The End of Everything Forever

by Eirik Gumeny

  “From zombies, werewolves, and mutants,” explained the conductor, reloading his shotgun. “We never said it was assholes-on-horses-proof.”

  There was a small explosion above them, a good chunk of the roof peeling away and bouncing along the tops of the remaining railcars. Three women in tactical jumpsuits dropped into the car, bandanas around their faces. The largest dropped directly behind the conductor and introduced herself by jamming a large knife through his neck.

  As the man’s body fell to the ground, Ali scrambled around it and grabbed the murderess’ leg with his robotic arm. She looked down, her eyebrow cocked. The implant was vibrating imperceptibly, matching the woman’s resonant frequency.

  “What the fuck are you doing, kid?” she asked. Then her leg exploded into its component molecules, a fine pink mist splashing along the train’s interior. The bandit screamed and collapsed to the ground.

  Ali wiped the bloody particulate spray from his face with his human arm.

  “This is why I hate public transportation,” he said.

  Catrina, meanwhile, had crawled forward, past the five marauders brawling with the two remaining conductors, and retrieved the original attacker’s dropped RPG. Shouldering it, she leaned against the edge of the nearest intact row of seats and fired a grenade directly into the large bearded man who had finally almost made it through the window. The impact knocked him outside, where he and the grenade detonated. Boudica IX continued snoring.

  “Wake the fuck up!” shouted Catrina.

  CHAPTER FIFTY

  Grizzly Men

  Tyrone Tainthammer led Chester A. Arthur XVII and Queen Victoria XXX through his expansive mansion – past a heavily-draped piano room, a room full of monkeys smoking pipes and banging on typewriters, two sex dungeons, and a kitchen the size of a modest ranch house, the ghost of Julia Child shouting “Hulloo!” from behind a slab of raw apatosaurus meat – and into the attached film studio. In the center of the cavernous room was a single well-lit green screen, thinning rows of potted trees and shrubs flanking it on either side. On the runner of the screen, in the clearing between the shrubbery, sat a single blue Oldsmobile. Framed correctly, and with a twinkling cityscape projected onto the screen, the scene would have been highly evocative of a make-out point from any teen movie of the 1950s.

  Except, of course, for the single, mournful, thirty-something black man sprawled across the hood of the car and reading a vintage pornographic magazine. That man was Martin Van Buren XCIX, cloned brethren of Chester A. Arthur XVII and Queen Victoria XXX. Judging from his all black attire and the sullen demeanor apparent on his face, he was recently the perpetrator of a heist that went very badly.

  “Marty?” called Chester A. Arthur XVII, squinting as he walked across the empty studio. “What the hell are you doing here?”

  “Charlie?” replied Martin Van Buren XCIX, his eyebrow arched. “Same as you, I’m guessing. You guys trying to steal the trivection unit?”

  “We were trying, yeah.”

  “Did you see the size of those guys out there? I punched one and fractured a couple knuckles. For an eighty-year-old porn star, this guy’s remarkably on top of things.”

  “You’re eighty?” gasped Queen Victoria XXX.

  “What can I say, love?” Tyrone Tainthammer shrugged. “Hard livin’ suits me.”

  “I would’ve said fifty, tops.”

  “Fifty? I must be losin’ a step.”

  “For what it’s worth,” replied the queen, “I’m not good with ages. I mean, I’m technically only six years old.”

  “We all are,” added Chester A. Arthur XVII.

  “Bollocks,” said Tyrone dismissively.

  “No, seriously,” called Martin Van Buren XCIX from the car. “A German sausage manufacturer created hundreds of us in vats after those gorillas blew up Washington, D.C.”

  “You do realize how ridiculous that sounds, yeah?”

  Martin Van Buren XCIX shrugged. “You’re an octogenarian porn star who successfully staged a militarized coup and took over England without ever putting on pants. I’d say we’re even.”

  The trio finally arrived at the green screen. Chester A. Arthur XVII and Martin Van Buren XCIX man-hugged, patting one another on the back. The Earl of London was biting his lip thoughtfully.

