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

by Nina Post

  Raum rolled his eyes. “The documents are extremely specific.”

  “What documents?” Forcas said.

  “The Civil Rules and Procedures for Angel Binding and Unbinding―which I tracked down after reading that article―explicitly states the conditions for safely egressing a prison by means of a mobile garbage bin.”

  Gaap made a face. “Oh, gross.”

  s Kelly followed the bald man through downtown Pothole City, she noticed birds dropping out of the sky.

  Moving steadily alongside the buildings on her right, she turned her head in short motions, eyes shifting in a figure eight pattern to pick out signs and to place the bald man contextually. She studied the bald man’s shape―broad shoulders, slightly pronating walk―and noted the regular spacing of surrounding objects: newspaper boxes, posts, alleys, bus stops, and shadows cast by the buildings.

  The bald man stopped at a high-rise office building and pushed through the revolving doors. She noted the address and made a quick stop at her apartment in the former Special Situations HQ to check on the SPs and get some food. After grabbing a bag of cheese crackers, she followed a strange sound to the pneumatic tube room.

  “Mehiel!”

  The angel who protected professors, orators, and authors was curled up in the corner holding on to the plastic tube. She lifted the end of his shirt and saw a wound leaking mint-colored fluid.

  She ran to her bag to get a number she had scrawled on a lollipop wrapper. Af’s number. Unlike Murray, Af was easy to reach on the phone. But since he was physically bound to Amenity Tower, she would have to bring Mehiel to him. But there was no answer.

  She carried Mehiel down the fire escape, wishing, not for the first time, that the elevators worked. She anchored her feet and lowered him to the ground from the ledge, thinking that out of all the ways to get someone off a fire escape, this was probably the worst, short of just dropping him to the ground like a sack of mulch.

  She unlocked her bike and told him to hold on to her, then rode to the condo building, dropped her bike, and met Af at a side door.

  “Who’s this?”

  “Mehiel. He’s injured.”

  Af checked the wound, then went through the mail area, Mehiel on his back. They looked like a shark and one of those tiny parasite fishes.

  On the way to the elevator, they passed a resident walking a death worm with a small pink bow on its head. To her surprise, Af smirked at the worm. “Owner taking you outside to do your business? How’s that going?”

  “He hates that,” Af said in the elevator. “And I enjoy it very much. The one vice I allow myself.”

  Noting her expression, Af continued. “He came here around the same time as I did, and assumed he could escape in the vessel of a death worm. He couldn’t.”

  “How can you tell which one he is?”

  “I just know.”

  They got into the high-rise elevator behind a cockatrice carrying a large insulated pizza box carrier. The cockatrice pressed a different floor and said, “Cluck.”

  She couldn’t tell if the cockatrice was insulting them, or giving them a polite greeting.

  The digital sign in the elevator reminded residents about the annual death worm audit: All death worms must be registered with the management office; only unit owners could have death worms; and guest death worms were not allowed.

  “We have a death worm problem here,” Af said. “They make a terrible shrieking sound you can hear floors away.”

  The cockatrice got out two floors lower than Af’s floor. “Cluck.”

  “Have a good day,” Af said.

  “Cluck!” Kelly said to the Cockatrice, hoping she got the tone right. She stared at the box with longing as the doors closed.

  “That pizza smells really good.”

  “We can order one.”

  “No time. I have to find the rest of the SPs. I got in trouble with Don, but don’t really care. What’s the worst he can do, start the apocalypse? Give me a bad recommendation?” Heat prickled her forehead as she realized she said too much.

  Af frowned. “Don? Don who?”

  “It’s nothing. Never mind. I got in trouble at work, but the SPs are more important to me.” It hadn’t occurred to her until she said it out loud. Usually her work took precedence over everything else, not that there was much else.

  “They’re usually at my place, but Mehiel is the only one I’ve located.” And she had a few questions for her so-called handler, Murray.

  “Let me help you, then.”

  “Don’t take this the wrong way,” she said, “but you can’t leave the building.”

  “True,” Af conceded, “but I could help from here.”

  “Such as?”

