Brodowski drew his weapon and aimed steadily at the mob: men, women, and children gone berserk. Fifteen rounds in a magazine and at least sixty to seventy civilians approaching fast. “Frank, they look pissed,” he said. “Make the call! What do I do?”
“Christ, knuckle-down, ya moron. Shoot the shit out of all hostiles and anyone else who gets cute.” Tompkins moaned, handing Brodowski his weapon, barely able to lift his arm above his waist. “Take my gun, kid. I’m no good to you now.”
They’re all hostile, Frank. There are too many of them. What the hell’s gotten into everybody? I can’t do this. I can’t stop them. Stop! Stop fucking running! Please God, there are children. They are people. No, not anymore. Get your shit together. It’s you or them, so squeeze the goddamn trigger. Do it now before it’s too late. Do it!
“Fuck this, this is suicide,” Brodowski saddled his gun back into his holster and hoisted Tompkins limp body into the back seat of the patrol car before the mob reached the corner.
“Easy! Jesus Christ, what are you doing?” Tompkins snapped awake, shoving Brodowski away.
“We’re getting the fuck out of here and getting you to a hospital, Sarge,” Brodowski said.
“I don’t need a goddamn hospital!” Tompkins howled back, gripping his abdomen harder.
“You prefer a coffin? I don’t!” Brodowski yelled, jumping into the driver’s seat.
He yanked the shift into reverse and slammed on the pedal, hurtling forward. “Shit!” Brodowski panicked, jerking the shift again.
“Christ! It’s the one with the ‘R’, moron!” Tompkins yelled from the back.
“I know! I know!” Brodowski cranked the gear again, into reverse, when a dark pulp rained down on to the windshield darkening everything; a large object crashed onto the hood, blowing out the glass of the passenger’s window.
“Fuck!” Tompkins lurched forward, alarmed by the curtain of human slush sliding down the windshield. “What the hell was that?”
Brodowski struggled to catch his breath.
“Oh my God, Sarge,” his eyes widened as the chunky plasma on the windshield slowly parted, revealing a man’s upper half violently thrashing on the hood, hands smacking against the glass and face wrenched in horror.
Tompkins levered himself to look out of the back window as the swarm ran past the vehicle, but a large fist the size of a wrecking ball swatted them back, into the air. Another fist drove down, repeatedly pounding, grinding, and smearing several of them across the pavement and bathing the vehicle in blood.
The living torso on the hood desperately pounded the windshield as Brodowski wrestled with the ignition again. How’s he still alive? Brodowski thought, stomping on the gas pedal, but the engine stalled each time.
“What are you waiting for? Get us the fuck out of here!” Tompkins boomed as the beast gored the back of the vehicle with its horns and raised it over its head. The car rose into the air and fell fifteen feet back to the curb, blasting metallic and glass shards from its body. Brodowski’s face shattered against the steering wheel, rendering him bloody and unconscious; Tompkins was hurled against the door.
“Kid? Hey! Brodowski!” Tompkins called out, banging on the safety barrier, but Brodowski didn’t answer. “Answer me, goddamnit!”
Blood covered the steering wheel and dashboard. “Kid?”
Tompkins gazed out into the blood-drenched street from the muddied back window. The chaos had quieted, and rain had begun to fall. It was getting dark.
The people were mostly dead, torn to pieces, cored like apples by the horned behemoth chomping on their carcasses, each tusk piercing and bursting hunks of flesh from its jowls.
All Tompkins could make of the monster was its ambiguous frame fading into the cinder and smog. Each step came with a tremor, every breath released with a furious gust.
“You ain’t gonna’ kill me you ugly son of a bitch!”
6
In Route to the Meadow
5:46 p.m.
“Has anyone seen or heard from Peter?” Freddie asked Domingo.
Domingo shook his head, keeping his eyes on the road, hands firmly on the wheel. “Nope, nothing, but Lilly’s at the meadow. She’s freaking out about leaving the babysitter behind.”
Freddie shot Domingo a curious look. “Where’s the babysitter?”