  “Six years old, eh? That could cause some problems for me.”

  “The kind of problems that would involve us being released?” proffered Chester A. Arthur XVII.

  “Nah, course not,” replied Tyrone Tainthammer. “I’ll just ‘ave to change distributors is all.” The scrawny man in the bathrobe whistled and several hulking piles of men emerged from behind the green screen, checking the lighting, bringing out a trunk of period clothing, and wheeling cameras into position.

  “Right, you two’ll need to be removin’ your trousers now,” said the retired porn star, pointing toward the two former presidents. “You should be able to find somethin’ more appropriate for the picture in that trunk.”

  “Us two?” asked Martin Van Buren XCIX.

  “Yes, you two,” explained Tyrone Tainthammer. “You two are the lovers.”

  Queen Victoria XXX began bouncing up and down and squealing with delight.

  “Oh,” said Chester A. Arthur XVII. “When you were telling us about it, I had assumed you meant me and Vicky.”

  “Tha’s why you don’ assume. Makes an ass out of you and me. Although, in this case, mostly you.” The man in the bathrobe pointed his chin toward the presidents. “‘urry up and get changed. This isn’t the only picture I ‘ave to film against people’s wills today.”

  The artificial politicians began undressing, the Earl of London watching them in detached observation, with special emphasis on their bathing suit areas. A calculating look descended on his face, like an ambitious four-year-old staring at a pile of Lincoln Logs. Queen Victoria XXX was doing the same, though the look on her face more approximated a four-year-old being given a bag of sugar and a spoon.

  This all stopped, of course, when a bellowing roar ripped across the film studio, shaking the rafters and knocking over some of the plants.

  The clones turned, the men doing so awkwardly and with some difficulty, as their pants had only made it as far as their ankles. At the far end of the studio an enormous frothing werebear was being led across the expanse, pulled forward by chains. The men doing the pulling, as imposing as they were in their own right, looked positively adorable and unthreatening in view of the raging colossus behind them.

  “What the fuck is that?” asked Martin Van Buren XCIX.

  “That’s the ‘at all costs,’” said Tyrone Tainthammer. “I told you about that earlier, di’n’t I?”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-ONE

  Emergency Exit

  Boudica IX was forcefully getting a piggyback ride from one of the seemingly perpetual bandits assailing the train. Her legs clenched around his torso, the queen had one of her hands on both of his, firing the man’s own gun into his compatriots, while the other hand slammed the man’s head into any solid object she could find. On the far side of the car, the still shirtless Ali was busy dissolving marauders with his cybernetic arm in between bouts of very awkward and not always successful sword fighting.

  The remade Celtic warrior-queen shoved the masked man’s head into the twisted metal edge of the exploded wall before dismounting with a flourish and kicking him into the charging legs of the steroid-powered horses still running parallel to the train. Leaning out the hole and looking toward the front of the locomotive, Boudica IX watched as another pack of bandits on horseback exploded in a way that would have made even a Romanian butcher upset, followed by the indistinctly shouted insults of Catrina as she ran farther down the top of the train with the RPG.

  Boudica IX followed after the hotel employee, through the interior of the train, squeezing past a conductor and a woman in a motocross mask trying to punch one another in the cramped space between the railcars. As she was halfway through the bullet-riddled doors at t
heir side, the redhead could just make out an automated announcement over the train’s PA.

  “Next stop: Alameda Station. Serving San Francisco, Oakland, Sacramento, and all points in between. Alameda Station.”

  “Poop,” said Boudica IX, turning on her heel. She jostled her way back through the fighters, crushing the bandit’s windpipe with her elbow for good measure.

  Jogging across the empty, aerated car, she found her bag hanging forlornly from the mangled metal pipes of the overhead baggage rack. Grabbing it and slinging it across her chest, she made her way toward Ali and his entirely uncinematic swordsmanship. Boudica IX shoved her way in between the swinging blades.

  “This is my stop,” she said. “Tell Catrina I said good luck!”