  “Ordering pizza, for one,” Af said.

  When they reached Af’s floor, they heard a noise outside and she looked out the hallway window down at Pothole City. Af hoisted Mehiel up on his back and stood next to her.

  From this wide southern view of downtown, more than forty floors up, they watched as birds dropped out of their migratory paths, and monsters of various shapes and colors dive-bombed office windows.

  A small slug monster slammed into the window in front of them, suctioning onto the glass. A tooth-lined rectum yawned open and lightning shot out, melting a tortilla-sized area of the window. Af staggered back, but the glass held. The slug monster flew off.

  Kelly blew air through her teeth in frustration. She had just washed that window.

  “I saw this earlier. If the birds are dropping from their migratory paths, it means that Anpiel isn’t on his post.” At Af’s expression, she added, “Protecting birds.”

  Af looked confused. “I thought Tubiel protected birds.”

  “No, Tubiel returns small birds to their owners. Anpiel protects birds, which includes migratory paths. Let’s get Mehiel to a bed.”

  Before they turned to go back down the hallway, they glanced down at the street. Cars, buses, cabs, double-decker buses, and fire trucks skidded and caromed off one another. The sky turned dark, then light, then dark again. The lighted windows on the office towers somehow coordinated to read ‘WTF.’ Toward the east, the lake blazed with fire, and a gigantic sea monster emerged from the burning water.

  “Hmm,” Af said.

  She shrugged. “That lake is so polluted, it was only a matter of time.”

  At his apartment, Af took the sleeping Mehiel to a guest room and lifted the bottom of Mehiel’s shirt to check the wound. “Almost closed up,” Af said.

  “That was fast.”

  “There are advantages to his status.”

  “What about your status?” she asked.

  “I have no status. But, hey, if Raum’s plan actually succeeds, then I can have any board seat I want. Of course, my HOA fees will equal the GDP of Panama.” Af paused and frowned. “What happened to him?”

  “I have no idea. I just found him like this. Maybe it was a burglar, but I didn’t see that anything was taken. Can you watch him for a while?”

  “Where are you going to be?” Af asked.

  “I have to go see about some evidence in a hell lodge.”

  “Pick up a matchbook for me, would you? I collect them now.”

  f swam his usual fifty laps in the pool, then sat on the side, legs dangling in the water. He put his goggles on top of his head.

  Raum strolled into the pool area wearing hibiscus-patterned board shorts, a Pothole City Cares About Soil-Transmitted Helminthiasis 10K t-shirt, and a towel around his neck, and carrying an espresso machine.

  “Hello there, Af.” Raum waved. He spotted an outlet behind the lounge chairs and plugged in his machine. “C’mon, sit over here. Have a macchiato. It’s not like we have to worry about losing sleep tonight.”

  Af took a chair near Raum. The espresso machine whirred, chugged, and spurted out a tiny coffee.

  “You seem pensive,” Raum said. “Human vessel getting you down?”

  “Yes, actually.”

  “Oh,
it’s wretched, isn’t it? I wake up in the mornings feeling like I was cast down all over again! Okay, bleak face: spill. Not that you need to give me a reason for that lugubrious expression.” Raum stretched out his arms to indicate everything in front of them. “We’re all trapped here, in this prison, and by prison I mean this building and these vessels. Can you believe these bodies don’t just dissolve in the pool? I was afraid to go in at first.”

  Af furrowed his brow. “You should take care of your vessel. We don’t know how long we’ll be here.”

  “Not long, buddy. Between you and me, I’m desperate to get out of here. We deserve it. We’ve been betrayed, abandoned, and rejected.”

  “Not to mention the hellspiral of committee meetings,” Af muttered.

  “Are you joking?” Raum chuckled. “Those meetings are the only good thing we’ve got. Is that what’s keeping you down?”

  Af leaned forward to look at the bottom of the pool. “I hired a dental hygienist to make a house visit for a cleaning, and she told me that my vessel has genetic periodontal disease.”

  Raum patted Af on the back. “That’s the kind of problem that lends urgency to our situation. We have to get out of here now and get back into our true forms.”

