On The 7th Day

by Zack Murphy

  *****

  Juliet was running harder than she had run in some time. She wasn’t the type to be fantasized by exercise. All through school she was the type of girl who would sit with her friends on the bleachers during gym class, filing their nails and gossiping about the girls who actually broke a sweat. But time was running out, so she had do what she swore to herself for many years she would never do; break a sweat.

  She raced up the stairs of the GNAN building because the elevator wouldn’t have done her a damn bit of good for this kind of work. She threw open the doors of the thirteenth floor, a floor that wasn’t on the elevator’s directory, or the building blueprints.

  It was dark and dingy, dimly lit by flickering lights that lined the walls. It wasn’t the type of place you’d want to spend much time in, and if Juliet had any druthers about it, she wouldn’t be there for long.

  Finally reaching a small office at the end of the hallway she opened the door gingerly and walked inside. The room was desolate except for a small wooden desk in the middle of the room. A candle sat burning on the desk, dripping yellow wax onto the oak frame. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a small key that gleamed in the twinkle of candlelight. She licked her pursed lips and slowly marched over to the desk, gently putting the key into the hole and turning it slightly.

  A tiny click came from the drawer as she opened it. She looked down at the dusty silver box that lay inside at the bottom of the drawer.

  The box was ornately decorated with signs and symbols that were much different and older than any written language that had been yet unearthed. She cautiously reached in and took it in both hands, clutching it gingerly as she read the inscription, the only one in English on the case, emblazoned with gold leaf lettering.

  DO NOT REMOVE

  The words rang in her ears as her grip tightened on the box. Even if she had wanted to put it down her will wasn’t strong enough. The box had a tighter grip on her than she had on it. She shoved the box into her purse and turned around to be met by a pair of eyes feet away from her, blocking the exit.

  *****

  Anoki Yamoto was standing over his corpse and pondering life’s many questions when he felt the cold hand of death holding his shoulder. Anoki had just finished shooting his first scene in his first movie. He was about to become the next huge action star, or at least that’s what his agent told him.

  What his agent didn’t tell him was that there was a small chance that the gun being used in this particular scene would be mistakenly loaded with real bullets rather than caps. Anoki knew that this was probably irony, how he died, but he wasn’t sure how. He did know that after years of struggling to be famous, he would be certain his name would be mentioned on all the entertainment shows for the next week. And that was enough to give him peace of mind in death.

  “Tsuitekuru, bokutachi beki deru haya.”

  “What?” said Anoki, spinning around to come face to face with The Death of Japan, Korea and The Philippines, who sort of looked like his cousin Devon from Fresno.

  “Bokutachi beki deru.”

  “Sorry,” said Anoki shrugging his shoulders and looking to DJKP for any semblance that he was being understood, “I don’t speak Japanese.”

  “Izashirazu, sonmei Anoki Yamoto!” DJKP was not in the mood for Japanese people who didn’t speak the language. He had spent the last few days having to do not only his job, but Barnaby’s as well. It was beginning to take its toll on his psyche, dealing with Americans.

  “My name, yeah, I know what you’re probably thinking; his name is Anoki Yamoto, he must speak Japanese. Right? Well, funny story, my real name is Jeff Yamoto, I’m third generation American. I changed my name when I became an actor.” He ran over to his dead body and pointed down emotionally, “See, this was my first movie, I’m an actor.” He starred down at his lifeless corpse and looked back up, “Well, I was an actor. Damn, that was my first movie. Oh well, that’s why I don’t speak Japanese. Do you speak English?”

  “Wakedehanai shinjiru getsunai!” yelled DJKP as he threw up his arms and angrily gestured to the light. He shuffled off behind his ward, muttering to himself how this wasn’t what he wanted to do with his life and he really wanted to get back to normal dead people. Americans were more trouble than they were worth.

