The Post-Apocalyptic Tourist's Guide to Louisville: a novella

by Stephen Lawson

  The Post-Apocalyptic Tourist’s Guide to Louisville

  Series 1, Episode 1

  by Stephen Lawson

  Kindle Edition

  The Post-Apocalyptic Tourist’s Guide Series Copyright © 2017 Stephen Lawson.

  The Post-Apocalyptic Tourist’s Guide to Louisville Copyright © 2017 Stephen Lawson.

  All rights reserved.

  Cover art and logo by Preston Stone. Copyright © 2017 Stephen Lawson.

  All rights reserved.

  For series information, author/artist bios, interactive maps, pictures, and upcoming releases, visit tpatg.com

  The Post-Apocalyptic Tourist’s Guide: Series 1

  The Post-Apocalyptic Tourist’s Guide to Louisville Copyright © 2017 Stephen Lawson.

  The Post-Apocalyptic Tourist’s Guide to St. Louis Copyright © 2017 David VonAllmen.

  The Post-Apocalyptic Tourist’s Guide to Utah's Deserts Copyright © 2017 Dustin Steinacker.

  The Post-Apocalyptic Tourist’s Guide to the Mojave Desert Copyright © 2017 Sean Hazlett.

  The Post-Apocalyptic Tourist’s Guide to Los Angeles Copyright © 2017 Jake Marley.

  The Post-Apocalyptic Tourist’s Guide to Seattle Copyright © 2018 Philip Kramer.

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  This novella is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons either living or dead is entirely coincidental. All rights reserved. No parts of this publication can be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, or mechanical, without written permission from the author.

  Dedication

  For my wife

  Table of Contents

  Acknowledgements

  The Post-Apocalyptic Tourist’s Guide to Louisville

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Acknowledgements

  Thank you to several knowledgeable tour guides at the Louisville Mega Cavern, and to the folks at the desk who gave me their tour guide script with even more information.

  Thank you to the nice folks at the Louisville Slugger factory for letting me in for free, and for explaining the science and history of wooden bat production.

  Thank you to Wayne at the Conrad-Caldwell House for giving me an immense amount of

  Old Louisville's history.

  Thank you to Captain Drew at the Belle of Louisville for letting me

  look around between excursions.

  Thank you to Kevin Gibson for writing Secret Louisville: A Guide to the Weird, Wonderful, and Obscure. This was an excellent starting point for several of my research adventures.

  Thank you to the folks at the Seelbach Hilton for letting me

  look around in the Rathskeller Ballroom.

  Thank you to David, Dustin, Sean, Jake, Philip, Megan, Andrea, Ville, Vida, Matt, Andrew, and Preston, for believing in this thing when it was still just doodles on paper.

  And thanks to Almighty God, without whom I could do no thing.

  The Post-Apocalyptic Tourist’s Guide to Louisville

  People once referred to Louisville as the horse-racing capital of the world. It held four of the distillers on the Kentucky Distillers Association’s Bourbon Trail, and had been home to Muhammad Ali, Colonel Sanders, and Thomas Edison, among others.

  Thursday Forrester knew these things because he’d read about them in the Churchill clan’s library. Their books, lovingly cared for by his grandfather, were the clan’s second most valued treasure.

  “We read,” Grandpa Cornelius had told him once. “That’s what separates us from the scavenging barbarians outside our perimeter. One man—like you someday, Thursday—can be an expert in as many things as he likes, if he takes the time to read and practice them. Oral traditions make that process slow and clumsy.”

  What Thursday didn’t know, as he looked up at the billions of stars, was how Louisville’s night sky had looked forty years before. Thursday didn’t know what light pollution was. No one did anymore, except the ones like Grandpa Cornelius who’d survived the alien invasion. The first attack had obliterated the GPS satellite constellation, bringing rapid transit to a standstill. The second attack—EMP strikes—had set men back two hundred years overnight. The third attack unveiled the sentient nanoswarms that still roared through the air like angry locusts, devouring anything that generated a strong electromagnetic field. They fed on metal and organic matter to repair, self-replicate, and grow.

