Exponential Apocalypse

by Eirik Gumeny

  “Oh, right, yeah. I forgot Mr. Big Bad Norse God is really just a whiny little bitch.”

  Catrina pouted her lips and proceeded to mock Thor, her approximation of his voice a spot-on mix of him and a pissy six-year-old girl:

  “Oh, I’m a human now, boo hoo. I keep having problems because I’m stupid and dumb and too stubborn to listen to Catrina, wah.”

  “Instead of insulting me,” said Thor, “you should be tracking down the ghosts of Steve McQueen and the Bandit’s mustache and convincing them to fight each other.”

  He hopped off the desk.

  “I’m gonna go rustle up some bodies for ‘em.”

  At precisely that moment, a pair of torsos was hurled through the glass doors of the hotel and into the lobby.

  “Will those do?” asked Catrina.

  “Nope.”

  Two more torsos bounced into the lobby.

  “OK,” said Thor. “What the hell.”

  Thirty: Ding, Dong, Ding

  Thor and Catrina stood in the broken, busted-up foyer of the Secaucus Holiday Inn and looked out over the plaza. Before them was an enormous, bulging werewolf, juggling a variety of appendages and heads with admirable skill.

  “That’s new,” commented Catrina.

  Thor scanned the rest of the plaza. To the left of what he had been assuming was some kind of escaped circus animal were three scientists: one looking on with curiosity, one looking on with a burlap sack over her head, and one sitting on the ground, clutching his knees and weeping. Thor pointed them out to Catrina.

  “Think we should go talk to them?” he asked.

  “You are aware of the giant wolfman between them and us, correct?”

  “Yes.”

  “The one playing with body parts?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you’re aware that we’re made of body parts, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you still think it’s smart to go over there?”

  “Verily.”

  “OK,” said Catrina, nodding her head, “have fun with that. If you need me, I’ll be grabbing the axe from the break room and then locking myself upstairs and hiding under my bed.”

  “Like an axe is gonna hurt that thing,” replied Thor. “Besides, you know we never clean under the beds. There’s bound to be something just as terrible living under there.”

  “Damn,” said Catrina, confused and upset that she was forced to agree with Thor. More importantly, that she was sober when doing so.

  “Fine,” she relented. “But if you get me killed, I’m coming back and haunting the shit out of you. And I mean constantly. When you’re asleep, in the shower, when you’re flirting up some senorita, whatever. I’m not gonna be nice about it.”

  “We’ll be fine,” replied Thor. “Just stay with me.”

  He grabbed her hand and led her around the edge of the plaza toward the scientists.

  The beast, singing “Frere Jacques” and balancing a severed arm on its nose, didn’t seem to notice.

  Thirty-One: It’s Always the Completely Batshit Insane Ones

  Thor and Catrina reached the scientists just as it began to rain.

  “Yo,” said Thor.

  “Yo, indeed,” said Dr. Lalas. “I’m Dr. Alexi Lalas; this is my assistant, Julie.”

  “Judy,” said Judy.

  “Judy,” said Dr. Lalas. “And this,” he patted the still weeping Dr. Meola on the head, “is Dr. Meola.”

  “Thor,” said Thor, nodding and extending his hand.

  “Catrina,” said Catrina, doing the same.

  “Nice to meet you,” said Dr. Lalas, shaking Thor’s hand.

  “Pleasure,” said Judy, shaking Catrina’s.

  The foursome switched partners and continued the introductory hand-clasping. Once finished, they stood in the plaza silently, looking at one another with complete neutrality. The rain continued to fall.

  Judy pulled her lab coat tighter. Catrina crossed her arms across her chest and huddled closer to Thor.

  Dr. Lalas smiled weakly and nodded at the hotel employees.

  The rain began falling harder.

  “So, uh, what the hell is that?” asked Thor, pointing a thumb at the super-wolfman, which was now standing on its hands and juggling scientist pieces with its feet.

  “That,” said Dr. Lalas, “is test subject 37-E, a hybrid of a werewolf and an irradiated, mutated human, engineered to be preternaturally aggressive, intelligent, and athletic.”

