More Bedtime Stories for the Apocalypse

by Joel Arnold

  He was supposed to cross the river, walk half a mile, and hand off the goods to a couple dudes in a green pick-up truck. They expected him hours ago, and they wouldn’t stick around too long. At least not this long. He had their cell number, but what good was it with a fried-to-shit phone?

  He glanced at the sun again. Something…

  He figured it out. The sun. Rises in the east, sets in the west.

  Then why is it rising in the west?

  Unless…

  Unless it is rising in the east and I’m already on the north side of the river.

  What in the hell? That couldn’t be.

  He picked up the map, shook it off, slung his knapsack over his shoulder and walked toward the Rio Grande.

  His skin itched. The swelling was worse. A sign of dehydration? He took another sip from his water jug. Still at least a third full. He took a long drink.

  He could see the river from where he stood. He watched it flow, and unless the river had changed direction all of a sudden, he was definitely on the north side of the river.

  Texas.

  That was a good thing, wasn’t it? But you think you’d remember something like crossing the fucking Rio Grande.

  Instead, Pete remembered the thing with the protruding eye and the lamprey-like mouth coming toward him, its tongue sliding out and forcing its way through his clenched lips.

  It touched the tip of his tongue, and he clamped down on it hard with his teeth. A spurt of warm fluid filled Pete’s mouth. His mouth went numb.

  He tried to spit it out, but couldn’t feel if it worked. Even his throat grew numb.

  He was afraid to look up, afraid to face the thing that had knocked him to the ground, that had forced its…tongue…into his mouth.

  He lost the feeling in his neck, his nose, his checks.

  He forced himself to look at it.

  The eye – its eye – protruded from its stalk and hovered over Pete’s chest as if examining it. Its snout moved slightly, jerking from the wound Pete had given it, but then a new tongue popped out, the spot Pete had clamped down on with his teeth whole again. It snaked out of the creature’s snout and hung in the air briefly before slipping beneath the collar of Pete’s shirt.

  He couldn’t feel it until it reached his chest, between his nipples, sliding warmly, numbingly over his breastbone and stopping just above his belly button. There was a sharp pain. Brief. Very brief, like the prick of a hypodermic needle, and then there was the warmth and numbness.

  God. What is it doing?

  He tried to scream, but couldn’t move his tongue and lips. He felt his drool fall into the crook of his arm.

  The tongue slid up and out of Pete’s shirt, and then slid over Pete’s neck and back under the collar, over his shoulder, stopping at his deltoid.

  Again, a sharp, brief prick followed by warmth and numbness.

  The creature repeated this process again and again all over Pete’s body, until he felt nothing; there was only the sensation of floating in a warm, salty sea.

  He walked away from the Rio Grande, heading north. His ankle throbbed. His elbows, too. And everywhere, every part of him, itched like hell. He’d tried scratching, but instead of providing relief, it sent pain shooting through his body. Where was his Benadryl when he needed it? He stopped, remembering the joint he’d stashed a week ago in a hidden pocket of his pack. He found it, lit it and sucked in deeply. He waited a moment and took another big hit. And another. Finally, he felt a little calmer.

  The eye on the stalk. The snout. The tongue.

  A dream. It had to be.

  He took another hit off his joint. That was better. He laughed to himself. One crazy fucking dream.

  Time to get going. Find someone with a phone. Make the delivery. Get back to his apartment. Maybe a long, hot shower would make all this itching go away.

  He found the drop off area, a lonely, dusty back road bordered by cactus. He followed it, listening carefully for vehicles or helicopters. Not a good time to be found by border patrol. His American citizenship wouldn’t do him jack shit if they dug through his pack.

  He walked two miles, three. His water was almost gone. He ate his last protein bar. He wanted to tear his skin off. It felt like his blood had turned to highly carbonated soda.

  He heard a vehicle approaching. He dashed off the road and hid behind the vegetation. The vehicle moved slowly, and as it neared, Pete saw that it was a green pick-up. He recognized the driver. He stepped out onto the road and waved.

