Enter the Apocalypse

by Gondolfi, Thomas

  Enter the Apocalypse

  Edited by Thomas Gondolfi

  If you purchased this book without a cover, you should be aware that it was an unauthorized sale. All books without a cover have been reported as “unsold and destroyed.” As a result, neither the author nor the publisher received payment for the sale of this “stripped book.”

  TANSTAAFL Press

  891 PH 10

  Castle Rock, WA 98611

  Visit us at www.TANSTAAFLPress.com

  All characters, businesses, and situations within this work are fictional and the product of the author’s creativity. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental. TANSTAAFL Press assumes no responsibility for any content on author or fan websites or other publications.

  Enter the Apocalypse

  First printing—TANSTAAFL Press

  Copyright © 2017 by Thomas Gondolfi

  Cover art: Andrei Bat

  Printed in the USA

  ISBN 978-1-938124-03-7

  From the Editor

  Thomas Gondolfi

  I am pleased to bring you Enter the Apocalypse, a collection of stories from authors all over the globe. They all focus on one topic – holocausts. I didn’t narrow our focus to one specific type, but instead let the creative muck of our authors ooze forth with anything they could envision. In the pages of this tome you will find zombies, magic, viruses, nuclear explosions, invasions, mold and many others turning our world upside down.

  What you won’t find within Enter the Apocalypse is a uniformity of dark, depressive works. There are several with a truly humorous bent. Whatever you do, don’t miss 13 Signs of the Coming Apocalypse or Death, Inc. I personally laughed soda through my nose at least once. Along this line I saved The Fluffpocalypse to round out our collection.

  Don’t get me wrong, I traditionally think of apocalyptic fiction as dark. I have chosen plenty of specific stories in this vein. The Sky Fell, our lead story, sets a severely dark tone. Other stories provide a leavening of hope, such as in The Other White Meat. It is hard to call out specific works in this editor’s note because all of these have touched me in one way or another.

  As this is our first anthology I have learned a great deal. To offer some of my naiveté, I had worried that we wouldn’t receive enough quality submissions to make this trilogy work. Instead the submissions poured in and just kept on coming, even after we closed the window. The stories you have in the pages of this book alone were winnowed down from over three hundred great submissions. SURPRISE!

  And if that weren’t enough, I had decided to edit an anthology (instead of writing a novel for one of my series) so I could focus on another aspect of our business last year. SURPRISE!

  I’ve spent enough time yammering. I’ll let you get into the joy of the pieces that our authors have provided.

  Thomas Gondolfi

  www.TANSTAAFLPress.com

  P. S. And yes, I do like making fun of myself in retrospect. Taking yourself too seriously is dangerous.

  Contents

  From the Editor

  The Sky Fell

  Seven Lost Things

  Alone

  The Infestation

  Saving for a Future

  Sea of Darkness

  The Other White Meat

  Something New

  Ia Ia Cthulhu Fhtagn

  An Acceptable Loss

  Passing the Torch

  Death, Inc.

  10 to 1

  Adrift

  He / She / They

  To Be the Walking Wounded

  Rise of the Golden Creep

  Gabeth Bhul

  Nightmare Factory

  The Tide Turns

  And I Will Sing a Lullaby

  The World Is a Vampire

  All News, All Day, All the Time

  13 Signs of the Coming Apocalypse

  The Centaur Project

  Unnatural Selection

  Heatwave 1976

  Of Dreams and Song

  Every Day

  Revelation

  The First Shot Fired

  The Fluffpocalypse

  Author Biographies

  Other Works from TANSTAAFL Press

  The Sky Fell

  Donna J.W. Munro

  Editor: Tout comprendre c’est tout pardonner, translated means, “To understand all is to forgive all.” It is one of the most contemptible lies ever uttered. There are things that just can’t be rationalized. There are things that can’t be absolved.

  Once the sky fell. Now, the dust piles against the dry stalks of corn and the stubble of mown winter wheat. Pheasant used to coo and peck there among my crops. Now only the rats and cockroaches swarm across the ground. Them and me.

  We stumble in the furrows that once nursed life from cold dirt.

  Somewhere down deep I know I should be planting. Or turning the ground. The seasons are written on my bones, even if I can't wake for the sun anymore. Even if my mind is clouded and my lungs don't breathe. I'm trapped in this meat that sometimes won't respond. I'm a rider trying to steer a hurricane.

  My meat's range is written by my life and tied to this dirt. It stumbles across a territory that once I'd framed with barbed wire and dry-set stone walls. Sometimes, if I concentrate and the meat has eaten, I force the muscles to carry me into the house. When the soul ache that is the meat’s hunger is satisfied, it lets me take charge of us. I head it into the house, rotting fingers hovering over pictures of those people I watched die. I stare at one picture of the woman and the boy, seated next to a man. Names flicker through my eye inside. Something with a c...Carmelle. Carmelle, my wife. Sam, my boy. Me...that name won't come. Not that I chase it. I don't deserve a name anymore. Not after what I've done.