  Thor nodded in agreement a few times before blurting out, “Why in the holy fuck would you do that?!”

  “Kinda just… because we could. Basically.”

  “Who,” asked Catrina, “is it juggling?”

  “My associate, Dr. Ramos.”

  Judy cleared her throat aggressively.

  “And a couple of interns.”

  “They had names, damn it!” said Judy.

  “Yes, yes, Jamie,” said Dr. Lalas, “I’m sure they did.”

  Judy screamed incoherently, then pulled out a revolver from inside her lab coat and shot Dr. Lalas in the leg.

  “Gah, fuck,” he said, before folding to the ground like a deck of cards made of meat and bone and possessing a doctorate.

  “Crazy bitch…” he continued, before Judy shot him again, twice, in the face.

  Thor and Catrina stared at her, wide-eyed. They took a step back. Slowly.

  “You guys, uh,” said Judy, “you mind if we blame the wolf for that?”

  “No, no,” said Thor, “go right ahead.”

  “Yeah, totally,” said Catrina. “Absolutely.”

  Thirty-Two: Adapt or Die

  “And, so,” concluded Judy, “we followed it here, where it proceeded to grotesquely massacre everyone except for myself and Dr. Meola.”

  She motioned to Dr. Meola. He was lying in a puddle near the edge of the plaza, curled up in the fetal position and sucking his thumb.

  “Even though it really probably should have.”

  “But why is it singing?” asked Catrina.

  “Couldn’t tell ya.”

  “I… I think it’s having a tea party with the heads…”

  “Huh, yeah. Looks like,” said Judy. “Maybe the thing’s retarded. Or maybe it just really enjoys dismembering people. Who knows?”

  “Well, you, right?” said Catrina. “You should.”

  “Pfft, please. I should, sure. But I don’t. So, you know…”

  Catrina held back on a response, waiting for Judy to finish her sentence.

  Judy did not.

  “OK,” said Thor, eventually, “OK. So. You and your scientist friends got bored and created an unstoppable, homicidal monster. Then you let it escape. And then you failed, utterly, in your attempt to stop it, and, in fact, most of you actually managed to die during the attempt.”

  Judy nodded in agreement.

  “OK, good, fine,” said Thor. “Where are your weapons now?”

  “We gave them away.”

  “What?” inquired Catrina.

  Thor buried his face in his hands.

  “They were so heavy! And, I mean, we ran into these two robots along the way that were collecting scrap metal and Dr. Ramos, that’s his leg, over there, he thought maybe they could use them and… you know, I don’t really know what went down, actually, but he ended up handing them most of our weapons. We still had a few, we’re not stupid, but now they’re all scattered with the body parts. And I don’t know where those robots went, so, I mean, for all intents and purposes all of our weapons are lost, I guess. Well, to me anyway…”

  “What about your gun?” asked Catrina. “The one you didn’t shoot that other guy with.”

  “Oh, it’s empty.”

  “Empty.”

  “Yep,” replied Judy. “Mysteriously.” She winked at Catrina, but the bag shifted in the process, so Judy had to position the eyehole, hold it steady, and then repeat what she still considered to be a subtle action.

  Catrina briefly reflected on the
fact that this was the scientist who hadn’t been murdered.

  “I do have a hammer, though” said Judy.

  “A hammer?” said Thor.

  “A hammer.”

  Thor would have buried his face in his hands again, but he hadn’t bothered to remove them after the last time.

  “Why are you carrying a hammer?” asked Thor.

  “I don’t know,” said Judy, “I thought we might need it. You know, to build a shelter or something.”

  “You gave away your guns to robots, because they were uncomfortable to carry, but you held onto the hammer, in case you had to build a shelter, even though your research facility is less than five miles away and you were walking toward one of the few remaining centers of urban sprawl left in the world.”

  “Yes.”

  Thor paused to reflect on the fact that this was the surviving researcher, but Catrina shook her head and mouthed the word, “Don’t.” Thor thought his friend looked like she had been crying for the sake of the future of all humanity. She also looked hungry and slightly cold, like she wanted her dark blue sweater.

