by Nina Post
“What did the chicken say?” She had a disorienting sensation that she wasn’t having the conversation she thought she was having.
Af stared down at his coffee with a slight smile, as though thinking of the moment. “It doesn’t matter.” He looked up again. “The point is, the chicken said something that realigned my entire perspective.”
He didn’t even trust her enough to tell her what the chicken said.
She let the coffee sit and cool. “And you have to leave to do this?”
“I managed to overcome the prince of wrath title, and yes, I accidentally destroyed public property during the previous apocalypse, like that solar trash bin that cost as much as a small airplane, and that priceless glass cupola. Other than that, I haven’t destroyed anything. But I want to build now.”
“I’ll get you some model kits at the hobby store.”
“It’s not the same thing.”
“In case you haven’t noticed, Pothole City is rebuilding right now. All around you.”
“CAH has that covered. There’s nothing for me to do here.”
“The SPs need you.” Kelly felt like a pothole worked over by a four-person crew with asphalt tampers. She put her hand over her warm forehead and closed her eyes.
She just wanted to be back in her bedroom at the SSI building, under the covers, but she couldn’t, because she didn’t have the strength to fight anything else. If Af left, maybe she would stay here in his apartment. No, that would make her sad. Forget that.
“But what about”―she swallowed and pressed the back of her hand to her forehead, like turning over a pillow for the cooler side―“the SPs? Who, by the way, are in the storage room. They need you here.”
“They don’t need me,” Af said. “They’re busy with their work: Tubiel, Fef, Morris―all of them. Their work is important. I’m just a former angel of destruction and anger, holed up in this apartment, using the amenities and not contributing anything to the world.”
She couldn’t let him go, but couldn’t fight it. She didn’t even feel strong enough to sit at the breakfast counter. Her face blazed with heat and her throat hurt.
“Can I just…” sleep in your bed?
She had never wanted anything more than to just crawl into bed. Anything else she had on her goal list, even if accomplished, would be secondary, if not farther down the list.
Finding her mother’s killer? Secondary. Avenging her? Secondary. Closing the air handler so inter-dimensional monsters from moldy galaxy cracks stopped getting sucked into Amenity Tower? Secondary. Finding Archie? Secondary. Getting Archie installed back at CAH so the SPs could continue to get their nutrients from Cluck Snack? Secondary. Keeping the SPs alive, thereby maintaining the delicate balance of the universe? Secondary. Keeping Af here? Friendship? Love? Connecting with family?
All secondary at best compared to a bed, especially his. But she couldn’t even ask.
Af tilted his head and furrowed his brows. “You don’t look well. Why don’t you take a nap in my bed?”
Sweeter words were never heard.
She typed out a fast text to Stringfellow. You gave me the ick. Af leaving.
She put the phone down and staggered to Af’s bedroom, but the phone buzzed. Af picked it up and read Stringfellow’s reply out loud. “Did u just text me in phonetic japanese? Since when does a ferret text?”
After mumbling something incoherent in response, about how she thought you couldn’t get the flu from a ferret, she collapsed onto the bed and fell into a deep sleep.
“I’m almost certain you can’t catch influenza from a ferret.” Archie mixed flavors into the Cluck Snack Dry Mix with a glass rod.
Kelly had crawled out of Af’s bed and found her way downstairs to the storage room. Af probably had his scheduled swim time or soemthing.
She could barely remember getting the storage room, let alone the details of her conversation with the cockatrice in the elevator.
“I’m dying.” She held her head in her hands as she sat on the cold concrete floor.
The SPs brought her things from the storage lockers: a yellow superhero sleeping bag, a floppy stuffed dog, a plastic record player, an unnervingly graphic first aid book, a vintage bicycle manufactured in Pothole City, and a pizzelle maker.
They piled the things around her like a fort. They wrapped the soft cotton sleeping bag around her, tried to put the stuffed dog on her lap, put a tiny record on the player, put the first aid book next to her, and plugged in the pizzelle maker. Zack rode the bicycle around Kelly in circles.
