by Eirik Gumeny
“But that could be days!” the queen whined.
While Queen Victoria XXX made one final attempt to get her friends to bang one another, Tanner the silverback gorilla sidled up next to Catrina, sliding off her headphones.
“Excuse me, hi,” began the gorilla. “Do you have any idea how long Thor and your redheaded friend are going to be in there? Those burgers are ripping right through me.”
“Oh, uh, I don’t know,” stammered the clerk. “Probably a while.”
“All right, thanks,” muttered Tanner, biting her lip. She spotted a modestly-sized clump of scrubby shrubbery growing through the asphalt and made for it, then settled in and noisily began taking care of business. Bex and Dr. Arahami, talking nerdy to one another only a few feet from the gorilla, either didn’t notice or didn’t care.
Ali, silent witness to all of the preceding, stepped behind Catrina and began gently rubbing her shoulders.
“We’ve really got to find some new friends,” he said.
“That is priority number one when we get home.”
***
Early the next morning, after taking shifts and driving straight through the night, Dr. Arahami’s all-terrain tractor-trailer finally arrived at the custom luxury-tank of Chester A. Arthur XVII and the patch of lonely desert surrounding it.
The truck idling, Chester A. Arthur XVII was the last to step from the back of the tractor-trailer, turning and pulling the retractable door shut as he exited. He stepped to the side of the trailer and waved into the large rearview mirror of the truck cab.
“Thanks again, Lee, for –”
The president was met with a half-assedly waving hand shoved out of the window and a faceful of mildly radioactive exhaust. He began coughing violently, placing his hands on his knees. Queen Victoria XXX hurried over and began rubbing his back.
“He really wants to hump that robot,” she said, watching the truck vanish into the distance.
“You guys might want to stand back,” said Thor, hunching near the methane port on the side of the custom-built tank and dropping his boxers. “I’ve been holding this in since New Hollywood.”
***
Several days later, Chester A. Arthur XVII, Queen Victoria XXX, Thor Odinson, Catrina Dalisay, and Ali Şahin arrived at the burned down pile of rubble that used to be the Secaucus Holiday Inn. Beyond the ashes, the entire Plaza at the Meadows could be seen, completely abandoned.
“We ... probably should have remembered this,” said Catrina, climbing from the luxury-tank and surveying the damage.
“Remembered what? What happened?” queried Chester A. Arthur XVII, knitting his brow. “I seem to be missing a good chunk of the days between Vicky strapping me to a hand cart and when I ended up on Joselin’s operating table.”
“We’ll explain later, honey,” replied Queen Victoria XXX, leaning into her boyfriend and sliding a hand into the back pocket of his trousers. “It involves you dying a lot.”
“We should probably find a new home, right?” asked Ali. “That should probably be a thing we’re concerned about?”
“I think I’d rather go get pancakes,” said Thor.
“I think I’d rather do that, too,” echoed Catrina.
“I could eat,” added Chester A. Arthur XVII.
“We should probably get Thor some new pants first,” offered Queen Victoria XXX, surveying the large blonde man in the flannel shirt, work boots, and heart-covered boxer shorts.
“There’s no time for pants, woman,” said the thunder god. Pointing a finger into the air, he shouted, “To the diner!”
THE END, PART THREE
(you’re almost there! woo!)
BED, BATH, AND OH, GOD, RUN
after the twenty-seventh apocalypse
“What do you think, honey?” asked Shannon Leber-Zheng, studying the curtain sample in her hands. “Do you think these burgundy ones will be dark enough for the bedroom?”
“They’ll probably work for the light, but the bedroom’s facing west,” replied her husband Wei. “I want to see if we can find something to help with the radiation.”
“Roger said the building was up to code.”
“I know that’s what he said, but the windows look flimsy as hell.”
“They’re brand new.”
“So was the factory explosion.”
“Roger said it was contained.”
“Roger said a lot of things. It’s what he gets paid to do.”
