After the End: Recent Apocalypses

by Kage Baker

  One-hundred-ninety days later and no Freddie.

  Marjorie asks me if I’m going to the Crucifixion later this evening.

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “No, Adam. Henry’s serious about this. I think this may be the season climax.”

  “There’s no one watching, Marjorie.”

  She twists her long black hair and looks at me with those stupid, pouty eyes. Getting caught down here is probably the greatest thing that ever happened to her.

  “Then leave,” she says.

  “That doesn’t make sense,” I say. “If I think there is no TV show, it means I think there really was an airborne disease that killed everybody else in the world except us. It means I believe Henry is some kind of God or at least history’s greatest scientist.”

  “Believe what you want. I don’t care. Like I said, you should just leave if you’re going to be so miserable. Go be like that idiot Freddie. I’ll bet everybody’s laughing at him right now.”

  “Bitch.”

  “Stupid fuck.”

  I snarl, about to say something else nasty when the fire alarm goes off.

  Fire alarm?

  Henry’s voice booms over the loudspeaker: “This is not a drill. Report to the north exit immediately.”

  I look at Marjorie. She shrugs. “Maybe it’s a ratings sweep.”

  We gather at the north exit, near the same brown door Freddie left by, months ago. Dominic hands out gas masks. I have to go to the bathroom.

  “Hold it,” Dominic says.

  I smell smoke. We line up. Frank’s behind me, saying he heard Ralph went nuts when Henry told him he was really going to crucify him and started a fire in the rec area.

  “Henry told him he was really going to crucify him?”

  Frank laughs. “Yeah. Henry is fucked up in the head. He really thinks he’s God.”

  “And you really think this is a TV show?”

  “No fucking question.”

  Dominic reaches for the door, resting his hand on the silver handle. “Get your masks on, you two,” he says, gesturing at me and Frank. He pulls his own mask over his nose and mouth, adjusting the valve.

  “I want to see Henry,” I say.

  “Not possible,” Dominic says.

  “He’s staying inside, then? With the fire?”

  “He’s the big man,” Dominic says. “He calls the shots. Not you.”

  And that’s that. I slide on my gas mask, Dominic opens the door. We shuffle out into the outside world. First time in one hundred ninety-three days.

  They blindfolded us when they brought us to the survey. Top-secret government bullshit. Just give me my check. I didn’t care. Blindfold? Sure. You still paying me one thousand dollars at the end?

  I’ve got a new perspective now. Like a man might have after being in prison for a long time. What’s money? Shit. Money’s just paper or plastic. I want the air, the solid ground beneath my feet. I want the sun. These are the things that are real.

  We’re behind a pockmarked brick building with no windows in a little alley. It’s dark out. I look up and see not a star in the sky, which would make sense considering all the bad air. Or it could just be cloud cover. The agony of not knowing is the worst.

  Dominic looks like one of those guys you see in movies about World War I, holed up in his trench, waiting for the gas, waiting for the end.

  “Face the building,” he says.

  “Eyes in front of you,” he says.

  “Keep those masks on. Stay together,” he says.

  “This is all a big fucking joke,” he says. “But not, I repeat, not a reality show.”

  Okay, he doesn’t really say those last two parts.

  I’m trying to look around for something, anything that suggests people are still alive in the world. One good sign: I don’t see Freddie’s dead body anywhere. If he’d come out this door—which he did—his body would be somewhere over there by the end of the building. Hey, there is something over there. I crane my neck a little more for a better look and then WHAM. A big hand slaps the side of my face.

  “Eyes in front. Face the building,” Dominic says.

  But what was that thing I saw?

  The rumors are true. Ralph started the fire when he used one of his cigarettes to light a roll of toilet paper in the john. Funny thing is, he was taking a dump at the time, the dumbass, and after the toilet paper burned down to nothing, he couldn’t even wipe.

  This is our Messiah.

  Henry announces it is time for the Crucifixion. We gather in the rec room wide-eyed and eager for some entertainment. Dominic stands, arms crossed by the double doors that lead into Henry’s lair, aka Heaven, aka the promised land, aka some dumpy office with black construction paper shrouding the windows so none of us can see in.

