Monster of the Apocalypse

by C. Henry Martens

  “Come look!” exclaimed each of them many times as they found wonderful thing after wonderful thing.

  At one point Deo speculated, “This stuff must be a hundred years old. Do you think Dad ever rode on one?”

  “Silly little one, this stuff was ancient when your dad was born,” Toshi remarked acidly. “There was a whole world of stuff before your dad. This doesn’t even begin to touch it.”

  “Well, tell me about it then.”

  “I’d rather stick a knife in my eye. I want to forget before.”

  Lecti couldn’t help but wonder why, but she had given up on asking Toshi in any direct way about the past, especially her own. It was probably the best way to piss her off.

  Railcars with brocade and velvet trappings astonished Lecti. The opulence of soft seats and rich colors, even seen through accumulated dust, amazed her. She pounced on one seat, bouncing up and down several times before the cloud of dust drove her out, coughing and laughing.

  Toshi got bored and wanted to set up camp in one of the open freight cars. Even though there were beds in one of the Pullman cars, the night on the soft mattress in Tahoe was uncomfortable enough to make them steer clear of soft beds.

  They talked briefly about a car containing a drawing room with a fireplace and chairs and a table as a campsite, but decided that with all the furniture it would be too crowded. Toshi sent Deo to pull some heavy rugs from the floor of the drawing room into the freight car, saying that it would be better than the bare wood floor.

  By the time Deo was back with the first rug, Toshi had disappeared.

  Lecti was out looking for firewood north of the building, and Deo was dragging the second rug into the freight car when they heard the shot. Both immediately crouched low and found cover. They knew from the sound that the shot was on the west side of the museum where they had entered, but they also knew that where there was one gun, there could be others in other locations. Deo stayed put inside and, looking out the windows at the front of the building, waited for Lecti to make her way to him. He had seen her go north after exiting through a hole in the glass at the front of the building on the east side and while worried about her, was reasonably confidant that she was okay. It was Toshi he was worried about.

  Lecti made her way back quickly. She was relieved to see Deo, and as soon as they were together they made their way to the rear of the building. The rear had no windows and only two doors since there was nothing in back other than the wrecks and the water.

  As they approached one door, keeping as much cover as possible and with guns ready, Toshi burst in.

  “C’mon, I need your help!” Toshi’s eyes were wide with excitement, and she had a huge smile on her face.

  “What,” fumed Lecti, “what’s happened?!”

  “C’mon, c’mon, I got one!” Toshi jumped up and down, hands summoning them furiously.

  It came to Lecti and Deo, and they visibly relaxed as tensions eased.

  “You shot a cow,” said Deo.

  “Yeah, I got one! Yeah, we’re gonna have meat tonight. Oh, man, I can hardly wait!”

  Lecti and Deo looked at each other. The damage had already been done. If anyone was going to be interested in the gunfire, they were already on their way.

  “C’mon Deo,” said Lecti. “Let’s deal with this in a hurry and get back inside.”

  As with most animals that go back to a wild state, it did not take cattle long to revert back to their ancestral forms. Where cattle were once pampered and genetically selected to be hornless and uniform in size and color, the natural conditions quickly weeded out the overlarge, heavily fleshed individuals, favoring smaller, lighter animals with horns and mottled coats.

  The yearling heifer was not much more than a calf by pre-plague standards. Toshi had selected well or gotten lucky and shot an animal that they could drag inside in one piece. Fortunately, this one had no mother to defend it, or they might have had to shoot her, too. There was no sign of any of the rest of the herd except for fresh tracks and dung scattered on the trail as they fled.

  By placing a rope around its head and attaching a stout branch to the other end, two of them could move the carcass with some effort, and pulling it inside didn’t take long. Once there, they tossed the rope across one of the exposed beams and hoisted the body by its back legs into the air. It took all three to lift the heifer off the ground. Toshi used her knife, and the blood flowed onto the floor.