  Af put his goggles back on.

  “Not that it’ll be easy to get everyone organized,” Raum said. “The whole escape sub-committee has breathed in some kind of fungus that makes them forget why they’re there. I’ve tried everything: slides, semaphores, charades, you name it. There’s no more time. We have to try this loophole now.”

  Af turned to Raum. “Wait―what loophole?”

  Raum rolled his eyes. “Maybe if you had bothered to come to the meeting, you would know.”

  “Don’t be petulant.”

  “Fine.” Raum spoke behind his hand in a stage whisper. “I’m almost certain that we can leave in a dumpster.”

  “You mean one of those bins in the ground level where the trash goes?”

  “Yes, the loophole is to leave passively in a container that takes us out of the building.”

  “Why a dumpster?”

  “That’s what the documents point to.”

  “Which documents?”

  “The Civil Rules and Procedures for Angel Binding and Unbinding. Also, the dumpster is big enough for all of us, and it’s picked up on a consistent schedule.”

  “I hope the board renewed the waste management contract, considering how carelessly you all tended to the building. When are you doing this?”

  “We need to be ready for the dumpster pickup tomorrow at 6:00 p.m. I need three other angels, though more are welcome.”

  “Do you really think you can get them into a dumpster?”

  Raum tossed back another espresso. He threw his towel onto a chair, went over to the pool, and lowered himself into the water. “I’ll tell them whatever it takes to get them in there. I presume you’ll be joining us?” He gave Af an expectant look, bobbing.

  Af shook his head. “I prefer to stay.”

  “What? Af, you’re talking crazy. Why would you do that?”

  “I like it here, Raum. I’m a calmer person here.”

  Raum put on his goggles. “Af, you’re not a person. You’re one of the most powerful angels of destruction there is. You’re a ruler―”

  “Over the death of mortals. I know.”

  “And a Prince of Wrath. That’s a big deal, Af. How could you possibly not want to be that?” Raum almost seemed sympathetic for a moment. “You know you can’t stay here, buddy.”

  “You seem to be enjoying the pool.”

  “For now.” Raum flashed a tight smile. “I have a lot of work ahead of me. But then we’ll be free.”

  “And after that?” Af asked.

  “We’ll be free.” He raised his hands to say ‘what else matters’?

  “What are you going to do after you get out?” Af asked.

  Raum grinned. “Destroying this prison, first.” He winked. “Then Pothole City. Totally obliterated. Then, yeah, everything else I see. I don’t want to leave one human, old friend. Not one. I’m going to go all out, full scale. The elliptical is not cutting it for me, know what I mean?”

  A fearful Emim giant stuck his toe in the pool and retreated with a shiver, then hurried to the hot tub, fitting just his foot and ankle inside. The water spilled over to the patio.

  “You’re not excited?” Raum asked. “You’re not totally psycho’d to leave?”

  “I believe the term is ‘psyched’. Psyched to leave.”

  Raum reached out and grabbed a float in the shape of a donut with sprinkles. The Jackal yelped in protest at the sudden loss of his float until Raum glared at him.

  “Yeah, okay. Well, aren’t you psyched?” Raum positioned himself in the float as the Jackal flailed in the deep end, trying to keep his thick, glossy hair above water. “Let’s be serious for a second.”

  “I’ve been serious this whole time,” Af said.

  “Ohhh, right. Well, hey, guess what? You won’t need this vessel anymore. You’ll be back in your true form and won’t have to worry about your perio-whatever. Destroy the whole world if you want!”

  “I have an appointment tomorrow.”

  “Cancel that nonsense, Af!” Raum jiggled the float in Af’s direction. “You know, I can’t help feeling a little offended that you don’t think I can do this.”

  “It’s not that, Raum. If anyone can release them, it’s you.”

  Raum grinned and puffed out his chest with pride. “Yes, that’s true.”

  “But I want to stay.” Af stood and set his cup on the table.

  Raum struggled to get in the donut float. He pulled it over his arms, tried to pull it down, then gave up and tossed it to the side, hitting the Jackal in the head. “You can’t stay.”