  “I Walk the Line” by Johnny Cash comes on over the loudspeaker. Henry is a devout old-time country fan. We get treated to all the old timers: Hank Williams, Patsy Cline, Marty Robbins, and Willie Nelson before he discovered pot.

  The volume is louder than usual, and we can tell Henry is trying to MAKE A STATEMENT. The doors next to Dominic fly open and Ralph comes out, dragging his cross on his back. He’s wearing a pair of gym shorts but otherwise naked. Dark red lashes run the length of his thin frame, and this almost startles me a little.

  “So he really lashed him,” Frank mutters. “I wonder how much they’re paying Ralph to do this.” He whistles. “You think Henry spanked Ralph as a kid?”

  There are so many responses I have for this question that my mind goes swimmy and I can’t say any of them, so I simply shrug and watch Ralph drag what looks like a cardboard cross.

  “You’d think with all the CGI effects they used on the videos of our loved ones dying, they’d be able to afford more than a cardboard cross,” Marjorie says. “Very disappointing.”

  Johnny Cash reminds us it’s because “you’re mine” that he walks the line, and Marjorie shoves me out of the way when Ralph passes by. Dominic is behind him. Marjorie believes the TV camera is hidden somewhere on Dominic’s massive body.

  I drift to the back of our little group, where Cecilia puffs on a cigarette. She smiles at me. She looks hot. She’s got on my favourite gray mini and the red sweater that makes her breasts kind of perky and pendulous at the same time. Her hair is pulled back and her forehead shines with a sheen of sweat.

  “Hey,” I say.

  “Hey,” she says, and it’s a hey with possibilities in the tone, a hey that suggests another blowjob could be in the cards as long as I play mine right.

  “You know,” I say, “this Jesus stuff just isn’t the same when his hands smell like ass.”

  “Fully God, fully man,” Cecilia says cryptically. That’s the other thing about Cecilia, the thing you forget about her because she’s hot and capable of mind-altering blow-jobs: she’s really kind of smart. Maybe too smart to be here with the rest of us doofuses. Maybe Freddie smart.

  “So what’s that mean?”

  She shrugs as Ralph climbs onto a stage Dominic constructed last week and lays his cross down on a chair. He looks dazed.

  “Drugged,” Frank says. He’s in front of me and Cecilia. “He’s been drugged.”

  “Fully God, fully man. It’s Biblical,” Cecilia says. “The Bible says Jesus was a paradox. Fully God and fully man at the same time.”

  Dominic is nailing the cardboard cross to the wall. Ralph watches him, red-eyed and stoned.

  Cecilia takes my hand. “I don’t want to see this,” she whispers.

  “Nah,” I say. “Crucifixions bore me.”

  We head to our spot, the third stall in the men’s restroom. It’s one of those handicap deals, so there’s extra room and a bar for Cecilia to hang on to when I’m doing her from behind.

  She locks the door and gets right to work, unbuttoning my pants and breathing all heavy.

  When it’s over, we both lay on the floor, exhausted.

  Cecilia speaks first. “I really hate myself some
times.”

  “Me too,” I say, not catching the edge of seriousness in her voice, well at least not at first, not until it is too late.

  Luckily she ignores me. “This sex stuff. It’s an addiction, you know.”

  This time, I stay quiet and wait for more. She’s quiet too. Finally, she sits up and pulls her sweater back on, sans bra which is still laying where I dropped it, on the back of the toilet. “He’s probably dead by now, you know.”

  “Who?”

  “Ralph. The Son of Man. Whatever you want to call him. He’s probably already bled to death on the cross for nobody’s sins but Henry’s.”

  “Do you think Henry really killed him?”

  She moves to the toilet where she sits to pee. “I know he really killed him. He’s been talking about it for weeks.”

  “You talk to Henry?”

  She tears some toilet paper off the roll and smirks. “Do you really think Henry’s God, Adam? Of course, I talk to him. He’s a man. You’re a man. Think about it. As a man, would you not talk to me?”

  I start to form an answer, but my mind is moving too slowly, trying to put it together. Cecilia and Henry. Henry and Cecilia.