  Deo stood guard by the back door, and Lecti watched the front as Toshi did the butchering. They were spooked. The noise of the gun may have drawn interest, or may not have, but they didn’t like the idea of being surprised.

  Toshi didn’t mind butchering. She would not do any more than necessary since they would not be able to preserve the meat. Not bothering to gut the animal, she cut out the tongue first, licking some of the warm blood off her wrists as she worked. It tasted good. Next she partially skinned the carcass, only exposing the back from the tail down to the neck and one haunch. The loin along the backbone, and the meat at the back of the leg was removed, and she was done. She cut the rope and let the body fall. Then she coiled the rope to put back in her pack. Lecti and Deo would have liked the liver, but they knew Toshi didn’t care for it, so they let it go.

  As they built their fire using wood found stacked by the pond, Lecti kept watch. By the time the loin was put on skewers she decided to join them, and from then on, fears were forgotten, and they concentrated on the meal.

  The haunch was cut into smaller pieces and, with water and some skunk cabbage saved from the mountains, was set to boil on the hottest coals until the loin was eaten.

  The tongue was put in a light pot with water and some cattail root. Some cress that was growing in the inlet to the pond was tossed on top. It would need to simmer until morning before they could skin it and enjoy the most delectable part of a beef.

  They slept well that night in spite of worrying about the noise that Toshi had made. Even Toshi acknowledged that it was chancy, but with stomachs full of beef and a rug cushioning the rough wood floor, Lecti and Deo managed to sleep until the smell of breakfast woke them.

  An early start and a full stomach gave them an energetic beginning to the day. Rather than a slow exploratory hike through the old residential section of town, they decided to move north quickly.

  They missed seeing the old Governor’s Mansion. It was one street up from their chosen path and, though they might have seen it from the lower intersection that they passed through, they happened to be watching some deer in the opposite direction as they hiked past. The mansion was the last residence of a governor to be security fenced in the entire country. After the bomb had been found on the front step at Halloween, the novelty of not being fenced wore off immediately, and the priority changed.

  Toward midafternoon they made their way to the north end of town. The road they were on ended abruptly and before them stretched bare ground for several hundred yards. The bare ground surrounded a building, a hospital by the sign still gracing the front entrance.

  It didn’t look like a hospital with the surrounding wall of heavy construction equipment and the two mounds of dirt behind the wall, topped by two camouflaged military tanks.

  Lecti dug the camcorder headset out of her fanny pack.

  Chapter 4

  Two dogs lay tethered in front. One dozed fitfully, a male, loosely Rottweiler-like and scarred badly about the right side of his head and neck. Angry red expanses of scar tissue with occasional tufts of black hair and a drooping, bloodshot eye gave him a demeanor of cruel fierceness and unpredictability even as he chased rabbits in his dreams. The other dog looked almost purebred Doberman pinscher. She was a beautifully alert, obviously intelligent, absolutely regal female in her youthful prime.

  Both dogs silently alerted before the three strangers broke cover among the high weeds surrounding the expanse of open killing field. Bregor, the male, lay down on his side and promptly went to sleep, saving his energy for when there was
an imminent threat. Lilly positioned herself where she could look under a road-grader in order to watch. She was obviously interested, but her real intent was only evidenced by the saliva that pooled below her tongue.

  The dogs tugging on their chains had switched a light on, just as it had been lit earlier in the day. Hal couldn’t believe it. There was only one other time that people had shown up in such numbers. A family of five wanderers, over a year ago. Now he had three travelers inside the hospital already, and it looked like three more were at the edge of his clearing.

  “Wow,” he thought, “how unusual is this?”

  Hal didn’t do much deep thinking lately. Although he was marginally bright, he was not very well educated. After being left solo, or as good as solo, in Carson, he became industrious for several years. Left with no one to talk to except a toddler who was not much of a conversationalist, he buckled down to building a fortress to keep himself safe, out of boredom and nervous energy. It was funny to Hal, naming the toddler, “Hey You.”

