Pursuit of the Apocalypse (11 page)

The woman spun so fast she almost lost her beret. “What did you call me?”

Erica had to think back. She was pretty sure she said woman and not what she had been thinking. “A woman?”

“A woman?” She stormed back and put a finger in Erica’s face. “I am not defined by society’s labels, bitch. There are more than sixty genders, and you paint me with one! Why? Because of my hair? Because of my sweetness? You are so damn ignorant.” She sighed and for that brief moment there was silence.

“So you’re a ...”

“It doesn’t matter what I am. How I self-identify is none of your business, you oppressive bigot.” She let out an exasperated gasp. “You know what? When the world first blew up, I thought it was a blessing.”

One of the men opened his mouth to speak, but she held up her hand to stop him.

“You’re right. I misspoke. It wasn’t a blessing because religion is evil and for weak-minded anti-science morons and children. Thank you for correcting me.” She went back to frothing. “What I meant to say was that I thought it was awesome. So much ignorance wiped out in the blink of an eye. It was the only logical conclusion to humanity’s destructive ways. Some of us lived and we had a chance to start over. I felt that intelligent people finally had a chance to reshape the world by doing what was right. But here you are, too stupid to know that your kind of ignorance is extinct. Fucking it up for everyone else. For everyone that functions with the respect and motherfucking civility this world deserves.

“So don’t you dare lump me in with you. I am nothing like you. This is our world now, and we’re not going to let you fill it with your hate.”

Erica dropped her head and looked at the ground. “You’re right,” she said. “You’re not like me at all.”

“Well thank you for that.” The woman began to turn away.

Erica looked up. “I don’t need a man to protect me.”

The woman turned back around. Her mouth hung open, but for the first time, probably ever, no words came out. Her lips moved trying to start several thoughts that never fully formed. The woman in the beret finally shot out, “Oh no you fucking didn’t.”

Erica shrugged, smirked, and looked at the two men in front of her.

It was possible that up until this point the woman had not actually been angry. Now her face flushed red and she screamed at the two armed men. “You two assholes, out.”

The two guards looked to one another, most likely hoping the other would act first. It was a game of chicken no one could win.

The guard on her left spoke first. “But, Carrie ...”

Carrie’s eyes were locked on Erica’s and her voice had grown cold and quiet. She spoke to the guard over her shoulder without breaking the stare. “Get out or I’ll say you were oppressing me.”

The guard protested. “I really don’t think ...”

Carrie turned, reached up and grabbed the guard by the neck. She pulled his face down to hers and screamed, “Fuck. Off.”

The two men backed out of the room and disappeared down the hall.

Erica listened to their footsteps fading away all while holding Carrie’s gaze. Another door slammed and the floor was completely silent.

Carrie screamed. “What have you got now, bitch? Is this what you wanted? Well, you’ve got it. I’m right here.”

Erica took a step toward Carrie who immediately sprung back and dropped into a defensive posture that Erica was certain never existed until that moment.

“I’m going to warn you once.” Carrie held out her arms and made a circle around her as she continued to scream. “This is my safe space. You stay out of it and I’ll let you live. But, step inside,” Carrie reached behind her back and pulled out a large automatic, “and I will fucking destroy you! I will ...”

Erica lunged forward and grabbed the wrist that held the gun. She pushed the wrist down and away, half turned and drove an elbow into the top of the woman’s mouth, knocking the beret off her head and a tooth from her mouth.

Carrie stumbled backwards and relaxed her grip on the weapon.

Erica pulled the gun free and spun the opposite direction, catching Carrie’s cheek with a right elbow. It wasn’t until Erica punched her for a third time that Carrie finally stopped talking.

The woman sneered at her through bloody lips and chipped teeth and screamed something unintelligible and gurgley before charging. Her fingers were curled like claws. Her eyes were the color of insanity. Even her hair seemed to be reaching out and trying to strangle someone.

Erica whipped the automatic like a club. The crack against Carrie’s jaw was satisfying but not as much as the complete silence that followed. Even the gurgling stopped.

Carrie stood and looked at Erica but there was nothing left in her eyes. They were unfocused and remained so as the woman fell face forward to the floor.