  By the time Ali realized what the hell had just happened, Boudica IX had gripped his assailant by the testicles, driven her opposing shoulder into his chest, and ridden the swordsman straight out the door of the speeding train. By the time Ali had stepped to the door to look after her, the man had landed abruptly on his skull and skidded several feet, while Boudica IX had nimbly jumped off him and rolled to safety. The cloned Celt stood up, dusted herself off, and then kicked the only technically living bandit underneath the train while waving to Ali. The donut maker waved back dazedly. The man thrown under the train did exactly what one would expect a man thrown under a train to do.

  Boudica IX stood waving for a few more moments, then adjusted the strap of her bag and watched the train disappear into the distance.

  “Wait, monkey trumpets,” she mumbled. “What the heck’s a wharf?”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-TWO

  Magneto Ain’t Got Nothin’ on Me!

  “This doesn’t look right.”

  “I think that sign said we were leaving Kansas.”

  Dr. Arahami looked at the compass.

  “It says north. We’ve been going north.”

  “Hey, is that an ice cream truck?” Thor leaned the top half of his body out of the truck’s window to check. The compass jiggled slightly and pulled toward the right. The thunder god slumped back inside. The compass jiggled back to where it had been moments earlier.

  “It wasn’t an ice cream truck,” he said dejectedly. “I think it was some kind of albino buffalo. Or maybe an old gas station.”

  “Son of a bitch,” said Dr. Arahami. He placed his hand against Thor’s shoulder. Some kind of sixth sense or internal sensor or magical scientist power told him what he needed to know.

  “There’s a strong electromagnetic field emanating from you at all times, isn’t there?”

  “Maybe?” said Thor. “I really don’t know.”

  “Son of a bitch!”

  The doctor pulled a wide and profoundly dangerous U-turn, tilting the trailer onto half of its intended wheels, before rockily settling the vehicle back down and beginning the return trip through hundreds of miles of wheat fields and gated underground missile silo communities, back toward the diner they had seen a few hours earlier.

  “I think we’re going to have buy a map,” grumbled the doctor.

  “I hope they have ice cream too.”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-THREE

  Queen of the Jungle

  A few hours later the ruins of Fisherman’s Wharf finally rose before Boudica IX – “rose” in this case meaning not “towered into view” but “had long ago collapsed into a jagged heap which itself had collapsed into the rocky shore of the receded bay, leaving a sloping mess of splintered wood and crumbling concrete, no pile of which appeared to be more than six feet in height.” In the distance beyond that grammatical train wreck, the redhead could just see the high-security insane asylum of Alcatraz[xxv].

  As she approached the fringes of the rubble, the Celtic queen looked at the smudged permanent marker on her hand: left-handed spork-head screwdriver in Lefty’s, the Left Hand Store, in Fisherman’s Wharf in San Francisco. Pulling a directory from an overturned planter, she checked for the name written on her palm but was unable to make any sense of the map, as someone had scratched “go the FUCK away” into the plastic cover and then drawn a skull and crossbones across the bottom in blood. Boudica IX shrugged, threw the directory back onto the planter, and began picking her way down through the wharf.

  After a couple hundred feet the debris suddenly lessened, opening up into a wide, intact field of wooden boards. In the center was a broken-down, two-level carousel with most of the seats removed. They appeared to have been moved to the middle of the upper-level and piled into a makeshift throne of plastic animals.

  Boudica IX stared at the throne, squinting her eyes at the kaleidoscope of odd angles and bright colors, trying to understand what she was seeing.

  The lioness slumped on the throne stared right back.

  “Can I help you?” the she-beast roared.

  “Holy shit,” said Boudica IX, her eyes going wide.

  From all sides, dozens of lionesses appeared from beneath and behind the piled wreckage. They began slinking across the open boardwalk, their ravenous eyes trained firmly on the redhead.

  “Is this because I cursed? I’m sorry I cursed!” she said. “I don’t usually, but you startled the poop out of me!”

  “We are the sea lions,” replied the lioness, “and this is our domain.”

  “Are you sure that’s right? I thought sea lions were the lazy, barky things that look like seals.”