“You didn’t say to bring her,” Domingo answered.
“What? So you just left her at the apartment? Use your head, man,” Freddie said, beaming Domingo with a hard look.
“You didn’t say…”
“Never mind what I didn’t say. I wouldn’t have just left her. Shit. She’s watched my kids for five years. She’s like family, Domingo.
You could’ve at least offered her a ride somewhere,” Freddie scolded him.
Samson sat in the backseat, sensing Domingo smiling, watching him in the rearview mirror the entire time, hardly listening to anything Freddie was saying.
“Lilly’s not gonna want to see you like that,” Freddie said, pointing to Samson’s blood soaked sport coat.
“You got anything in the back for him to change into?” Freddie asked Domingo.
Domingo gleamed devilishly, his trucker’s hat slightly askew, eyes hidden behind bulky mirrored sunglasses. “In fact, I do. I’ve got a nice NYPD t-shirt with your name on it, buddy!” he said, taunting Samson in the mirror. “So, the famous Samson, in the flesh,” Domingo continued. “The King of Chinatown graces us with his presence! What was that they used to call you back in your day, the Asian Magician or somethin’, huh?” he snickered.
“You’re being an asshole,” Freddie grunted.
“What? I’m just fucking with the guy,” Domingo insisted.
Samson didn’t dignify Domingo’s bravado with an answer. Instead, he watched the scenery roll by one dismal street after another: dead civilians, people looting, crowd control, others rushing past the dead and wounded, more dead people, strange looking people, things burning, and utility vehicles howling from every direction.
Domingo jerked the steering wheel of the truck and swerved into oncoming traffic narrowly avoiding the patrol car that launched into their path. He collided with a cab and spun forty-five degrees to a halt.
The patrol car slammed into the light post pinning a pedestrian to the pole. Bloodied rioters rushed Domingo’s side of the truck. Some clamored for help; others assaulted the vehicle with weapons.
“Is everyone okay?” Freddie asked.
Domingo drew his gun from his holster and cocked it.
“Yeah, I’m good.”
Samson’s glasses had been knocked from his face; it was the first time Freddie had seen the scarred cavity in Samson’s head. “Now we see eye to eye, huh, Freddie?” Samson smiled.
TO BE CONTINUED…
PART TWO
CHARLIE & JERRY vs. THE APOCALYPSE
MOURNING GLORY
Monday, January 27th, 2014
Morning of the storm (Day 1- 11/21/13)
There was a loud, desperate banging at my front door. I ignored it, sleep was far more important. I dozed off again because being awake hurt too much, and it felt like an elephant was standing on the top of my head. I wanted whoever it was to go away.
The banging on the door came again sometime later, and every slam brought me one step closer to reaching for the pail by the bed.
Those red blaring numbers on the digital alarm clock read 1:33, but I couldn’t tell whether that was a.m. or p.m. because I had built a tomb out of my bedroom.
“Oh God, please, please kill them,” I begged. I finally rose from the darkness and made my way down the stairs slowly and painfully. The banging kept coming, and I heard a voice from the other side calling me.
“Charlie! Charlie! Open the fucking door, man, come on!” It was Jerry, and he sounded more urgent than usual. Crap. Jerry must’ve done ‘shrooms again, I thought.
I opened the door and the daylight blasted my eyes, blinding me as Jerry pushed his way into my house.
It was too much to take in after what I had just done to myself in the last three days.
“Did you take that shit Zack gave you again, man?” I asked holding my hand up to shield my eyes.
“Here, put this on, I got it from the garage!” Jerry threw a filtration mask at me urging me to put it on.
“What were you doing in my garage?” I asked.
“Just put it on!” Jerry hysterically raced through my house grabbing things and stuffing them into garbage bags as I stood in my boxers watching him. I knew when Jerry was high and this time he surprisingly wasn’t.
I grabbed him by his shoulders and stopped him in his tracks. “Hey, what the fuck is going on, man? Chill for a second, talk to me.”
Jerry’s eyes welled up with tears as he finally told me what was happening out in the world. It all sounded pretty stupid to me.
