More Bedtime Stories for the Apocalypse

by Joel Arnold

  “Let go,” Amund shouted. Jacobine continued to scream.

  “Please!” Amund said.

  Another scream. This time from one of the Mikkelsen brothers. Amund looked back in time to see the creature’s head rise from their parent’s grave, grab hold of Knute and pull him down.

  Now Amund joined the chorus of voices shouting “Out! Get out now! Get out of the graves!”

  He turned back to Jacobine, her screams turned to sobbing. She still held onto the upper half that remained of her husband. Amund heard more thunder. Louder now.

  He knew it wasn’t thunder.

  “Please, Mrs. Overland. Let go. Now! You must.”

  She didn’t seem to hear, or at least didn’t care. She couldn’t take her eyes from the fixed, dead eyes of Gunnar.

  Amund felt the earth shake. As he reached down to grab Jacobine by the shoulders, the creature rose again from the grave, grabbing the rest of Gunnar. As it gulped him down, it opened its jaws wider, rose another foot from the ground and snapped over Jacobine’s head. Amund fell backward as the creature burrowed back beneath the earth. Blood from Jacobine’s neck spilled into the dirt and splattered onto the remaining splintered coffin boards.

  More than one. There has to be more than one.

  People ran to the church, dropping shovels and picks along the way.

  Pastor Blom was already in the bell tower, ringing the church bell. As townspeople gathered in the church, Amund watched Blom and finally put his hand on his back. “Stop!” he shouted. “Stop now, Pastor.”

  Pastor Blom looked over his shoulder at Amund and slowed down his frantic tugging of the thick rope. Blood dripped from his palms. He struggled to pry his fingers off the rope.

  Amund’s ears rang. “Go talk to your flock,” Amund said. “They need you.”

  Pastor Blom looked at Amund, perplexed. Fearful. “But – I don’t know what to tell them. This – whatever it is that is happening – what do I say to them?”

  Amund thought a moment as the sound of thunder rose outside. “You will know what to say.”

  “But there are no words,” Blom said. He paused a moment as the echo of the church bell died. Then he walked down the bell tower’s spiral steps and strode into the middle of his congregation. Amund followed.

  Blom glanced around at his people, those he’d known for so long, those he’d baptized and confirmed and counseled. He cleared his throat. “Let us sing,” he said. “A Mighty Fortress is our God.”

  They sung.

  “A mighty fortress is our God,

  A Bulwark never failing…”

  Amund joined in.

  “And through this world, with devils filled,

  should threaten to undo us…”

  They sang it loudly, boldly, defiantly.

  “The Prince of Darkness grim,

  we tremble not for him…”

  As the hymn ended, all was silent.

  Until…

  Until softly at first, they heard the ringing of a coffin bell outside. It grew louder and was soon joined by the ringing of another. And another.

  The sound of thunder grew louder.

  The congregation didn’t move from their spot inside the church, even as the foundation of the building shook.

  They listened. Again, they started to sing. This time Rock of Ages.

  Because…

  Because there was nothing else to do. Nothing else to say.

  From one cemetery to the next, from town to town, across the farmland and prairie, across river and forest and marshland, the coffin bells – all of them – began to ring.

  * * * * *

  * * * * *

  The Soft Caress of Falling Bombs

  The child grew in an incubator of deep-sea pressures, grew to the size of mountains, of deep oceanic gorges, its skin pasty green, eyes blindly bulging from cavernous sockets. Now it seeks escape from its watery womb and rises, rises, rearing its head from the liquid surface.

  The child thrashes at the sudden hit of newly felt atmosphere. Tidal waves form. Air patterns change. The seismic wind flips the first wave of fighter jets over, knocking them into ocean swells the size of which has not been seen in eons. They smash like thin glass bulbs dropped on cement, not even registering on the newly risen babe’s senses. The child calms. It decides it likes the feel of air on its warped doughy face.

