The Earth Died Screaming

by Chuck Rogers

  I considered his liquor cabinet and reluctantly left it alone. I was going down below alone and physical training was going to be my best friend.

  I found his sex toys. He had a collection. Some of it was terrifying.

  To my shame?

  Yeah, I considered the Fleshlight.

  But no.

  Frame, keeping it real and staying pure under the earth.

  Besides, if Bobby had been "in it?"

  There just wasn't enough bleach in the world.

  Of course where there were sex toys? The cache of coke, pot and a bag of not immediately identifiable pills could not be and was not far away.

  It's been a long time since I'd done any of that, and I didn't need any of that back in my life.

  I grabbed shopping bags and looted the tools in the garage. I don't think he'd ever swung a hammer in his life but Bobby stopped just short of having a machine shop.

  I took my bulging sacks of plunder and took them into the shelter.

  Then I closed the hatch.

  I had eleven minutes.

  I opened my laptop and got on my phones.

  Bobby's shelter had Wi-Fi.

  I took the time to download some of the "Top 10 Survival apps." I was Marine Force Recon. We went through active survival training but I downloaded the SAS survival manual to the Kindle anyway.

  It's a classic.

  I'd spent a lot of time on the rez. I was reasonably handy but I downloaded apps like iHandy Carpenter and Construction Master. A complete, stitched together topo map of the continental US seemed interesting. I figured the new and expanded "101 Post Apocalyptic Life Hacks" books 1, 2 and 3 might be worth a rec. The Rand McNally 2019 Road Atlas seemed like a no brainer.

  Two minutes.

  I suddenly felt very alone. There might be a very good chance I would die down here, or find nothing above.

  I wanted to talk to somebody.

  Besides it might take awhile for the non-relativistic jet to destroy all life on earth. A companion wasn't a bad idea?

  I called Connie.

  Convincing her to come over and join me in a porn star's bomb shelter might be--

  Connie picked up instantly on speakerphone. Her voice was hard, like when it was time to stop being nice to an asshole in her bar. "Dude, I'm in motion."

  Oh shit, she called me dude.

  "Listen, I--"

  "Your girl told me."

  "Really? Then--"

  "Listen, she seemed nice, and I am glad you two had yourselves your End of Days grunion run."

  Grunion run.

  Imagine little silver grunion fish by the millions flipping around in the sand and surf releasing the payload of love and the required condiments by moonlight in California. It wasn't a bad metaphor for my evening with Line. I always thought Connie should write a book. It also reminded me of the girl on the bathroom floor and my heart tightened.

  "Connie, listen."

  "No, you listen. I am in motion. I do not have time to come and save your ass."

  "Wait--"

  "Good luck, Frame."

  call ended

  God, damn it.

  It was a no, wait, I'm supposed to be breaking up with you moment, with the added goodness that I was trying to save her but she thought I was eve of the apocalypse, cake-and-eat-it-too kind of scum.

  Actually?

  I kind of was.

  My dog tags hung around my neck like a yoke of shame.

  My snuggle-pit dreams of Connie returned to the cold harsh reality of Bobby's subterranean colon of solitude.

  I was already regretting not bringing the booze.

  I already needed a cigarette.

  I won't lie.

  I was second-guessing the Fleshlight.

  Oh, well.

  I hoped Connie made it.

  I had no idea where her bolt-hole was. That was the one part of her prepperism she never told anybody, at least no one I knew.

  Then again?

  We might end up being long-distance neighbors.

  I texted:

  Bomb shelter.

  Malibu.

  Sec code #37263

  I snarled as I fat-thumbed the street address and had to write it twice. I hit send.

  The green sending progress line stopped half way across the top.

  message not delivered

  I found I didn't have any bars either. I leaned over and looked at the laptop.

  Internet connection lost

  I checked and there was no available Wi-Fi connection.

  I tried calling my house.

  My phone literally did nothing. I tried calling my house from the shelter's landline.

  "All circuits are busy, please try again later."

  Not good.

  I turned on the emergency radio.

  Static across all channels.

  It was official.

  I was off the grid.

  Or there was no grid.

  I lay back on Bobby's pink satin sheets. In the military I had learned to sleep anywhere at any time. In prison sleep was just about your most precious commodity. If you were lucky with your dreams prison disappeared and so did another eight hours of your sentence. I looked up at the ceiling.

  Of course, there was a mirror on it.

  And a large metal hook.

  Ceiling suspension.

  I closed my eyes.

  Neither the Angel of Death nor the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse visited my sleep. Fire, earthquake and holocaust did not disturb my slumber. I slept through the night.

  I dreamed of Line.

  We made love on Malibu's Surf Rider beach. There were no surfers. No families of tourists. We had it all to ourselves and we made love in the surf's edge straight out of From Here To Eternity. The sex I'd had with Line on my bed was the best sex I'd ever had in my life. Sex on the beach with Line was the best sex I'd ever had in a dream. It was fantastic. Utterly could-not-tell-it-from-waking-life reality. The only tip off that it was a dream was that the sand wasn't annoying and the water wasn't cold.

