Terminus: A Novella of the Apocalypse (11 page)

“We get it,” I growl, “but maybe you should have tried to stomp on the thing and keep it hidden beneath your shoe.  You might have escaped notice.”

“Maybe,” offers Engineer, his mustache twitching as his body shudders.

From his cluttered desk, directed toward The Engineer, Guide announces, “You owe me, dude.  Big time.  Now you got to slap yourself.”

We exchange glances and wonder if the other man will comply.  To our delight, he does so, if only to clear his mind of rat-thoughts.  The sound is loud and smack-worthy.  We laugh.  Our tension resolves.  Post-Terminus, rampant acts of violence are not traumatic.  Rather, they are… daily.

From there, we push through foothills and then the mountains.  Up there, the pre-Terminus population was always sparse, so passage through those high passes is almost serene, relaxing.  Then we descend into rugged valleys and pour out onto the windswept deserts of Nevada.

Reno is a catalogue of chaos.  Half the city has burned.  All of it has been looted, for whatever reason.  Bodies litter the streets and spill out from the buildings.  All of them desiccated and dried by the desert sun and the rarified air.  Our truck drives slowly through town, weaving through the scatter of abandoned vehicles and periodically bouncing over human remains.  At the entrance ramp to Interstate 80, someone has piled a small mountain of these corpses with a frontend loader, staking a U.S. flag at the top.  As we turn onto the highway, we see a variety of climbing gear scattered around its base, and then we notice a lone figure scaling the mound like a high-altitude climber, tackle, ropes, spiked shoes, ice axe, and all.  Like it’s every day for him, the lunatic waves as we drive past his little vacation spot.  Weird.

Maybe an hour later, we turn onto State Highway 95 and spend two hours on it.  Along the way, we encounter the inevitable scenes of Terminal mayhem.

At one spot, we pass a line of perhaps twenty cars parked along both sides of the road.  From the evidence, we gather these vehicles stopped one at a time so the tourist families in each could get out and fight each other to the death along the shoulders.  Men.  Women.  Children.  A blackened trail of blood leads away from the wreckage for many miles, until we bounce over the lone survivor, a giant bear of a man who obviously either bled to death or expired from exposure shortly after the fight.

95 turns to 6 in a formerly sleepy little desert town named Tonopah.  At the entrance to the main street, which is the business vane of 95, we encounter a ramshackle barricade someone has assembled into a makeshift toll booth spanning the street.

When our lead truck stops and we stop behind it with the third vehicle behind us, a large, disheveled man of perhaps fifty saunters out of a nearby fast-food restaurant, scratching his behind to pull a long-seated wedgy.  He wears dirty denim overalls, untied leather hiking boots, is shirtless, and sports a months’ long beard, gone white and shot through with gray.  His teeth are brown, stained by the tobacco he incessantly spits in dark streamers across the parking lot.

Through the cameras, we watch him approach his homemade barricade, his right hand raised high.  He says something we can’t hear until The Guide ups the gain on his microphones.

Via the truck’s loudspeaker, our host demands to know, “What do you want?”

Gatekeeper shouts cantankerously, “Whiskey!”

The Guide punches his keyboard.  The back door of the truck in front of us opens to emit a single black crow, who rounds the vehicle with a pair of bottles, one in either hand.  The Strangler offers these to the old man.

The old man examines the first one, and tosses it to shatter on the sidewalk.  Then he repeats the same gesture with the second, shaking his grizzled, spotted head.

Through the loudspeaker, Guide protests, “That was thirty year old Scotch!  Five hundred dollars a bottle!”

“I said whiskey,” protests Gatekeeper, “and I mean whiskey, god damn you!”

“Scotch IS whiskey!  The best!”

“That ain’t no account to me,” returns the old goat, “what I want is Jack Daniels.  Black Label.  I might accept some Johnny Walker.  Red.  But I ain’t got no use for decades-stale foreign piss-water!”

Growling impatiently, the Guide punches more keys.  He makes an inaudible declaration into his microphone.