Her phone buzzed. She swallowed and tried to clear her throat, which felt like swallowing chunks of quartz.
“Hamlet,” she said in a croak.
“I just crossed myself,” he said. “Is this Kelly Driscoll with SSI or a demonic chupacabra?”
“Both.” She didn’t say anything else, hoping he would just plow ahead.
“Are you sick?” Hamlet said.
“Yes!”
“Listen, the Archie Impostor has assembled a team to buy out any remaining land in the city. Do you know how many buildings CAH is developing right now?”
“A lot,” she said.
“You sound terrible!” Hamlet said. “You should be sleeping. Yes, CAH is financing the majority of rebuilding in Pothole City. But this Impostor, he is not satisfied with those projects. How are we supposed to depose him and get the real president in his rightful place?”
It was so hard to just think. “I’ll blast him out.”
Hamlet didn’t reply. “I’m kidding. Let me call you back. Soonish.”
She wrapped the sleeping bag around her shoulders and went over to Archie. He did a double-take.
“My word, are you ill?” In a whisper, he added, “The Spanish Flu isn’t back, is it?”
She peered at him through half-lidded eyes, enjoying all of these social interactions. “Can you make me something that will get me through the next few hours like a person? I’ll take whatever.”
Archie held up a finger. “I’ve got just the thing.” A few minutes later, he handed her a steaming hot and fizzy red drink that tasted inexplicably like piña colada. She drank the whole thing in a continuous series of gulps.
Now the question of how she could get to CAH? She staggered out of the storage room, theoretically bolstered from Archie’s drink, though she felt exactly the same, and took the elevator up to the second floor.
Pedro assiduously mopped the lobby floor.
“Hey Pedro,” she said, and it sounded like the mating call of a toad.
His eyes widened.
“I know, I look terrible and need sleep.” She closed her eyes for a second and waved it off.
Gil rolled into the lobby, whirring at a high pitch. “Where have you been? There’s a committee meeting in ten minutes, and the accountant is coming in to discuss how best to allocate the reserve funds among our various bank accounts!”
Kelly wanted to dismantle the telepresence robot for scrap parts. “I’m sure you have it covered.”
Gil left in a huff, if a telepresence robot could leave in a huff, knocking over a large vase filled with river stones and fake orchids, and in his distress, showed a cleaving iceberg on his screen.
The Jackal opened the door from the fitness center and made a beeline to Kelly. He wore blue satin shorts, a blue-and-red striped tank top, and purple sweatbands.
“Ms. Driscoll! Have you found my crystal star?”
Tthe Jackal seemed much taller. Towering, even.
Because she’d fallen to the floor.
theno fumed as her boyfriend and his cronies destroyed her donut shop, but fumed quietly, in the kitchen. She didn’t want to chase him away, and she didn’t want her sister ruining this relationship, too. Stheno liked to say that she picked her battles, when the truth was, she let her boyfriend do whatever he wanted. And if that meant letting her boyfriend and his friends run roughshod over United Donuts Co., and use Medusa’s fancy Super-Fryer to bring about another apocalyp
se, then so be it.
The bitter Gorgon wanted Medusa to be the desperate one for once. She wanted her sister to lose what she held dear: her stupid donut shop, her rabidly devoted customers, her vacation cottage (located uncomfortably close to hers), Archie, and anything else that made her happy.
Why did Medusa get to have everything? She was confident in her appearance, funny, and more likeable. Their parents had loved her sister more, given her more. She had a good-natured man who loved her, the far more popular donut shop, a flair for decorating, her own unique style, a great apartment in the city…
Stheno tightened her lips and willed her eyes to not tear up. She had a boyfriend, too. OK, he took advantage of her all the time, expected her to clean up after him like his mother, and made her donut shop into a war zone without hesitation or care. And she had a hell lodge timeshare.
She put her head down on her folded arms and cried as her donut shop was violated.
After Kelly recovered from her brief passing-out experience, and got a revised drink from Archie, she and Firiel took a few oat canisters to the train station.