  “Well, yeah, they were, but now we are the sea lions. The hairy, roar-y things that will bite your face off.”

  “So was it, like, evolution?”

  “What?”

  “Evolution. Did you evolve from sea lions? Are you the next stage in the history of that proud, beach ball-balancing race?”

  “Oh. No. Don’t be stupid,” explained the lion queen. “It was straight-up genocide. Once we learned there was another animal calling itself a lion, actions were taken. We learned to swim, crossed the oceans, and then eradicated every last one of those barking clowns from the face of the earth.”

  “Neat.”

  “You don’t seem frightened.”

  “I’m not.”

  “Most people are frightened when they find out we hunted down and exterminated an entire species out of nothing but arrogance.”

  Boudica IX shrugged. Then, looking around at the slinking golden felines surrounding her, she wondered aloud, “Where are all the males?”

  “Dead, probably,” said the lioness. “We left them behind. Fuck those lazy assholes.”

  “How come you can talk?”

  “The better question is: How come you can understand us?”

  “Oh my gosh,” said Boudica IX, bewildered. “That is a better question.”

  “No,” said the lioness, “it’s not actually. I’m just messing with you. All lions have been able to talk since the transmogrification bomb.”

  Shortly after the world ended for the fifteenth time, intracontinental war in Africa reached a bloody peak. Hoping to end it once and for all, a six-year-old girl in Kenya cobbled together a transmogrification bomb, the intent being to turn all the rampaging warlords into kittens, so that even if they continued to fight, it would at least be adorable. Unsurprisingly, the six-year-old’s lack of adequate training in quantum mathematics or god-playing meant the bomb didn’t work as intended and instead of turning every human into kittens, she simply gave all felines on the continent the ability to talk.

  “So, anyway, you want to state your case, or should we just go ahead and kill you now?” said the enthroned lioness.

  “Oh, right,” said Boudica IX, looking at her hand. “I’m here to look for a left-handed spork-head screwdriver.”

  “Huh. Popular item.” The lioness shrugged, then gestured toward a large, long-haired man digging through a saw-toothed mound of old souvenir stores. “Feel free to root through the piles of garbage with that fat guy over there. We’re never going to use it.”

  “Well, thanks!” Boudica IX began skipping toward the rubble.

  “Oh, hey, just a hea
ds up, Red. You’re going to have to fight your way out of here,” called the lioness. “Nothing personal, just one of our by-laws. Plus we’re really getting sick of fish.”

  “OK,” said Boudica IX cheerfully, waving a hand.

  “You’re going to have to fight one of us, I mean. A lion.”

  “Got it,” lilted the queen.

  “Are you sure?”

  CHAPTER FIFTY-FOUR

  No Rest for the Weary

  Ali Şahin and Catrina Dalisay sat in the empty dining car, staring ahead dead-eyed, their free coffee getting cold on the fold-away table between them. Their clothes destroyed in the preceding melee, the couple wore ill-fitting conductor’s uniforms, scavenged from the employee quarters. They had not seen another soul since shortly after the fighting had ended and the last surviving bandits had fled. Ali and Catrina didn’t even know if the train was still following the right path or if it was just hurtling blind along the tracks.

  “Aren’t we supposed to be the boring ones?” asked Ali, picking up his cup and watching the lukewarm coffee swirl. “I liked being the boring ones. We almost got blown up a lot less.”

  “I am so fucking tired.” Catrina planted her forehead on the edge of the table.

  The couple sat in silence again, the presumably tedious trek through unknown lands for twenty pounds of isotonium weighing heavily on their spirits. The minutes rolled into hours and, almost imperceptibly, Catrina and Ali kind of almost started to maybe think it might be OK to close their eyes and get some rest. Immediately, the donut merchant and hotel representative heard the train’s PA system crackle to life.

  “Next stop: Vancouver Station. Serving the territory of Irish Colombia. Vancouver Station.”

  “I guess that’s –”

  “May someone have mercy on your souls,” continued the announcement. “Seriously, anyone.”