  More jets come; tiny mosquitoes. The child smiles faintly at the pop of broken sound barriers. A bubble forms and bursts from its toothless maw, the membrane of spittle knocking out aircraft and aircraft carrier alike, crushing the highly trained crews and equipment into a mist of blood and metal.

  The babe takes its first tentative steps, its pod-like limbs disrupting the ocean’s flow. Submarines spin out of control, their steel skins peeling back like heated popcorn hulls.

  The babe’s long memory is mostly of the simple feel of deep ocean pressure, but it remembers Mother, too; a faint, faint memory deeply stored somewhere in its thick, ropey membranes of cerebellum. It wonders where she is, not knowing she died millions of years ago, that her carcass has long since dissolved, her molecules dissipated throughout the far reaches of the globe. It only knows she was once there, and now she is not.

  It wants her, but Mother is all around, in the water, the earth, the sky. It can smell her, but so can all of us, although the scent is so long ingrained in our brains that we have forgotten its origin. But the child smells her. The child knows the source of the scent.

  It takes another step, destroying ships, islands, and shorelines hundreds and hundreds of miles away. Long dead putrefied whales drip from its nasal passages.

  Cruise and Minutemen missiles arrive, some finding their way to this gargantuan child-thing. They burst on its skin, punching tiny pinpricks in its vacuous eyes, into its dumb maw, into its rolling mountainous neck.

  They tickle the babe, and the babe claps bulbous appendages beneath the surface in amusement. More shoreline is laid waste with its enthusiasm; coastal cities are destroyed.

  Nuclear warheads are released from the U.S.A., France, Russia, Pakistan, all merging on the wonderstruck babe, exploding in multi-layered mushroom clouds.

  And now – now somewhere deep inside its ancient brain, it believes it has found her, mistaking the soft caress of falling bombs for Mother.

  And so soothed, it sinks deep into the ocean for another nap of dreamless millennia.

  * * * * *

  * * * * *

  Last Seat of the Rapture Express - 3

  Bodies lay sprawled across the roof of the Rapture Express. Rain makes the surface slick. There are three-foot long spikes set here and there at random intervals.

  The matron walks with ease on the roof, but the man can’t even stand without getting thrown to his knees from the earthquake-like shaking of the train.

  “Let me give you some advice,” the matron says. “Hold onto those spikes. Hold on tight! Rap your arms around them, do whatever you have to do. Remember, the important thing is making it to the end. Because if you make it to the end, the gates of glory will open just as wide for you as anyone else.”

  He reaches out to grab a spike, misses, and falls flat on his stomach. He slides to the edge of the roof. His feet and calves kick in the open air. The woman grabs his arm and hauls him to his feet.

  “Believe me, you do not want to do that again.”

  As she finishes the sentence, Johnson sees another man, about his same age and build, slide off the roof and into the air, his screams mingling with the thunder and chug of the train. Others are huddled around spikes, holding on for dear life, while others who can find no place left on the spikes to grab, hold onto the legs and waists of those who can.

  Someone else goes sliding past Johnson out into the grey void. Johnson tightens his grip on the matron’s forearm as she leads him farther along the roof. She nods at a few of the people around them. “See, they got the right idea. They have what it takes.”

  Johnson stares in disbelief. There
are three men and two women who sit still, some eyes open, some shut, breathing, some mouths open, some shut, but they sit there, the movement, the violent shaking of the train having negligible effect on them. They remind Johnson of the Buddhist monks he’s seen on television, meditating.

  “See, they’ve found the proper balance,” the matron says.

  Balance? Johnson wonders. But how?

  He looks at them closely. One of the women in particular catches his attention. Her head is tilted back, eyes closed, mouth open. Her mouth fills with rain, and then she closes it slightly. As her throat muscles contract, the rain sluices up and out, over her lips. Tinged with blood.

  Why is she...?

  Then he sees the point of the spike protruding from the side of her neck. She has impaled herself on it.

  The perfect balance.

  The others here, too – the ones sitting so perfectly still, so perfectly balanced – have placed themselves on the spikes, rectum to throat, in the hopes that they can last just long enough to make it to the end.