  Thor didn’t move at all, but Catrina recognized that he understood her condition and would do what he could to remedy their current situation and get her back inside and out of the rain as soon as possible. Catrina, likewise without flinching, thanked him for his continued consideration of her comfort and then apologized for the accidental alliteration. Both of them. Thor was not a fan of repeating consonants, intended or otherwise, but, as he conveyed to her with but the slightest of nods, it was OK, given the circumstances. Catrina didn’t smile, but Thor knew she wanted to.

  Thor and Catrina were pretty tight.

  “Uh, guys?” said Judy, not really sure why they were just looking at one another.

  Catrina took the hammer from Judy and handed it to Thor.

  “You up for this?” she asked.

  “I don’t think I really have a choice,” replied Thor.

  “Well,” said Catrina, “you could let this thing live to wander the countryside and kill more incompetent scientists.”

  Thor looked at Judy and her sopping wet burlap sack smile and briefly considered this option.

  “No,” he said finally. “It might kill a useful one. Or a baby or something. I should probably stop it now…”

  Thor looked down at the “weapon” in his hand.

  “… with a fucking hammer.”

  Thor hung his head.

  “I’m going to die, aren’t I?”

  “Looks like,” said Catrina.

  “Awesome.”

  Thirty-Three: Break It Down

  Thor walked through the pouring rain toward the atomic wolfman. The beast, curled up into a ball on the brick plaza, appeared to have tuckered itself out playing and dancing and singing and was now taking a nap.

  Thor turned around to face Catrina and Judy and said, “You do realize that this thing hasn’t actually done anything wrong, right? It just defended itself from a group of people trying to murder it.”

  “We also tortured it,” said Judy. “And we called it’s momma a ho!”

  Thor raised an eyebrow.

  “Why would you…”

  “Turn around, Thor,” said Catrina.

  Thor lowered his eyebrow and did as instructed. He saw nothing but heaving fur.

  The super-werewolf was towering over him and snarling, with claws out and sharp, pointy teeth exposed.

  Thor wasn’t an expert regarding animals by any means, but he assumed this is what a creature looked like when it had decided it was going to eat you.

  “Well,” he said, “this certainly makes things easier.”

  Thor looked at the hammer in his hand again.

  “Morally, anyway.”

  The werewolf swatted at Thor and he jumped back, its claws just inches from his chin. Thor swung the hammer will all his might and connected with the beast’s face. It tilted its head and looked at him kinda funny. Then it backhanded him across the plaza.

  Thor lifted himself onto his elbows just in time to see the monster lunging at him. He threw himself out of the way, the beast shattering the bricks it landed upon. The wolfman turned quickly and kicked, connecting with Thor’s chest and sending him back to the other side of the plaza.

  Thor hit the pavement hard. He began to pick himself up from the ground, but was immediately tackled by the werewolf.

  The beast took a few chunks of flesh from Thor’s left arm before Thor kicked the wolfman in the throat. It reeled up slightly. Thor, lying on his back, kicked it in the face. The wolfman fell backwards, rolling to the middle of the plaza. Its claws skittered against the bricks briefly before it regained its footing and readied itself to pounce.

  Thor, dizzy, staggering, and bleeding profusely, sized up the bleary atomo-wolf opposite him. It was bigger than him, stronger than him, and hairier than him. Thor figured he was a little less than three seconds away from violently being turned into confetti and/or salsa, depending on what the wolf did with his remains. Not really seeing any alternative, Thor shrugged, winced, and then threw the hammer at the atomic wolfman.

  In the same instant the hammer hit the creature’s snout, the werewolf was struck by lightning.

  Thor looked on incredulously.

  “What the fuck?”

  Thirty-Four: At Least It’s Not Raining Man-Eating Frogs, Right?

  “OK,” said Chester A. Arthur XVII, taking in the sight of his burning apartment building from the parking lot, “let’s not do that again.”