“The terrorists are attacking us with a tornado?...Uhm, okay,” I said as I turned to look back at my door. “The terrorists knocked down our trees? I don’t give a shit about the trees, Jerry. You woke me up for this?” It hurt too much to be awake.
I walked out onto my porch and saw that the storm had knocked over most of the trees and phone lines for several blocks over. The screens in my kitchen windows were gone and the floors were flooded.
The flooding in my kitchen concerned me more because I had to eventually clean it myself.
Jerry finally collected himself and told me that people were getting sick from some airborne virus. Jerry called it “BIOLOGICAL WARFARE.”
“It’s on the news, and we have to evacuate immediately!” he yelled on his way to the kitchen.
“No way, nuh-uh, I’m ain’t fallin’ for that shit again,” I said. If I jumped every time the government told me to, then I would never have gone to the beach on a holiday weekend after 9/11.
“We’re going to be fine,” I assured Jerry. “We’re going to be fine. SARS hasn’t killed me, the Swine Flu, Anthrax and West Nile virus hasn’t either, so I think we should just take it easy. It’s the same shit with the news and their propaganda, ignore it. I’m going back to bed.”
“You can’t go back to bed!” Jerry ran to the windows and pulled back the curtains pointing out the unusual amount of traffic on our street.
Our neighbors were trampling one another to a chorus of car horns. There was a congestion of vehicles, and neighbors moving their families out of their homes alarmingly fast and taking off at lightning speed.
“Ignore that?” he asked.
2:10 P.M.
Jerry and I sat glued to my couch, channel surfing between the coverage of the turmoil at the marinas, the main street riots, and the dial-it-in-know-it-alls who clued us in on the behavior of the tornados, why no one saw them coming, the mystery virus, the diabolical terrorist’s plot behind all this, and biological warfare.
Suddenly, there were NO terrorists? No, Mother Nature was the terrorist. No, the virus was the terrorist. Wait, well, where did the virus come from? The virus came from the tornado? Oh, two tornadoes…and maybe terrorists? Then the patriotic fanfare by local politicians and pundits began.
Park Avenue is in peril and there’s a meltdown in Midtown. There’s a skirmish on the circle line and it’s every man for himself now. Look at these fucking animals. They’re like cattle on a minefield. The news ticker reads, “BREAKING NEWS: SHOTS FIRED IN MIDTOWN: 5 FATALLY WOUNDED,” as it scrolled across the bottom of the screen. Minutes later the ticker read, “POLICE KILL GUNMAN.” Problem solved.
Let’s just turn this goddamn’d city into the O.K. Corral while we’re at it. Panic brings out the stupid in people.
Emergency vehicles choke the streets, and police reroute traffic away from the bridges and tunnels. Whistles, bullhorns, and sirens sing the songs of chaos.
“SEVERAL INJURED, POSSIBLY DEAD AND TRAPPED IN SUBWAY SYSTEM.”
This is what the yellow cabbies live for: stunt driving in Manhattan. Jack up those meters you Paki-bastards! “Get me the fuck out of here!” will cost you double!
“MAYOR TO SPEAK”
ZzZzZz.
“VIRUS SCARE PLAGUES THE BIG APPLE”
News teams jockey for the lead. Death is good, ratings are even better! Mealy-mouthed anchors “really do care” and the perky weather girl isn’t wearing a bra tonight. Jerry accuses the lead anchor of doing cocaine.
“How do you know?” I asked.
The signs are all there. Any man with a fake tan in November and a hair transplant has to be shoveling some fairy dust up his nose, right?
Elsewhere:
Someone calls in a bomb scare. Tourists are kicking themselves. Christmas comes early this year for the crooks and looting’s incited. Jerry is pissed football is canceled tonight due to the end of humanity.
Rowdy thugs throw up gang signs and yell profanities into the news camera, disgusted field reporter is giving it her all to look riveting.
Weepy schoolteacher meets NYPD linebacker and gets body slammed when she attempts to cross a barricade. “I just want to go home!” she cries. A horse carriage turns over and crushes the horse near Central Park West.