  *****

  Mr. Finklestein sat on a fiberglass rock in his man-made mountain getaway. If he had a pen and paper, and if could write, he would almost certainly write an angry letter to his Congressman about the horrible treatment he had received. Being a bear was supposed be all fun and games and pic-a-nic baskets, but living here at the zoo wasn’t what he had envisioned his life would turn out to be.

  The other bears seemed to be quite content with their surroundings, but he longed for something more exciting. Plus, the crap tourists threw into the cage was disgusting. The sign says Please Do Not Feed the Bears, but if they were going to, he wished it would be more than half eaten hotdogs and cotton candy. He was trying to be healthy [All animals make New Year resolutions, but very few have the mental recollection to remember them past Presidents’ Day. This applies to higher thinking animals as well, but they usually only get to Martin Luther King Day] but he was having difficulty with all the temptations that surrounded him.

  He harkened back to his three hours out in the wilds of downtown Los Angeles and his thoughts turned to wondering about what ever happened to that strange man he was talking to when they were both gunned down by the cruel darts of captivity.

  He wondered if that guy had been taken back to the zoo as well and was living out his existence in a small cage while the gawking stares of snot-nosed children ogled him while being prodded him with miniature souvenir baseball bats.

  He liked the idea of humans being caged up like common animals, and for the first time in days a sense of blissfulness crept onto his face. Then he was hit upside the head with a chunk of fried dough.

  *****

  “This isn’t fair. In fact it’s downright ridiculous,” protested Michael as he stared knowingly at the hot dog cart across the street. “Why are we here? Let’s go somewhere fun.”

  DANZ & C>500TP was getting bored with her stakeout as well, but wasn’t going to admit it. They had spent the better part of six hours hanging around outside the hotel and as much as she wanted to storm into the room and catch Barnaby in some sort of wild embrace with his newly found hussy, she couldn’t admit to Barnaby that she had spent the last few days obsessing about him and his infidelities.

  “What is it with this guy anyway?” he said trying to pry any morsel of tactile information from the woman who sat seething in the adjacent seat. “What’s so special about this guy that we’re spending all of our time tracking his every move? Are you two a couple?”

  “It’s none of your business, that’s who he is.” Her glare told him to stop, but he was going to press on. Besides, what was she going to do? Kill him?

  “Listen, as far as I’m concerned we’re partners in this right now. And as equals I feel I’m entitled to know just exactly why we’re tailing him.”

  DANZ & C>500TP grabbed Michael by the collar and lifted him a few inches off the ground, staring a hole in him that would have made him wish he were dead. “We are not equals,” she said as she brought his nose in contact with hers.

  A small bead of sweat trickled down his forehead as he met her impenetrable gaze. This was a look usually reserved for when Yo Mama jokes have gone too far and personal, “You and I are not pals, friends, compadres, chums, amigos, buddies or partners. I have my reasons for being here. I am the only one who needs to know why I am here.”

  She dropped her lock on his shirt and he tumbled to the ground. “But, we are in this together,” he said, “You need me. I don’t exactly know why, but you do. If you didn’t you wouldn’t be dragging me all over this city, you would have left me to get on with my, um, life. So as much as you don’t want to admit it, you need me.” A lump formed inside his throat as he looked at her face to
see if her expression of sheer anger would waver, but it didn’t.

  His little speech seemed to only have upset her more. He searched around for a place to run, but he knew that no matter how hard or fast or far he ran she would eventually catch up and the repercussions would be a lot worse than if he just stayed and took it like a man.

  DANZ & C>500TP reached down her hand and Michael took it reluctantly, he held his breath and placed his hand near his crotch in case this was some sort of trick and a swift knee would meet the manliness he had grown to cherish. “Come on,” she said letting his hand go, “let’s go.”

  He thought best to cede defeat. “Where are we going?”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “Does this mean we’re friends again?”

  “No. We were never friends to begin with.”

  Michael followed her sheepishly through the vortex. As the light faded from existence the hotel doors opened and Barnaby, Ketty and Jeremiah entered the fresh L.A. air and headed down the boulevard.

  “Did you see something?” Barnaby asked as he exited the hotel, peering at the space where the light had been.