  She was on top of me. Her body was haloed by the sun, warm and pink and her red hair a laval molten bronze. She was literally weeping with pleasure and with every buck of our bodies she moaned "I love you . . . I love you . . ." I thundered towards a nuclear bomb blast of a nocturnal emission.

  Then she raised the pistol and blew her brains out.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Thirty days in the hole

  I WOKE UP SCREAMING.

  And yes, true believers, you actually can wake up screaming and spewing all over yourself at the same time. I lay there on Bobby's satin sheets drenched in my own sweat, teeth chattering and shuddering like a squid. Clenching and spewing like a grunion who knew this was his death.

  That lasted a while.

  When my breathing returned to normal I rolled up and sat shaking in the absolute darkness of underground while everything on my chest and stomach went sticky, congealing, gross and cold.

  God . . . damn it.

  It was a dream that in various iterations that was going to visit me for a long time.

  I reached over for the remote and turned on the light.

  Fuck!

  My eyeballs fried right out of my head. It took several moments of flash-blinded, swearing effort to work the dimmer. Did I mention that underground darkness is absolute darkness?

  Not a single, stray photon to be had.

  The good news was that shelter had power. That meant Bobby's solar panels were still up and connected. No need to turn on the generator or go to batteries.

  I grabbed a no-rinse bath wipe and cleaned myself up. I took a deep breath and looked around my new home.

  I was back in the Hole.

  Solitary.

  I've done it. I've done it on full property restriction. That means they take everything including your clothes and put you in a bare and barely heated cell by yourself and it is no fun.

  Thirty days in the hole butt-naked with no on
e to talk to but the toilet can mess with your mind.

  A routine helps, and Bobby's fortress of solitude had diversions.

  I had coffee.

  I plugged in the hotplate, got an urn going, and started my routine.

  First I ran the full check. Cell, landline, internet, radio.

  Nothing.

  I took Bobby's radiation dosimeter and climbed up to the hatch. Some might say that Bobby had questionable taste but anything he bought was top of the line. Including his radiation detectors. It looked like a fat cell phone. The dosimeter was calibrated to Gamma, Beta and X-rays. I didn't know if it could tell me whether there was radiation outside, but the graph on the screen was green and it texted me:

  negligible

  If the world was an irradiated hell it wasn't getting in.

  Yet.

  I put the dosimeter into standby mode and mounted it on the bracket next to the hatch. It would start peeping if it detected anything.

  Next?

  Exercise.

  I went full prison workout.

  I went Bronson.

  (Look it up.)

  I'd never liked going to the gym and lifting weights or hitting the machines. I really did gamble a stamp back in the day and sent in that coupon from the back of a comic book for Charles Atlas's Dynamic Tension courses. I did it faithfully and I was the first kid my age in the trailer park to have pecs, much less biceps.

  I saw no reason to get dressed. I went nudist and cranked out the push-ups, free squats and wrestler's bridges and then arm-wrestled myself in the mirror the Atlas way.

  Muscle against muscle.

  The natural way.

  Every morning.

  Somewhere up there Bobby was laughing his ass off watching me flexing at myself in his pink bomb shelter's full-length mirror wearing nothing but dog tags.

  He was probably jerking off as well.

  It was something to see.

  How strong was I? Dunno.

  Let's just say I'm stronger than I look and that's saying something. I'm nearly always the largest and strongest guy in the building unless I'm at a professional football game and even then I was well in the middle of the pack. I could tear telephone books in half, (though that's mostly technique), break handcuffs and perform olde-timey strongman feats of strength.

  Without much else to do?

  I had achieved Peak Frame in prison.

  I was going to get it all back.

  Then there was hygiene.

  I had a no-rinse bath wipe cleansing a day after working out and once a week I allowed myself a feeble, lukewarm shower in the tiled bathing nook.

  I had projects.

  Signori Bartolomeo Beretta most likely started spinning like a lathe in his five hundred year old resting place as I sawed the barrels of the Giubilelo down to the fore end and removed most of the stock.

  No, I didn't want a Mad Max gun.

  Though now I had one and how cool was that?

  At the asshole-end of the 20th Century, the United States military had engaged in a lot of urban warfare.

  I know. I was there.

  The troops had discovered that shotguns were ideal for blowing the hinges and locks off security doors. Some clever wags had gone hillbilly and started custom mounting sawed-off shotguns beneath their ARs. The rigs had been nicknamed "Key-masters" after the character in Ghostbusters. In a fit of good sense the military had deliberately designed a shortened, AR mountable shotgun for city fighting.

  I made the most expensive, hillbilly Key-Master in history.

  I kept the Parallelo pristine. Who knows what was going on up top? Squirrel and pigeon might be what's for dinner for a while.

  Could be cat for that matter.

  Doom on you, Poofers.

  And before I had gone down in the hole? There were wild turkeys in those Hollywood Hills. I took one of Bobby's shoulder bags and created a behind the shoulder rig for the Key-Master and grinned as I drew the brutally shortened shotgun and pointed it at myself in the mirror.

  Fuckin ay, bubba.

  It was balla.

  I mastered sailor's knots.

  I stripped, cleaned and lubricated every gun and nearly asphyxiated myself as I cleaned guns in a "non-well ventilated area." I checked every round of ammo. I made checklists and inventoried everything.