“I really like this burgundy color,” continued Shannon. She glanced at the samples hanging beside the one in her hands. “It doesn’t look like this manufacturer has any lead-lined varieties.”
“Can’t we just buy a liner separate and put it up behind the curtains?”
Wei’s wife made a mock retching noise. “That’s disgusting.”
“What? It’s easy and cost-effective.”
“And gross-looking.”
“We’d never see it!”
“The neighbors would think we’re trash!”
“I’m pretty sure the neighbors are werewolves.”
“Now you’re just being mean, Wei.”
“I’m serious,” he replied. “I saw Rick sleeping in his driveway in a pool of blood after the full moon last week.”
“Maybe he’s just a violent drunk,” replied Shannon. She let the burgundy curtain drift back to the crayon box of draperies hanging from the wall then looked around the fabric store. “I’m going to ask if they have this with a lead-lining.”
Waving down the clerk, Shannon met the slight, khaki-clad young man in the center of the sales floor, then pointed toward the wall and her husband. “Do you have a more radiation-resistant version of the grommeted burgundy tweed over there?”
“I’m sorry, we don’t,” said the fabric store employee, “but we can add a liner to it.”
Shannon made a face.
“Oh, god, no, not like that,” replied the draper with a laugh. “We stitch the liner between the outer tweeds. Every panel we carry here is dual-layered. We can include whatever additional support fabrics or light metals you need inside the two outer fabrics. No one will ever see it.”
“Oh, that is perfect,” said Shannon, grinning like a lioness. “Is there an extra —”
A tremendous commotion erupted from the back of the store, a cacophony of dull thuds and tumbling boxes from behind a fire door marked “Employees Only.” The noise died down quickly, only to be replaced by the guttural roar of some large beast.
“Was that ... in the store?” asked Shannon.
“What the hell was that?” asked Wei, moving behind his wife and placing a hand gently on her hip.
“Oh, that’s just one of the draugar,” said the clerk nonchalantly. “A Nordic after-walker. You should probably run. If you want to give me a call with your measurements when you get home, I can put in the custom order for these drapes.”
There was another large crash from the back of the store, followed by the dull warble of distending steel. More crashes followed. The metal door continued to strain. The rhythmic pounding knocked over a nearby display case, seam rippers and safety pins scattering across the carpet in a jigsaw of glass shards.
“I’m being completely serious,” continued the draper. “You’ve got maybe a minute before your life turns into a waking nightmare.”
Wei and Shannon stared at the clerk incredulously, Wei only seconds from reflexively threatening the fabric store employee himself.
Then the floor began to rumble.
The Leber-Zhengs, as one, started backing away from the smiling curtain reseller. A crack of thunder sounded as the couple neared the door, and the building shook like a cardboard dollhouse. Drapery panel displays swung and tumbled from the walls; a wire stand of steel tacks and plastic rings canted to the floor with a clatter.
Wei’s back was against the exit. He leaned against the door, pushing with such urgency that his soles threatened to tear up the carpet. But the door refused to open. Turning his head, Wei saw th
e tremendous maelstrom that had descended on the fabric store. Wind swirled incredibly, malevolently, hurling rain and debris against the glass storefront in a constant assault, threatening to bring down the entire building.
“Well that’s unfortunate,” said the store employee, his smile fading. “You seemed like nice people.”
“What the hell is going on here?!” barked Wei, still straining against the door. “Why –”
A hulking beast burst from the back room in a constellation of rent steel and plasterboard dust. The Leber-Zhengs could do nothing but stare in disbelief. The creature appeared to be a walking corpse, the decomposing husk of a giant. The dead man turned and lumbered toward them, decaying cowhide falling from its boots with each step. The woolen coat draped over the monster beat limply against its legs as it advanced. A large, dented battle-axe rested on its shoulder. Shannon shrank down against the door and began to cry softly. Wei tried desperately not to soil himself.