  Thursday sat back on the oft-repaired roof of what had once been Churchill Downs, and stared into the milky-white pinpricks in the curtain of night. The vertigo that made him laugh always made him cringe at the same time. The feeling that gravity might fail at any moment, sending him hurtling into that cold, indifferent expanse never failed to gnaw at his stomach.

  It wasn’t a light that tore his attention from the stars, but a darkness—a black orb that floated above his head.

  Thursday stood up, trying to determine how far away the shadow was by moving left and right on the roof and comparing his views.

  It wasn’t far away at all, he realized. What he’d taken for some sort of fast-moving giant orb a mile overhead was actually a slow-moving, head-sized orb just a few feet beyond the reach of his fingers.

  It floated down gently, losing altitude an inch at a time. Thursday laid down his crossbow and danced across the roof, carefully stepping over Filson’s flamethrower as he went. He normally kept his distance from the rig since, despite loving the napalm aroma that clung to the thing, he knew it would give him a headache.

  “What’s that you’re chasing?” his brother asked when he noticed the black shape. Filson, too, kept a bit of distance from his flamethrower until it was needed. He could lay down a wall of fire two seconds after a call of, “Bogies on the wire!”—even if Thursday had let him doze off for a few minutes.

  Neither Filson nor Thursday had ever seen a bullet. Government and private ammunition stockpiles had been used up in the preceding decades as men fought for survival, and the infrastructure that supported their manufacture had given way to chaos.

  Gelled gasoline, though—bacteria-ridden and no longer useful for powering engines—abounded in swarm-torn cars and filling stations. The Churchill clan used the ruined fuel to keep nocturnal predators at bay when they got past the crossbow bolts.

  “It’s some kind of bubble,” Thursday said. He nearly grasped the string that hung from it, but a gust carried it close to the edge of the roof. He wished, as he watched it float just past his reach, that he’d shot it down with a bolt.

  Then the breeze shifted again, cool against his face. He grabbed the string, nearly falling off the edge of the roof as he did so. A small plastic container hung from its end. Thursday looked it over and found that the end screwed open.

  “Thursday,” Filson said, “I wouldn’t—”

  The cap came off in Thursday’s hand. White powder puffed out of the container, covering his fingers. He dropped the cap and shook his hand, unsure whether he felt the powder burning him or imagined it. He tried to wipe the powder off on his patched, hand-me-down Curmudgeon Brewing t-shirt, but the fine grains clung to his now-sweating skin.

  The balloon’s sender had rolled a piece of paper and crammed it into the container as well. Thursday removed this with his powdery fingers and tried to read it under the starlight.

  “I can’t make th
is out,” he said to Filson. “The writing’s too small.”

  Filson looked over the edge of the roof, scanning the perimeter for raiding parties and feral dogs. The screech of metal scraping metal echoed from several blocks away.

  Thursday thought he heard a man’s scream carried on the wind from the direction of Cherokee Park, but it was the first scream he’d heard all night. For a night watch, it had been relatively quiet.

  “You shouldn’t have opened it,” Filson said finally, turning his gaze back to Thursday. “Bring it here.”

  Filson pulled a tallow candle from his pack, and held it to the nozzle of his flamethrower. Careful not to push the valve trigger, he manually squeezed the sparking mechanism until the candle’s wick caught a spark.

  “Use this,” he said, handing the candle to Thursday. “I’ll keep an eye on the wire.”

  Thursday ignored the burns from the melted tallow that dripped onto his powder-covered hand, and lifted the note into the candle’s soft glow.

  What had appeared as a dark splotch at the top of the page a moment before, came into focus in the dim light. A logo depicting what appeared to be a tall, slender tree without leaves, and thick bands around its trunk was set into the center of a shield with three bold ‘S’s along the top. Beneath the logo, Thursday could finally read the text.

