The Last Condo Board of the Apocalypse (Kelly Driscoll Book 1)

by Nina Post

  Af met her eyes briefly. “Close quarters in here.”

  The slug snorted with derision. “At least someone is getting something out of it.” It came up with a cheese puff from a hidden pocket and inserted it into its mouth. A moment later, what little was left of the cheese puff oozed from its cloaca onto the floor.

  Af and Kelly watched the slug, eyes wide, though they politely kept their heads faced toward the digital screen. Eventually, they looked away and read the notices for the upcoming pizza delivery sub-committee, the cowboy song workshop in the club room, and a reminder to not feed the dragonflies in underground level five.

  The screen updated to show Roger’s quote of the day: “It is better to have a good neighbor than a friend who’s far away.”

  “Unless that neighbor has a death worm,” Af muttered.

  “How are you enjoying your vessel?” Kelly asked Af. He must be in love with a mortal female, she guessed. Isn’t that always why angels walked the earth?

  “It’s fine,” he said. “I mean, I’ve inherited a few minor physical ailments from―”

  “The poor bastard’s body you stole?”

  “I didn’t steal it,” Af said, affronted. “We take whatever form suits our needs. To be honest, I have no idea how it works.”

  She was thinking how his form would suit her needs.

  He hesitated. “And I miss some things, of course.”

  “Sure,” she said. “Power, immortality, wings. Who needs it? Be human and suffer.”

  The slug shifted position and rubbed against Af’s arm. Af discreetly wiped the residue off on the back of his shirt.

  “I haven’t seen you in a while,” the slug said, presumably to Tom. “You look good.”

  Kelly thought the slug was staring straight ahead, but it was hard to tell, especially from the back. The scorpion used one of his left limbs to shine Af’s shoes.

  “You too,” Tom said gruffly.

  “Is this a new service?” she asked Af.

  Tom spoke up. “I live in the building, but needed the health care. The union has great coverage.”

  “You mentioned suffering,” Af said to her. “Is that what it’s like?”

  She sipped at the remnants of her margarita and nodded to Tom, who started the blender again. “Let’s see. Losing people you love, not knowing if you’ll ever be with them again. Tyrannized by what you said or didn’t say, what you did or didn’t do. Lugging our pasts behind us like mace balls from a chain. Decisions we’ve made mauling us day after day. Our grief like murderers, jumping out to stab us with a dagger when we don’t expect it. The worry. What’s not to like?”

  “That sounds so violent,” Af said.

  The elevator stopped at two and the slug glided out. Over what might have been its shoulder, it said, “I’ll be at the pool, if someone cares to join me.”

  Tom handed Kelly her second margarita.

  “Seriously, what are you in charge of?” she asked Af.

  “Wrath. Destruction. The death of mortals.”

  “The death of mortals.”

  “Mm-hm.”

  “You say that like you’re ordering a sandwich. Does that mean you can tell me what happens to mortals when they die?”

  “I don’t really know,” he said. “It’s beyond my purview.”

  The elevator stopped at floor one and she pressed the button for fifty-seven herself, making a conciliatory gesture to Tom. The doors closed and the elevator went back up.

  “You don’t know what happens after?”

  Tom picked up his ukulele. “‘Let’s Be Neighborly,” by Roger Balbi.” He softly strummed a song. “Let’s just all be civil, let’s be neighborly…”

  “Look, um―”

  “Kelly.”

  Tom strummed as he sang softly, “Let’s meet in the common areas and share our common dreams…”

  “Our bureaucracy is vast and dense,” Af said. “Layers upon layers upon layers of administrative subgroups.”

  She pictured a napoleon with layers of pastry and custard. A flaky biscuit. A lasagna. She dug around in a pocket and found only an unwrapped stick of gum covered in lint.

  “There is so much granular specificity with our positions. Each layer is very protective of what it does. There’s very little inter-agency communication. I do my small part, and then someone else takes over. Trust me, no other angel would be surprised that I don’t know. What happens to mortals after they die? Only a few at the top know that kind of thing.”