  She keeps talking instead of waiting for me to answer: “And me? I’m a sex addict. That’s why I don’t mind this place so much. All these men, young and old. No wives to get in the way.” She pouts and pulls her panties and miniskirt up. “I hate myself.”

  “Why?”

  She frowns, her brown eyes going serious and sad. “You’re just like the rest of them. You only want me for the sex. You don’t even listen to me when I talk.”

  “No, Cecilia.” I stand up, amazed a little by the intensity in my voice. It must catch Cecilia off guard as well, because she tilts her head to the side as if seeing me new for the first time.

  “I do care about you. I want out of this place. Am I the only one who wants out? Do you want out?”

  “I don’t know what I want. I thought I wanted to have sex anytime I wanted it, with any man I wanted. I’ve got that now, sort of. You, Henry, Dominic, Theo. Frank.”

  “Frank? He’s like seventy.”

  “I don’t discriminate. Besides, he’s a freak of nature.”

  “Come again?”

  “Never mind.”

  I don’t get mad. Not exactly. Just frustrated. Disappointed. Here I am thinking this girl likes me, but all she’s concerned about is finding the next dick.

  “I knew you’d get mad,” she says. “If it makes you feel any better, I hate myself for being this way. I really do. And another thing. What we just did. Just a minute ago. It was special. More than just my addiction. I like you, Adam.”

  This is maddening. Maddening because I want to hate her but when she says something like this I can’t hate her. In fact, I think I love her.

  “You know what,” I say, my voice rising. “You’re a paradox. Fully slut and fully . . . ” I hesitate, not knowing how to end it. From the look on her face, she is not hurt by the fully slut remark, so I reach for something else, some extreme that will satisfy both ends of her paradox, and settle on “ . . . Fully slut and fully angel.” It comes out silly sounding and sentimental, but she doesn’t seem to mind. She softens, brown eyes doing this little flash before going all sweet.

  She comes over and hugs me. “That’s the nicest thing anybody ever said to me, Adam.” She holds me, not letting go and there is no sex vibe in this embrace, a first in all my encounters with Cecilia. She whispers in my ear. “You’re different.”

  I whisper back, “I saw something outside. The day of the fire. I think it might have been a body.”

  They’ve killed him. Nailed him to the wall. He’s still hanging there now. I would worry more about who is going to be next, but I think Henry has made his point. Today at lunch, he called for mandatory prayer time. Communing with Him, he said. We were supposed to lay prone on the floor and repeat some stupid mantra. I refused. Everybody else went down, the bloody spectre of Ralph hanging over them like a reminder that we may not serve God, but we serve Henry, and Henry is a vengeful, well, Henry.

  Dominic comes over and grabs me by the scruff of my neck, nearly lifting me out of my seat at the table. I didn’t even know I had a scruff on my neck, but Dominic obviously does.

  “Get down like the rest,” He shoves me hard to the ground, but instead of lying prone like the others, I bounce back to my feet.

  “Leave him, Dominic,” Henry’s deep voice intones. “I would like to see him in my celestial office.”

  “Sure thing,” Dominic says, cracking a big grin that suggests he knows what is about to happen to me and he finds it immensely pleasing.

  Me? I’m scared shitless. I’m going to meet the only God I’ve ever known, and he’s a loser named Henry who gets his kicks watching us squirm.

  On the way back to that dark cubicle that is his celestial office, three thoughts run through my mind. The door to the outside, unlocked, beckoning is one of them. This is followed by a memory, just a flash, from the other day when Dominic had been shouting at us, telling us to face the building and I’d seen something by the corner of the building . . . what had it been? I try hard to pull a picture up, to rewind to that fleeting glimpse, but I can’t. It was too fast. All I can remember is the sensation, the sudden gripping of my insides, a dizzy feeling in my head that whatever it was had mattered.

  The third thought that enters my head on the way to Henry’s idea of heaven is unrelated to the other two. Or . . . maybe it isn’t. I can’t tell. It is the realization that once again, Cecilia had not been among us.