  Two hours later, Pete stumbled into the emergency room of the Las Palmas Medical Center of El Paso. His eyes blurred with matter. His skin felt like it was on fire, felt like it was boiling right off of him.

  He tried to speak to the person behind the receiving desk, but instead he collapsed onto the floor.

  A nurse hovered over him, talking, but Pete couldn’t make out the words. They sounded garbled. Pete opened his mouth to talk, tried to say, “I’m on fire, man!” but his tongue wouldn’t work. He thought his mouth was full of ants.

  A second nurse hovered over him. A third. He barely realized what they were doing as they lifted him onto a gurney. He could barely keep his eyes open. As he blinked, he noticed one of the nurse’s scream something at him and back away. Another nurse disappeared from his line of vision.

  The last nurse at his side – the one who’d first come to his aid – looked terrified. The last thing Pete saw before he could no longer keep his eyes open was something – a bunch of somethings – burst from his skin like popping corn and attach to the nurse’s face.

  It was such a relief – like how scratching an itch was supposed to feel.

  His skin popped off of him in small chunks, sending the first wave of the invasion to spread throughout the emergency room and beyond.

  * * * * *

  * * * * *

  Rotten Fruit

  A figure sits beneath the large, leafy apple tree in the distance. A woman, judging by the sundress and floppy hat, but Jackson stays back, studying her, just to make sure. The woman fans herself with an old, red Frisbee, and the movement of her hand and wrist seems too smooth, too human to be one of them.

  Jackson swallows. He hasn’t seen a woman, a real woman, for so long. His jaw drops at the sight of her calves, feminine and lovely. Definitely human. But to be safe, he stays in place behind the thick, fragrant lilac bush he’s using for cover, only straightening up enough so that she can see his face.

  “Hey!” He waves.

  She slowly turns her head.

  Definitely human – he can see that from here.

  She looks terrified.

  “It’s okay,” he calls. “I’m not one of them.” Isn’t it obvious? He holds up his hands to show her he’s not armed, and steps out from behind the lilacs. He glances around the open field, making sure there’s no one else – no thing else – coming.

  As he nears, he notices dozens of fallen apples, shriveled and rotting, surrounding her. She slowly shakes her head as he approaches.

  Jackson smiles. “Don’t be afraid. I won’t hurt you.” He studies her carefully. Her cheeks are flush, eyes clear, the hand waving the Frisbee intact, the skin supple, fingernails clean and trimmed. “What’s your name?”

  She doesn’t answer.

  He steps closer, breathing in the sickly sweet apple smell. “My name’s Kenneth Jackson. I promise I won’t hurt you.”

  She waves the Frisbee faster and closes her eyes.

  She’s terrified, Jackson thinks. Maybe I should just let her be. But doesn’t she know how much danger she’s in? Just sitting there all alone?

  He steps closer. The woman opens her eyes, turning her face to the green leaves and ripe, red fruit clinging to the branches above. A tear glistens on her cheek. Jackson holds his hands out to show her again that he means no harm. He approaches tentatively. She continues to slowly shake her head, as if trying to escape a bad dream.

  He steps beneath the leafy canopy of the apple tree and notice
s a chain circling her waist, holding her fast to the rough trunk. He stops, confused. She opens her mouth and grunts. Her tongue is missing. She shakes her head faster, and glances into the canopy once again.

  Jackson’s eyes follow hers.

  They are there, waiting.

  Before he can move, three pairs of rotting hands shoot out from above, grabbing him by the head and shoulders. Branches shake. Apples fall. Three desiccated, disfigured creatures drop from their perches, their teeth tearing into the rind of Jackson’s skull, searching for the fresh fruit of his brain.

  The woman closes her eyes and grimaces at the sounds of crunching bone, waving her Frisbee faster and faster.