  The elevator stopped at fifty-seven. Tom didn’t even ask; he just pressed floor two.

  “I’m sorry I don’t have anything better,” Af said.

  The digital sign promoted Roger’s latest show with his featured guest, the band “Föhnkrankheit.”

  “So am I,” she said.

  hat night, the angel in charge of the protection of water insects, also known as Dave, invoked Tubiel to find and return his canary. Kelly was surprised to discover that one SP could invoke another SP.

  After some tree-climbing with a flashlight, Tubiel found the chirping yellow bird. She expected to see someone like Tubiel―placid and silent―but Dave looked like a guitar player for Föhnkrankheit.

  And Dave, like Murray, talked.

  “What is this, a bed and breakfast?” Kelly asked, looking around.

  “It’s a grant-supported communal living home for retired showgirls,” Dave said. “Similar to a B&B, but with all the televised roller derby, dense smoke, and butterscotch candy you can eat. Anyway, thanks again for finding Pearl.”

  She presumed that was the last she would see of Dave. But a few minutes after she stopped in to check on Tubiel, Dave showed up in the ground level camera feed at her building. He found the outside intercom and pressed the button.

  “Hey, uh, Kelly? It’s Dave, from earlier. I have the canary, Pearl?”

  She shot a dubious look at Tubiel as he ate a Cluck Snack Steak-Flav’r Pudd’n cup. “You know anything about this?”

  He shook his head.

  “Then how does he know where I live?”

  Tubiel set down his pudding and scribbled a business card on his sketch pad.

  “You gave him my card? The one I don’t give to people?”

  He nodded, proud.

  “Why do I even have those cards?” she muttered, and pressed the intercom. “Dave, I’ll meet you in back, by the fire escape.”

  Tubiel’s pudding consumed, he padded over to the kitchen and poured a bowl of Cluck Snack Krispy Baked B’nana Bitz for Dogs and Ferrets (“Can Be Used As Cereal!”).

  She took the fire escape down to the last rung and stayed perched there. It was hard to see Dave with all the black until he smiled and his white teeth flashed.

  “Fear not,” he said.

  After jumping to the ground, she approached Dave with a large flashlight.

  “Legs apart, hands on your head. Do it.”

  He did it. She patted the sides of his legs and torso.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “One of the girls started thinking I was her least favorite ex-husband and then they all turned against me,” Dave said.

  She patted down the sides of his shirt and jacket.

  “I sort of brought someone,” Dave turned his head to the dumpster. “That’s Kermit. He’s in charge of three o’clock a.m.”

  She waved the flashlight over him.

  Kermit, who was skinny, with longish dark hair and as wide-eyed as a lemur, wore a red race track helmet with a lightning logo and ear flaps. He inexplicably did a brief tap dance.

  “Why?” she asked Dave, her arms folded.

  “He loves to tap dance,” Dave answered. On her expression, he corrected himself. “Oh, you mean, why do I have Kermit with me?”

  “I don’t care why he’s with you. Why did you bring him here?”

  “I ran into him at a convenience store.” Dave held his hands out defensively.

  “So you don’t even know each other?”

&nbs
p; Dave laughed. “Of course we know each other―he’s in charge of my favorite hour! Also, it turns out we’re both in the Small Birds Club.” At her look, he elaborated. “For the encouragement of the propagation of small birds.”

  Kelly considered the two angels in front of her and wondered how she got into this nutbar situation. Her job was supposed to be to find the high-value target for Don, and to vial any angels or supernatural creatures along the way to be, as Murray put it, repatriated. The job was not to let single-purpose angels stay at her place and place absurd demands on her time.

  She considered living in the stairwell of Amenity Tower so she could get some work done.

  At this rate, she would never sleep. Then she would collapse. Then all the money she earned from this job would get sucked into her blindingly expensive hospital stay. Then when she was still recovering, she wouldn’t have any time to work more jobs to pay for her electrolyte drip or whatever because she would spend every available minute on the phone with the insurance company arguing over duplicate billing and incorrect procedure codes. But she wasn’t about to explain that to the angel in charge of water insects.

