The Last Donut Shop of the Apocalypse (Kelly Driscoll Book 2)

by Nina Post

  “The Pothole City Relief Society includes the founders of United Donuts Co. and Pothole City Donuts,” the mayor said, “as well as the president of Clucking Along Holdings; the Chief Executive Officer of Claw & Crutty; the founder of Pothole City’s leading garbage disposal company, Pothole City Waste; and several attorneys.”

  Pothole City Donuts was the new donut shop leasing space on the first floor of Amenity Tower, and their business was doing gangbusters compared to United Donuts. Kelly didn’t know why the founders of two donut shops were in the Relief Society. But then, the number of available business leaders in Pothole City was limited.

  “And finally, Mr. Mayor, how would you classify the mood in the city right now?”

  The mayor intertwined his fingers in his lap. “I would characterize the city’s mood as understandably fearful and uncertain, but also hopeful. And dare I say, exhilarated over the prospect of change, of moving forward. I think people are focusing on the small things.”

  At the moment, Kelly was exhilarated over the prospect of having a snack.

  The show’s second guest, a wiry man with a mustache and an amused expression, passed through the studio lights to take the seat across from Kelly.

  “Why don’t you introduce yourself to our viewers,” Kelly said, giving the man what she hoped was an encouraging smile, and not a menacing snarl.

  The camera operator gave her a thumbs up.

  The man leaned forward slightly and kept his hands flat on his thighs. “Sure. My name is Sugar Montana, and I’m the Pothole City Transportation Commissioner.”

  “Thanks for taking the time to appear on What’s On Your Mind, With Roger Balbi, Mr. Montana.”

  “Call me Sugar.” He nodded, and flashed a smile so fast it qualified as subliminal.

  “I’m sure our audience is keenly interested in Pothole City’s deteriorating pothole situation,” she said.

  Sugar cleared his throat and darted his gaze at the camera. “Of course they are.”

  In the management office, the butterfly monster thudded against the window and the tentacled cylinder had hopped up on the reception desk. A third resident, a monster resembling a smallish volcanic crater with feathery appendages, huddled, trembling and nonplussed, by the supplies closet.

  Sugar sat up a little straighter. “The residents of Pothole City have probably noticed more potholes this year. This is clearly due to the combination of last year’s blizzard, along with frequent freeze-and-thaw cycles, and the demons in the underworld seeking points of weakness in old asphalt. Our revised pavement strategy calls for more so-called ‘pothole killer’ machines for use in alleys. We don’t want to be called Sinkhole City.” He chuckled softly.

  Tom the giant water scorpion herded the butterfly monster and the other two monsters out into the hallway to resolve their conflict there.

  In the studio room, Kelly looked intently at Sugar. “Don’t you think that the destruction of Pothole City just weeks ago has something to do with the worsening pothole situation?”

  At the studio window, Tubiel cupped his hands around his mirrored sunglasses with the side safety mesh and looked into the studio. He waved at Kelly, and put his hand back to the glass.

  “Yes, that could have something to do with it.” Sugar’s mouth quirked, delicately, to indicate his facetious tone. “After the destruction, much of the rubble was swept or trucked away. Some of that rubble was hastily backhoed into the lake, forming an artificial beach of rusted iron spikes and chunks of gravel.”

  Sugar glanced at the window, presumably to make sure the mayor wasn’t listening, though Kelly got the impression he didn’t much care.

  “This process almost certainly caused more potholes to form,” Sugar continued. “Moreover, traffic consisting mainly of Pothole City Cab Co. Livery drivers, city vehicles, and Cluck Snack delivery wagons started flowing through the city before the street-resurfacing program got underway. This definitely worsened existing potholes.”

  More residents assembled inside the management office. Enim giants, fallen angels, worm-like residents in mucous envelopes, residents with hard exoskeletons, and a couple of SPs watched the monitor screen as colorful opaque wings and membranous wings flapped gently in the crowd to make a breeze. Tubiel jumped up and down at the window, but only saw his head.

