An Apocalypse of Our Own (Novella #5)

by Jeff Strand

  Missy switched her aim to one of the other mutants, then back to the first one, then lowered the gun. “There’s no way we can take out all of them.”

  “We may have to run back to the bunker.”

  “I really, really don’t want to do that.”

  “I don’t, either.”

  “There is literally nothing I want to do less than go back to the bunker.”

  “What about get torn apart by mutants?” Kevin asked.

  “That might be better.”

  Another couple of mutants stepped into the road.

  Kevin glanced back over his shoulder and saw yet another mutant in the road behind them. “I’d rather not die,” he said.

  “I’m not sure I agree with that.”

  “I vote we run back to the bunker. We’ll reevaluate our plan from there.”

  “I hate that idea,” said Missy.

  “We know the combination. We’re not going to get locked down there for months again.”

  “Shit,” said Missy.

  “I know,” said Kevin.

  “Fuck.”

  “Agreed.”

  “All right. Shit. Let’s go. Shit.”

  Kevin and Missy turned around and ran back toward Uncle Jake’s home.

  * * *

  “So clearly the gunshots were a mistake,” said Kevin, as they sat in the bunker. “I figured there’d be maybe two, three mutants out there, tops. I didn’t realize we’d draw that many out of the woods. We just have to be quieter next time.”

  “Then how do we defend ourselves?” Missy asked. Kevin wished she’d quit scowling. It was making him uncomfortable.

  “We just kill them without as much noise. Decapitation. It’s not completely silent, but at least it’s a thunk instead of a bang. Or we break their legs. Again, not silent, but it’s not like the crack of leg bones breaking will draw them out for miles. If I slipped in the shower and broke my leg, you’d hear me screaming but you wouldn’t have heard the crunch.”

  “I guess.”

  “We’ll be fine. It was a learning experience.”

  “When do you think we can leave again?”

  Kevin sighed. “Pretty soon, I’m sure.”

  “I can still hear them up there.”

  “Yeah, I can too, but they’re bound to get bored eventually.”

  The last time they’d checked, there were about twenty mutants wandering around Uncle Jake’s home. Based on the sounds of the footsteps above, though, Kevin was confident that no more than seventeen or eighteen remained.

  Missy kept her scowl and added a glare.

  “It’s nice to travel, but it’s always nice to sleep in your own bed, right?” asked Kevin.

  “Burn in hell.”

  “This isn’t my fault.”

  “I’m not blaming you. I’m taking my frustration out on you. There’s a difference.”

  “Let’s give it an hour. By then, I’m sure they’ll have left.”

  * * *

  One hour later, they could still hear the footsteps above.

  “Okay, so an hour was overly optimistic,” Kevin admitted. “I think there are less of them up there now, though.”

  “It doesn’t sound like there are fewer to me.”

  “Don’t be pedantic.”

  “What?”

  “I said, don’t be pedantic.”

  “I was asking what you meant.”

  “You corrected my usage of ‘less.'”

  “No, I didn’t,” said Missy.

  “You did! I heard you!”

  “I didn’t correct you. I used the proper form when I said it myself. That’s not the same thing.”

  “Sure it is,” said Kevin.

  “Just because you make a grammar mistake doesn’t mean I have to make the same one. I didn’t correct you. You can say ‘less’ all you want—doesn’t make any difference to me. If you want to completely regress into grunts, that’s cool too. I don’t care. I’m not judging you. I’m just not following you into the abandonment of the proper way to speak.”

  Kevin considered that for a moment. “I guess that makes sense. But do you agree that there are fewer of them up there?”

  “No.”

  * * *

  “I have to admit, I thought six hours would be long enough for them to clear out,” said Kevin. “This sucks.”

  “It’s been seven.”

  “Oh.”

  “I can’t stay down here much longer,” said Missy.

  “Me either. I’m starting to feel like there’s a centipede in my eye again.”

  “We’re leaving in the morning, no matter what. If our destiny is to be in the bellies of eight different mutants, then so be it.”