  “I can, and I will. It’s my choice.” Af gathered his things and headed for the door in the glass wall.

  “It’s the wrong choice.”

  “I guess we’ll see.”

  The Jackal grabbed his float and paddled furiously to the deep end of the pool. Raum waded through the shallow end and pointed.

  “You’ll be collateral damage, Af. You understand me? Anything, anyone left in Amenity Tower will be obliterated as soon as I get us out. Even you, if you stay in your vessel.”

  Af paused, his hand on the door. Raum was right―he would still be in his vessel. His fragile vessel, with its need for maintenance of all kinds.

  “Why are you being so stubborn?” Raum yelled from the pool door. “You can’t even leave the building! Is it that great here? It’s just demented! Why am I the only sane one left?”

  don’t have much time,” the bald man announced when he shut the employer’s office door.

  “Take a seat, have a sandwich. My favorite show is on.”

  The bald man sank into a tufted black leather chair and picked up a crystal globe with an engraved plaque: Hell Lodge Golf Club, Destroying Angel of the Apocalypse, Best Putting Stroke.

  Don, dressed in his usual hibiscus-pattern shirt, stayed focused on his flat-screen TV. He laughed uproariously at Roger chasing ducks around the studio and wiped tears from the corners of his eyes.

  “Out of all the shows of this type, this is the best. I hope he wins this year. So”―Don swiveled to face the bald man, but swiveled too far and grabbed on to his desk to pull his chair back in―“what do you want now?”

  The bald man leaned back in the chair on the other side of the desk, legs open and arms out to the side, to show that he felt no need to protect his sensitive parts in this room.

  “We have a problem.”

  “No, you have a problem.” Don jabbed his finger in the air.

  “We both have a problem.”

  “It has always been your problem.”

  Don deflected his intense gaze from the bald man and unwrapped some kind of burrito from wax paper.

  The bald man waved his arm to the side. “You wouldn’t even have this―this sinecure if I
hadn’t fixed who knows how many damn problems that you created.”

  Don took a sip of his iced tea. “I admit that your services have been useful to me.”

  The bald man checked his phone for messages. “I’m so glad. Now, speaking of your problem, let me set the scene for one auspicious day. Most of the paperwork on that day pertained to those pesky fallen angels who were assigned or reassigned to a brass pot, a coffee cup, an arcade machine, a parking meter, whatever. But it was just so much work. Not only did you have to fill out all those forms―one per angel―you had to translate every word into Sumerian before securing final approval. Tedious.”

  Don made himself a drink from the bar cart, muddling mint and sugar at the bottom of the glass.

  The bald man stretched back, arms at his head. “It would have been a whole lot easier to just bind all the naughty angels to Amenity Tower, Pothole City’s Finest Luxury Condominium Building.” He extended his arms, palms up. “And now, all of the fallens are together, in the same building. The same building. That is some gnarly stuff waiting to happen, Don.”

  Don sipped his drink. He did not offer one to the bald man, who noticed the blatant oversight. “First of all, I don’t see what the big deal is.” Don set his drink on his desk blotter. “So they’re all in the same place. What’s the worst that could happen, they change the bylaws? Besides, he is in there. I routed him with all the rest. Do you have any idea how dangerous he is? If he gets out of that condo and wreaks worldwide chaos and destruction―”

  The bald man raised a brow.

  “It would be bad,” Don said. “For, you know… people.”

  The bald man laughed. “You can’t stand people. Why would you give a―ohh, I see.”

  “What?”

  “You don’t want him to take all the credit.” The bald man stood and slapped his palms down on the desk.

  Don wheeled back.

  “That’s it, isn’t it? You two have been at each other’s throats for epochs. It must curdle your caustic bodily fluid to think of him escaping and stealing your thunder. Because you’re lazy. You’ll intend to cause total destruction, but you’ll just keep putting it off to play golf or to watch another episode of What’s On Your Mind, With Roger Balbi. You don’t have the project management skills. Those angels are going to pull together as a team and figure out how to escape the luxury condominium building you assigned them to, and then they’re going to make you look bad.”