by M. G. Herron
THE END OF THE WORLD IS BETTER WITH FRIENDS
Copyright © 2016 by M.G. Herron. All rights reserved.
Cover Design by James, GoOnWrite.com
This is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, businesses, events, or locales is purely coincidental. This story may not be reproduced without express written consent.
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
STORY
THE END OF THE WORLD IS BETTER WITH FRIENDS
MORE
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
M.G. HERRON’S STARTER LIBRARY
ALSO BY M.G. HERRON
THE END OF THE WORLD
IS BETTER WITH FRIENDS
—
M. G. Herron
I stood on the bridge over the eastern dam, a dozen feet above the water’s surface, and followed Michelangelo’s trail as he whizzed by the pedestrian bridge and then past the collapsed bridge where the bats lived. Ripples in the shallow lake water trailed the quadruped robot as he zoomed toward me.
I noted the time on my stopwatch—just under two minutes—as Michelangelo rounded the corner and came along the final stretch. In the water beside the road, the beast’s slimy tail undulated as it hurried to keep up with the speeding robot. The hair on my neck stood on end. Seeing its wake always gave me the creeps.
Michelangelo took the last corner sharply, barely losing any speed. His dust cloud blew across the bridge, and the robot finally came to a stop next to me. I clicked a button on the stopwatch to mark the time.
“Two thirty-three. Now that’s what I’m talking about!”
I smacked the solar panels that doubled as the robot’s protective shell—it was squat and low like a turtle, six feet wide at the center. An orange stripe of paint crossed his central panel diagonally. “You didn’t even give Slimeball time to break the surface this run. That’s a new record, Mikey.”
Michelangelo merely tilted his solar panels toward the setting sun, taking advantage of the pause to recharge. He may have been a wicked fast transport bot, but Michelangelo didn’t have the capacity for speech.
It was lonely in this dead city. Since the alien ships inexplicably rose through the atmosphere and departed like a cosmic swarm of satiated mosquitos moving on to their next victim, I had been this city’s sole inhabitant.
Everyone else I had ever known had died during the invasion.
The beast I called Slimeball, whom the alien invaders had left behind, turned and began to make its way back to the center of the lake, its massive wake clearly visible as its legless serpentine form wriggled under the surface. It was likely heading to its bed at the lowest depth, but I couldn’t really say for sure.
I sniffed.
A dam at either end of the lake kept this stretch of water from drying up—and kept Slimeball penned in. I suspected the only reason the aliens hadn’t sucked the fresh water out of this lake, like they had out of Lake Michigan and the other great lakes, was for the sake of this monster.
I had no idea why they left it behind. Maybe they were in a hurry. Maybe they left it to torment the 1% of humanity still struggling to survive on this ravaged world.
Unfortunately, the lake was also the only source of fresh water I had left. That’s why I was making Mikey race. I figured that if I could create a reliable distraction with the robot, I could retrieve enough fresh water to fill my water catch system. This, my last test run, seemed to indicate that the plan had legs.
I pulled aside the panel covering one of the passenger seats inside Michelangelo’s shell, then jumped in and let his guidance system lead us home.
I hung on, gripping the padded safety bars while we drove along streets lined by abandoned and dilapidated skyscrapers. As we turned to head back to the shelter, something moving down near the river caught my attention.
I pulled Michelangelo around in a sharp U-turn, my eyes scanning the tree line that ran along the lake.
My heart pounded. Was Slimeball smarter than I had assumed? Or had my eyes deceived me?
No. There. A thin figure in a green, oversized Army surplus coat and baseball cap. The figure dropped off a tree branch and crept toward the water. I pulled Mikey to a stop and jumped out as I saw the familiar ripples on the surface of the water glide toward the shore.
“Get back!” I shouted. My shock at seeing another person was tempered by the conditioning of fear that several close run-ins with Slimeball had instilled. “The water’s not safe!”
A boy turned and regarded me. His eyes narrowed with distrust. He crouched on the thick tangle of tree roots and lowered a plastic jug into the water.
“Are you deaf? I said the water’s not safe! There’s a monster in there!”
He let the jug fill while he watched me, licking cracked lips. Apparently, fresh water was worth the risk. That was something I could understand. But the dark hump of the beast’s back was rising out of the river now. If I didn’t do something and fast, the only human idiot I’d seen in years was going to be a Slimeball snack.
“Mikey, run!”
Michelangelo spun his wheels, kicking up a great cloud of dust that immediately enveloped me. I skidded down the sloping bank, grabbed a fistful of the boy’s big coat, and yanked him back an instant before Slimeball’s great jaws snapped shut on the tree roots where the boy had been crouching. I squinted as a volley of splinters flew overhead. A wave of water knocked us back.
Mikey zipped off toward the dam then, and Slimeball took the bait, trailing him in the water.