Forecast for the future: there won’t be one.
Eyewitnesses across the city recall moments before the storm hit.
A heavyset man working with a road crew on the Long Island Expressway describes the air as “becoming still and electric-like” seconds before the sky darkened and then—Boom!
“There was a powerful burst of wind that flipped cars on the highway and hurled some of my men off the *bleeping* bridge!” he claimed.
The sky, soon after, roared above them as heavy rain and hail fell from it, he added. Several motorists lay injured on the flooded highway after colliding with oncoming vehicles, falling trees, and flying debris and metal.
A teenage girl, on an elevated train platform in Brooklyn, described what she saw as a whirlpool of fire forming in the sky miles away.
A man submitted recorded footage from his 18th story balcony window in the Bronx, via cell phone, of an unusual lightning storm before the burst blew his windows out.
Man: “Oh, my *bleeping* God. Can you see this *bleep*?! (laughter)
(cont’d) What the *bleep* is that? Holy *bleep*!”
--female voice in the background: “Get away from the windows you *bleeping* idiot!”
Video footage from the cell phone shows approaching fat clouds funneling with bursts of light underneath their bellies.
Man: (cont’d) “Wow! That is *bleeping* crazy!”
--female voice in the background: “You’re *beeping* stupid if you stay by those windows, babe.”
Man: (cont’d) (laughter)
The video footage goes black after an explosion of glass—screaming ensues.
The deadly uprising of angry mobs grew larger in high traffic arenas like those in downtown Flushing, leaving thousands injured or dead in the subways and on the streets.
Water taxis, ferries, and the National Guard assembled along the marinas from here to Long Island hurried people away from the threat of contamination.
The decline of civilization and widespread panic—There was chaos, confusion, and minimal cooperation from the civilians frantically trampling and flooding others off the piers and into the bay as they fought to get onto the boats.
Then there were the unfortunate ones stuck in transit, who did not have enough time to regroup with their families, get their children out of school, and get to the evacuation zones before the authorities blockaded the ports and entry to the city.
All incoming flights were rerouted; outgoing flights were canceled at the airports after a 747 took a nosedive into the bay shortly after takeoff.
The end of our existence, televised on five local news stations. Jerry and I bounced between each one of them as we
stuffed our faces with frozen pizza and beer.
“We’re going to fucking die, man. I know it,” Jerry said, slowly grinding away at the pizza crust with his jowls. I squirmed back into my couch waiting for the aspirin to kick in.
“Dude, don’t freak out on me, seriously. We’re not going to die. Tomorrow everything will be back to normal,” I said.
At 6 p.m., the electronics started going dark—the phones and cable were the first to go. Channels 2, 4, and 5 news went dark before channels 9 and 11 did. Moments later, the talking head appeared in the box, yours truly—Mr. President. Bad news travels fast.
President’s Address concerning the “First Circle” Queens, NY
THE PRESIDENT’S ADDRESS
“Fellow Americans, this indeed is a time of great struggle and tragedy. We assure you that we are acting diligently and aggressively to overcome the challenges of what we are calling the “First Circle” epidemic.
Many of you are aware that earlier today the greater portion of Queens, New York, suffered a significant amount of damage from multiple tornadoes, followed by an outbreak of a deadly virus. The Borough of Queens and Long Island are under immediate quarantine to prevent the virus from advancing and reaching neighboring Boroughs.
We are acting on an initiative to rescue survivors and restore the lives of our loved ones.
As Americans, WE as PEOPLE—when unified—are resilient and insurmountable when facing great adversity. We must not allow ourselves to lose hope under the weight of fear and isolation. We must have hope, we must have faith, we must persevere—God be with you all. God bless.”
By 7:30 p.m., all the networks went down and the President had told us to sit tight. “Help was on the way,” he said, but we went outside anyway.
I didn’t want to feed into Jerry’s paranoia of us dying, but why would they cut off the television feed? That has never happened before.
I'M NOT DEAD: The Journals of Charles Dudley Vol.1 Page 10