  “No.” answered Ketty.

  “Nope,” replied Jeremiah who was hobbling gingerly on his left leg with an ice pack clutched tightly to a large lump on his head.

  “I thought I saw-- Oh well, must have been nothing.” As they walked out into the setting sun Barnaby turned around to give the spot a last glance. He probably didn’t see anything, but he could have sworn he smelt a very familiar perfume. If he could only put his finger on where he’d smelt it before.

  *****

  Famine led the way, riding on the creature she had named Princess Lollipop, a moniker the others had vehemently begged her to reconsider. She had ditched her horse riding helmet and somehow come back with a stylish pink cowboy hat she wore proudly on her dark mane as she sang from atop her dinosaur.

  At the moment she was, as she had been for longer than any of her fellow riders would care to gander, singing at the top her lungs. The song wasn’t anything the other three were familiar with, but the theme seemed to strike a germane chord with the current state they found themselves in. It was a ditty about a man, who had ventured out into the dessert, and for some reason had failed to give his mount a name. Not naming your steed was seen as a big no-no to the others, as riding a horse with no assigned designation was seen as a slap in the face to honorable equestrians everywhere.

  The Death, War and Conquest were riding a safe distance behind her, as they had been adverse to Famine’s camp leader role-playing game. Sing-a-longs weren’t the norm when one is headed into the throws of ushering the end of days. They counted the setback of their prehistoric mounts as just that, but warbling the hits of the 60’s, 70’s and beyond were just too much.

  After a few hours of distant obstreperousness they galloped up beside her as they finally came around to her wants and joined in with the chorus. Famine was happy, though she didn’t look back at her associates so they could see her gloat. If there was one thing she prided herself on, besides global starvation, was her resolute sense of modesty. She gleefully assumed the biggest grin anyone would have ever seen, if they weren’t alone, lost in an ever growing expanse of nothingness, and gleefully yelled, “Everybody sing!”

  *****

  Manuel watched his boss sitting on a marina bench, silhouetted by the glorious pinks and yellows of a smog infused sunset. She hadn’t spoken or touched a drop of liquor during their drive. She hadn’t called him Marco or Pablo or Little Mexican Man or Rodrigo; she just sat and stared out the window. It was almost as if for the first time she had a sense of calm about her. He felt through her silence that she knew something terrible was coming. He also felt that she was all right with it.

  Manuel took a rag out of his pocket and scuffed a small smudge that had caught itself on his newly waxed car. He blew off a twig from the windshield and sucked in his gut as a couple of young women passed by.

  He gave a wink, making the young ladies giggle out of sheer amusement at the idea that a middle aged man had any chance with someone like them. As he tried desperately to look nonchalant at their doe-eyed barbs he glanced up to the sky and noticed a dark cloud moving in from the East. It was ominous and threatening and he knew immediately that he had waxed the car to no avail.

  *****

  Loman arrived home and immediately rushed over to his answering machine. For the first time in a long while it was blinking. This was it, he reflected; Ketty, who hadn’t been seen or heard from for a couple of days, had called on him. She had needed to be her knight in shining armor and rescue her from whatever dangerous situation she had gotten herself involved with.

  He pushed the play button with as much anticipation as anyone who had ever pushed a button in the history of time. This was his little red button on the presidential desk, and as the voice on the other end spoke, a huge plume of nuclear smoke rose from his gut. It was his mother, wondering why he hadn’t bothered to call her on her birthday.

  He couldn’t be bothered with anniversary greetings to the woman who bore him into this harsh and seemingly uncompromising world where he was a Mazda in a world of Mercedes. Not when the love of his life, his life-partner, his four-cylinder Toyota was out in harm’s highway.

  He paced his apartment floor, hollowing a path through the linoleum that lined the rooms of his home. He needed to find Ketty. He needed a plan. He needed a hint to as where to start looking. He was a math teacher; he wasn’t a detective, but he’d watched enough cop shows to know a little about clues. And he was determined to find one.