  * * * * *

  * * * * *

  The Calendar in the Break Room

  January – Jean Harlow

  I’m the new guy here. Divorced last year and had to get away from St. Louis. My daughter Angie’s all grown up and married, and though she was pissed at me for a while, she finally got around to understanding – or at least accepting. Plus, I was tired of the traffic and the rush of everything. I grew up in a small town, and now that I’m nearing fifty, I found myself craving that small town life once again. So long story short, that’s how I ended up here in Adolphina, Iowa working as a mechanic at Morton’s Service Garage. Sure, small towns have their problems, but they’re small town problems. I’ll take them over big city problems any day.

  February – Cleo Moore

  The first time I noticed something odd about the calendar was the day Cal Johnson wandered into the break room at Morton’s looking for his daughter Jenny. Jenny’s our weekday cashier, and Cal was here to pick her up to visit some relatives over the weekend. I nodded at the employee bathroom, and he nodded his understanding and joined me at the break room table.

  The break room is located just off the service garage. There’s a fridge and microwave, both in need of a serious scrub down, and the square card table we sat at – the kind you’d get out and unfold on Thanksgiving to seat the extra company.

  “Want a Coke or anything?” I offered, digging a dollar out of my wallet.

  “No,” he said. “Thanks, anyway.”

  I’d never met Jenny’s father before, and he seemed like a nice enough guy. Not much older than me, I figured, and Jenny had only good things to say about him.

  “You’ve got a hardworking daughter,” I said. “She’s always done a great job around here.”

  He nodded. “She’s a good kid.”

  On the other side of the two-bay garage is a little convenience shop that sells candy and soda, coffee and maps, cigarettes and condoms. We take personal checks if you’re local, and it’s up to the cashier to decide just how local you need to be on a case-by-case basis.

  Jenny’s main job here is to sit behind the counter on a padded stool and make change. But she’s one of those kids who goes above and beyond the call of duty; she also helps keep the place clean and the coffee flowing. Like her father said, she’s a good kid.

  Cal Johnson looked from me to the bulletin board. Back to me, and then back to the bulletin board. His eyes narrowed. “Okay, please tell me I’m not losing my mind.”

  I turned to look where he was looking, but didn’t see anything amiss. “What do you mean?”

  “It’s a leap year, isn’t it?”

  I thought a moment and nodded. “Yep. Always a leap year when there’s a presidential election coming.”

  He shook his head. “Whoever made that calendar must not have realized it. There’s only twenty-eight days up there.”

  I turned again to look. The box for February twenty-ninth was right there at the bottom of the calendar, and I was about to ask him what he meant when there was the sound of the toilet flushing. Jenny emerged from the bathroom.

  “You’re here already,” she said, giving him a big hug.

  “Right on time,” he said.

  I wished them a safe trip and didn’t think about his comment again for a couple of weeks.

  March – Jayne Mansfield

  The calendar is one of the pinup kinds; a photograph on the top half, the days of the month on the bottom. When a new month arrives, you flip the bottom half up, re-pin it, and voila – new photo, new month. It’s also a pinup calendar in the sense that the photos feature famous pinup girls of the mid-twentieth century; the forties, fifties, sixties. I grew up in the sixties, and back then it wasn’t unusual to see one of these in a working class break room. But at some point they fell out of fashion. Considered sexist. Still are, so I was surprised to find one here at Morton’s Service Garage, especially in this day and age of mandatory sexual harassment classes and hostile work environment lawsuits.

  It looked vintage, the photographs sun-faded, the white borders yellowed with cigarette smoke. The small break room where it hung had been non-smoking for years. If you had a nic fit, you had to step outside and cross the parking lot onto a small grassy area the size of a postage stamp. Some industrious hunyuk had placed a tree stump there for sitting before I arrived on the scene, so if you needed to park your butt while smoking a butt, you were covered – although perhaps not in the most comfortable fashion.

  I hadn’t smoked in over twenty years. Damn glad I quit, too, and even though I look on with longing at anyone sucking on one of those cancer sticks, I’m not nearly as tempted as I once was. Straight black coffee is my poison of choice. That, and an occasional stick of peppermint gum. But if the weather’s favorable, I’ll go out onto that smoker’s stump on my break to read. Nothing fancy. Mysteries mostly.