  “It would be for just one night,” Dave said. “Please?”

  She let out a breath.

  “Isn’t it kinda strange that all of us are in the same city?” Dave asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  He unsnapped the collar of his leather motorcycle jacket and put his hands in the side pockets. “Our kind―single-purpose angels―are usually much more scattered. Mobile. I’ve never seen this many of us in one place. I guess we all sensed it was a hot spot.” He shrugged. “Lucky you.”

  Kelly met eyes with both of them.

  “We heard one of us was killed,” Dave added in a low voice. “By someone who obviously knew how to do it. Majorly disconcerting.”

  “Why me? Why here?”

  Dave gave her a half smile and a shrug. “Just a feeling?”

  “One night.” Her reputation for getting a job done was being compromised, but she suspected her fugitive could be a certain mild-mannered fallen angel with honey-colored hair―just a gut feeling. But she wouldn’t say anything for now, at least not until she learned more about Don’s real agenda.

  Dave gave Kermit a high-five. Kermit ran back to the dumpster, grabbed a duffel bag, and walked back toward the fire escape with a loping gait, arms dangling awkwardly at his sides.

  She got them up the fire escape and into the top floor and tossed their bags on a desk just before the intercom rang again. More SPs.

  She made a quick stop by the pneumatic tube room, where she jotted down a message:

  M, Need reinforcements! Come over now!

  As she popped the latch and sent the tube on its way, she wondered if Murray would misconstrue that request.

  s a former Angel of Anger and Prince of Wrath, Af tried to stay calm and bend like the willow, but often found mortal and condo life to be a series of affronts.

  The first thing that annoyed Af that day was the drip coffeemaker, which leaked from the carafe every time he poured it. After that, it was the uncleanable ceramic stovetop and the cabinet knobs that caught the fly in his pajama pants.

  Af poured his coffee and wiped off the coffee puddle from the carafe with a rag.

  Earlier in the week, he researched how people got through the days. In something called summer camp, young humans had blocks of different activities, then lunch, then more blocks of activity, and a group event in the evening. They woke up and went to bed at the same time every day. In human prisons, schools, and monasteries they did very much the same thing. Af based his schedule on this model, with specific times every day for eating, exercise, hobbies, and leisure. He didn’t need much sleep, but liked to try, or pretend.

  Every day at 9:00 a.m., he spent thirty minutes in the fitness center. Every day at 4:30 p.m., he went downstairs to check for mail and packages. (He subscribed to a wide variety of publications, including Turkey World, Rock and Dirt, The Lancet, and Tugboat Review.)

  He liked being able to schedule things. He had spent thousands of years bound to a gold urn at the bottom of the Gulf of Mexico. Then another thousand years bound to the Ms. Pac Man game in Erie, Pennsylvania, where that jerk Abaddon inadvertently released him. He made a mental note to send Don a gift basket.

  Since Af’s release from the Ms. Pac Man game was an accident, no one noticed. He took advantage of the mistake and did some traveling, but after a few weeks, he found himself inexplicably bound to a luxury condominium high-rise in downtown Pothole City.

  Amenity Tower lived up to its name, though Af sometimes marveled how he was doing activities profoundly unbecoming to an angel of his stature. Riding the elliptical machine. Attending board and committee meetings. Making his own food. Having a death worm in the elevator sniff his pants.

  Af was one of many angels in Amenity Tower, but didn’t associate much with the others outside of the meetings. They would nod in the hallway and in the fitness center and around the pool. And every day, new monsters that left behind bioluminescent smears and weird little adhesive hairs and bizarre scents moved into the building. And, of course, everyone had to have their own death worm.

  On any given day, Af had a new neighbor of indeterminable provenance. Earlier that morning, he opened his door to a beetle-monster holding a rhubarb pie with serrated, whiskery arms.

  “Hey, neighbor,” it said, trying to ingratiate itself. When Af reached out to take the pie, the beetle-thing sheepishly admitted that on the way over, he pierced the pie with his beak and secreted enzymes into the filling. “I just couldn’t help myself.”

