Star-Spangled Apocalypse

by Harmon Cooper

  James started laughing and looked up, hoping that Nathaniel would emerge soon. “Damn, I wonder what’s taking him so long…”

  “Beats me.” Virgil yawned. “You know what I have been wondering about…”

  “What’s that?”

  “I have been wondering what all the other employees at our former job think about us just bouncing out of town and not contacting them since. I also wonder if the McStarbucks Corporation has a violent hit man squad, possibly made up of ninjas, who are searching for us as we speak…”

  James shrugged. “Who knows what they think? The people at the store probably think that you took off on a drug-infused trip right out of Fear and Loathing and I accompanied you as your attorney.”

  “I mean, that’s not far off.”

  “Bill has been texting me, but mostly just bullshit.”

  Virgil’s eyes went wide. “Dude, we’ve got company.”

  James looked up just in time to see the front door of the manager’s office kick open. “Holy shit!”

  ***

  Standing in the doorway of the RV office was a large, white haired man in a flannel shirt, tight Wrangler jeans and a Santa Claus gut. He look irritable, and he looked even worse after brandishing a shotgun and aiming it at the windshield.

  The fat, red-faced man stood still, his gaze steady and his eyes narrow. Virgil slowly inched towards the side passenger door and slowly rolled down the window. He yelled at the top of his lungs at the man with the shotgun.

  “Hello, sir!” Virgil piped from the open window. He cleared his throat. “We mean no harm! Just dropping Nathaniel off.”

  “Whhhhoooeeeeeeeeeee, Nate, these here boys is mighty goddamn brave!” the man said, as he lowered the shotgun to his leg. “Movin’ around while a man’s holding a gun at you. Day-yum! You boys go ahead and step on outta that there jeep. You with the long hair, hippie one, go ahead and come out first.”

  Virgil stepped out of the jeep slowly, with his hands in the air and his fingers trembling. James followed suit, his cigarette hanging out the side of his mouth collecting ash.

  “Welp, Nathaniel, you was right, these is definitely some city boys. Ya’ll can putcher hands down by your side, I ain’t gonna shootya just yet.”

  “I’m from Huntsville,” James said as he lowered his hand. “Not quite the city.”

  “Not quite, huh? Let me ask you this, boy, how far is Huntsville from Houston?”

  “An hour.”

  “That’s city where I’m from.”

  “Enough, Cody,” Nathaniel said as he stared in James and Virgil’s general direction. “Sorry ‘bout this gentleman, fellas, he’s just playin’…”

  “The hell I ain’t. Go get my clippers, Nathaniel! We need to do somethin’ bout this boy’s girl hair.”

  Cody approached them with his gun at his side. He shook hands with James, then after he introduced himself, he spat some tobacco juice out of the corner of his mouth.

  “James, and my friend here is Virgil.” James motioned towards Virgil who reluctantly shook Cody’s hand. Cody’s hand was large, weathered and calloused, his grip tight, which forced Virgil to cringe as the big man squeezed his hand until it was red.

  “Now I don’t usually associate with city folk, especially not libtards from a city full of fags and queerfolk like Austin.”

  I don’t blame you, James found himself thinking. Then he recalled the people he’d met in Austin and many whom he’d worked with. Not all were that bad. He’d worked with gay people before too. They were all just people. Everyone was equally fucked when it came to existence and working to prolong it.

  Cody snorted. “But seein’ as how you boys helped my old buddy here in distress, especially with his stupid lookin’ Elvis costume…” Cody grinned at Nathaniel, and spat some more tobacco juice onto the dusty soil.

  “Now listen here, Cody,” Nathaniel said, still standing in the doorway. “I already told these boys ‘bout how much you hate Elvis, you don’t need to go an’ reiterate it. Don’t make me tell them ‘bout what happened in Wichita, 1984.”

  “You wouldn’t dare…” Cody said as his face quickly changed to the color of lipstick.

  “Wait, so you’re the traveling Bible salesman Nathaniel told us about?” Virgil asked, interrupting Cody’s glare.

  “This fucker right here really told ya’ll about me?”

  “He sure did,” James said, quickly trying to take hold of the situation. “Nothing but good things, though. He mostly just told us about you guys travelling and some of the sermons you used to give.”