“What the hell is that?!” he shouted. “What’s going on?!”
“As I said earlier, that’s a draugr,” replied the clerk calmly, “an after-walker, a Viking ghost.”
“Jes– Wait ... Ghosts can’t rot,” said Wei, his fear momentarily replaced by confusion. He locked his eyes on the approaching travesty. “And they don’t smell like week-old trash. Are you messing with us? Is this some kind of a joke?!”
“It’s not funny,” sniffled Shannon, pulling her self up. “It doesn’t even make sense. That thing is clearly not ethereal.”
The store employee rolled his eyes and sighed. Deeply. “Draugar are the lost souls of unworthy Vikings, cursed to forever haunt their own bodies,” he explained. “They’re ghosts, forever shackled to their decaying flesh. It’s a punishment.”
“Isn’t that just a zombie then?” asked Wei.
Before the final syllable was past Wei’s lips, the eyes of the draugr had become wide and a blood-curdling scream was leaping from its throat. The monster lifted the ancient axe above its head and the storefront exploded inward in a gale of rainwater and shattered glass. As Wei tumbled backward, the rusted blade fell, tearing through his shirt and cleaving a small valley in his chest.
“Oh, god, OK! Not a zombie!” cried Wei, writhing on the broken glass and pressing his arms to his wounded chest. “You’re not a zombie! I’m sorry!”
The draugr growled through clenched teeth and swung the axe downward again, narrowly missing the wriggling man and burying the blade in the floor.
“Holy shit,” muttered Wei, skittering awkwardly away from the axe head.
With decomposing hands gripped so tightly around the haft that they began to crumble, the reanimated Viking spent the next few moments trying to remove its weapon from the floor before giving up with a flourish of exasperated hand gestures. The draugr stomped across the store to the back room in a pique.
“You’re probably going to need a tetanus shot,” said the draper, helping his customer from the soaked ground. As soon as Wei was on his feet, he shoved the fabric store clerk away.
“What the fuck just happened?!”
“I told you to leave,” said the clerk with a small shrug.
“We tried!” barked Wei. “We couldn’t get the god damned door open.” He nodded toward the buckled frame of the storefront and the easing deluge dripping from the cracked teeth of the window. “Where the hell did that storm even come from?”
“That was probably the draugr,” explained the clerk. “They can do that.”
“That thing can control the weather?”
“Among other things.”
“But ... I thought it was trying to get us to leave,” said Shannon.
“I was trying to get you to leave. The draugr was trying to get you gone. It didn’t really care how,” continued the drapery salesman. “The Vikings were a very possessive people, to the point that they were actually buried with all their crap so that no one else would touch it. Dying doesn’t really change that a whole lot for them. If anything, being a ghost makes it easier.”
“It wanted us to stay away from its stuff, so it trapped us inside,” said Wei, “with its stuff.”
“The draugar are dead. Cut ‘em some slack.”
“If the ... drugstore or ... whatever ... can figure out how to get its centuries-old corpse to come at with me with an axe, it should be able to figure out that that was a terrible idea.”
With a roar, the draugr reemerged from the back room, swinging its arms wildly over its head before perforating the rear wall with its fists.
“Now you’ve done it,” said the clerk.
“How did it even hear that?”
The Viking ghost ripped a display rack from the wall, shrouding itself in a rainbow of fabric. The monster threw the curtains to the ground.
“You realize I’m going to have to bill you for the damages.”
“Like hell you are!” shouted Wei, shoving the fabric store employee. “You’re the one keeping a murderous zombie –”
The draugr screamed. Lightning severed a majority of limbs from a tree on the far side of the parking lot.
“Ghost! Sorry!”
The after-walker howled and tore down the cotton solids shelving.
“You’re the one keeping a murderous ghost on staff,” continued Wei. “I came in here with my wife to buy some god damned curtains and we got attacked by a god damned Viking. And you’re threatening to charge me?! For what the ghost Viking did?! You owe me money! I will sue! I’ll take your whole god damned company down!”