  And what could Af say to that? ‘I would prefer that you not secrete enzymes into my rhubarb pie?’ It was a nice gesture, after all.

  “That’s very kind of you,” Af finally said, accepting the pie. “But you’ll have to excuse me; I need to finish some minor home surgery.” He gently closed and locked the door to a bemused but sympathetic expression on the beetle-monster’s face.

  Af wondered when he would see Kelly, the window washer/maintenance engineer/fugitive hunter again. Because even though he was stuck in a small enclosed space with a giant ukulele-strumming, margarita-mixing water scorpion and a green blob with an over-active cloaca, he was happy to talk to her, and didn’t think he had ever enjoyed himself as much. Her strange pale eyes reminded him of his favorite facial tissue line, ‘Sky Expressions.’

  wo hours later, Dave, Kermit, Tubiel, and half a dozen other single-purpose angels were devouring Cluck Snack toaster oven pizzas in the conference room.

  “What’s going on?” Murray asked.

  In Mr. Black’s office, Kelly checked the plot watcher feeds for the cameras she had installed in Amenity Tower, which took an image snapshot every eight seconds.

  “The angel of water insects, the angel of the three o’clock hour, and the angel in charge of returning small birds to their owners and who knows who else are watching a romantic comedy in my conference room.” She closed her laptop.

  She and Murray went past the general office area toward the kitchen and lingered in the door to the conference room, where the SPs watched the movie.

  Dave said, “I don’t understand why she believed he was a good choice for a mate. He lacks manly features. How can he be expected to exact blood vengeance for her kin?”

  A ding indicated something set off the motion detectors, and she walked back to Mr. Black’s office, murmuring, “What now?”

  On the monitor, three angels wandered around the front revolving doors in a confused way. Two of them bumped into each other while the third leaned against the stone and seemed to instantly fall asleep.

  Murray stopped in the door. She swung her arm at the monitor. “Go downstairs and bring them up before someone sees them. They think this place is a safe house.”

  Murray raised an eyebrow. “Isn’t it?”

  “Providing lodging to every single-purpose angel in the city wasn’t part of the deal.” />
  “You have the whole building. Put them on the next floor.”

  “This is not the end of it, Murray. More SPs, maybe all of them for all I know, are going to want to come here, through angel telepathy or Dave’s blog or courier birds or however they operate. Don is already on my back for not single-handedly rounding up his target. I should be at Amenity Tower 24/7, but I keep getting pulled away.”

  She leaned back in the swivel chair and closed her eyes. “Also, I don’t like people.”

  Murray sat on the edge of the desk. “These aren’t people.”

  She gave him a skeptical look. “You’re right. They’re angels, with a single-minded focus on water beetles or tree frogs or clowns. I wasn’t going to tell you, but―”

  “What?”

  “I dated an SP once. Didn’t know it at the time. He was in charge of the protection of jumping spiders and ship’s husbands. The second job was one he took over for someone else. Eventually I got tired of his work schedule and the spiders he was always leaving around my apartment and the ship’s husbands he’d bring over.”

  “What is a ship’s husband?”

  “Never mind. My point is―never mind.” She waved it off. “It’s fine. I’ll take care of it.” She opened her laptop.

  “Okay, because I―”

  “Look, they need supervision, not to mention bedding materials and food, and that is definitely not something I’m good at.”

  “Well, I don’t need supervision, and I’m an angel,” Murray said.

  “Oh, a sample of one to represent many. Q.E.D., then.”

  “Don’t worry. We’ll fill out reimbursement forms for any supplies.”

  “Bring another stack. And don’t think I won’t vial the lot of them. I’m in enough trouble as it is.”

  Murray snorted. “Ironic that they think this is a safe house.”

  “Okay, bring them up. We’ll need more food. I wouldn’t have expected they would eat at all, let alone as much as they do.”

  “They acclimated.”

  “And they won’t eat anything but Cluck Snack.” She let out a breath. “You may as well tell me who the rest of them are.”