This time, a handful of crows pour out of the truck in front of us, each snapping their garrote’s at the ready.  When the old man sees them come around the back bumper, his eyes pop wide.  Then he spits, drops into a ready stance, turns and bolts around the corner between the fast-food shop and the tire store next door.  The first crow with his five brothers and sisters gives chase.  They disappear into the township.

Guide shakes his head, leans back in his swivel chair and says, “This will take just a minute.  Relax.  Have a soda.  They’re cold.”  He pours himself a double Scotch, neat.  “Honestly.  I don’t know what gets into these sunbaked locals.  To think they can best a city Clan.  Stupid.”

Somehow, I’m not so confident.  I lean forward in my own seat, propping my elbows atop my knees to watch the camera monitors.  Off in the distance behind the closest structures, I think I see movement.  Human activity.

Then I whisper, “Shit.”

From perhaps a block down the street, three of the crows come running back to the dubious sanctuary of the convoy, their knees frantically kicking the aprons of their black robes, their hoods billowing backward off desperate faces, and their garrotes flapping forgotten in pumping fists.  Behind them, twenty or so overall-clad hillbillies give chase!  Each of the yokels carries a pitchfork, pickaxe, shovel, sledgehammer or some other farm implement of destruction!

Without waiting instruction, the first truck surges forward to barrel through the apparently flimsy barricade, fashioned as it is from shopping carts, bicycles, lawnmowers and the like.  When the truck rolls through, however, we hear the unmistakable POP-HISS of punctured tires, and through the forward-facing cameras we see its rear wheels churn an accordion-deployed spike-strip.

Through his microphone, Guide bellows, “Right!  Right!  Right!  Onto the sidewalk!”

On flat tires, the first truck rolls down the street, and the one remaining crow tries to climb into its open cargo bay.  His two mates lay prone on the pavement behind slathers of their still pulsing brains.  The Hillbilly Clan chases after the stricken vehicle, pulling themselves inside through the yet open door, while those who cannot immediately make the leap pound on its doors and side panels with their farm tools.  Now one crow after another comes flying through the open doorway to land headfirst on the pavement.  The opposing clan begins to quickly mince their bodies, robes and all.

Behind us, the third truck follows.  We push through the clamorous crowd and eventually steer onto State Highway 6.  To one side of our passage, that first truck coasts to a stop, crashing into a plate glass storefront where it comes to rest, surrounded by bloodthirsty desert rats.

Guide flicks his right hand back and forth across his chest and abdomen in a poor imitation of the Catholic ritual, which he ends by grabbing his crotch, turning his head, and coughing once.  “Vios con Dios, amigos!  Whatever that means.”

“Go with God,” returns Chief solemnly.

“What’s that you say?”

“It means ‘go with God’.”

“Yeah?  Well, that’s stupid.  I thought it had something to do with corn-chips!  Where is god in this mess?  Huh?  And what did god have to do with that lopsided showdown?”

“You said it, not me.”

“Yeah, well… I must be stupid.  Forget it.”  For the first time, our host notices his spilled Scotch, which has run across his blotter to wet his expensive silk suit.  “Ah, man!  That sucks!”  Fetching a wad of paper towels, he blots his slacks and stands, disgusted, “Oh, well.  I got to take a dump, anyway.  Might as well change clothes while I’m at it.”

Heading for the bathroom installed into the forward passenger-side corner of his office, Guide announces, “Y’all might want to pinch your nostrils or something.  This could get ugly.”

We groan.  The Engineer hops his chair away from the bathroom door.

By the time the air clears, Guide emerges wearing a fresh silk suit and a shiny new pair of shoes, while the remaining pair of trucks navigate the rugged desert.  This is more scrubland than sandy dunes, as the state highway snakes through an endless series of low, rocky hills crowded with sage and hardy cacti.  Perhaps three hundred kilometers north of Las Vegas, State Highway 6 turns south onto 375, and the scrubland opens up considerably.

Rolling through this barren landscape in the stilted sunlight of a late autumnal afternoon, we occupy ourselves variously as we please.  The Girl sharpens her knife, while Chief polishes his knuckledusters.  The Kid and Engineer play cards, slapping the colorful bits of paper onto the butt of an empty chair.  The Guide and I keep a bored interest on the cameras and, through them, our surroundings.