“The draugr’s not on staff, sir,” explained the clerk with a colossal eye-roll. “If you’d read the sign when you came in you’d realize that this store was built on a Viking burial ground and we take no responsibility for any consequences thereof. By entering the store you agree to be bound by those terms.”
“Why would you build a curtain store on a Viking graveyard?” asked Shannon.
The employee shrugged. “This is really good real estate. We’re right off 7. And we did put up a sign. It’s not our fault if people don’t read it.”
“You keep saying that,” said Wei.
The draper pointed to a tiny pink rectangle adhered to a triangle of glass near the far corner of what used to be the front window. “It was in the lower corner over there, next to the Certificate of Occupancy.”
Wei, his back a prairie of glass slivers, limped toward the warning label. As he bent down to examine it Shannon began brushing the window fragments from his shirt.
“I’ll be damned,” said Wei before turning toward the clerk. “You still should have put it somewhere easier to see.”
“I made the suggestion, but corporate said we had done all we could.”
“You really didn’t,” said Shannon, tossing a particularly long shard of glass to the ground.
“We did all we were legally required to do.”
The Leber-Zhengs stared at the clerk, their eyebrows askew.
“Seriously?”
“Yes,” said the clerk. “The laws on this kind of thing are pretty messed up.”
In the rear of the store, the draugr stalked across the savannah of shredded fabrics and into the back room. It reemerged with an iron long sword.
“My name’s Steve,” said the store employee, stepping between the Leber-Zhengs and the approaching corpse. “Call me with the measurements when you get home. Which you really need to go to right now. It takes forever for the draugar to calm down. And god knows how many others this one riled up when he went back there.”
“There’s more of them?” asked Wei.
“How come it’s not attacking you?” asked Shannon.
“It got used to me,” answered the clerk quickly. “I live in an apartment upstairs. The draugar see me all the time.”
“But they try to murder everyone else that comes in here?”
“Try,” scoffed Steve. “The draugar graves are literally in the basement. They didn’t even pave over them. Everything on the other side of that fire d
oor is one hundred percent dead-Viking-owned and they’re going to protect it accordingly.”
“You know we’re not trying to take it, though, right?” asked Shannon, leaning around the clerk and speaking directly to the advancing draugr.
The Viking ghost lowered his long sword and tilted his head.
“We’re not here for your gold or your treasure or whatever it is you’re guarding,” she explained. “My husband and I just wanted curtains. For our bedroom. For our new home.” She smiled. “If we had known that shopping for them would bother you we never would have come here.”
The draugr twitched its decomposing head slightly. Its sword dangled limply at its side.
“A group of men in –” Shannon turned toward the clerk. “Where’s your corporate headquarters?”
“Dallas.”
“A group of men in Dallas built a fabric and sewing accessory retail store on top of your graveyard because they don’t care about your peaceful eternal slumber or our not getting murdered.”
“Or my getting paid fairly,” added Steve.
“Or his getting paid fairly,” echoed Shannon. “No one is going to go through your stuff. Especially not us, or people like us, customers who come in here looking for drapes. I think – I know – I speak for all of us when I say, none of us would have entered this store if we had known that it was going to upset you.”
The draugr mewled incoherently.
“Really,” replied Wei with a slight nod. “We meant no harm.”
“We’ll go now if you’d like,” said Shannon.
The deceased Viking nodded its head softly. Then it lifted a pile of torn, dusty curtains from the floor and shuffled toward the couple, drapery dragging and display bar clinking between the grommets. The reanimated corpse placed the trailing bundle in Shannon’s arms.
“Oh, uh, thank you,” she said, “but these, uh, I’m not sure we –”
The draugr growled, showing its blackened teeth.
“Thank you,” Shannon replied sheepishly. “I love them.”
