by Eirik Gumeny
“Hey, speaking of good ideas,” said Mark, “why haven’t you guys just fixed the blackout and turned the lights back on for good?”
Everyone’s eyes went wide as one.
“Son of a bitch,” said Chester A. Arthur XVII.
“How did you not think of that?” asked Queen Victoria XXX, turning toward her partner. She shoved his chest with both hands; he promptly fell off the chair arm on which he was perched.
“Why didn’t you think of it?” countered the president, pulling himself back up slowly with his one functioning arm. “Or Catrina?”
“Because that’s not my job!” shouted Catrina. She tossed a stapler at Chester A. Arthur XVII. It skittered across the carpet, missing entirely.
“We figured that if you didn’t suggest it, it must not have been something that we could do,” clarified Ali.
“For the better part of the last month, Thor has regularly been striking me with lightning to get my once-deceased body functional for a day or two at a time,” explained Chester A. Arthur XVII. “There is no way my brain is performing at the level at which we’ve all become accustomed. I am blameless in this.”
“You’re the leader!” shouted Catrina.
“Vicky and Bo are leaders too!”
“You know what I mean!” The clerk hurled a handful of paperclips toward the president. They scattered harmlessly to the floor a few feet from the desk.
“That just seems wasteful,” said Mark. “You know we can’t vacuum.”
“I don’t know what I thought would happen there.”
CHAPTER TEN
The Scourge of All Mankind
“Just to clarify, your car works?” asked Thor, scratching behind his ear.
“Yes, Thor,” replied an exasperated and only barely functional Chester A. Arthur XVII. “The engine and all systems run entirely on methane. I should have enough compressed tanks to get us to Las Máquinas. On the off chance I don’t, though ...” He turned toward the tiny Filipina hotel employee. “Catrina, you made us some chicken afritada, right? And all the brown rice you could find?”
“Yes, they’re in the mini-fridge in the trunk,” said Catrina. “And I still don’t like the sound of this.”
“And Ali, you rustled up a dozen or so mason jars? And whatever other vacuum-sealed containers you had in the back of the Dunkin Donuts?” continued the cloned president.
“This is going to get disgusting, isn’t it?” replied Ali.
“Almost certainly.”
Ali, Catrina, Thor, Queen Victoria XXX, and Boudica IX were standing in the Holiday Inn lobby, near the front doors. Chester A. Arthur XVII was slumped in a corner, as everyone was tired of holding him up. He was at least fifty percent metal and not exactly lightweight. Nearby were several duffel bags of clothes and weapons, and one smaller canvas bag full of nothing but deodorant and air fresheners.
“Right, so you want me to load the rest of this up into the fart car?” asked the thunder god.
“I really hoped we’d be able to get through this without someone actually saying ‘fart car,’” said Queen Victoria XXX.
“Wait,” began Catrina, turning to Thor. “How’d you know that flatulence was mainly methane? You think burritos are unripe tacos.”
“Where do you think all the compressed methane came from?”
Everything within earshot, including a pair of blue jays outside the doorway, groaned in disgust.
“And yet somehow you still didn’t know cars worked during a blackout,” said Queen Victoria XXX.
“I didn’t know what they were for. Someone says fart and I say how much.”
Everything groaned in disgust again.
In the six years since Chester A. Arthur XVII and his fellow political knockoffs were released from the German sausage company that had created them, the cloned president had developed something of a love/hate relationship with automobiles. Specifically, he loved cars like a developmentally-disabled man-child loved rabbits – working on them, reading about them, talking about them, staring at them longingly – but he hated the way they kept getting taken from him and wrecked. The president’s four previous vehicles had been, in chronological order, “borrowed” by his former roommate William H. Taft XLII and driven into a sinkhole, stolen by a suicidal ostrich and driven into a tar pit, stolen by a ghost-possessed zombie cowboy and driven into a tree, and stolen by a two-hundred-year-old Nikola Tesla and driven into a hotel.