Erica delighted in the lack of screaming for a second before stripping Carrie of her jacket. She listened for the other guards but heard nothing. Erica stepped to the door and found where the beret had landed.

She put on the jacket and the hat and slipped into the hallway. The guards were out of sight, but she could hear them talking.

“I haven’t heard Carrie say anything for a minute.”

“Yeah, it’s kind of nice, isn’t it?”

“Should we go check on her?”

“Let’s enjoy it for a minute.”

Erica ran down the hallway away from the guards and found a door to a stairwell. Two minutes later she was outside and making her way through the town of Tolerance.

FOURTEEN

They had to speak at the gates. That wasn’t the plan, but sticking to one word answers got them into the town. Once inside, Willie and Coy did their best not to talk to anyone. The fact that no one wanted to talk to them didn’t make it any easier. Now they were forced to not offend anyone with their looks. And this had been a challenge their entire lives.

They tried not to smile. If compliments could get you arrested, there was no telling what an unwelcomed smile could do. But they also worried about frowning. They didn’t want to give anyone the idea that they were judging them. Willie found wearing a neutral face more difficult than he would have thought and his mouth bounced back and forth between a smirk and a frown giving him the appearance of having a facial tic. One person approached concerned he was having a stroke.

Coy, on the other hand, had his chin nearly straight up in the air while simultaneously trying to direct his eyes to the ground in front of him. This extreme focus caused Coy to subconsciously chew on his lip, which exposed his teeth in a twisted snarl and gave him a lumbering gait.

Willie directed his partner down an empty alleyway and shoved him behind a brick wall that had been built to hide a dumpster. “Coy, what the hell are you doing?”

Coy turned his whole body to answer without taking his eyes off the ground or his nose out of the sky. “I’m doing what you told me to do.”

“I’m pretty sure I never said walk like a retarded Frankenstein.”

“That’s not what I’m doing.”

“It is, though.”

“It’s not. You told me not to look at boobs. This is me not looking at boobs.”

“Yeah, but you’re making it too obvious, dummy.”

“I am not.”

“You are, too. That’s an ‘I’m not looking at boobs’ face if I’ve ever seen one.”

“So what if it is, Willie? You told me not to look and I’m not looking.”

“Yeah, Coy, but you can’t get caught not looking.”

“Why not?”

“Because some women find it offensive if you don’t look.”

“But you told me women find it offensive if I do look.”

“Right.”

“Well how the hell am I supposed to tell the difference between a woman that wants me to look at her boobs and one who don’t!?”

“You moron, they’re the same woman.”

“So you’re saying a woman might get upset if she sees me looking at her boobs. But the same woman might get mad if she sees me not looking at her boobs?”

“Exactly.”

Coy finally dropped his chin and, after a moment of trying to process the new information, shouted, “That doesn’t make any sense.”

“Right. So look but don’t look, and don’t look but do look. But whatever you do, don’t get caught.”

“Don’t get caught doing what?”

“Looking. Or not looking. Or both. Or either.”

This confused Coy even more. He sputtered over several questions starting with why, how, how in the hell, and finally gave up. “What the hell am I supposed to do then?”

“Just act natural.”

Coy shook his head slowly and a sad look crossed his face. “Willie, this place makes my head tired. Let’s hurry up and catch the guy so we can get out of here.”

Willie peered out around the brick wall. They had been directed to the square in the middle of the campus. Most people seemed to congregate there. He scanned the crowd for the Librarian. “Don’t worry. I’m working on a plan.”

“Well work faster, would you?” Coy sat down next to the brick wall, leaned back and found a handful of pebbles to toss at the dumpster. “I’m bored and now all I can think about is boobs.”

Coy’s pouting fanned a little flame of rage in Willie’s stomach. Even before the end of the world all the big ideas had been his responsibility. Even the little ideas fell to him. Not because his ideas were the best, but because Coy was the laziest bastard he knew. And he could say that because Coy was his best friend. Everything the pair had ever done that amounted to anything had first been spawned in his head, not Coy’s. Willie finally snapped, “Maybe you’d like to come up with a plan for once.”

Coy looked up with a scowl before a thought flit into his head. “Maybe I will.”