I pushed myself up, hauled the boy to his feet, and dragged us both up the muddy bank. I paused when we reached the street and I was sure we were out of Slimeball’s range. I’d only ever seen the creature come a few feet up the shoreline. It seemed to prefer to stay in the water—for the most part.
“I’m sorry,” the boy said. “I—I didn’t know.”
But it was my turn to stare with my jaw hanging open. The voice that came out of the boy’s mouth was…a female voice.
Not only was this girl the first person I’d seen in over a year, but she was the first woman I had seen in…well, since my mother died. The bulky green army jacket and baseball cap had fooled me. Now, I noticed her narrow shoulders and how the army jacket hung loose on her frame. I stared at her small hands and the dirt under each long fingernail.
She noticed me staring. “What?” she demanded, burying her hands in two of the jacket’s many pockets.
“Nothing.” I reached into my pocket and clicked a button on the remote without looking, ordering Michelangelo to make his way back to retrieve us. Her curiosity seemed to get the best of her then.
“Who are you?” she blurted.
“I’m Sid.” I held my hand out. My palm was very sweaty all of a sudden.
“Nina,” the girl said. She didn’t take my hand so I let it fall.
“What are you doing here?”
“My watering hole dried up last week. Aren’t many left. Had to come down here to find fresh water.”
“Well, you found it. It’s occupied.”
She snorted. “No shit.”
She cracked a smile. A giggle burbled up from my gut, and soon we were both laughing. Adrenaline is a funny thing.
Michelangelo came into view, angled toward us. The girl stared at the robot as he came to a stop. I flipped open a panel and took a water bottle out of the back. When I handed it to her, she took a deep drink.
“Easy,” I said.
She eased up and I
took the water bottle back and took a careful sip myself. Then I climbed into Michelangelo’s shell under a front panel.
“I haven’t seen a robot since I was a girl,” she said.
“Want to go for a ride?”
She nodded and climbed in.
“Let’s go home, Mikey.” The robot put our backs to the river in response to the voice command and we rolled into the center of the city. After a dozen blocks, we passed through an open gate and skirted what used to be the state capitol building, back when that meant something to anybody.
“This is incredible,” the girl said, staring up the straight columns at the rotunda.
“You’ve never seen it?”
“No. I was like 5 years old when the invaders came.”
“Your folks?”
She shook her head.
“I’m sorry,” I said. “My parents are gone, too.”
“My mom said the city was here, but…I was always too scared to come see it.”
I nodded. “Their ships filled the sky as far as the eye could see.” That was one memory that still frequented my nightmares.
“My mom said it was because of the oil in Texas.”
“My dad said they came to suck the Earth dry.”
Michelangelo drove across what used to be a lush green lawn and was now a patch of crab grass and dirt. He finally stopped near a hole in the ground, a perfect rectangle twenty feet across and a hundred long.
I popped the panels and climbed out. Nina struggled out of the awkward door after me, caught her foot on a hinge and fell to the grass.
“Sorry,” I said. “I should have helped you out.”
She snorted and when she inhaled again her whole face scrunched up all of a sudden. “What’s that smell?”
I inhaled the rich air deeply. “That is the smell of home.”
“Home?” Nina said. “It smells like shit.”
“Indeed it does.”
Michelangelo rolled to the side and raised his panels up to recharge. Just in time, too. After the time trials and an extra run to distract Slimeball so I could save Nina, his battery was severely depleted.
I waved for Nina to follow me and led her into the building, down a stairwell, and out into a long hall that was positioned directly below the long rectangular hole. Tile went around the outside of the floor. The real treasure was what I’d built in the middle—my garden.
The hallway itself was cleverly built on a perfect east-west axis so that it was exposed to maximum sunlight. When I found the hallway, the floor had been covered in shards of glass—the remnants of the roof—and the outside had moved in. It took me a week to clear the floor. But the submerged shelter made a fantastic greenhouse, naturally sheltered from most of the wildlife.
“Oh my god,” she said. “How did you get all this dirt and stone and”—her nose wrinkled again—“fertilizer down here?” Without waiting for an answer, she hopped across the stack of loose stones forming a wall around the edge of the garden and stepped gingerly down a row of baby cabbage and red peppers, marveling at the tiny plants, caressing the purple and green leaves.
“Incredible,” she whispered.
“Mikey helped me cart the stones. The soil I pushed in through the ceiling. The fertilizer was scavenged at first, but I make my own now.”
“Really?”
“Yep.”
“That’s commitment,” she said. “Is that what you called the robot? Mikey? Where did you find him anyway?”
“In a big glass building northwest of the city. The aliens left all that technology just lying around. After the ships disappeared, I came out of the shelter and tracked the robots down. There are hidden treasures all over the city if you know where to look.”
“You mean the ruins,” she said.
We locked eyes. I looked away first.
I hated that word: ruins. It signified something lost. This city wasn’t a ruin to me. It was a lonesome city now, but it was my lonesome city. I could bring it back to life. This garden was proof of that, wasn’t it?