  “To be fair, we only know that they’re murderous, not cannibalistic.”

  “I don’t care if they’re thrill killers with chainsaws. I refuse to die down here, even if it means that I die a few feet away from here.”

  Kevin nodded. “We’re leaving in the morning. No matter what.”

  * * *

  When they woke up the next morning, they listened carefully for the sounds of mutants above.

  “There are still a shitload of them up there,” said Kevin.

  “It sounds like even more than yesterday.”

  “Probably no more than twenty-five, though.”

  “I was serious that I’m not staying down here another day,” said Missy. “That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t. I don’t want you to do something suicidal just because I am.”

  “No, it’s fine. Peer pressure could make me drink hot tub water, but not die. I think I have a plan, though.”

  “A good plan?”

  “Not a five stars out of five plan, no.”

  “How terrible is this plan?”

  “It’s pretty terrible,” said Kevin. “But I think it’s better than climbing up there and letting mutants rip you apart from limb to limb.”

  “Let’s hear it.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  “That plan sucks shit,” said Missy.

  “I told you it was poor.”

  “I came up with a few plans of my own, but I didn’t say them out loud because I was embarrassed by them. I actually have to admire your courage in sharing that.”

  “Thanks,” said Kevin, taking it as a compliment even though he knew she meant it otherwise. “But it’s still better than just climbing up there and dying a horrible death, right?”

  “Marginally.”

  “So let’s do it.”

  The plan involved three key elements:

  1. Open the hatch.

  2. Wait for individual mutants to drop ten feet into the shelter.

  3. Break the mutants’ arms and legs.

  Missy and Kevin had removed the top metal shelf from where they stored their food. With each of them holding an end, Kevin was moderately confident that they could bash the crap out of the mutants as they fell. It would certainly be less insane than going up there and trying to fight all of them at once.

  Since this was Kevin’s awful idea, he volunteered to climb the ladder and open the hatch. He climbed to the top and entered the code.

  Something buzzed. The display read INCORRECT.

  What the freaking hell…?

  “What’s wrong?” asked Missy.

  “Nothing. Nothing’s wrong,” Kevin assured her. There was, sadly, not enough room for him to turn upside-down and drop the ten feet onto his head.

  “Did you enter the right code?”

  “I, uh, I, I’m not, uh, I…”

  “0-4-0-2?”

  “Oh, wait, actually, I entered 0-4-0-1. Thank Christ.”

  Kevin entered 0-4-0-2. Something whirred, then something clicked, then something beeped. He opened the lid and hurriedly climbed back down the ladder.

  “Now we wait,” he said.

  They waited.

  The mutants didn’t moan or anything, but Kevin could hear them all stumbling around, occasionally bumping into things. His plan required them t
o lack the self-awareness to realize that there was a hole in their path. That might be underestimating them. They weren’t necessarily mindless zombies.

  Missy kicked the bottom of the ladder. “We’re down here!”

  “She’s telling the truth!” Kevin shouted. “There’s a feast just waiting for you!”

  “Come get some delicious succulent human flesh!” Missy shouted.

  “We taste awesome!”

  “We won’t fight back! We’ll just let you devour us!”

  “Too much,” said Kevin. “That’s not believable.”

  “I don’t think they’re actually processing what we’re saying.”

  “We don’t know that for sure. They might understand every word. Oozing and frothing doesn’t mean they aren’t still human.”

  Missy shrugged. “Okay.” She kicked the ladder again. “Down here! We’re down here! You’re missing out on free food! You’ve never tasted such scrumptious meat!”

  They continued shouting these sorts of things for the next ten minutes. Kevin realized with a jolt of horror that he was starting to get hungry for Missy’s succulent flesh. He didn’t share this with her, and chalked it up to lingering traces of insanity.

  “Maybe they aren’t dumb enough to fall down a hole,” said Missy.

  “So what do we do?” Kevin asked.

  “I don’t know.”

