The Post-Apocalyptic Tourist’s Guide to St. Louis

by David VonAllmen

  Spikes of pain dug into Thursday’s toes. He sucked air through his teeth.

  “What is it?” Nandi asked.

  Thursday sat down on the floor and yanked his shoe off, expecting to see blood. There was nothing.

  It was the infection. It had to be. Something was going wrong inside his body, and the pain in his toes was just the beginning. If the decay was starting already, how long until he became too sick and weak to travel?

  A voice echoed from the next room, a booming voice speaking with passion. Thursday put his shoe back on and they followed the sound, walking into the cathedral’s main body. The sight was more opulent than Thursday could have imagined, the golden mosaics paining stories across massive columns and arches that towered fifty feet above his head. Hundreds of wood benches sat lined up in rows down the length of the cathedral’s floor, empty near the rear where Thursday and Nandi stood, but filled with people near the massive marble altar where a man in white robes paced back-and-forth, delivering a sermon with waves of his hands to emphasize every word. He held a black book in one hand, and shook it in the air.

  “…is but the first gift the Lord had decided to bestow upon His faithful,” the man called out. If he noticed Thursday and Nandi enter, he didn’t show it. From such a distance, it was doubtful he could make them out clearly enough to know they were newcomers. “More gifts are coming. But in order to receive them, we must continue to prepare, we must work to make ourselves worthy.”

  “Nandi…” Thursday said in a low voice. “I didn’t tell you the truth about why I was going up river with you on the Belle.”

  Nandi kept her body facing the altar and the preaching man, but turned her head to look at him.

  “I’ve been… infected with something,” he said.

  Nandi leaned away from him. “Infected with what?” she whispered.

  “It’s not contagious. It’s something somebody made up in a lab. I have to get to Seattle, on the coast. It’s… I don’t know. A thousand miles?”

  “A thousand miles?”

  “The Belle was going to get me halfway there. I only have about three months.”

  “A thousand miles in three months? That’s impossible. And why? What…?”

  “The people who made up this infection said they’d cure me. But they’re in Seattle.”

  “Why are you telling me this now?” Nandi asked. From the look on her face, she already knew the answer.

  “Look, I… This thing is already messing up my body. I have a long way to go and no time to get there.”

  Nandi looked away from him and stood silently, fear stretching her lips into a tight line.

  “…all we need to know right here,” the preaching man said, waving his black book at the crowd. “The Bible foretold what was to come, and the Bible foretells what will happen next.”

  “So you’re going to leave,” Nandi said.

  “I have to.”

  “Ryan is going to die. They’re going to let him…” Nandi realized her voice was getting loud enough to carry and stopped herself.

  “I helped you get this far. Isn’t that enough? I wish I could do more—”

  “You’re going to blow my cover,” Nandi said.

  “What? How is me leaving—”

  “We told them we were on a spiritual quest. And now that we’ve found our holy man you’re just going to leave? They’ll know that doesn’t add up.”

  “Well… we can get into an argument. I’ll say I don’t believe and you can tell me off, proclaim your faith. They’ll see how devoted you are and trust you more.”

  Nandi shook her head and exhaled heavily. “It won’t work.” Her tone was one of resignation.

  “…Revelations 9:19 which reads…” the preacher held the black book open to read it. “And I saw every last light extinguished. Night overtook the entire surface Earth all at once, black and lifeless. The next Death descended upon us, the Beast’s swarm of flies that ate man and machine alike.”

  “What…?” Thursday looked to Nandi. “Did you catch that?”

  “Catch what?” Nandi asked.

  The preacher continued reading. “The Alien swarm devoured entire cities like locusts feasting on wheat fields, ridding man of his technology. The faithless, stripped of their electronic gods, mourned and wailed. And yet the faithful rejoiced, for they saw that their world was being purified, preparing for the Second Coming of the Christ.”

  The preacher snapped the book shut and held it above his head. “This is how we know the shape of the future. The Bible foretold of demons appearing as aliens invading Earth. The Bible foretold of waves knocking out our electricity. The Bible foretold of nanoswarms killing any who touch technology. The Bible foretold of the demons disguised as humans who live among us now. And the Bible foretold of the apocalypse yet to come.”

  Thursday’s mouth hung open. “Did you know that?” he whispered. “Did you know that the alien invasion was in the Bible?”

  “I don’t know much about the Bible,” Nandi said. “But I never heard anyone say…”

  A hand gently squeezed Thursday’s shoulder.

  “Amazing, isn’t it?”

  Thursday spun to see a woman had stepped up behind them. She wore simple robes of red and cream colors, unadorned and hanging straight down like her brunette hair. Her face held a placid smile and her eyes drifted, as if she was watching a pleasant dream. Her age was impossible for Thursday to figure – thirty, perhaps? Or maybe a forty year-old who’d spent little time in the sun.

  “The Bible was written thousands of years ago, and yet it contains our own story,” she said softly, her words unhurried. “It also contains the means to our salvation.”

  “I don’t understand,” Thursday said. “How could it?”

  The woman’s smile grew. “You have a lot of questions. That’s normal. You’re just like I was when I first met the Bishop.”