  Locking the little one, Hey You, in a childcare room with a low drinking fountain, a box of cereal and a video system filled with thousands of recordings set on random, he would disappear, sometimes for days to scavenge anything of value that he could find in Carson. As the hospital rooms filled with everything from canned goods to trinkets, he was also building elaborate fortifications intended to give visitors the impression that he was one of many, and more dangerous than he really was. It never occurred to Hal that he could not possibly man all the gun emplacements or even flip all the switches to activate the various sensing devices and cameras and automatic alarms that he had installed over the years. Eventually he forgot what most of them were for.

  What Hal didn’t forget or grow tired of was his lust. Oddly enough he didn’t see Hey You, somewhere around twenty-two years old by now, as an object of satisfaction. He liked young girls, and boys, but liked them closer to ten or so. Just prepubescent. As children got older he lost his interest in boys, though he still found young women interesting. Hey You didn’t interest Hal because he never taught her any personal hygiene, and by the time he would have thought of her as prey, she smelled really bad and looked worse. It never occurred to him that it was intentional.

  Hal began to lay traps as his paranoid phase wound down. After several travelers came and went, he decided that maybe it would be nice to have the option of keeping some of them. When the family of five showed up he was already well practiced in the art of capture.

  Bregor had never shown an interest in man flesh. He was too sweet and forgiving, and Hal felt guilty about the hot oil he had employed in order to try to train Bregor to hate, or at least distrust, humans. Lovely Lilly, on the other hand, was another story. She exuded beauty and charm right up until she started to toy with you. Hal narrowly missed a serious mistake with her more times than even he knew. It was all about timing with her. She had played with the patriarch of the group of five for almost half an hour while Hal watched. He already knew she was more than deadly, but he gained a new respect and fear for her after that performance.

  Now three men sat in the lobby of what was once a thriving healthcare facility. They had arrived on solar-charged battery bikes from Reno. The rumor of high radiation in Reno was wrong. That applied to a city further east. As they came down the hill from Washoe Valley, the once pretty but since industrialized route from the larger city, they noticed the cleared vegetation around a building and knew there were inhabitants. The tanks gave them pause, but they were used to fortifications and a spray painted welcome sign on a bus by the highway gave the oldest of the trio reason enough to investigate.

  He met Hal just outside the barricade of heavy equipment. Hal introduced himself, but the newcomer avoided giving a name. Since Hal appeared to carry no weapons, and seeing no obvious threat, the stranger waved the other two in.

  Cotton, the blonde, was jovial and outgoing. He laughed easily and liked crude jokes. His easy-going manner hid a deep cruelty and sudden temper. About six two and one eighty, he was slender and very lightly bearded, looking like he usually kept himself shaved irregularly. Dressed like a figure from the old west, with a vest and cowboy boots, he wore a revolver slung low on his left thigh.

  The dark brooding one, Zip, was better looking. Beautiful to the point of being pretty, his sinister attitude made it plain that he was volatile. He was just under six feet and weighed as much as Cotton. He sported a braided tail in back of his longish black hair, a trimmed moustache with a braided soul patch, and muscular shoulders and arms beneath a shirt with the arms cut off. The only obvious weapon showing was a Bowie knife on his back with the handle over his left shoulder. A bomber jacket hung heavily from his frame.

  Hal steered them away from the dogs. Cotton, seeing Lilly, rushed over to her. Cooing and looking directly in her eyes, he started rubbing her ears and scratching her back. Lilly enjoyed the moment and looked forward to enjoying whatever the future held.

  Standing in the front entrance, the three travelers hesitated. The atrium of the hospital was roughly oval, a large room with a curved back wall and a huge, curved expanse of two-story glass in front. A broad staircase looped around the back wall, rising from right to left over the main hall into the facility, just beyond the wide reception desk that Hal used as a bar. The two younger men walked in, backlit by the glass. The older man moved to the right where the shadows were, making it difficult to see him in dusty, dark leathers.