Chester A. Arthur XVII decided he would take no chances with this newest car and started from scratch, fabricating the entire vehicle himself from the steel-reinforced tires up and including every safety feature and anti-theft device known to mankind, as well as a few new ones he invented or stole from robots. The frame was made from tungsten carbide, the body from titanium, and the bulletproof windows were fortified with diamond filament. The exterior was painted a scratch-resistant matte black, while the red leather seats were absolutely saturated in a highly toxic stain- and water-repellent of his own design. There were four large caliber cannons worked into the body, and possibly up to six more that Chester A. Arthur XVII refused to acknowledge, most likely for legal reasons. The trunk could fit two large motorcycles and the interior could comfortably seat eight. In truth, the vehicle was more of a luxury tank than a car.
A large part of the design, though Charlie would never admit it, came from Thor’s constant assertions to “make a god damned Batmobile.”
Queen Victoria XXX maneuvered the custom-built vehicle out of the hotel parking lot and onto the main road around the plaza. Chester A. Arthur XVII was duct-taped to the passenger seat beside her. Catrina and Ali sat in the row behind them, while Thor and Boudica IX occupied the backseat. All of them had cup holders, heated seats, and exceptional legroom.
“So who’s paying us again?” asked Thor.
“No one,” said Chester A. Arthur XVII.
“Then why are we doing this? Are we being autistic?”
“Altruistic.”
“Sure, whatever.”
“No,” said Queen Victoria XXX. “It’s for selfish reasons.”
“Oh, OK,” said Thor. “That’s fine.”
“What’s the plan, by the way?” inquired Catrina.
“We’re going to go talk to Dr. Arahami,” explained Chester A. Arthur XVII.
“And then ...?”
“Do whatever he says, I guess. Repairing the continental electrical grid is a little out of my wheelhouse.”
“That’s our entire plan? Trust the mad scientist?” asked Ali.
“How many of your brain cells has Thor electrocuted?” Queen Victoria XXX seconded.
“Lee brought a solid one-third of us back from the dead,” said Chester A. Arthur XVII, intending to look at Boudica IX but unable to move his head or neck. “I think we can trust him. Besides, who else is going to know how to repair the North American electrical grid?”
“An electrician?” replied Ali.
“Does anyone know an electrician?”
Everyone looked around, avoiding the gaze Chester A. Arthur XVII was unable to fix them with[x].
“Right. And does anyone have any better ideas?”
“I could strike the entire world with lightning,” said the former Norse god, raising his hand. “Like, a lot of lightning.”
“I said ‘better,’ Thor.”
“Oh, I didn’t hear that.”
Ali wriggled in his seat and scratched the underside of his thigh vigorously.
“Easy there, killer,” said Catrina with a small laugh. “Did Boudica give you her fleas or something?”
“Hey, that’s not fair,” a very sad and very offended Boudica IX pouted. “Timmy made me get rid of my wolf cloak.” She quietly added, “I really liked my wolf cloak.”
“Guys?” asked Queen Victoria XXX, catching a glimpse of a smoking inferno in the rearview mirror. “Do you think Mark knows the hotel is on fire?”
All eyes capable of doing so turned to Thor.
“What? I di
dn’t do that,” he said.
“Are you sure?” Catrina narrowed her eyes.
“Did you charge the generators before we left?” asked Chester A. Arthur XVII.
“Yeah, Mark asked me to.”
“How many volts did you charge the generators with, Thor?”
“I don’t know, a lot. I didn’t know how long we’d be gone.”
“Their top capacity is only about ten thousand watts. If you went too far in excess of that you would have overloaded them and risked the possibility of starting a fire.”
“Oh,” said Thor. “Then, yeah, I probably did that.”
“Should we go back?” Boudica IX suggested, turning around and staring through the rear window. “Help Mark put it out?”
Thor likewise turned around to look at the growing conflagration. He shrugged. “He’ll figure it out eventually.”
“That’s our home, guys,” said Ali.
“Yeah, but all our stuff’s in this car,” said Thor.
“Not all of it,” said Queen Victoria XXX. She unconsciously began to slow the car. “I left my iPod on the nightstand.”