On the way, Firiel tugged her sleeve and pointed to a silver vending cart receiving new supplies from a Cluck Snack delivery truck.
“I don’t want to miss the train and have to wait twenty minutes for the next one.”
He looked up at her with an expression she couldn’t refuse, so she bought him a Cluck Snack Meal’n a Box Totez and he put it in his jacket for later.
They got to the station and took the biomorphic train back to Hell Lodge number three. The train’s persona, pleased with the oats, gave them chocolate chip cookies and hot coffee.
Archie’s second mystery flu drink had made her hyper, and Firiel shrank away from her a little. When they stepped off the train, she zoomed right past the fortune machines and headed straight to the main lodge. Firiel ran to keep up, until he got distracted by a mushroom, noticed he had fallen behind, and ran after her again.
She used the cast iron polecat-head doorknob to push open the massive door to the lodge. The restaurant on the left side served breakfast when they came in. It smelled amazing, but she waved off the host, an amiable fence lizard with a bright blue belly, and approached the bar at the back.
The spider was busy making mimosas, but winked at her with one of his glossy black eyes. “You find Archie?” He sent off a tray with a cyclops giant.
“I found him. Thanks for your help before.” She spoke fast. Whatever Archie had given her would probably make her crash soon.
“You’re looking for someone else?”
“Mr. Black. I think he was just here. Maybe having breakfast? With his associates Mr. Orange and Mr. Yellow?”
He polished some highball glasses. “Let’s say, hypothetically, that they were.”
“Let’s.” She lifted Firiel onto a swivel chair and put her hand on the back of the chair. She would characterize her flu at this point like a wolverine smothered under layers of bubble wrap. It wouldn’t stay in there for long.
“Or let’s say, hypothetically speaking―”
“Of course.”
“―that they still are.”
“They’re here right now?”
“Just leaving now, actually.” The spider lifted his head and she turned around. Two men walked through the open door while one held it open, and the door swung shut after them.
“You’re the best.” Kelly lifted Firiel off the chair.
She followed the SSI execs, staying back a comfortable distance with Firiel behind her, studying at the ground the whole way looking for mushrooms.
Her energy thrummed; she wanted to run as fast as she could to burn it off. Her forehead, the tops of her ears, and her chest felt hot, but Archie’s drink had numbed her throat, a huge improvement in itself.
Mr. Black, Mr. Orange, and Mr. Yellow passed Stheno’s vacation timeshare cabin at their left and where she and Firiel had come in on the train, and kept going another stretch to a large treehouse. She waited as they climbed the stairs and disappeared into the bottom of it. She was most curious about Mr. Black because she used his office.
“Coming?” she said.
Firiel nodded, looking nervous.
She climbed up the tree house steps and pushed open the door above her. Not very subtle or stealthy.
“Anyone home?”
The treehouse looked fit for a bachelor with its knotted wood walls and deck, big worn velvet chairs and corduroy sofa, and folding camping tables that held tin cups, playing cards, cigar clippers, and empty boxes of Cluck Snack Krispy Baked B’nana Bitz.
Firiel held up his Cluck Snack Meal’n a Box Totez.
“You want to eat it now?”
Firiel nodded.
“OK. Knock yourself out.”
In the miniscule galley kitchen, she found only Cluck Snack Ravioleee and cans of P’nut Butt’r Koffee Drink.
“They’re gonna get scurvy,” she said, and noticed a huge oil portrait of the three SSI executives: one with curly dark hair stood in the center with his arms crossed; one with short red hair leaned over at the left with his leg up on a chair and hand under his chin; and one with slicked-back brown hair crouched on the right, arms in the middle of a kung fu punch.
She reached out and touched the hardened swirls and crests of paint, and straightened the gilt frame. Something about it felt off when she moved it; she tried to lift it off the wall fastenings, but it refused, and she pulled on the left side of the frame.
The painting swung open to the right and opened into a dark passageway.
“You should come with me,” she said.
Firiel nodded.
