” The voice came out of the shadows, bounced twice off the steel walls and landed at their feet with a thud.

  “Chris?” Willie asked the dark.

  “Where is his body?”

  Willie and Coy looked around. Trying to pinpoint the speaker.

  “Come on out and we’ll talk about it,” Coy said.

  Silence followed for a long moment before the man in white emerged from a dark corridor behind them. “I’m only going to warn you once, do not try and double-cross me.”

  Willie shuddered as the pair walked across the warehouse to meet him, hoping his reaction wasn’t noticeable in the low light. For such a small guy, their employer sure scared the hell out of him.

  Willie smiled. “There you are. Why were you hiding, Chris?”

  “Is the job done?” he asked.

  “You bet,” Coy said. “We did just like you said.”

  “Yeah,” Willie added. “We went to the steakhouse, sat, ate steak, and waited for that guy to show up.”

  “And?” Mr. Christopher asked.

  Coy nodded with half his body. “And he showed up. Just like you said he would.”

  Mr. Christopher rolled his hands in the air to get the story moving.

  “Well, then we had a bunch of guys jump him,” Willie said.

  “Yeah, six or seven, even,” Coy added.

  Willie stammered a bit. “But, um, well, he shot a lot of them.”

  “Yeah, six or seven, even,” Coy added.

  Mr. Christopher removed the hat from his head and ran his hand through thinning blonde hair. “You failed and still you came here? Why?”

  Coy laughed. “To get the money you owe us.”

  “I paid you to kill the Librarian and bring me his head!”

  Willie held up his hands, trying to slow things down. “Now, I don’t want to get picky. But you said you’d pay us ten gold coins to go to
the steakhouse, sit there, eat steak, and kill the Librarian when he showed up.”

  “That’s true.” Mr. Christopher placed the hat back on his head. “It will be interesting to see where you’re going with this.”

  “Well, me and Coy went to the steakhouse. We sat there. And we ate steak.”

  “So?”

  “So, that’s like eighty percent of what you asked us to do,” Willie said. “And we did it. So we figure you owe us eighty percent of the money.”

  The man in white’s eyes grew wide and he stared at each man for an uncomfortable amount of time. He began to speak several times but abandoned his thoughts before they really got started. He finally settled on, “You two can’t honestly be this stupid.”

  “Hey. No one calls us stupid,” Coy said.

  “Yeah, we did the math and everything,” added Willie.

  “But, I hired you to kill the Librarian!”

  Willie held up a finger. “And that other stuff. The stuff we did.”

  “I did not pay you to sit down to dinner, you fucking hillbilly.”

  “Watch it, Chris,” Willie cautioned. “There’s no need for names. We’re all friends here.”

  The man in white was small but quick. With a flash of his arm, he struck Willie across the face with a gun and knocked him to the floor. Then he pointed the weapon between Coy’s eyes and yelled. “You can’t be this stupid!”

  Coy was terrified of their boss, but he was more afraid to lose his only friend. He leapt towards the man and grabbed the gun. He put all of his weight on Mr. Christopher’s arm until the weapon clattered to the ground.

  Mr. Christopher pulled a knife with his free hand and raised it to strike.

  Willie saw what was happening and sprang to his feet. He grabbed the man’s stupid hat and yanked it down over his eyes. He shoved the man back into the darkness of the warehouse and grabbed Coy by his shirt. “Run, Coy.”

  The two friends ran through the warehouse and jumped on their bikes. They heard Mr. Christopher screaming as they started the engines and hit the throttle. The sound of squealing tires and gunshots filled the steel building as they raced away from the best job they had ever had.

  They didn’t stop riding until they were miles away from the warehouse and in a place where a Jeep couldn’t follow. Willie pulled off the road and Coy followed. The two were still breathing heavy.

  “That guy welched!” Coy cast an accusatory finger back to the west. “He’s a welcher.”

  “I know, Coy. I know. You just can’t trust people to keep their word nowadays.”

  Coy pouted for a minute before sighing. “Well, what are we going to do for money now?”

  “I don’t know, Coy.” Willie stared off into the distance. He always believed that’s where really good ideas were found—somewhere off in the distance. That’s where the stars in the movies always looked. It’s where important people in paintings always looked. So that’s where Willie looked. But all he could see was the interstate. A lone truck made up all of the traffic of the once busy road. But, he sure didn’t see any ideas.

  Then it was there. The great idea was right in front of him. “I do know what we’re going to do.” He pointed to the truck. “We’re going to catch the Librarian ourselves.”

  “What are you talking about?” Coy asked.

  Willie pointed in Mr. Christopher’s general direction. “Screw that jerk. If he was going to pay us ten to capture the guy, he’s probably getting at least twenty for him. Right? So we cut out the middle man and collect the money ourselves.”

  Coy walked over and stood next to Willie. Together they watched the truck journey west. “You really think it’s as much as twenty?”

  “Maybe more. Maybe thirty.” Willie was getting excited. He really liked this plan.

  “But he whooped seven of us back there.”

  “He’s after Mr. Christopher. We know that now. He’s distracted. We’ll use that.”

  “But how are we going to stop him?” Coy asked.