  “And how many potholes did you fill last year, Commissioner?” Kelly asked.

  “Over seven-hundred-thousand street potholes,” Sugar said. “Crews also filled more than fifty-thousand potholes in alleys, considerably more than the previous year.”

  “Wow.”

  “Yeah, wow is right.” Sugar smiled. “Our department would like to be less reactive to the problem.”

  The third guest, a band called Frog Hotel, clattered into the studio with their equipment as Kelly went out. She wanted to stay and watch, but had the meeting with the accountant about the reserves and the investment accounts, the package she had to put in the delivery drop box across the street, and most important, she needed a snack.

  By the time she opened the door leading to the elevator vestibule, she had smears of colored slime and powdery dust on her shirt. She was getting used to it.

  f met Kelly at the north door by a shrieking death worm tied to a fire hydrant and not pleased about it. She relaxed the second she saw his smile, his unruly honey-colored hair, and his intense blue eyes the exact shade of a freshLactarius indigo mushroom. He wore his usual jeans and sweater.

  If she let herself do whatever she felt like doing, she would melt right into him, just rest for a moment on his chest.

  But she didn’t feel comfortable enough to take the risk of leaning on him.

  She’d been working nonstop, but didn’t know where her focus should go, didn’t know if she was working on the right things. And sometimes, though she couldn’t let anyone see it, she just wanted things to be quiet for a minute, just wanted a peaceful bubble of a quiet, intimate moment, but it was an indulgence she couldn’t afford.

  Recording Roger’s show fueled her competitive nature even though they didn’t work together and he was a shrieking iguana-monster flying through the stratosphere. Feeling competitive could be motivating, but it could also be draining in a way she didn’t notice until she exhausted herself.

  “Nice vessel,” she said instead.

  “What, this old thing?”

  She walked with him down the hall past the resident photo gallery―rows of black-and-white photos of the trash chute, the stairwell, the automat, the vending machine, the amenities. Being bound to the building, the angels didn’t get out much, but they loved their amenities.

  Af presented a serious distraction. Without him around, Kelly couldn’t stop thinking about him and felt a strange soaring, bursting kind of feeling that she kind of wished would stop, and with him around, well, she was maddeningly aware of it on a molecular level.

  They passed through the mail area and he stopped in front of her, hand on her shoulder, eyes fixed on hers. Her breath caught. She got a little of what she wanted without having to do it herself.

  “You don’t have to stay in this job.” He spoke in a low voice, deeper than usual and soothing, like driving through a tunnel. “I know you don’t want to. Just leave. The new manager can screw up until Claw & Crutty sends someone, or something, else.”

  “Do you want me to leave?”

  He got so close she could feel his breath on her face, clean and both warm and cool, like walking into a new store from a summer day. She raised her nose and stealthily inhaled. She was far gone.

  “I was hired for a job this morning. A bond agent wants me to find the president of CAH. Clucking―”

  “―Along Holdings,” he said with her. “That building you saw from my place.”

  The door from the lobby opened and let out a five-foot white plastic robot, which had a mechanism at the bottom for rolling in any direction, a screen the size of a small manila envelope, and a camera on top. It rolled, whisper-quiet, down the hall.
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  He let go of her shoulder.

  “I’ll have to let Gil fall on his face more often, anyway,” she said.

  “Wouldn’t he break his screen?” Af gave her a wry smile.

  “Yeah, but that part’s not expensive.”

  The robot steadily rolled around the Jackal, looking through his mail, wearing a pair of blue satin short-shorts, heart-print leg warmers, and a terrycloth headband with matching wristbands.

  “I’ll give it a few more days. Give him a few more Turkle tests,” she added, half-joking.

  Af arched a brow. “I think you could give Gil months and still not see any dif―”

  “You are late!” Gil, the telepresence robot, rolled up to Af’s feet, backed up, and went forward again in a curve to approach Kelly.

  She ignored him, and headed with Af toward the management office.

  Gil picked up his speed with a hitching, higher-pitched whirring noise, following them past the elevators―one of which had a vendor working inside―and through a series of three doors, which they didn’t hold, but sturdiness saved him.