  Surprisingly, the door is unlocked. I walk right in. The room is bare except for a desk with a chair behind it and two chairs in front. The only other item of note is a long black curtain covering the back wall. Cecilia sits in one of the chairs, her legs crossed beneath her pink mini skirt, her hands folded in her lap. Despite this posture, her face tells a different story. Flushed cheeks, damp brow, languid eyes; she’s been fucking Henry again. She looks at me and smiles and starts to speak, maybe to say sorry, maybe something else, when a voice comes from behind a curtain.

  “Please sit, Adam.”

  I laugh, resisting the sudden urge to rush the curtain, peel back the veil and throttle Henry.

  “Would you like to share your laughter with me, Adam?”

  “Not particularly.” I take the seat next to Cecilia and try to look relaxed. Now that I’m here, I can’t decide if I’m afraid or simply amused.

  “My son,” Henry begins, and the curtain billows a little. I wonder if he’s puffing it out for effect. “My son died on the cross for all of you, yesterday. I saved you from the Apocalypse. I fed you.” His voice trembles with emotion. “I love you. Yet. Yet, you both dishonor me. You both choose to rut in the bathroom instead of witness the greatest event in the new history of your lives. Not that there is anything inherently wrong with rutting in the bathroom. That is one of the things I would like you to understand about the new history. The old God? He was a God of rules and of sin. That’s not me. I actually encourage rutting. I need you folks to make babies if this new world is to survive. What I do demand is respect and fear. I demand you kneel when it is time to kneel. Or, if you don’t like it, damnation, the new damnation awaits, ironically, above us now.” The curtains shift, and I can almost picture a little bald man back there chuckling and scratching his ass. Anger boils inside me. I start out of my chair, but Cecilia puts her hand on my arm and I sit back down.

  “Adam, my beloved, Adam,” Henry says. “The door is unlocked. Please, if you would like to join Freddie in eternal damnation, go.”

  Cecilia’s hand tightens on my arm.

  “Well?” Henry says. “What will you do?”

  Long answer: I see myself get up, go into the room where the rest of the idiots are still prone on the floor worshiping a man who doesn’t have the courage to show his face. I tell them this is hell and I hope they’re happy in it. I shout, “I hope you enjoy your reality show!
” and dash for the steps, taking them two at a fucking time as I head up to the brown door. I wait, just an instant, just long enough to breathe a good gulp of air, long enough to feel it pour into my lungs. Long enough to know I’ve made the right decision, win, lose, or die. Then I turn the handle and step into a world without precedent, a world where it could all be true or a world where it could all be false. And I am not afraid.

  Short answer: My imagination has balls, but I don’t.

  After we are dismissed, Cecilia and I go back to the others and assume the posture. My rebelliousness is gone, replaced by an apathy so profound I’m not sure I care about anything anymore. If the real God, the one who unfortunately has been as inscrutable as Henry in my own life, deems this to be my fate, then so be it.

  The floor smells like sweat and piss and mildew, and I wonder if it has been cleaned since Ralph used to slide those half-smashed roaches across it. I try to think if I’ve ever seen Dominic with a mop before, and before I know it, I am asleep.

  The dream is a simple one. Me, above ground, on a windswept piece of brown earth. There is nothing. Nothing at all around me except the same dull brown earth, hard packed and unforgiving.

  The world is gone or appears to be. I’m left alone to wander this bleak landscape. But then I see it out of the corner of my left eye, a fleck of contrast, almost blinding in the drabness. I whirl and see a human body. It lays in the unnatural posture of death. I go over to it and am not surprised to see Cecilia, her face serene except for the deep cavities where her eyeballs used to belong.

  I touch her skin, noting the smoothness, the soft texture, like velvet. I touch a strand of hair, moving it over one of the brooding caverns.

  I sit beside her body for a very long time.

  “We need to go now.”

  The wind keeps blowing. It’s something. Better than nothing. And the body. Something about her body doesn’t make sense. It’s on the tip of my tongue.

  “Now, Adam. We have to go, now.”

  Her skin is so new. The eyeballs are gone. Who took them? Her skin is so new, even in death.

  The wind is clawing at me, pulling my shirt tight against my neck.