  Dear Research Participant, it said,

  Congratulations!

  By opening this letter, you have agreed to all terms and conditions associated with the first post-invasion pharmaceutical trial. You should be very pleased, as the future of our species depends upon the high-quality pharmacological products that we make at Synapse Sentries of Seattle, a Limited Liability Company.

  You are among the first test-subjects to be exposed to B19-GBSX, a strain of the B19 virus with our proprietary DNA payload. Worry not, the virus is non-replicative, and poses no danger to those not immediately exposed to the lyophilized virus, the white powder contained within this capsule. For you however, the virus will by now have found its way through your mucus membranes and in a matter of days, it will rear its nasty little head.

  This special variant will not only cause the typical symptoms of Parvovirus B19: Fever, nausea, headache, and a red rash on the cheeks and hands, and other extremities; its payload will turn your body against you. At first you may notice tingling, numbness, and weakness in your extremities. After a period of 3 to 4 months (depending on your muscle mass and physical condition), the paralysis will spread to your diaphragm and kill you! You should be very excited about the treatment schedule that awaits you in Seattle, Washington when you arrive on your no-expenses paid trip.

  As an added bonus, this powdered biological vector includes our latest “We Really Mean It!” strand, which may cause nausea, sweating, eye irritation, tinnitus, and/or nosebleeds over the next 24-48 hours.

  In addition to treatment, exciting and one-of-a-kind opportunities await you in Seattle. Thank you, Participant, for volunteering for lifetime treatment with Synapse Sentries of Seattle, LLC.

  We look forward to meeting you, and welcome you to the team.

  Sincerely,

  Management

  SSS, LLC.

  Thursday read it again, wondering if it was some sort of strange joke.

  He read it a third time, before he heard Filson yelling, “Bogies on the wire! Thursday, get your damned crossbow and sling some damned bolts!”

  Napalm erupted with a hiss from Filson’s flamethrower, illuminating the night with its stream of white-orange death.

  Thursday ran to the ledge in time to see two emaciated youths sprinting across the barren no-man’s land inside the wire. Filson had fired too soon, and they leapt over the wall of napalm that blazed on the clover.

  Thursday shouldered his crossbow and fired, sending a bolt through one of the faster youth’s thighs. The boy screamed in pain and fell to the ground as his partner kept running for the low wall.

  Filson fired again, and this time the styrofoam-gelled gasoline hit the other youth square in the chest. Filson had just hand-pumped both of his air tanks to maximum pressure—even at risk of blowing an O-ring—so the flaming glob of napalm knocked the kid over even as it set him ablaze. Thursday watched him try to scream, but any air exhaled was taken by the flames. He stopped moving after a few seconds of writhing in the dirt.

  The first kid tried to pull himself out of flamethrower range, hobbling on his wounded leg.

  “How many sweet potatoes did they think they’d dig up before we scorched them?” Filson asked. “It must be really bad in the packs to just send these two.”

  “Could be more behind them,” Thursday said. “Could be waiting for me to go out and get my bolt back.”

  “Yeah,” Filson said. “As great a deterrent as it’d be to let him go back with his story, it’s bad for our rep if we let them live. We’d best hurry.”

  “You or me?” Thursday asked, as he put his foot in the crossbow’s stirrup and pulled back the string with both hands. He strained with the weight of it as always, and felt the string digging into his fingers. It locked in place, finally, and he loaded a bolt into the flight groove. He’d had a pair of pig skin loops once which he’d used to pull the string. They’d long since rotted, though, and he hadn’t replaced them.

  “We have plenty of gas, but the foam’s low,” Filson said. “You.”

  Thursday shouldered his crossbow again, lined up the sights he’d hand-filed years ago, and squeezed the plastic handle of the tiny screwdriver he’d turned into a trigger.