  “Yep!” Virgil piped in, agreeing with Cody as quickly as James did. “That’s all, promise.”

  “Oh, really?” Cody said as he looked back at Nathaniel. “Well, did he tell you about what else I did?”

  “I told them that you made some real strong applejack moonshine, and one of your recipes is…” Nathaniel searched his mind for the right words. “One of your recipes is divine.”

  “Oh, I get what’s going on here. You boys wanna try some of that, huh? Some of that stuff that makes you see things, am I to understand this?” Cody tapped the barrel of the shotgun against his leg.

  “Yes,” said Virgil.

  “Quiet, Austin, speaking of which, boy howdy is that city fucked! But don’t choo worry, we’ll figure out who did it.”

  “It was the Russians,” Virgil said blankly.

  “The what?” Cody started to raise his shotgun again. “Now we don’t know for a fact it was the Ruskies. Hell, could have been anyone. Could have been Antifa. Or Black Lives Matter. Sorry, Nathaniel, but you know how I feel about BLM. Or hell, could have been somehow associated with the Clinton Foundation. Wouldn’t be surprised there. Uranium Two, am I right?”

  Virgil looked to James as if to ask, do you believe this guy? James nodded, mostly because James did believe Cody.

  “Whoever it was, our boys’ll get ‘em. Just you watch. Whoever it was will soon find out that the big G-O-D himself is on our side. Hell, America is as close to heaven as you can get on God’s green earth. And then we’ll go after them socialists, liberals, Colin Kaepernick, the mainstream media, and anyone who ain’t all about the man upstairs.”

  Virgil bit his lip, the urge to say something writ large across his face.

  “After all, Jesus wasn’t a damn commie socialist; he would have tossed the poor to the street and let the sick die, I tell you what!”

  “Let’s get this over with, Cody.”

  “Get this over with? Damn, Nathaniel, you’re no fun. Okay, I’ll wrap it up. You boys religious?”

  “Christian!” both Virgil and James shouted, Virgil quickly abandoning any hope of having a reasonable religious conversation with Cody.

  “What type?” Cody snarled at Virgil.

  “Um, Catholic?”

  “Lutheran!” James blurted out.

  “Is that so?” Tucker asked, aggressively leaning towards Virgil’s face. “Well, I’m Baptist and I don’t know if I can just give you boys some of this stuff seein’ how we have some…irreconcilable differences.”

  “Cody, leave them boys alone, you stupid old fool! You was Lutheran back in the 80s, you jackass! Your ex-wife was Lutheran too.” Nathaniel walked down the steps of the office, and puttered his way towards the three men.

  “Welp, at least you boys ain’t some type of Moohamid worshippin’ geeehawdist, cause if you were I’d hafta shoot ya…put one right there in your turban.” Cody pointed towards Virgil’s forehead.

  “I said leave ‘em alone! They ain’t terrorists, you red-bellied bastard!”

  “All right...” Cody said, grinning slyly. “You boys passed the test. Just remember one thing, I don’t care whatchoo think is right, when it’s Judgment Day, boy, it’s Judgment Day. And all these mainstream commie geehawdists are gonna toast up like burnt barbecue in hell! You boys got that?”

  ***

  Cody drummed his fingers on his belly. “Now let’s talk ‘bout this here moonshine, it�
�s my secret recipe. Pope once tried to send a Catholic ponteef to git it, and I told him oh-hell-no, you sonuvabitch, now get the hell off my property!”

  “I can only imagine the Pope in this part of Texas,” said Virgil.

  “You questioning my story, boy?”

  “Absolutely not, good sir!” Virgil looked to James quickly and rolled his eyes.

  You idiot, James wanted to say, just let the man say his piece, and we’ll be done with this. It’s the goddamn Texas way.

  “So, it’s like this, fellas, I got me a friend that lives back on 281, right up the road there.” Cody pointed towards the main road. “She has a small motel ya’ll can stay at if you decide to take this stuff right now. I already called her back in the office, and told her ya’ll would be coming. You boys wait here right quick.”

  Cody clanked his way towards the office, leaving Nathaniel with the two men. James quickly noticed the cause of Cody’s limp: the sole of one boot was larger than the other.