  “I guess keep waiting for them to fall down the hole.”

  “I guess so.”

  They continued shouting for a while.

  Then they sat quietly, to see if that worked.

  Then they shouted some more.

  Then they sat quietly.

  When a mutant plummeted into the shelter, they were so surprised that they just stared at it for a moment.

  It was a young woman. A large sharp bone protruded through the right leg of her blue jeans, but the mutant tried to pull herself along the floor toward Kevin and Missy.

  Kevin and Missy each picked up one end of the shelf, then spent the next couple of minutes smashing it into the mutant, until many more bones were visible. Then Kevin took it by the hands and dragged it to the far corner of the shelter, leaving a trail of gook. It was still flopping around a bit, but in a harmless manner.

  “Let’s be honest,” said Kevin. “That was kind of fun.”

  Missy gaped at him.

  “You don’t agree?”

  “No, I don’t agree!”

  “Oh.”

  “It was a brutal murder!”

  “You’re right, you’re right. I don’t know what I was thinking.” Kevin wished he hadn’t said anything.

  “Violence isn’t fun. That mutant had a family. She had hopes and dreams. She might have had a cat.”

  “Maybe,” said Kevin. “But she’s also light green, covered with boils, and doesn’t talk. It’s reasonable to dehumanize her. Every indication is that they’re mindless killing machines. Are we not allowed to enjoy protecting ourselves from a mindless killing machine?”

  “Not if we still have a moral compass.”

  “The world sucks now. Does it make me a bad person to take a ‘glass half full’ approach to life?”

  Another mutant, a pudgy guy, dropped down into the shelter. It caught its chin on one of the rungs of the ladder, snapping its neck. It fell to the floor, then lay there with its head bent almost all the way backwards, looking at Kevin and Missy even though the rest of its body was facing the ceiling.

  It reached for them with one hand. Its tongue lolled out of its mouth as if trying to lick them from afar.

  “I just have trouble comparing that thing to somebody that has hopes and dreams,” said Kevin.

  They walked over and bashed the creature with the metal shelf until it was significantly less identifiable as something that had once been human.

  “I hope this didn’t give you a boner,” said Missy.

  “C’mon, that’s not fair,” said Kevin. “All I said was that it was kind of fun. I wasn’t giggling and playing with myself.”

  “Not with me standing here, no.”

  “It was like fishing! You can say you enjoy fishing without it being sexual gratification, right? Why is it okay to con a fish into thinking it’s getting a meal, jabbing a hook through its face, and hoisting it into the air to suffocate? Its entire weight is supported by the hook! Can you imagine if I jammed a hook through your mouth and then dangled your body in the air? You’d call me a psychopath, but a retired guy could do that all day and he’d be a kindly old man!”

  “You’re comparing this to fishing, but this is more like dangling humans by meat hooks in a shed.”

  “Point taken,” said Kevin.

  Two mutants were lying in the corner. That left many more upstairs, but at least the plan was in the early stages of being successful. Worst case scenario, there were two fewer mutants to rip them apart if they ended up just making a run for it, damn the odds.

  They waited for about half an hour. The mangled mutants in the corner still seemed harmless, but it was also creepy as hell having them there, squirming around.

  “You know we can’t sleep in here tonight, right?” asked Missy.

  “Well, we could sleep in shifts.”

  “I’m not sleeping in here with them. I don’t even mean that I’m worried that you’d fall asleep during your shift. I mean that even with you wide awake on high alert, I can’t sleep with those things in our shelter.”

  “We could throw a blanket over them.”

  “Nope.”

  “I don’t want to sleep with them in here, either,” said Kevin, though he was more worried about Missy falling asleep during her shift. “We’ll just have to incapacitate as many as we can.”

  A few minutes later, there was a clatter, but nothing dropped into the shelter. Kevin and Missy walked over to the ladder and looked up. They both just stood there for an extremely long moment, staring.

  “Now what?” Missy asked.

  “I honestly don’t know.”