  “Is that him jumping around up there on stage?” Nandi said.

  The woman’s smile almost faltered. “Yes, it is. Even from a distance he’s unmistakable. There’s no one who channels the Holy Spirit with the same zeal as the Bishop.”

  “Can I meet him?” Thursday asked eagerly.

  “Soon,” the woman said. “But first, you must be cleansed and made worthy.”

  “How, exactly, are we to do that?” Nandi asked.

  ~~~

  They walked a mile south with the woman, whose name was Jael. Two of the larger members of the Bishop’s faithful escorted her as they walked along city streets and under highway overpasses. They arrived at a neighborhood of tightly-packed houses, and a chest-height wall surrounding many city blocks, behind which stood a plain and flat white building some three stories high. The center of the building’s front was all glass, up to a glass arch that popped up another story above the rest. A white sign with faded green letters read “Missouri Botanical Garden.”

  “Some of the garden’s 79 acres had to be given over to crops,” Jael said as they exited the back side of the building and into the gardens. “But we managed to keep most of it more or less as it was pre-invasion.”

  The group stepped into a world bursting with color. They wandered the concrete paths that wound through the deep green of the gardens, and nearly every step revealed a dozen new plants Thursday had never seen before. Lavender-colored stalks gently waved in the breeze like wheat in a field. Giant lily pads floated on tranquil ponds. Orange flowers blossomed like a thousand tiny explosions. Trees covered in pink buds hung in drapes over their heads. Within a few minutes, they were so deep inside the endless twists of greenery that Thursday thought they might never find their way out again.

  Everywhere they went, the Bishop’s devotees worked with rakes and clippers. When they walked past one young woman, she turned and stared right at Thursday, yet he would have sworn she did not see him at all. Her dazed eyes seemed to look through him.

  “Wow, I can’t believe you’ve managed to keep this all up,” Nandi said. Thursday ha
d gotten to know her well enough to suspect her tone wasn’t genuine. “Is that what your people do? Keep up the city’s culture? You know when we helped your men fight off those cannibals, it was in a huge art museum. Do your men go there to keep the art safe and clean?”

  Thursday fought to keep a scowl off his face. It was a clumsy attempt to dig for information on Nandi’s part. As if Jael was just going to tell them what the Bishop’s men have been searching for.

  “No, that museum was a new discovery on our part,” Jael said. “We’re on the hunt for aliens.”

  Thursday stopped short. “What? I thought the aliens were all dead.”

  “They are all dead,” Nandi said.

  “Oh yes, they are,” Jael said. “And they left carcasses all over the city. We’re searching for their dead bodies.”

  “Whatever for?” Nandi asked.

  Jael resumed walking and waved for them to follow. The group entered a hedge maze, the greenery rising almost to their chins. As they wound through the turns, Thursday saw the trees rising from the center of the maze were something other than trees. The closer he got, the less the leaves looked like leaves and the more they looked like aqua-colored ribbons, a few feet long each. Though it was hard to say for sure in the harsh sunlight, he would have sworn the ribbons had a blue glow to them. The trees’ trunks were nearly black, and each was made up of dozens of strands as thick as his arm that rose from a few tightly-bunched points in the ground to wind and braid through each other.

  As they emerged from the hedge maze into an opening, Thursday’s eyes followed one of the trunk strands to the ground. It emerged not from the soil itself, but from an odd blue mass, something flesh-like that Thursday couldn’t quite make out. Across the ground were more of the blue masses, each with a tree strand growing from the center. As Thursday got closer, his eyes made out what appeared to be hands, blue and alien, attached to arms that led into the masses, which meant that the masses had to be torsos, and the ridges on them ribs, and the basketball-sized thing sticking out with bony protrusions up top and two black orbs imbedded in the middle had to be…

  Thursday stumbled back. “What the shit…?” he said.

  “For those who are faithful to God, plagues transform into bountiful harvests,” Jael said.

  “What are these things?” Nandi asked.

  “It’s the aliens,” Thursday said.

  “What? No…” Nandi said. She inched closer, staring with her face crumpled, arms drawn in as if she was afraid they’d come to life and attack her.

  “The bodies of the aliens are a fertilizer for Trees of Godsight,” Jael said. “Eating their fruit grants us the ability to see the demons no matter what disguise they take and provides us a natural armor to protect us in our fight against the Devil’s minions.”

  One of the Bishop’s followers, a man who had been tending the trees with a watering can, looked Thursday and Nandi up and down with unfocused eyes.

  “What do you see when you look at me?” Nandi asked Jael, “Am I one of these demons?”

  “No,” Jael said flatly. “But not all humans are worthy to become acolytes of the Bishop.”

  “The tree is what makes your people hard to hurt?” Thursday asked.

  “Yes,” Jael said.

  “Does it also protect you from disease or… maybe even cure disease?” Thursday asked.

  “Yes.” Jael said with a proud smile. “It helps us in so many ways. It is truly a gift from God.”

  Thursday wouldn’t have believed it if he hadn’t seen it himself, hadn’t struck a man across the jaw with a metal bar and see the man get up a second later. But he had seen it, he knew it was real. He likely wouldn’t live long enough to make it to Seattle, but the fruit of the tree might just save him.

  A smile overtook Thursday’s face. He looked to Nandi, expecting the same from her, but the smile she held on her face was tight and forced.