  “I’m sorry ‘bout that, gentlemen,” Nathaniel said, his head lowering to the soil dejectedly. “He’s quite a pompous sonovabi...I ain’t gonna say it. He’s putting me up for a bit, ‘til I can get back on my feet. Got to show the man some respect.”

  “It’s cool, yo,” said Virgil, taking a deep breath. “I’m just glad he didn’t shoot us.”

  James finished his cigarette. “Don’t worry about it.”

  “That gun wasn’t even loaded. Ya’ll shoulda seen the bastard. As soon as he made the call to his friend at the motel up the road, he took them shells out of the gun, started laughing to himself and said he was ‘gonna give you city boys a real scare.’ I told him not to…” Nathaniel glanced towards the ground, defeated.

  The men looked up as Cody stomped down the steps carrying something. He gave James a glass Dr. Pepper bottle wrapped in an old Nascar T-shirt.

  “Looks like Kombucha,” Virgil said, as James investigated the murky liquid in the bottle.

  “Cum what now? Dammit, hippie, now this ain’t…what’s that cereal called?” Cody contemplated for a moment then continued. “Well, whatever. This ain’t kid tested, mother approved. This ain’t some stuff you gonna find anywhere in Texas, and just maybe on this Earth.”

  James watched as a lump of something cascaded its way gingerly down the inside of the bottle.

  “What I wantchoo to do is get to my friend’s motel, pay her, head to your room and split this bottle between ya’ll two. Got it? Now it ain’t gonna taste great, shoot, it ain’t even gonna taste good. In fact, it might taste horrible, but that’s the difference between this applejack moonshine and regular applejack. I don’t care how bad it tastes, don’t barf it up. Keep it down.”

  “What are the effects and how long will it take?” Virgil asked.

  Gray whiskers jutted from Cody’s chin as he prepared to spit more tobacco. “It’s gonna hitcha real quick, maybe ‘bout ten minutes to start kicking in. Visions will start roughly twenty minutes after you drink it, depending on if you got a full belly. If your stomach is empty it’ll take quicker. Now, I am gonna say this one more time, just so you know how serious I am about this: don’t barf it up, it won’t work if you do. Also, if you need anything, or if you want to get in touch with Ol’ Nate in the future, here’s my number.”

  Cody handed the piece of paper to Virgil, who swiftly placed it in his jacket pocket.

  “Now you boys best be gettin’ on yer ways.”

  Chapter 14: Maggie’s Motel

  “Hello, ma’am. Mr., um, Cody called about getting my friend and me a room here tonight,” James told the woman behind the counter at Maggie’s Motel. She was the aunt of a hippo, large enough to fill up the cab of an eighteen-wheeler equipped with an ARI Legacy Sleeper. She wore a pink shirt streaked with grease stains and a necklace with a cross on it.

  “Taker seat overthure,” she said in a low, scratchy voice, the product of years of chain smoking.

  “Are you Maggie?” James asked. He had volunteered to go inside and purchase a room for the night.

  “I sayyed taker seat right overthure, mister.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” James plopped down onto the cracked vinyl seat and immediately whipped out his phone.

  Slow service out here, but after hitting refresh a bunch of times, he was able to read an email from Rush Hannity:

  You’ve heard the lamestream media, the pink hat wearing snowflakes, the educated elite, Antifa, the coastal city cyber cucks. You are the silent majority, folks, the hard-working men and women who make America great again by doing what Americans do best – being American.

  That’s right, you’re American, and I’m American, and together, we are the best country the world has ever seen, will ever see, and you and I both know that America will go down in the history books as a beacon for how a civilization should live. But there’s a caveat to all these glorious things I’ve just said. If we let the leftist liberal MSM hold us back, if we let them distract us, we’ll never make this country great again.

  Case in point: Judge Donny Moore has been accused by the Bezos Washington Post of amassing a huge collection of child pornography. Their proof? Dozens of recently released police records detailing the contents of Moore’s hard drive and a videotaped confession of the honorable Donny Moore claiming he did it and laughing about it. But before we start pointing the finger, shouldn’t we be asking a few questions, questions like:

  1) Do we really know they’re underage?

  2) Did they consent?

  3) Is the Alabama State Police Department secretly being controlled by the DNC? Could the DNC have planted this evidence?