  “See,” the matron says, prying Johnson’s fingers off of her forearm. “They’ve got gumption.” She lets him go. “What about you?”

  Johnson drops to his knees and starts sliding to the edge of the roof as the train bumps and shakes. He grabs one of the spikes. It’s wet. His hand is wet. He wraps his arm around it so that the spike is nestled in the crook of his arm.

  The matron watches him for a moment. “Best of luck to you,” she says and walks with ease back down the length of the train car’s roof and disappears down one of the ladders between the cars.

  The train shakes violently. Johnson is flung in a semi-circle around the spike, and he almost straightens his arm, but catches himself. For now he holds on.

  He looks at the impaled ones. One of the women tilts her head toward him and her eyes slowly flutter open. She can’t talk around the spike protruding from the side of her mouth. But it does look like she’s smiling at him.

  Johnson looks away and another jolt of the train nearly breaks his hold on the spike. He hears moaning.

  No, not moaning.

  Laughing.

  She’s laughing at him, the sound so awful around the protruding spike.

  The train jostles him again. He knows he can’t hold on much longer. He hears the matron’s words clearly in his mind one last time.

  Do you have the gumption?

  * * * * *

  * * * * *

  Occupied

  (alternate version)

  With each stride, Brenda Chapman’s running shoes hit the dirt trail with a muffled, yet satisfying, smack. It was a hot, humid day at Cone Hill Park and Campground. Sweat blossomed across the front and back of Brenda’s gray tank top. Her purple headband was soaked through. She dug in, straining, as the trail rose sharply. When she got to the top of the hill, she slowed to catch her breath, walking in a circle, checking her pulse. She glanced at her watch. So far, she’d made good time, and now it was downhill for a bit – at least until it was time to turn around and jog back the way she’d come.

  She liked this trail. Not far from home, never crowded, and she was out in nature, damn it! No cars honking as they passed, no same-old, same-old of the suburbs in which she lived. There were some small drive-up campsites spread throughout the park, but they were rarely in use. And today – she couldn’t imagine camping in this kind of heat. But jogging; that was another story.

  She stretched, propelling her arms in circles, rolling her head on her neck. No view up here to speak of, since the hill was covered in thick, leafy trees. But she liked the trees, and here their branches reached over the narrow trail, turning the sunlight into an overhead mosaic.

  A thick layer of old, fallen leaves created a soft, earthy mattress just off the trail, and for a moment, Brenda imagined lying down on them. Just lay there and stare at the branches. But no, she thought. I’m a warrior princess! I’m goddamn Xena!

  Besides, she had a wedding dress to fit into. Time to get a move-on!

  She took a deep breath, checked her posture, and continued her jog down the trail. Her wedding was in a month and she’d already trimmed off the fifteen pounds she’d wanted to, so now it was all about keeping them off and working on her tone and stamina. Besides, jogging in these rolling hills was a great way to relieve stress. Gee-suz there was a lot of stuff to get ready for a wedding!

  A forest-green fiberglass outhouse at the bottom of the hill marked her halfway point. The Biffy Palace. It stood on a circular gravel surface about twenty feet in diameter. A service road continued on its way behind the outhouse to the highway beyond.

  Brenda usually just circled it, pretending to use its gravitational pull to fling her back the way she’d come. She’d seen that in a movie once, only it had been a spaceship flung around the sun, not a jogger flung around a pre-fab outhouse.

  But this time she actually had to use it. She wasn’t a big fan of small, confined spaces, but when you had to go, you had to go. As she neared, she noticed the small indicator just below the door handle was red. Occupied. That was a first. She considered just going off trail a few feet to pee au natural, but she figured with her luck, that would be about the time a troop of Boy Scouts came hiking along. She jogged in place, waiting.

  When the door finally opened. a startled female looked out at her.

  Brenda smiled, wiping sweat from her cheeks with the back of her wrist. “Hello,” she said.

  The other woman smiled back. “You scared me.” She wore a thin pink dress and sandals. Long red hair spilled over her shoulders.