Just after we pass through Warm Springs and make the turn south, the wary Asian hisses and sits straighter in his chair.  His fingers furious on the controls of his cameras, his disturbance attracts every set of eyes present within the makeshift office.

“What was that?” he demands with a surprised gasp.  “Did you see that, Scientist?”

“What?” I hedge uncertainly, my eyes roving the displays with only vaguely alarmed interest.

“Something moving through the draws back there,” he points to an aft-facing camera, where a series of low hills are already receding into the distance.

I shrug.  “Probably a deer or tumbleweeds.”

“A deer?” whines Guide.  “Come on, dude.  Give me some credit.  I may be a city boy, but I know a deer when I see it.  This was no Bambi.”

“How do you know?” asks Engineer, abandoning his card game to drag his chair closer to the desk.

“Because, it was huge.  Freaking huge, man!”

“How big?” from Chief, also joining us before the camera monitors.

The Guide shrugs, “Elephant huge?  I don’t know.  But big!  And scary!”

We exchange glances over Guide’s rapidly moving head.  These gazes collectively wonder if the Clansman’s brain has finally cooked-off.  Only The Girl remains convinced.  Something about the concerned flash of her lustrous green eyes makes me wonder.

Of her, I ask, “Did you see it, too?”

She nods.  The rest of us return our attention to the scenery with renewed interest.  For several long minutes, nothing happens.

Then Chief stabs a thick, stubby finger at a camera pointed forward-right and declares, “There!  Did you see it?”

Though we rapidly fixate on the monitor in question, we see nothing save for arid hillsides, rocks, and pebbly sand.  Guide works his controls to make the camera pan right to follow the same focus as we pass.  Nothing moves, except the shadows of our trucks.

Once more, we resort to scanning the empty world, sifting the elongating shadows of late afternoon for something scary.  Thanks to our recent experience with aliens and spaceships from another world, we cannot easily dismiss these fleeting visions, so we anticipate the next revelation with bated breath.  Nobody can guess what might happen next in this world gone bizarrely Post-Terminus.

Abruptly, the lead truck skids to a halt, and our truck follows with an unexpected jolt.  Everything not bolted to the deck slides forward and then topples.  We all spill from our seats.  Glass breaks.  Keyboards fly.  Inside the bathroom, we hear the chemical toilet slosh.

“What the hell…?” begins Guide, his rolling chair bouncing off the wall to his bedroom.

Before he can right himself and return to his desk, through his earphones, which he wears loose around his neck, we hear one of the drivers shout, “MONSTERS!”

That brings us quickly to our feet.  Permanently fixed to the driver’s side bulkhead of the truck’s cargo hold and thus still solidly emplaced, we scramble to find something in the camera displays to inform us of our situation.  Ultimately, a black mass moves across a particular rendition labeled, “Truck 3, Front Bumper”.  There, lurching along the centerline of the highway toward the camera lens, we see something impossible.

Insect-like, spiky, multi-limbed and scaly, its bristle-maw working furiously, a terrifying chimera of alien origins stands astride the two-lane blacktop, towering before the truck to the height of a fully grown African bull elephant.  Only, this is no bull elephant.  It’s no mammal or Earthly animal of any kind.  Though I only count four supporting legs, it resembles a massive tarantula more than anything else, but this resemblance is only vague and proportional.  Where a terrestrial spider should have presented a bulbous head, this creature reveals a scaly trunk leading to a pair of wickedly powerful, multi-jointed arms ending in terrifying prehensile claws.  Atop these formidable limbs, an armored carapace protects a sinister face embedded directly between them, its many eyes glinting hostilely in the falling light.  Like a tarantula, however, it confronts the appearance of our trucks by raring backwards on its hindmost pair of legs.  From a spouted gland on its abdomen, a sticky tar-like substance sprays forth.  It coats the camera perspective, which instantly goes dark.

From another monitor labeled, “Truck 1 – Front Bumper”, we watch a gout of chemical smoke billow up into the blue-white sky from the forward aspect of front truck.  Although the box of its cargo bay obscures our direct view of it, the driver’s screams tell us the unknown liquid has quickly dissolved the front windshield and hood to pour into its cab and begin eating away at the Stranglers inside.