  I grew a beard.

  Besides sleeping, meals are the most important part of prisoner's life.

  I ate all the perishables I had brought down first and then hit the stored food.

  Bobby had stocked the bunk beds with Mountain House, and they are the gold plate of survival rations. He also had a case of MRE's and I had taken everything in a jar or can or that could be prepared in one pan from his kitchen and pantry.

  I like to cook.

  I got creative.

  I ate three squares a day.

  I incongruously found a single bottle of Budweiser. I'd save that for opening the hatch. No matter what I found.

  In the end? Like any stint in solitary? You spent a lot of time thinking.

  Me?

  You wouldn't like the kind of thoughts I got.

  My mind?

  As the song says, the house is haunted and the ride gets rough. But I was back in the hole and I had a lot of time to think. There is a song that goes; there comes a time in every man's life, when he's got to look over his misdemeanors, misgivings, misfortunes and miss whatever her name was.

  I thought about my life a lot.

  All lines of thought?

  Ended up being about Line.

  I tormented myself with thoughts that I could have saved her. If only I had believed her. Maybe I could have convinced her to come down here with me in Bobby's shelter, and instead of one last night of passion we could have had a month. I'd told her I had never considered suicide. Down here in the hole I thought about a suicide pact with her. I wondered if what I found up top would make me wish I had joined her.

  I fantasized that at the end of the month we opened the hatch together, held hands and took that great, big, Adam and Eve post-apocalyptic gamble.

  But I hadn't believed her.

  I'd told her I loved her.

  She told me she loved me.

  Then she'd blown her brains out in my bathroom.

  I'd taken her phone. I looked at her pictures.

  A lot.

  I looked at pictures of her with people who must have been family. I looked at pictures of her with men who had their arms around her and I knew jealousy. I loved the pictures of her obviously posing on vacation. She had a goofy streak that I loved though I had never seen it.

  She wasn't cat-lady crazy, but there were substantial numbers of Mr. Poofers pics.

  He appeared to be a mildly obese Russian Blue.

  I wished the fat bastard well of his freedom.

  Be joining you soon, Poofers.

  She had some videos as well.

  The twenty-seven second one of her in a bikini giggling and whoo-hoo'ing with friends on the beach with a drink in her hand in what appeared to be Hawaii?

  I watched it a thousand times.

  I listened to her voice on the answering message a thousand more.

  "Hi! You have arrived at the Line line! Leave all the pertinent information, and I will call you right back! Science is magic!"

  This kind of stuff leads to madness.

  Particularly when you are down in the hole. Discipline helped, and like I said, I had diversions. I read all the new books in my Kindle and then reread the old ones. I selectively read Bobby's Kindle. He appeared to love the fantasy genre. He had multiple hobbit swords on his walls. So I got caught up on hobbits, elves and orcs and the slew of authors who had been feasting on Tolkein's bones ever since.

  I had power, a 70" TV and Bobby's DVD collection. He loved the fantasy genre, so I director's cut, extended versioned with deleted scenes caught up on hobbits and elves and orcs, again.

  Bobby also loved everything 1970's, particularly sci-fi. So I wa
tched a lot of the classics.

  They really took their dystopian futures seriously back then.

  I wondered if I would emerge into a world ruled by monkeys. If there was a chick named Nova to take my mind off Line, that would be okay.

  I read as long as I wanted to and allowed myself a movie a day.

  I had my laptop and my iTunes so I had my music collection.

  Day five in the hole I was checking the dosimeter and I heard vague pattering on the hatch.

  It was raining.

  Rain implied that some aspect of nature was still going on, and rain washed away fallout.

  It was pattering the next day I checked the dosimeter as well.

  This was southern California and I grew concerned as it continued raining.

  Unless the pattering was something else I couldn't begin to imagine, it rained for weeks. I adjusted my calendar. I wasn't about to emerge into a deluge. The rain kept on and on. I'd spent the first few days with the creeping fear of opening the hatch and finding nothing, and what I would do after that. Like I said, this is California. I knew about mudslides after fires and now I had nightmares of the hatch being buried under tons of mud and rubble and me trapped down here drinking my own pee and starving to death in the dark.

  But the fresh air kept coming in through the filters. So I knew if the hatch was covered it wasn't by too much.

  We would just have to wait and see.

  The rain mostly killed the solar power.

  That killed the solar water heater so my once a week shower was a cold one.

  But cold showers are good for your vigor.

  I had to turn on the generator. I nervously watched the fuel supply. I got good at doing things in absolute darkness as I rationed myself power.

  I got on the connected exercise bike and started getting in cardio to charge the shelter's bank of batteries.

  It rained for a month.

  Genuine Old Testament flood.

  I didn't want to emerge into mud so I decided to give things a few weeks to dry out. The only thing Bobby's shelter was missing was a periscope and I kicked myself just about daily for not telling him to install one.

  Despite the ever intensive physical training and the diversions and projects? Two months in? The stir-crazy was happening. The chemical toilet began to get problematic. Toilet paper ran out and I started using ones and twenties from the bug out bag.