  A split-second later, the kid from the packs stopped moving.

  ~~~

  Thursday slept the deep sleep of a watch well-executed.

  When he woke in the early afternoon, he made his way to the communal kitchen to find a slice of salted pork and some vegetables. The kitchen had once been a VIP area with floor-to-ceiling windows that looked out over the horse-racing track, so that rich people in silly hats could watch the most exciting two minutes in sports from air conditioned comfort. Thursday looked down through that same glass and found Boone and Rebecca searching for ripe tomatoes in the garden plot closest to him. At the far side of the track, he spotted Kit holding a ladder for Teek as she pulled apples from the upper branches of their semi-dwarf trees.

  Thursday would be on farm rotation in another week— out in the sun again, and off the wall.

  He washed the salted pork down with foraged-herb tea, and his dreams came back to him as he drank it.

  He remembered dreaming of a dragon who had flown over the clan compound. It circled to the northeast, over Papa John’s baseball stadium, then down across the ruined asphalt roads to land in the middle of the Churchill Downs farm. It flared its wings and breathed fire across the fields of soy and vegetables. The orchard blazed.

  In the dream, Thursday tried to shoot it with his crossbow to keep it from destroying the farm, but his crossbow wouldn’t fire. Nonetheless, when he pulled the trigger, the dragon spotted him and rose into the air again. Thursday found himself alone, without any of the other perimeter watches to aid him. The dragon became impossibly huge—its wings stretching from one end of the Downs to the other—and it inhaled deeply before spewing napalm down on him—burning him alive, and into wakefulness.

  When he remembered the black balloon, he shrugged off the note as one of life’s meaningless occurrences at best, or an attempt by the packs to unnerve him at worst. Nobody could make a disease that would kill him in three months and send it to him on the end of a balloon. That was the sort of thing people did before the invasion, when they’d had electricity and machines to engineer such things.

  He shrugged off the nausea that hit him an hour after waking as a side effect of eating questionable raccoon meat two days prior.

  Then he felt his nose start to run. He found this odd, since he’d only had a cold once before. When he wiped his nose, his hand came away bloody.

  As he stared at the blood, remembering the note’s warning, his nausea turne
d into a stabbing gut-pain that made it hard to stand. He curled up against the glass, pulled his knees to his chest, and clenched his teeth together.

  He felt like someone had stuck a screwdriver in his stomach and was wrenching it back and forth.

  It’ll pass, he thought, cramming his face into the space between his knees. The screwdriver twisted again, and he nearly jumped with the painful spasm. I’ll be okay, and this will stop. I’ll be fine, I’ll be—

  “Thursday?”

  Filson stared down at him, concern in his eyes. They widened when he saw the dry blood that had crusted under Thursday’s nose.

  “I don’t feel good,” Thursday said.

  “That note,” Filson said. “Do you still have it?”

  Thursday pulled a hand from his knees and searched a cargo pocket. He found the crumpled paper and handed it to Filson. Filson accepted the note with a pair of forceps, then wiped it with a moist cloth.

  Filson sat next to him then, back against the glass, and read slowly.

  “I’m taking you to see Cornelius,” Filson said finally. “The letter says it’s non-replicative. They might be lying, but I’m okay with that gamble and I figure he will be too.”

  “I’ll be fine,” Thursday said. “I just need to—”

  He grew quiet and tried to slow his breathing as a hot, choking sensation crept up his throat.

  He held his breath.

  The screwdriver in his stomach twisted again, and he covered his mouth, trying to hold it in.

  Filson shoved a plastic bucket under his face, and Thursday found himself retching into it. He heaved, his stomach involuntarily clenching as tight as it could. When he opened his eyes, he saw vegetable scraps at the bottom of it, bound for the compost heap. Even in emergencies, Filson wasted nothing. Thursday retched again, his eyes watering from the exertion that he wished he could stop.