  “You are late!” Gil said behind them. “We have the annual meeting and unit owner party to strategize, episodes of What’s On Your Mind to plan, and complaint letters to write.”

  Kelly tried to shut her office door on Gil, but he pushed through and approached her desk. Af flattened against the wall to avoid Gil.

  “We are busy busy busy,” Gil said. “The elevator vendor is here to investigate a scratching noise, Dragomir needs your approval on a boiler repair, and the cleaning company found something that scared them during the deep cleaning of the air vents. We’ve received complaints about the line in front of the new donut shop―people are trying to queue in our lobby. In addition, a resident has their death worm tied up by the north door and it will not stop shrieking.”

  Kelly sat back and tapped her Amenity Tower pen against the desk. Claw & Crutty, the property management corporation that managed the building, had worked out a deal with Kelly for the use of the telepresence robot, a gift to her from Don, the Angel of the Bottomless Pit.

  Don had used his telepresence robot to go on vacation for him in Hawaii, and gave a matching one to Kelly as a tongue-in-cheek ‘I’m sorry for causing the apocalypse’ gift. Claw & Crutty uploaded G.I.L., an AI manager they developed in-house, into the robot substrate. But none of the residents or employees would listen to Gil, so she told them she’d stay until Claw & Crutty found a replacement, which she hoped would be sooner rather than later.

  “I’ll take care of it.” She shot a glare at Gil then went back to the computer screen.

  He lingered.

  She got up and opened the door, sweeping her arm to indicate that he should be on his way.

  “You still need to schedule the―”

  “Leave, Gil.”

  He whirred out the open door.

  “First order of business.” Kelly returned to her chair while Af thumbed through the latest edition of Today’s Luxury Condominium Manager (feature story: Smother Your Rage with Diplomacy).

  “Make sure that the guests are lined up on What’s On Your Mind, With Roger Balbi.” Af was used to her verbalizing her task list.

  Even though Roger ascended to regional manager, she kept his name on the show. She certainly didn’t want her name on it. It was annoying enough to work as herself, day after day.

  For a few minutes, she looked over the show’s monthly schedule.

  The phone rang, and at the same time, Gil came back. She ignored the phone and noticed the gift basket on the floor as she turned. Dammit.

  “What now, Gil?”

  “There is a family of cobras in the lobby who keep spitting at Clementine,” Gil said. “She has one of them in a headlock.”

  “Send Dragomir.”

  She unwrapped the cellophane tied over the gift, revealing a dozen bags of Cluck Snack brand ground coffee. The note read, ‘You’ll need this,’ signed, ‘Your long-suffering guardian.’

  “Who sent that?” Af said.

  “He who watches,” she said, rubbing her forehead.

  “The bald guy?”

  She had pursued ‘the bald man’ since she was ten, thinking him responsible for torching her family’s cabin and her family with it. After her multiple attempts at ending him over the years―poison, explosions, you name it―he finally bothered to tell her, decades later, he didn’t do it and had only been there at the time as her guardian, at a friend’s request.

  Kelly struggled with guilt when she found out that she had been trying to kill the wrong person, but he could have mentioned that earlier. They had negotiated a tense truce.

  “Does he own a gift box company?” Af picked up the gift and turned it around to look at it. “This is about the eighth one he’s sent you.”

  “He just likes to send them.”

  A knock sounded from the door. Af reached over and turned the handle.

  Dragomir loomed in the doorway. “Where is Komay?” He said this like the contractor responsible for the maintenance of their elevators was also responsible for the slaughtering of his village and his highly valuable goat farm.

  “I just saw him in cab five,” she said.

  “Where is Komay!”

  “I’m not hiding him from you, Dragomir.” Kelly put her palms out as if holding a large beach ball. “Didn’t you hear me? Cab five!”

  He growled like an annoyed wolf and shut the door behind him.

  “Have you tried team-building retreats?” Af said.

  “Please. He’d kill us all.”