  I focus on one thought. Push pictures into the decaying connection between my mind and the meat. I order the meat up the stairs. It gargles protest. It’s tired. It wants to stand and rest, but I'll never let it. It doesn't deserve rest. I push and push and finally, it grunts its understanding. We shuffle up the stairs, thumping and moaning.

  I know it doesn't want to see what it’s done. It’s the only lesson I can teach it.

  The top of the stairs pass and we shamble down the hall, it dragging my feet and protesting with pauses and grunts. I push, hard. It gives.

  The hall isn't long, three doors and only two matter. We pass the boy's room. The crib stands upright in a mess of ripped toys, fetid clothes, and matchstick furniture. I'd been there when it happened. When the meat devoured Sam, I'd fought so hard. But I didn't understand how to move it then. I curse myself for that. If only I'd learned sooner. I might have been able to drive it from them.

  I slow long enough to linger—one long look at the tiny lump covered by a blue sheet. Sometimes, when I'm particularly brave, I pull that sheet back. Stare at what's left of my little Sam. Today, I'm not that brave.

  The meat moans, shifting back and forth on its feet.

  I push it forward, to the other door. Its moans grate mournful across my hearing. Still, I shove. No escape, my friend. We will see it.

  The meat moves forward again, though each step is lead-lined and slow.

  The door opens on my bedroom. The chamber where my beautiful wife and I planned our family. We made Sam here one warm summer evening when the wind carried a honeysuckle scent across our skin. The memories once sweet, are now rocks in my mouth...its mouth. The meat.

  I push and it moves forward, past the bed sheets made crisp with hospital corners. The last thing she did before—

  It comes back to me in a wave, drowning me. I walked up behind her. I hadn't told her about the fireball. About the thing that fell from the sky. The dust hadn't come yet, but
I'd breathed in the heat just the same. I'd changed that day.

  It came on me slow, crushing the self from me, replacing me with hunger. Hunger is all I was. Sam cried in the other room. I saved him for later. I, the meat, closed in on my beautiful wife. The only woman I'd lain with. My only love. She'd turned when she heard me, brows drawn with concern.

  "Has the fever broken?" she asked, with the music that was her voice.

  The meat, I, grabbed her. Shoved her to the floor with a ferocious pounce. She was such a little thing. Strong in her way, but no way could she fight against the meat. Its teeth were in her. Tearing. It ate and ate and ate. Inside I screamed, but it was so hungry.

  Now, I made the meat look at her, lying there a pile of bones.

  It moans at me and lets the tears I feel run down our cheeks.

  It moans at me, trying to pull away from my welling wave of loss. We stagger, drop to the floor next to her. The meat lets me direct the hand and I stroke her black hair, fanned out around her skull, bleached and dry from the years. I try to leave it there, to remember how beautiful it had been on our wedding day. Just to remember.

  The memories are all I have.

  Seven Lost Things

  Eric James Spannerman

  Editor: Given a lever of fear and a fulcrum of anger, the world can be plunged into chaos.

  He sat alone in a brewpub, drinking a wheat beer, finishing a ham and swiss on rye while pondering the box that contained the end of the world. Among other things, he wondered what effect the end of the world would have on craft-brewed beer.

  He fiddled with the box, which sat next to his plate, and remembered how this decision had come to him. It started with the sharp, plastic smell of an Apple IIe as he unwrapped it. It began in earnest when he made the device type “Hello World” on the screen using a BASIC program that had taken him three hours to write. The little machines were going to make everyone smart and happy and rich. They were going to change the world.

  And indeed, his world had changed. He lost things.

  One: Stability

  Precisely fifteen years ago, his workday had begun with a mandatory-attendance department meeting. It ended with him in the parking lot of the building where he had worked for over a decade, clutching a cardboard box of personal possessions—verified as such by a security guard—and blinking in the sunlight.

  By afternoon, he was sitting on his sofa, staring into the middle distance. He stirred slightly when his wife came in.

  "Hello, Barb."

  She was first startled, and then cheered by his unexpected presence. A fraction of a second later, she was frightened by the look on his face.

  They sat together as he explained—about the new site in India, the contractors, and the severance package. Looking for some comfort, he pointed out they’d be able to keep group medical coverage for a year and a half or so. The premiums would be high, but not as high as the full cost of keeping his diabetes in check.

  Days passed. Then weeks. Methodical by nature, he ran through the obligatory steps of visiting the job bank and going to interviews. This turned out to be a complicated and time-consuming way to discover that his skill set, while not precisely obsolete, was not precisely in demand, either.

  Eventually, he ended up in a strip-mall “retraining center,” pursuing a new career in computer security. He reasoned that companies willing to outsource just about everything else would insist that access to critical systems be handled by someone they knew—not an anonymous mailbox.

  For the next ten months, he came to a beige room and learned things. It wasn't all that different from his job, except that the time he spent there was emptying his bank account rather than filling it.