“Fine. Go right ahead.” Willie scooped up his own handful of pebbles and dropped to the ground. “I’ll just be waiting right here for your big idea.” He threw a stone into the corner and watched it bounce off both walls before it dropped to the ground. He smiled and did it again. It was way better than thinking.

From the corner of his eye, he watched Coy think. The strain showed on the man’s face. Coy’s lips moved as he processed ideas, and he squinted and shook his head when they didn’t pan out. A bead of sweat broke out on Coy’s temple.

Willie chuckled. “Not so easy, is it?”

“Shut up, Willie.” Coy got to his feet and began to pace and whisper to himself. He had ideas and he shot ideas down in a series of mutterings. “We could ... no, he’d never fall for that. What if we ... no, that’s stupid. Maybe if ... but where would we find a tiger? If we ... no, no that would be wrong. Maybe if ...” his voice trailed off and he just began laughing.

“Focus, super genius. We haven’t got all day.”

“Shut up, Willie.” Coy paced faster around the brick enclosure, muttered more and then suddenly stopped. “Okay, I’ve got it.”

“Right. Sure you do.”

“No, I really do. Listen. We can set it up right here.” Coy began to gesture with his hands. He ducked behind the wall and began to choreograph the whole plan. “We get the library guy to come around here. Come past the dumpster and stop at this metal door.” Coy paused.

Willie watched a smile grow across Coy’s face. “And?”

“He stops here. Wanting to get in this door. But he can’t. So he shakes it and maybe bangs on it. But he can’t get in.”

“So?”

“So that’s when we jump out of the dumpster.” Coy slapped the dumpster with a bang. “And shoot him with a net gun.”

“Really, Coy?”

“Really, Willie.”

“One small problem. There’s no such thing as a net gun.”

“Sure there is.”

“So where do we get one? The future after someone invents it?”

“There really are net guns, Willie. I saw one on a nature show one time.”

“Bullshit.”

“No, really. And you shouldn’t go around calling me a liar.”

Willie threw up his hands. “Fine, but since we don’t have a nature show host around from which to borrow a net gun ... what do we do?”

“Well, we could use a regular net.”

Willie stood up and threw the rest of the rocks against the dumpster. “Well, that’s a pretty good plan, Shaggy, but how do we get him to the door? Should we maybe draw an X on the ground? Or maybe we fill a bowl with birdseed.”

“I doubt that would work, but we do put some bait in there.”

“What kind of bait?”

“That Chris guy.”

“Brilliant. But, we don’t have a Chris guy.”

“Yeah, but the library guy doesn’t know we don’t have that Chris guy. What if one of us dressed up as him in that stupid white suit and his dumb hat? Then the library guy would think we’re that Chris guy and follow us right to the door. Then,” Coy slapped the dumpster with a bang, “we jump out of the dumpster and catch him in a net that may or may not be fired from a net gun.”

Willie brushed the pebbles from his palms and dropped a hand on his friend’s shoulder. “Coy.”

“Yes, Willie?”

“That is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard. But, it just might work.”

“You think so?”

“I do. You get to be the Chris guy.”

“Wait. Why?”

“Because it was your idea, Coy. And because the library guy really wants to kill the Chris guy a lot. So it would be better if you did it.”

“But ... but I don’t know how to be the Chris guy. I don’t know how to act.”

“Look, all you have to do is walk around in the crowd in a white suit until someone starts to follow you. Then lead him back here and,” Willie slapped the dumpster with a bang, “I jump out of the dumpster and drop a net over his head. Or, you know, a bag or something if we can’t get a net.”

“Hey,” Coy pointed a finger at Willie. “Don’t you go changing my plan.”

FIFTEEN

Andy Levinson was the best door kicker in the apocalypse. Small and wiry, his rise to the championship was possibly the first Cinderella tale in the new world.

The sport branched off from Breaking and Entering—a popular pastime following the end of the world considering almost everyone participated while looking for food and supplies.

Sure, some survivors resisted for a time, citing moral reasons or the owner might be alive and have a gun reasons, but even the holdouts got into the act out of desperation or pure boredom. It wasn’t long before everyone left alive had an opinion on the best way to kick down a door. And once someone has an opinion it doesn’t take long for some asshole to condemn it. Egos are bruised and sports are born.