  Af checked his watch. “Well, I have to go back to my apartment.”

  “One of those things you do at the exact same time of the day, every day?”

  He gave a tiny shrug with his shoulder and eyebrow.

  “Lunch? Exercise?” She was genuinely curious. Af had an envious ability to truly relax and keep his life steady and serene. Or at least until he got overwhelmed by the human condition and changed back into his original angel of destruction form.

  He folded his arms. “It’s one of my lunches.” At her look, he continued. “I eat four small meals a day: one at six, one at ten-thirty, one at two, and one at five. Helps break up the day.” He furrowed his brows. “Why, do you think I’m too regimented? Complacent?”

  “You’re a fallen angel bound to this luxury condominium. How could you not be regimented and complacent?” She thought about it for a second. “But Raum isn’t like that.”

  “Raum is a narcissistic showman.”

  “Exactly,” she said.

  “I like to keep things simple.”

  Af left to do whatever he did at that exact time of the day, every day―Kelly would need a chart to keep track―and she went to check out the hot new donut shop that had opened in the building more than a week ago, thinking she screwed up that conversation. She didn’t mean to imply his life was boring. She only meant that if she were in his position, she’d want to have a schedule, too, because how else could you cope with it?

  Pothole City Donuts was the most popular eatery in the city. The restaurant leased space on the southeast corner of Amenity Tower, which already boasted an automat and a grocery store on the premises.

  The property management company, Claw & Crutty, chose Pothole City Donuts as the tenant for a coveted, street-level commercial space. In the process, they turned away a competing donut shop―United Donuts―and hundreds of other applicants wanting to expand their business into Pothole City.

  The decision was an easy one, since Pothole City Donuts had already sponsored a month’s worth of What’s On Your Mind, With Roger Balbi episodes―a shrewd tactic and a good match for the city’s most popular local access show.

  But it made Kelly’s days more difficult. The donut chain only opened for only four hours a day, and attracted every monster and fallen angel in the city, who stood in winding queues for up to an hour.

  The shop drew even more attention to Amenity Tower, the only condo high-
rise not under construction. Claw & Crutty’s real estate office even leased stairwell space to new tenants who couldn’t get an apartment in the building, and that meant more work for her.

  She hadn’t even had the time to stop by and grab a donut yet, so she made her way across the lobby, raising a hand in greeting to Clementine, who carried a giant box out of the package receiving area for a slow-moving monster with dozens of segments.

  Kelly entered a vestibule that led directly to the shop. Directly inside the entrance sat a plump vintage jukebox and two brushed nickel chairs, which she figured customers could sit in while waiting for a take-out order.

  The tables shone with a donut decoupage. Flip-style mini-jukeboxes perched against the wall next to laminated menus in holders. A neon pink hexagonal clock glowed between forties-style posters advertising Cluck Snack products, placed above small blue vinyl booths. A chalkboard advertised the donut of the day in colored chalk.

  A dramatic mural dominated the south wall and depicted a winged maiden of mercy holding a torch and fighting off savage hounds above a ruined Pothole City while large black raptors circled in the sky.

  As Kelly inched up in line, she salivated at rows of delectable yeast-and-cake-fried marvels that looked like pages out of a lavishly-illustrated children’s picture book.

  Behind the counter, a petite Gorgon greeted her customers with a charming smile. Her pyrite-colored wings shimmered and caught the rays of morning sun as she gracefully and efficiently placed donuts in pink boxes despite glittery, purple-painted claws that almost rivaled the size of Af’s in his original angel of destruction form.

  Her serpent skin suggested a hundred subtle colors, and her fangs looked like the cockatrice beauty shop down the street painted them with meticulous detail.

  Kelly inched closer to the counter behind a gradually shorter queue, and noticed the donut of the week―a Cluck Snack flavor, the classic Krispy Baked B’nana Bitz for Dogs and Ferrets (“Can Be Used As Cereal!”). Here, it was used as a donut topping. Brilliant. Kelly bought a half-dozen so she could give some to Clem and Tom.