  ~~~

  As the sun set, Jael and a group of The Bishop’s followers walked Thursday and Nandi to a stone building with a red roof they called Union Station – though it looked to Thursday more like a four-story castle that had been stretched the length of a city block. Inside and up a wide set of granite stairs, an arched ceiling ran the length of what might have once been an elegant ballroom. They were given white robes to put on over their clothing.

  “Follow the light of the torches,” Jael said, pointing them through a grand arched doorway, flickering firelight barely illuminating the darkness inside.

  “What’s down there?” Nandi asked.

  “A mirror,” Jael said.

  “A mirror?” Thursday asked.

  “Of sorts,” Jael said.

  Thursday and Nandi walked side by side, slowly, the torches more blinding than illuminating.

  “I know what you’re thinking,” she said.

  “This isn’t the time for talking,” he said.

  “You think they’re going to cure you.”

  “It’s possible.”

  “No it’s not. This guy’s full of shit.”

  “We haven’t even met him.”

  “We’ve met his followers. And they’re full of shit. Which means he’s full of shit.”

  “He’s just following the Bible,” Thursday said. “And the Bible foretold everything about the invasion. How did it do that if it’s not the word of God?”

  “I don’t know,” Nandi said.

  “And if it is the word of God, then shouldn’t we be following it?”

  “Ah, so now that religion’s going to save your ass, you’re all for it.”

  “If you can read a book that rightly predicted the future and think there’s nothing spiritual going on there, you’re in denial. And I know why.”

  “Because I’m not a sucker.”

  “Because if you admit the truth, then you can’t betray these people by going back to the King of Brews and reporting their activities to him. And that means your boyfriend might die.”

  Nandi was silent for a moment. Tears pooled in the bottom of both of her eyes.

  “Something’s not right with these people,” she said.

  “Do what you want,” Thursday said. “I won’t rat you out. But I’m going to meet the Bishop. I’m staying here. It’s my only—”

  Something skittered through Thursday’s vision and he stopped in his tracks.

  “What?” Nandi asked.

  “Did you see that?”

  “Obviously not, or else I wouldn’t have said ‘what’ now would I?”

  Thursday stood motionless, straining to see in the hard shadows that swallowed everything outside of the torches’ blinding glow. There was no more movement.

  “Hello?” Thursday called out. “What are we supposed to do?”

  “Screw this,” Nandi said, and turned to go back the way they entered. Thursday ran to catch up and grabbed her by the arm.

  “Wait,” he said. He lowered his voice to a whisper. “If we don’t do this, they won’t let us become members. We can’t find out what they’re up to and you won’t be able to help Ryan.”

  “You don’t care about helping Ryan,” Nandi said. The wavering torchlight played games with her image, warping her angry stare into a grimace beyond what a human face was capable of. “You’re just afraid if I don’t complete this they’ll expel both of us.”

  “No, that’s not—” Thursday began.

  Nandi yanked her arm free.

  “I’ve learned something – they’re looking for alien bodies and that’s what makes them hard to hurt. I’m going back to the King of Brews with that information. That should be enough.”

  Nandi strode away. No sooner had she disappeared into the blackness than Thursday heard her scream echoing through the hallway. A moment of terror froze his muscles, but he ripped himself free of it and ran to help her.

  The walls wavered. He stopped and blinked. Surely, it was nothing more than the shimmer of the torches. He took another step and the waves grew bigger. Soon Thursday could
see the brick undulating in and out, cresting three feet at each peak. The ceiling dropped, as if it was going to collapse on his head. He ducked, but the ceiling stopped as quickly as it had started. It dropped again, coming down on his head. He called out and fell to his knees, throwing his arms over his head and shutting his eyes tight. The ceiling never hit him.

  Thursday slowly opened his eyes to see everything as normal—brick walls flat, torches casting hard shadows.

  “Nandi?” he called out weakly.

  A few feet in front of him, the floor bulged, a form rising out of the tile. It looked like a rubber blanket had been pinned to the floor and a man trapped underneath it was struggling to get to his hands and knees. The form let out a guttural huff of breath. Thursday could not tell if the sound indicated anger, pain, the excitement of a predator on the hunt, or all three.

  Thursday jumped to his feet and ran deeper into the tunnel. Hazy wisps of smoke raced past him from behind, like the arms of an octopus reaching for something beyond him. The scent of burnt tar struck him each time a smoke tendril brushed his skin. The torchlights changed hue, each one he passed becoming more and more pink.

  Too afraid to go forward or backward, Thursday stopped. He stood paralyzed except for the heaving of his chest. He stared down the tunnel, straining to see anything other than pink torches and dim gray lines of smoke. He looked back the way he’d come, the view was the same.

  Perhaps this entire thing was simply a test of courage. Was that what was required to become one of the Bishop’s followers? Thursday decided he had no option but to keep going. He turned to continue on. He didn’t make it one step before the smoke tendrils coalesced into a pair of demons.