  A mutant had fallen into the hole. But it was a morbidly obese mutant, and it had gotten stuck. Only its lower half was visible, its legs kicking back and forth against the ladder.

  They both continued to stare at it for a while.

  “Tug it?” Missy asked.

  “I guess.”

  Kevin climbed a few rungs up the ladder, then took hold of one of the mutant’s feet with one hand while gripping the ladder with the other. He tugged. The mutant didn’t budge.

  “Is it working at all?” asked Missy.

  “Nope. I’m going to have to try both hands.”

  Kevin grabbed the mutant’s other foot, then pulled as hard as he could. It did no good. He jumped from the ladder, hoping that by using his entire body weight he could pull the mutant through the hole, but it didn’t move at all, and Kevin dropped to the floor.

  “What if we greased it up?” asked Missy.

  Kevin shook his head. “It’s way too big.”

  “Shit.”

  “We may be trapped down here forever.”

  “What if we made it, uh, smaller?”

  Kevin frowned. “What do you mean?”

  “What if we went up there with some tools, and made the mutant small enough to fit in the hole?”

  “I hate our lives.”

  Missy went and got the butcher knife. “I’ll do it,” she said.

  “No, no, I’ll do it,” said Kevin, hoping like hell that this discussion would continue long enough for him to allow Missy to do it.

  “It was my idea,” said Missy.

  Kevin tried to think of the best way to respond. “That’s true” might make it seem like he was giving up too easily. Repeating “No, no, I’ll do it,” might make her say, “Okay, good idea, thanks for the offer.”

  “Still…” he said.

  “It’s my turn to do something like this,” said Missy.

  “Fair enough,” said Kevin.

  Missy climbed up the ladder. The mutant was thrashing around, but
it wasn’t actually making a direct attempt to kick her, so she was able to climb past its legs and not get knocked off the ladder.

  She jabbed the knife up into its belly. Horrible goo rained down upon her.

  “We can trade whenever you’re ready,” said Kevin.

  Missy sawed away with the butcher knife, whimpering but remaining admirably committed to the task at hand. Kevin had to admit that this was worse than when he’d had to cut up Uncle Jake’s body. He’d been dead, and the contents of his body had not been pouring on Kevin.

  Missy threw up.

  More mutant liquids splashed onto the floor.

  Missy threw up again.

  “Repeating my offer,” said Kevin, even though it made no sense to trade now, since Missy was already drenched.

  She didn’t respond, probably to keep anything from getting in her mouth.

  She continued to cut away. An intestine flopped into view and quickly unspooled.

  Kevin threw up.

  Missy climbed down halfway, threw up, then climbed down the rest of the way. “Give it a tug now,” she said.

  Kevin reluctantly climbed the ladder. He grabbed each of the mutant’s feet, then pulled as hard as he could. There was a squishy slurping sound, and then the mutant popped free, splattering all over the floor.

  “Nice work,” said Kevin.

  They dragged the mutant over to the corner with the others. Then Kevin went back and collected the intestine as well, so they wouldn’t have to keep looking at it.

  “The plan seems to be working,” said Kevin. “But still, we’re only down by three of them. If we’re not willing to sleep down here, I don’t know how we’re going to clear out the entire upstairs.”

  “We may have to be bolder.”

  “Bolder than being showered in guts?”

  Missy nodded. “Luring them down here with our voices isn’t working, and it could take forever to wait for them all to accidentally fall down the hole. Somebody needs to climb up there and wave to them.”

  “Somebody?”

  “Yes.”

  “Does this mean it’s my turn?”

  “No,” said Missy. “Pulling the stuck mutant through the hole counted as your turn.”

  “Oh, good.”

  “If my legs start flailing around as if I’m being dragged up there against my will, your job is to pull me back down.”

  “I can do that,” said Kevin.

  Missy climbed up the ladder. Kevin felt bad letting her do this, but it wasn’t as if he’d let her taunt all of the remaining mutants. They’d trade back and forth. Keep things fair.