“He didn’t have to put us up there, you know,” said Catrina. “The only thing he’s asked from us is that Thor and I keep working there, and, quite frankly, we’re terrible employees.”
“We are the worst,” said Thor.
“We do kind of owe him,” said Queen Victoria XXX, scratching absentmindedly at her armpit.
“Are you itchy too?” asked Chester A. Arthur XVII, straining his peripheral vision.
“I used an old razor this morning, I don’t think it agreed with me.”
“I’ve been itchy for days,” said Catrina.
“The underside of my testicles has been irritated for the last two hours,” added Chester A. Arthur XVII.
“Mine too,” said Thor, scratching with great abandon. Slowly, and then much more rapidly, everyone in the vehicle began to do likewise.
“God damn it,” said Catrina. “Did we get fleas?”
“It’s not fleas,” said Boudica IX sternly.
“Then what the fuck is it?”
“Are rashes contagious?” Ali inquired. “Who got a rash and didn’t tell anyone?”
“I always tell you when I get a rash,” said Thor.
Boudica IX, in a fit of impassioned scratching, removed her t-shirt, revealing dozens of small red welts across her very white stomach and chest, lined up in groups of three. Thor did the same, revealing the same.
“What the hell?”
“I think the hotel has bedbugs,” answered Boudica IX.
Queen Victoria XXX threw the gearshift into park and popped the trunk.
“Everyone out,” she ordered, the car barely done lurching. “We’re burning our clothes. And towels. And anything and everything else that could possibly harbor those little blood-sucking motherfuckers.”
“Is the car going to be OK?” asked Thor. “We’re not going to have to walk again, are we?”
“The car’s fine,” said Chester A. Arthur XVII. “Bedbugs can’t survive in leather, and the interior’s been treated with weapons-grade chemicals anyway.”
“Is that why I’m dizzy?” Ali mumbled.
“What about the hotel?” asked Catrina, her door open and her jeans off.
“Fuck the hotel,” replied the queen, unclasping her bra. “We would’ve had to set it on fire anyway.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
The Cheetos! Won’t Somebody Please Think About the Cheetos?!
Timmy the super-squirrel and his wife and kids huddled beneath a chair outside the shuttered Dunkin Donuts, watching Mark Hughes, owner of the Secaucus Holiday Inn, stare distraughtly at his burning hotel. Ash fell like filthy snow across the plaza.
“Well, this is unfortunate,” the hotelier muttered.
The other residents of the plaza – two Armenian jewelers and one tenacious Greek restaurateur, who had rebuilt her eatery no fewer than three times – gathered behind Mark, staring up at the conflagration and secretly hoping it would consume the whole plaza. Business had not been great lately. The green lights of the Holiday Inn sign sputtered and died, the H, O, and L cannonballing from the building’s facade.
A man appeared in a second floor window, banging on the glass and fumbling with the latches, trying to get it open.
“Oh, shit,” thought Timmy. “212.” The squirrel scampered across the brick of the plaza and up Mark’s khakis and polo shirt, onto his shoulder.
“We have to get him out,” he said to Mark with his mind.
The hotel guest figured out the latches and slid the window open.
“Hey!” he shouted. “It’s really hot in here!”
“The building’s on fire!” shouted Mark, his hands cupped around his mouth. “Get out of there!”
“The air conditioning doesn’t seem to be working!”
“THE HOTEL IS ON FIRE!”
“Does that mean you’ll knock today off my bill?”
“We should still probably at least try to get him, right?” said Timmy.
“GET OUT OF THERE! THERE’S A LADDER UNDER THE BED!” bellowed Mark.
“All of my ice is melting!” shouted the man.
The hotel manager shrugged. “I feel good about our efforts.”
“We did what we could,” said Timmy with a tiny sigh.
“Oh fuck,” barked Mark suddenly, “Sheila!” He began to run toward the flaming deathtrap that was the hotel.