“He grows vegetables and rescues robots,” she said. “What an enigma. How did you learn all this?”
“My dad taught me about solar panels and robots when I was younger. He worked at the robotics company.”
“What about the garden?”
“That’s been more trial and error. That’s actually why I was at the river today.”
“Is that right?”
I was excited about the idea and wanted to tell her. I had forgotten how fun it was to tell someone who could actually talk back about your plans—even if this girl seemed like a bit of a grump.
“I think I found a way to distract Slimeball for five full minutes,” I said. “Imagine how much water I can haul out in five minutes.”
She looked confused. “The garden seems to have done fine. Why do you need the extra water all of a sudden?”
I sighed. “The water catch ran dry, and there’s no sign of rain. If I don’t find a way to get extra water, the garden will be dead in a couple weeks.”
“You never used the river water before?”
“You met Slimeball, right?”
“Is that what you call that alien monstrosity?”
“Yeah. He’s gross.”
“So what’s your plan?”
“Okay. Mikey has to be going full speed to get Slimeball’s attention. I think it has something to do with the noise or vibration he makes when he’s cruising along the shore. Slimeball goes apeshit every time. So if we’re at the eastern dam when Mikey starts, and he leads that thing to the other dam and back, that leaves me 5 minutes to haul water while Slimeball is distracted.”
“And what if your friendly lake monster doesn’t take the bait? Or comes back sooner than you expect?”
I grimaced. “It’s a risk I have to take.”
“Stupid,” she said.
“Excuse me?”
“It’s a stupid plan.”
“Who are you to come in here and tell me my plan is stupid? Aren’t you the stupid one who’s stupid life I saved like an hour ago?”
“I didn’t know about Slimeball. You named the damn thing. That’s the difference between ignorance and stupidity.”
I glared at her. She rolled her eyes and stepped back into the garden. She wandered through the rows while I fumed. At least she had the decency not to pick any of the leaves or vegetables.
When she found a couple of cherry tomatoes on the ground at the far end, she brought them back to me with barely contained glee. We each popped a tiny, juicy tomato into our mouths, sighing with contentment as the juice gushed between our teeth.
I didn’t like tomatoes, but I had learned to appreciate them.
• • •
I climbed into the garden and checked things out. Some of the leaves were starting to shrivel. I cursed under my breath for the thousandth time for not planning better, and sooner. My reserve water would only last another few days. And that was for drinking.
Nina wandered off. I didn’t follow her. We’d just met, and I was kind of relieved to be alone again. I’d forgotten how much energy being around people took out of you. Especially women.
But I was disheartened, nonetheless. Nina was right. My plan was stupid, and my stupid plan was the only one I had.
By the next morning, I had talked myself back into it. I walked up to ground level and found Nina there. She leaned against Mikey, waiting for me.
“Going ahead with the stupid plan, are you?”
I ignored her while I checked to make sure Mikey’s power levels were full. The gauge read 98%, which was about as good as he ever got.
“What if he runs out of battery?”
“He won’t.”
“What if your big fish doesn’t take the bait?”
“Slimeball always takes the bait.”
“What have you got to haul the water in, then?”
“What’s with the thousand questions, Nina? This is none of your business.” I looked down at
my hand where I held it rigid at my side and noticed it shaking. I made a fist to try to get it to stop.
“You’re scared.”
“Am not.”
“You are too.”
I walked over to the parking garage and brought back a stack of orange buckets.
“You’ve got to be kidding,” Nina said.
“You got a better idea?”
She fell back onto her heels, her eyebrows raised.
Her wide-eyed astonishment from yesterday had completely vanished. Now she looked at me with the intense disdain only a very self-assured young woman can muster.
I paused. I actually had no idea how old she was. Well, there would be plenty of time to figure all that out—after I tested the plan with Mikey. I hoped I hadn’t made Nina angry enough to leave.
I popped open Mikey’s back panel and arranged the buckets like a six pack of beer in the rectangular “trunk,” padded with pink insulation I’d cut out of an old house.
“Mikey’s got enough juice to take Slimeball for full lap of the lake—8 miles all told—plus a bit more to get us home. Then he’s out of juice and needs to recharge for a few hours.”
“Five minutes should be plenty to fill these buckets. Don’t you have any more buckets?”
I slammed the panel down. “Nothing but criticism from you.”
She stood there while I got into the robot.
“Well, are you coming or not?” I said.
Nina climbed in. I let Mikey take us to the dam real slow to conserve his battery.
• • •
On top of the eastern dam, we unloaded the buckets.
“Right down there, that’s where we’ll fill up.” I pointed down the hill to a stretch of grass that was just a few feet above the waterline.
“Who’s this ‘we’?”
“Did I say we? I meant me.” I was surprised how easy it was to get back into the habit of speaking collectively.