  I learned the auto mechanic’s trade with my father, who ran his own small shop up in Minnesota’s iron range. After Dad died and cars became more computer-driven, I attended technical college over in Duluth and did my best to relearn the trade. I still prefer older cars, though; the ones where you can diagnose a problem with your eyes, ears and hands. I like to get down under the hood and delve into the guts of the beast. Those old cars, you know what’s going on with them. But these newer ones – you hook ‘em up to a laptop that tells you what’s wrong and what parts need replacing. It’s all computer chips; magic dust for all I know. And if you can break open a new car part and tell me just by looking whether a chip is good or bad, then you’ve got a hell of a lot better eyesight than I do. And these eyes of mine are in good shape. Never needed glasses, and I can still read the doctor’s eye chart from top to bottom with no pause.

  But back to the calendar. I keep veering away from the topic, and I think it may be one of those unintentionally intentional things your mind does. You know – on the surface, you don’t mean to do it, but the deeper part of your brain does it for you whether you intend to or not.

  See? There I go again.

  The calendar in the break room.

  Jenny didn’t show up for work on March 1st, and we couldn’t reach her on her cell. Me and Ben Kinsley – fellow mechanic and oldest of our crew – took turns running the register. It wasn’t a big deal since it was a slow day, but then Maggie Franklin, the postal carrier, came in asking if we’d heard.

  “Heard what?” I asked.

  “About Cal Johnson.”

  “Jenny’s dad?”

  “Had an aneurysm yesterday. Happened while he was taking a shower. His daughter found him, called 9-1-1, but he didn’t make it.”

  Well, that explained why Jenny hadn’t shown up.

  I told Morton, the eponymous founder of the garage, what I’d heard, and he said he’d head over to the Johnson house to make sure Jenny was doing okay.

  An aneurysm. Shit, that’s one of those things that can just bring a body down with no warning. Maybe a few bad headaches, but you never really think that means aneurysm, do you? Poor guy. Poor Jenny. Her mom died when she was twelve, and now here she was, seventeen, with no folks at all. Well, that’s one way to grow up fast. I wondered what she was going to do now. What about those relatives she’d gone to visit?

  I remembered the calendar, remembered how Cal Johnson somehow hadn�
�t seen the leap year. February twenty-ninth. It sort of made sense now. An aneurysm meant something was going on in his brain, and maybe it had been a warning sign. You become forgetful, you say things that don’t necessarily make sense. You miss things right in front of you. Then, boom – a vessel bursts in your head and you’re down for the count.

  April – Hedy Lamarr

  The last day of April, I sat with Ben in the break room while he played solitaire. I got up to flip the calendar page to the next month – just trying to be proactive – but when Ben saw me lift the bottom page and pin it up to reveal Ms. May, he shot up so fast his chair fell over. He grabbed my hand and yelled in my face, “What the hell you think you’re doing?”

  I froze, staring at the veins bulging in that scrawny little neck of his. “Just turning the page,” I managed.

  “Put it back,” he said. “Ain’t time for that, yet.”

  “Let go of my hand.” The initial shock of Ben’s outburst quickly wore off, and I felt my anger rise. “Tomorrow is the first of May. Today is April 30th. Seems like it is the right time.”

  “Put it back,” Kinsley demanded.

  “Let go of my hand. What is wrong with you?”

  That’s when Morton stormed in. “What the hell’s going on?”

  “I was turning the calendar page,” I said.

  Ben gripped my hand as if his life depended on it. “He’s turning the page and it ain’t time, yet.”

  I shrugged at Morton as if to say of all the dumb things to fight over, but he surprised me. “Jordan, put the goddamn calendar back the way it was. It ain’t your position to mess with it.”

  Kinsley let go of my hand and backed up to the card table, his eyes not leaving mine. Only after I put the page down and re-pinned it back to good ol’ Hedy Lamarr did Morton turn to leave and Ben go back to his game of solitaire. I didn’t feel like hanging around Kinsley for the rest of my break, so I sat out on the smoker’s stump and stewed. I was so pissed off that even the spent cigarette butts lying around the stump looked tempting.