  4) Has anyone checked out the Clinton Foundation recently?

  So there it is, questions, it’s what makes us American, folks. And getting the facts straight, that also makes us American. It’s why I still refuse to say that Russian attacked the liberal hub of Texas, even though I’ve lost a good many of my sponsors, aside from Home Depot, Papa Johns, Hobby Lobby, and Koch Industries.

  I’m fighting for you, for your rights to know the truth. Are you fighting for me? Let’s fight for America together, dammit. Tune in at the usual time today, folks. I’ve got an exclusive guest fresh off a recent groundbreaking article first published by InfoTrolls.

  Rush Hannity, out.

  “I don’t know what I’m fighting for any longer,” James whispered.

  Next to James was a short Hispanic man with a Dallas Cowboys T-shirt tucked into his extra tight Wrangler Jeans. James nodded at the man who quickly looked up at James, nodded, then pulled the brim of his hat down over his eyes.

  Am I supposed to say something else? James thought. He’d never been good with minorities or how to respond to them. A simple nod seemed appropriate, but should he have said something like “howdy” as well? Hard to tell.

  Probably should treat them just like anyone else. James considered this: if the Mexican man had been white, would he have done anything differently? Maybe, maybe not.

  It took the receptionist nearly fifteen minutes to figure out which room was available, eventually settling on a room that sat about fifty feet off the highway. She showed James a map of the complex, which was ironic due the motel’s size, and told him that they had until eleven tomorrow to vacate the room.

  “Do you guys have, um, a continental breakfast or anything?” James asked, already guessing the answer.

  “Mister, we gawts a snack merchine right overthure.” Maggie wagged her finger at the far corner of the shabby reception area.

  “Thanks.” A few dollars later and James was the proud owner of a couple of bags of chips and two chocolate bars.

  ***

  Their room was far from a room at the Hyatt or a Holiday Inn. Hell, it wasn’t even a Super 8, let alone Motel 6 material. The dismal state of affairs had two saggy twin mattresses, bubbly mold on the ceiling, a single window with a large hook shaped crack and a leaky air conditioner beneath it. The place reeked of butt sex and cigarette burns.

 
“This room isn’t sooo bad...” Virgil sat down on the bed closest to the door and traced his stoner eyes over a crack on the window.

  “This place fucking blows, Virgil, and you know it.”

  “Yeah, I can see how you’d say that.”

  James tossed his knapsack on the bed and started looking at himself in the mirror. He dropped into a few poses with his katana and Virgil laughed.

  “Oh well,” James said as he sheathed his weapon, “we aren’t going to be here for long, plus it only cost twenty dollars a night. Oh yeah, I got us some food in the office, Cody mentioned something about eating. Or at least I think he did.”

  James chucked a bag of chips and the candy bar to Virgil. The younger barista finished the snacks in no time, and once he was through, he grabbed his illustrious chest of drugs.

  While James ate, Virgil took out his sack of weed and quickly rolled a thin joint. He lit the joint and lay back on the bed, staring at the paint chips on the ceiling.

  “Man…” Virgil asked on the threshold of an exhale. “You want a puff of this?”

  “Nah, not today. I want to see how strong this moonshine is without the help of any other substances.”

  “Cool.” Virgil exhaled a blue cloud of smoke. “Man, Nathaniel sure had a strange energy about him. What a weird dude, a blind man dressed as Elvis? Fuck, crazy shit. Cool guy, though. Real trippy.”

  “Definitely interesting.”

  Virgil looked at the moonshine that James was holding and commented, “Dude, that stuff totally looks wicked.”

  “Well, I guess we might as well see if it actually works or not.” James shook the bottle of moonshine up, unscrewed the cap, quickly downed half of it, and handed it to Virgil with a disgusted look on his face. “Fuck, it’s terrible. Quick, drink before I change your mind.”

  “Ha. Fine, fine. Let me put the joint out real quick.” Virgil placed his joint in an ashtray on the nightstand. A thin line of smoke twirled to the ceiling and was greeted by the slow-moving blades of a rickety fan.

  “All right, here goes nothing…”

  Virgil took the bottle of special moonshine from James and chugged it quickly, heaving as soon as the liquid hit the bottom of his throat. He placed his hands over his mouth to stop himself from vomiting.