  “By using our smartness,” Willie said to the distance.

  FIVE

  Mr. Christopher watched the two bikes fade into the distance from the steel building’s loft. He cursed the two idiots and marveled at their sheer stupidity. Their failure had cost him nothing financially. But, it may have cost him his lead over his pursuer. The aggravation alone was worth murdering them both slowly.

  Mr. Christopher wasn’t afraid of the Librarian. He was afraid of losing him. As long as he was ahead of the wanted man, he was in control, and that’s where he intended to stay.

  He watched the horizon wondering if he would see the man appear in his truck ahead of a cloud of smoke. How had he caught up so fast to begin with? Christopher had stopped for nothing until the storm trapped him in Bomb City. How could his prey have made up the time?

  He wanted to think that it was impossible. That no man could live up to their own legend, but the Librarian had managed to outwit, outshoot, outfight, and out-stab every man and minion Christopher had hired to take him down.

  He’d hired dozens of locals across the wasteland and they had failed miserably to subdue the bounty. This was not surprising. He knew they stood little chance of stopping the target, and he expected most of them to end up broken or dead. He sent them to harass the Librarian and remind him that he would never be out of danger. The constant state of alertness was intended to fatigue his mark and keep him off-balance. But the man had proven surprisingly resilient.

  Several bounty hunters of considerable repute had also met their ends at the hands of the Librarian. Mr. Christopher had agreed to split the bounty with men and women of fearsome reputations. Their failure, while disappointing, had spared him the trouble of double-crossing them at a later date.

  Many morons had their place in his plans. They were extremely useful. They worked cheap because math gave them headaches. And, often they worked for free if you killed them later. They would believe anything you told them if you made it simple enough. And, if it was too complicated, you just had to make up a boogeyman for them to fight against. Even in the event they did ask questions, they were really stupid questions.

  Up to this point every single person had failed him, so it should have been no surprise that the two morons he found vandalizing the sign with pornography had been unable to capture the man. He hadn’t hired them for their brains. But it was still profoundly stupid of them to try and collect the payment.

  Their problem was obvious to him. They were too stupid to know how dumb they really were. It was a dangerous type of idiocy that couldn’t determine its own place in the natural order. Most people knew their limitations. If they didn’t excel at math, they would accept this and focus on other areas where they could succeed.

  No, these two were just dumb enough to think they could think for themselves. These two morons would blame numbers for being stupid and mock anyone who understood them. They no doubt saw this new world as a land of opportunity free of authority and most likely gave themselves credit for surviving the end of civilization as if they had personally outsmarted the bombs and other horrors unleashed on the world.

  Mr. Christopher chuckled at this. It never ceased to amaze him how many stupid people survived the end of the world while so many sensible ones had perished. It was a numbers game, he supposed. Going into the apocalypse the intelligent had been vastly outnumbered. It was only common sense they’d be a minority on the other side of it as well.

  The Librarian himself was an anomaly. The man clearly wasn’t stupid. He had eluded the bounty hunter countless times. Escaped every trap. Foiled every plan.

  When he began the hunt, Christopher didn’t believe half of what he’d heard about the man. How could he? The stories that spread from town to town were preposterous. They were stories of heroics and rebellion against evil that seemed crafted only to inspire others, like he was some poster child for selfless sacrifice. They were too perfect tales of a compassionate champion that stood for right against wrong
, and occasionally bears. Every one sounded as if they had been borne of bards instead of facts.

  In each, the man was an underdog. He appears from nowhere to help the oppressed in their most desperate hour. He turns the meek and defeated into an army that stands against a superior foe. And in the end—triumph. Always triumph.

  Fairy tales. They could be nothing but fairy tales.

  But now, after chasing him for a year, even he, the skeptic, was beginning to believe more and more of these stories. And his legend continued to grow. Somehow the tale of what happened out west only days before had beaten Christopher to Bomb City. And that was one tale he knew to be true.

  Regardless of the truth, his bounty was a hero to many. But he had upset the wrong people in Alasis, and that made him the right target for a nice payday. No one paid as well for vengeance as the Great Lord Invictus.

  Mr. Christopher turned away from the road and walked back through the warehouse dismissing the incident with the two morons.

  The time for pawns was done. The game was drawing to a close and it would take someone smarter to handle the Librarian. He would have to face him himself.

  Mr. Christopher reached the Jeep where he had parked it in a dark corner of the building. He moved to the vehicle’s rear gate and inserted the key.

  He would face the Librarian, but he would still have the edge. Already he had turned the tide of the chase, and as long as he had his captive, his bounty would grow more and more desperate. And desperate men always made mistakes.

  He turned the key in the gate.

  As long as he had the girl, he had control of his enemy’s thoughts.

  He lifted the Jeep’s gate and said, “Shit.”

  The girl was gone.

  SIX

  Erica ran.

  Down a ditch, up the other side and into the woods. Her feet slipped through the wet leaf litter as she struggled to maintain her balance with bound hands. She had managed to free her feet after hours of struggling, but the ropes on her hands were too well tied.

  Free of a gag for the first time in days, she took large breaths. The cold stung at her lungs, but the pain didn’t stop her from gasping every time she stumbled.