  Barb had gone back to work, cutting hair. The hours were odd and long, and the pay was uncertain. Even when she spent time at the shop, there wasn’t any money unless there were customers. Sometimes there were, and sometimes there weren’t.

  Graduation brought a series of interviews. Somewhere after the fifth, the impersonal humiliations began to run together in his mind. Eventually, there was a spot for him in a beige cube, and the numbers in their bank account began getting larger. They agreed Barb would keep cutting hair until the credit cards were paid off.

  That day never came.

  As it turned out, he had been wrong about security. If the price got low enough and the risks looked like something that would happen in a different bonus period, management was willing to turn the keys over to just about anyone. As long as it could be described as "industry standard," how could anyone be blamed if it didn't work out?

  After just six months, he found himself holding another box of personal possessions in another parking lot. This time, he barely knew his former coworkers.

  Eventually, he found a position where he worked from an anonymous cube in a consulting agency with an equally anonymous name—General Solutions, or somesuch. Half the time, he couldn't remember it. Like Barb, his hours were long and the pay was uncertain. Also like her, he was paid only when there were customers. Sometimes there were, and sometimes there weren’t. Unlike her, he typically traveled for three weeks out of the month. Customers wanted the convenience of having him on site.

  Two: Belief

  He tapped the cover of Pandora’s box, lighting its screen. It was an aging portable device, once called a palmtop. It was cheap to buy and hard to trace. Embedded in its memory were codes that would awaken other programs and set processes in motion. Those processes would erase most of modern existence.

  He put the palmtop down and concentrated on remembering Barb’s face. The concentration yielded two scenes.

  One was in the living room, when he arrived at midday, again unemployed. He remembered the deep lines of weariness on her forehead and around the corners of her mouth. As he explained his plan for another job hunt, she looked at a far corner of the room.

  His second image of Barb was lit by the glow of their home computer screen. Even in the dim light, her smile was unmistakable. They were looking at their investment portfolio.

  The portfolio contained a promise: the promise of a day when Barb could stop cutting hair and he could stop traveling three weeks a month. They weren't going to retire on the Riviera, but they could see the day coming when their investment income would render all but a little part-time work unnecessary. They were happy with that promise.

  They got caught in the crash, of course. In a matter of weeks, the wealth melted away like fairy gold, along with the future it represented.

  At some point, he and Barb stopped looking—first at the accounts, and then at each other. They no longer lay in bed and talked about what they would do when he quit. Instead, they lay together and said nothing. He felt her growing ever wearier.

  Three: Home

  Less than three years ago, he came home to the biggest change of all. It began with Barb in the dining room, sitting at the table, with her face puffy and eyes wet. The table, normally a mass of unopened mail and discarded odds and ends, was perfectly clean, except for one thick envelope, filled with neat papers. Without looking, he knew what they were.

  He signed, of course. No point in dragging it out. She got the house, he got the car, and they split everything else down the middle. They promised to remain friends and not be bitter, but never really talked again.

  He started living in a rental suite that bore a striking resemblance to the anonymous beige cubes where he worked. Sometimes, on a long assignment, he moved everything into storage and saved the rent, taking the first available unit when he returned. It really didn’t matter.

  Four: Craftsmanship

  He could remember distinctly when work stopped mattering.

  The blond guy wearing a blue blazer and khaki pants came down his row of cubes, toothpick in his mouth, looking pissed.

  “You mind explaining to me why the hell SoBreeze Chemical was off line for six fucking hours last night?” The blond guy’s jaw jutted out.

  He’d frowned, and poked at the
entries in his worklog. Memory came flooding back.

  “Oh, yeah, they were a mess. They had six different versions of the remote-sensing hardware drivers on different systems, their core components were patched beyond recognition, and their configuration was twisted into some totally non-standard piece of shit. I tore everything out, upgraded to current and standardized the config across all the boxes.”

  “So who was screaming for that?”

  “Nobody, really, but it had to be done. Their entire process monitoring system was ready to fall apart.”

  “I thought you fixed that the week before.”

  “I slapped some configuration around; there was no way it would hold together past the next component upgrade. I told them that at the time.”

  The blond guy pulled the toothpick out of his mouth and stabbed it in the air. “You took a working system off line, and charged the client for something that nobody requested?”

  He’d felt the color rising in his cheeks. “They sure as hell would have requested it when it crashed in the middle of the day again and shut down their entire production line.”

  “Next time, wait for that!” The blond guy’s face was red. “When that happens, I can sell double-rates to get it fixed. For this bullshit—” he gestured toward the work log “—I’m going to have to give it to them, and end up apologizing.”

  The blond guy turned away and walked back down the row of cubes, pulling on his belt loops and muttering.

  So he learned to do what was expected, which was usually the minimum necessary to keep systems functioning. Or at least maintain a semblance of functioning. Security holes and operational anomalies were OK, assuming the equally-harassed auditors didn’t find them. It all looked good on the surface, and clients could be assured that state-of-the-art technology was being used in there someplace.

  Five: Hope