  “The renting-out-the-dead part?” asked Queen Victoria XXX. “Or just the setting-our-apartment-on-fire-to-escape-the-clutches-of-homicidal-munchkins part?”

  “I had been referring to the latter, but honoring the former seems like a good idea, too.”

  “Man, all of my stuff was in there,” said William H. Taft XLII.

  “All of our stuff was in there, Billy.”

  “Except my iPod,” said Victoria, “that’s in the car.”

  The car—parked absurdly close to a raging inferno, all things considered—exploded.

  “Fuck,” said the queen.

  “We probably should have seen that coming,” said William H. Taft XLII.

  “You’d think.”

  “That wasn’t our car, guys,” said Chester A. Arthur XVII.

  “Oh,” said William H. Taft XLII.

  “That’s good,” said Queen Victoria XXX.

  Another car exploded. Queen Victoria XXX and William H. Taft XLII looked at Chester A. Arthur XVII.

  “Also not ours. I parked ours on the other side of the building, on the far side of the lot, away from the inferno, thankfully,” he explained. “How do you guys not know what our car looks like?”

  “You never let us drive it,” said William H. Taft XLII.

  “And you’re always moving it and ‘upgrading’ it,” said Queen Victoria XXX.

  “Honestly, we just take your word for it that it’s even the same car.”

  “Oh,” said Chester A. Arthur XVII, thinking about it for a moment. “Yeah, that’s understandable.”

  Chester A. Arthur XVII, Queen Victoria XXX, and William H. Taft XLII stood in silence briefly, before simultaneously sitting down on the pavement on the far side of the parking lot. They continued to watch their home convert itself to heat and cinder.

  “It’s a good thing no one else was home this weekend,” said William H. Taft XLII.

  The flames twisted into the streaming smoke, like the tendrils of dancing octopi, reaching up and into the night sky. There was the occasional pop and isolated burst as an appliance exploded, but otherwise the building burned with a remarkable consistency.

  The reincarnations of leaders of state found themselves oddly soothed by the whole thing, as if they were sitting around a campfire. Right up until the screaming, anyway.

  “You guys’re hearing that, too, right?” asked Victoria.

  An old lady engulfed in flames jumped from the roof of the building. An
old man followed her. He was also on fire.

  “Oh, fuck,” said Chester A. Arthur XVII. “The Jenkinsons.”

  “I thought they moved out!” exclaimed Queen Victoria XXX.

  The screaming didn’t stop when the old people smashed into the ground. In fact, it seemed to get louder and more inconsistent, a random mix of blasphemies, obscenities, and complaining about the pain that accompanies being on fire and breaking multiple bones. Thankfully, the immolation didn’t stop when they hit the ground either, so the screaming didn’t continue much longer.

  “Jesus…”

  “Well, uh, at least,” stammered William H. Taft XLII, “at least all the possessed zombies are gone now, right?”

  The car Chester A. Arthur had parked on the other side of the apartment building roared past the trio. It looked to be full of reanimated corpses, at least one of whom, judging from the “Yee-haw!” shouted from the passenger seat, was possessed by a cowboy.

  “That’s our car, guys,” said Chester A. Arthur XVII.

  “You had to fucking say something, didn’t you, Billy?” said Queen Victoria XXX.

  “I didn’t… how was I…”

  “It’s like you’ve got a god damned superpower or something,” she continued, before resting her head on her knees and sighing.

  Thirty-Five: Hope Tastes Delicious

  Quetzalcoatl, after cracking his skull against an exposed beam and summarily regaining the full use of his cognitive abilities—as well as his absolute animosity toward a world in which he was not a god—had decided to give up on the cabal of philosophers and strike out on his own.

  The philosophers, however, were of a different opinion.

  Apparently one cannot just stop being a savior.

  “Though the world appears doomed, and destined to fall…”

  At first, the poets and thinkers and whatever else simply followed Quetzalcoatl around. Which was fine. Once Quetzalcoatl started running, though, they, too, stepped up the pace, repeatedly getting in his way in a desperate attempt to stop him from fleeing. Which was less fine.