  “Sorry,” Brenda said.

  “It’s okay.” The woman’s face was beaded in sweat. She stepped out and stood in front of the outhouse.

  Brenda wondered why she didn’t step aside. She nodded at the outhouse door. “I need to – ”

  The redhead quickly moved aside. “Oh, geez, of course.”

  Brenda jogged inside and shut the door. Latched it shut.

  Occupied.

  The sun shone through the fiberglass in a toxic-green glow. The venting slots near the low ceiling did nothing to relieve the stifling heat. The air was deathly still. Three distinct scents vied for the number one spot in Brenda’s nostrils; the smell of human waste, of course, and trying to cover that was a pungent chemical odor – a strong disinfectant of some sort. It made Brenda’s eyes threaten to water. And to top it all off was the cloying scent of vanilla – as if a hundred automobile air fresheners had been tossed inside this tiny fiberglass hut.

  Aside from the competing odors, it was just plain hot in there.

  An oven. Brenda pulled off a long length of toilet paper, wadded it up and mopped the sweat off her face and neck. She quickly peed, pulled up her shorts, squirted some hand sanitizer in her hands and pushed the door open.

  Still sweltering outside, but at least the air was fresh and moving. However hot it was outside, the inside of ye olde Biffy Palace felt exponentially hotter.

  She took a deep breath, bracing herself for the return half of her jog. The redhead she’d encountered earlier was nowhere in sight, and Brenda wondered if she was braving one of the park’s shaded campsites.

  She started back up the hill, looking forward to a nice long shower when she got home. Looking forward to settling into Mark’s arms in their queen-sized bed.

  Usually, Mark jogged with her, but today he’d said, “Not today. I love ya babe, but it’s just too damn hot out there.” Now, as she jogged her way back up the hill, she saw his point.

  A sharp whistle startled her. A man shouted, “Hey! Hey you!”

  She looked for the source of the noise and spotted him just off the trail about twenty feet ahead. She slowed. Stopped. Jogged in place.

  “Yes?”

  “I need your help.” He wore jeans, a t-shirt, a baseball cap pulled low over a pair of sunglasses and close-cropped hair.

  “With what?”

  “It’s my wife. Something’s wrong.”

  Brenda
grew wary. Something didn’t feel right. “Where is she?”

  “Just over here.”

  “I’ve got a phone in my car,” Brenda said, keeping her distance. “I’ll call for help.”

  “I already did that. They’re on their way. But please – until they get here, I really need some help.”

  Damn it, if the guy really needed help, she’d hate herself for ignoring him. But still…something about him…

  He was tall and lanky with ropey muscles. He wore a leather belt with a large knife sheathed on the side. A small strap of worn leather to keep the knife secure was unsnapped.

  Was that it?

  Trust your senses, Brenda told herself. This did not feel right.

  She was about to apologize again, offer more help in finding more assistance, but as she opened her mouth, he leapt at her, pulling the large serrated knife from the sheath.

  Shit!

  She spun around and sprinted down the hill. She heard the man’s footsteps behind her, heard him shout “C’mere, bitch!”

  Jogging down a hill was one thing, but sprinting in a near-blind panic was something else.

  This isn’t happening. This isn’t happening, she told herself, her heart racing. Then – Watch your footing.

  The man stumbled behind her; she heard him grunt, “Shit!”

  She glanced over her shoulder. Had he fallen on his knife?

  No such luck. He sprang up.

  Don’t look back again. You can outrun this guy.

  But as she neared the bottom of the hill, neared the gravel surrounding the Biffy Palace, she realized he was fast. Very fast. She heard his breath come out in controlled grunts. He sounded much too close.

  Her foot hit the gravel and slid out from under her. It wasn’t much – she didn’t fall – but a sharp pain shot up her calf. Damn it!

  Should she try to outrun the son of a bitch? What if he caught up to her? What if he threw the knife and it caught her between the shoulder blades? The Biffy Palace loomed in front of her, looking like an oasis in a desert of gravel.