  He noticed movement on the partially shadowed second floor balcony as he entered behind the other two. There was no special reason to think that there would be a problem. It was just good to be cautious.

  Relieved to get the three inside without incident, Hal offered them what he felt they would want. They looked rough, and though he was fearful, he always had a plan. Still, he would be cautious and had already decided he was not interested in containing them. Unless, of course, they started to threaten him or he found out they had something he wanted.

  After the younger two were shown to the center of the room where five tables with chairs sat, and they received amber colored whiskey, the older traveler in dark leathers still hesitated. As his eyes adjusted to the gloom of the balcony, he saw bright eyes in a dark face, and a form covered in what appeared to be a bundle of rags. When he made eye contact the person slipped into a doorway, and just discernible, he heard the slap of bare feet on a corridor floor, running away. He asked for a soda and sat down, away from the others, close to the shadows.

  Hal wanted to talk the ears off his visitors. He missed conversations, especially since Hey You was very quiet and unpleasant to be around. He dearly wanted to ask his new guests so many things, but he would start slow. There was too much tension in the room.

  Approaching the loner first, he was rebuffed by the obvious reluctance of the older man to communicate. The all-seeing eyes and frown were clues Hal ignored in his urgency to talk. When he asked the stranger if he’d like something to mix in his drink and got a growled, quiet, and terse, “No,” he realized he might have better luck with the others.

  Sitting and speaking quietly, laughing at private jokes while leaning their heads close to each other, the younger two were making rapid progress on their fifth of good whiskey. They still appeared completely sober, just seeming a bit more dangerous than before. One in particular, the dark haired one with the hard eyes, seemed to be in a volatile mood.

  Deciding that another bottle might help him ingratiate himself into their circle, Hal reached for another fifth of whiskey. Just as he did, a light above the doors flashed on.

  Sitting in her room, Hey You followed the unfolding developments. The security station overlooked the atrium lobby through a large, one-way window, as well as the outside approach across the cleared area through an exterior window to the south. With a door to the balcony, it also had another entrance, which she quietly used after making enough noise running down the corridor to leave a false trail for the watchful man that knew how to use the sh
adows. She had cleared out all of the office furniture and made the room hers, changing the locks and always bolting the doors to keep Hal out. So far she was successful. The long coat of smelly rags hung just outside in another locked room, so that she would not pollute the air in her space. It had taken her a while to figure out a hidden way to install an alarm light in her room without Hal being aware, but she managed. That was why, from the second floor window, she saw the newcomers before Hal.

  When the three visitors in the atrium saw the light, and Hal rushed to the side of the windows to pull a ladder from behind the two-story curtains, they all reacted. The older man faded into the darker shadows. The light haired Cotton hurried to the window, standing beside the ladder and looking out as Hal scrambled up to look over the outside wall of machinery. Zip sat calmly, finger slowly tracing the rim of his glass, his mind mulling over the activity and waiting to see the advantage that he knew would come to him.

  By approaching from a side street, Lecti, Deo, and Toshi missed the spray painted bus on the freeway coming into Carson. Now they were confronted by an imposing dilemma. Was this the store that the faded spray paint advertised when they came into town? It certainly didn’t look much like a store. The building looked big enough to house a small army and appeared to be fortified to be defended by one.

  Adjusting the camcorder on her head, Lecti leaned in close to Deo, “Well, this looks like it could be something to avoid. What do you think?”

  Deo looked carefully at the open space, the wall of heavy vehicles, the tanks, and the sandbagged gun emplacements. He noticed the tanks had an accumulation of wind-blown dirt in their visible crevices, the weathered sandbags were starting to leak, and there was a lack of use in the undisturbed open area, but he also noticed some signs of recent activity.