“Mark, no!” shouted Timmy, digging his claws into the hotel manager’s shoulder and throwing all his inconsequential weight backwards. “It’s too late! She’s gone!”
“No!” Mark swatted Timmy from his shoulder and charged into the cloud of smoke billowing from the front entrance. The squirrel hit the ground hard and rolled, end over end. Timmy’s tiny wife turned away, covering the eyes of their even tinier children.
Recovering, Timmy ran halfway toward the hotel, thinking as loudly as he could, “She’s not worth it, Mark! Let her go!”
***
Nearly ten minutes passed before Mark reemerged in the collapsed entranceway, coughing and covered in soot and dragging a deformed, melting vending machine behind him.
“I feel like I might be missing something,” said Alexa Kostopoulos, owner of the Olympia IV grill and bar, brow furrowed in confusion. “Is Sheila trapped inside the vending machine? Is she a little person or something?”
“Sheila is the vending machine,” explained Timmy.
“Mark was dating a vending machine.”
“Yes.”
“He ... talked to me about their bedroom problems once.”
“Yeah.”
“So they ...”
“Yep.”
“Oh my.”
“That’s about right.”
“I guess that explains why he never brought her over for dinner.”
The Greek woman and the squirrel watched as Mark knelt over the warped appliance, weeping and banging his fists and shouting to the heavens while ash continued to rain down around them. A panel on the side of the vending machine buckled and broke loose, spilling a dozen bags of jalapeño potato chips onto the brick plaza. Sobbing, Mark grabbed them and pulled them tightly to his chest.
“That ... that’s not right,” said Alexa.
“That hasn’t been right for a while,” replied the psychic squirrel.
CHAPTER TWELVE
The Omega Woman
The Rockaway Townsquare mall had seen better days. This wasn’t surprising, as the world itself had seen better days and the Rockaway mall was part of the world. Still, even for a large shopping center in a desolate post-post-post- post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-post-apocalyptic wilderness, Rockaway Townsquare was hurting. Of its two hundred stores, only one hundred and twelve were still extant, and, of those, only one was still staffed. The ten-foot-tall lights spelling out “ROCKAWAY” above the mall’s main entrance
had collapsed in such a way, through sheer chance and the fault of no one in particular, that it now spelled “GO AWAY.” And then, of course, there was the fact that the nearby interstate was no longer functional, the surrounding municipalities and parks had been on fire for the better part of two years and were now fields of still-glowing embers threatening to reignite or burn down the mall itself should the winds shift, the parking lot was a literal death trap built to ward off the zombies and homicidal turkeys after the sixth and fifteenth ends of the world respectively, and the mall had officially closed after the twenty-first end of the world – the third apocalypse in a one year span. None of these made for a particularly pleasant or sane shopping experience.
In fact, if it wasn’t for the free food, free clothing, free shelter, the seemingly never-ending ICEE machine in the food court, the lack of public transportation, and the inability to locate her family or friends, Ellie Belle would have quit her job at Eddie Bauer and moved away in a heartbeat.
As it was, she hadn’t seen another person, much less a customer, in the nearly four years since the mall closed. She had become quite friendly with the pigeons, the smarter rats, and some of the more risqué items for sale in the secret back room of the lingerie store, however, plus she regularly forgot that the people on the televisions in the “Best” Buy weren’t real, so it wasn’t all bad. If anything, hers was a life of quiet satisfaction and stability, and she actually kind of enjoyed it.
Which is precisely why – after a booming crack of thunder and the miraculous return of the lights – when six naked, bug-bitten people walked into her outerwear store, Ellie was not ready. She had, in fact, given up on ever being ready and was wearing an empty Popeyes’ three-piece takeout box on her head and stained thermal underwear on the rest of her. She was also knuckle-deep in her own nose.
“Hi,” said the tallest, blondest, and presumably coldest naked person. “We need clothes.”
Ellie, lounging atop the checkout counter, her back against the register, turned slightly, looked them up and down, swung her legs over the edge of the counter and, after clearing her throat for the better part of five minutes and remembering how to talk, said, “OK, sure, go nuts.”