She crouch-walked through the short, narrow tunnel and came to a door that led to a supply closet, where a ladder descended from an opening in the floor. After taking the ladder down a few steps, she helped Firiel down, opened another door, and found herself in the lowest underground parking level beneath Amenity Tower.
“Huh.” A few seconds later, her phone buzzed and she noticed an email that Hamlet Gonzalez forwarded from his personal account:
CONFIDENTIAL MEMORANDUM – DO NOT CIRCULATE
Effective immediately, all Cluck Snack production―including retail products and foodservice lines―have been suspended. During the most recent inspection, we determined that the ratio of unexpected ingredients and contaminants exceeds the allowable values, on both a volume and weight basis. Our best scientists are working night and day to determine the source of the problem.
But until then―and to avoid panic and loss of brand equity―we have created a cover story that should allay the public’s concerns. We will be issuing a press release later today stating that we are performing scheduled maintenance on the production line.
You are instructed to direct any employees or customers who ask about the situation to the aforementioned press release. I will provide a confidential update to all recipients of this memorandum by close of business tomorrow. Sincerely, Archibald Driscoll.
“That can’t be good,” she said.
She looked down at Firiel and noticed with alarm that he’d taken on a pasty greenish hue. She took the elevator to floor forty-two, and Tom used two of his arms to rock Firiel gently side to side.
After he got out of the elevator, Firiel threw up on the vine-patterned carpet. He curled up into a fetal position and made a low keening sound.
“Let’s get you somewhere else.” She picked Firiel up and took him down the hall to the end unit. Could SPs get a viral infection of the intestinal tract?
When Af opened the door, she felt reassured by his presence, and like the world’s biggest jerk. Did she do anything else but bring injured SPs to his apartment for him to fix? But he took Firiel from her and moved him into the bedroom, throwing back the cover and placing him as carefully on the gray flannel sheets as a Stradivarius violin.
“Am I running some kind of clinic?” Af flashed a rueful half-smile.
“Sorry. He just threw up, and I have to g
et Archie.” She had to keep things simple. Her flu-addled brain couldn’t handle things like facetiousness, irony, or any other rhetorical flourishes.
“How do you feel?” Af asked.
The hyperness had worn off a little and she felt like the wolverine had enough room to run in a tight circle. Maybe Archie could give her more of his mystery drink.
“I’m fine.” If fine meant feeling hot and sometimes too cold, a throat that felt like the site of an archaeological dig, and overall misery getting worse by the minute.
“Do you get colds, or the flu?” She put her hand on Firiel’s sweaty forehead. Mint-colored beads formed by the SP’s hairline.
“I don’t know. I’ve never had one.”
“Well, I’m heading down to the storage room. Could you―”
“Of course.”
“And maybe put a cold towel on his forehead?”
“Sure.”
“He ate a Cluck Snack Meal’n a Box Totez at the Hell Lodge. Maybe it was bad. Expired. Call me if anything changes, OK?”
She gave Firiel’s arm a squeeze and walked out of the room to the front door. She lingered in the hall as Af stood in the doorway, eyes wide and fearful.
“Where did you buy it?” he asked. “When?”
Another question. Torture with the flu. “Uh… he got it from a vending cart before we got on the train. A Cluck Snack delivery van unloaded them.”
The expression on his face made her pulse spike in fear. “What? Tell me!”
Af started to say something, hesitated, and started again. “I rescued Raum and the board at the Clucking Along Holdings Dry Mix factory. He said something about the dry mix, and Don sending them there. I tried to call, but you didn’t pick up.”
Her head felt like a piñata someone was trying to break to spill out the candy, but she concluded that Don sent the board there to poison the dry mix.
Af sat on the bed. “If that Cluck Snack delivery truck was unloading new product at the vending cart, it could have been made from that batch of dry mix. That factory is run by robots. Really fast, top-of-the-line robots that make Gil look like a cardboard Dalek. It’s entirely possible that the poisoned mix went into Meal’n a Box Totez that fast.”