  *****

  Onaiwu Iyare peered through binoculars at the desert sand that stretched out, encircling his ranch for thousands of miles. He had been given false hope by a pack of vultures he thought had finally come to relieve him from his constant monotony, but they passed him by to gnaw on a hyena who had wandered to far from water. How he wished he was a rotting corpse of a dehydrated hyena.

  He had started to miss his family more and more as the hours faded from memory. He had thought this siesta from family obligations for a day would do him good, reenergize his batteries, but as the cat was gone the mouse got bored and started to reminisce about the game.

  Every dust cloud brought a twinkle of hope that the ennui was soon to be extinguished, but as the dust settled and nothing came out of its residue his knowledge that he was alone swelled like a pornographer’s wallet at a Bob Guccioni estate sale.

  For generations this had been a bustling farm of nonstop chattering of tens of people. Tens of people does not necessarily sound like much, but when the lack of voices that tens of people cease, it feels like the end of world. How very little did he actually grasp the reality of his thoughts.

  *****

  Large men carrying large guns scuttled by, while smaller men in lab coats flashed credentials while eating bologna sandwiches. The hallway was long and sterile, lit by unflattering linear fluorescent light. Doors marked by small numbers and electronic key pads lined the corridor like Christmas tree lights.

  Henry crouched down, peering through the small window in the door of room 243 as he planned his next move. He needed to get to room 267, a well guarded room where one needed not only a key and pass code, but an eye-retina scan and handprint to enter. He had gotten this far, with much avail, and now only required the necessary wherewithal to do the really hard part.

  He rustled out a cell phone from his coat pocket and dialed Juliet. It was a brief conversation, consisting of her mainly stating that she couldn’t care less how he did it and just to do it. His side of the exchange consisted of one word- “yes” [Most men will find that the simple answer of yes will be sufficient in any conversation with the opposite sex, and that when more words are called for, use “you’re right and I’m wrong”]. Several times while muttering unholy swears against his boss under his breath.

  He hung up the phone and placed it back in his pocket. He looked out the window again and s
aw his chance at the incredible action movie sequence he had imagined in his mind so many nights as he lay in bed alone thinking of ways to impress women.

  A stealthy click resonated in the hallway as the door handle slowly turned. The door moved slightly and out popped Henry with the strength and speed of so many cinematic ninjas.

  He sprang at an innocent and oblivious white lab coat carrying a small man with thick coke bottle glasses. With fists flying through the air Henry hit the man with a chop to the back of neck.

  The rest of what happened was a blur to Henry, he remembered a gasp from his victim and he remembered someone hitting the ground with the force of an atom bomb.

  When he woke up twenty minutes later in a small concrete room surrounded by three very large men with very large guns pointed at his skull, he really wished he’d stayed in bed. Action sequences worked out so much better in his dreams.

  *****

  A small man wearing a white lab coat over a dapper tweed suit and coke bottle glasses strode into room 267 without a second look from anyone. He flashed his credentials and was sent on his way by security, who all had bigger fish to fry than the new guy who had seemingly single-handedly apprehended and restrained a wild eyed terrorist hell bent on world domination.

  It was lucky for him some crazed lunatic decided to attack him and create an interference so he could slide into the room as a victim and not as someone who had just five minutes earlier knocked out and stolen a lab coat from an unsuspecting technician. Of course he had to kill the poor man to get his finger and eyeball, but it was more humane than taking those things off him while he was still alive.

  *****

  Juliet hung up her phone. She already had enough of her own worries, without having to deal with every little difficulty Henry ran into also. Besides, she figured he’d be fine, he may have been a pain in the ass but he was resourceful. She was confident he’d find a way into the room. She hung up the phone and shoved it back into her purse. “Sorry about that. Where were we?”

  “Why are you here? And what do you think you’re doing with that thing?” he pointed to the box she clutched in her hands.

  “I don’t think that’s any of your business.” She knew that this wasn’t the answer the man either wanted or would accept as fact, but she had to give it a try.