The Book of Apex: Volume 1 of Apex Magazine (2 page)

God, he could be such a dick.

The comet, or asteroid or
whatever it was, streaked through the sky apparently aiming for a point
somewhere between her eyes. The wind screamed in her ears. Her teeth vibrated
in their sockets and her bones felt ready to shatter. It started to break apart
and chunks of fiery rock rained down around her. She could smell her hair
burning and see blisters rising on her hands.

The ocean was beginning to
boil, and foul-smelling steam, like rancid fish, rose up around her. Sweat
stung her eyes.

“Shit.”

The vortex was closed.

She looked down at the
envelope.

“Post Apocalypse.” That joke
just keeps getting funnier every time you tell it.

Asshole.

Sarah thought that if she had a
pen she might just start filling out the form for the hell of it.

She would write, “huge
motherfucking rock” in the space next to Nature of The Event.

August 29, 2113.

She looked down at her watch.

3:27 p.m.

Weather conditions?

Who gives a fuck?

In her own words she wrote,
“THIS SUCKS!”

Is that specific enough?

The vortex opened beside her
and Sarah stepped through.

The observation posts they used
were more or less the same in each dimension. Sometimes the color of the walls
or the stains on the shabby carpet varied, but not by much.

The house Sarah’s vortex opened
onto was positively opulent.

She tumbled into an overstuffed
Italian leather sofa, creamy and soft as meringue. The floors were marble tiles
laid in a beautiful, intricate pattern. Thick, chocolate-colored, velvet drapes
covered a window the length of one whole wall.

The phone was ringing.

“Fuck you very much, Ian,” she
answered cheerily. “Nice fucking weather we’re having, don’t you think?”

“Sarah, honey, is something
wrong?”

“I am tired of your little
game, Ian.”

She was grinding her teeth
together so hard she could taste enamel dust on her tongue. Mixed with the bile
in her throat, it made her feel lightheaded and a little buzzed.

“You’re pathetic, shuffling
through dimensions all these years and you’ve learned nothing except that
eventually the earth always ends one way or another, and there’s nothing you or
anyone else can do about it.”

“Are you finished?”

“Not even close. That was it.
My last armageddon. I’m coming back, and I’m reporting you and your useless
research to the University. You’re finished. How’s that for an apocalypse, you
sorry piece of shit?”

“I was calling to apologize. My
timing on the last shift change was a bit off. I didn’t mean to cut it so
close, but I won’t say I’m not glad for the opportunity for such a close
observance.”

The last sentence was so oily
she could almost hear it squeak. The lying bastard, he was enjoying every
minute of her discomfort, savoring her rage and humiliation like a warm bath.

“We’re so close honey. I swear
to you. We get just a little bit closer and then you’re gonna see it for
yourself. I promise you, baby. It’s gonna be wild.”

“I meant it, Ian. I’m going to
the University.”

“You do whatever you feel you
have to. Our work doesn’t need defending.”

He tossed that “our” out as
casually as a blow dart, and she felt it prick her skin, draw a drop of blood.

“Just tell me when the event is
scheduled to occur and when you’ll have my ticket out.”

“Don’t worry about that, Sarah.
You’ve got plenty of time. I arranged a sort of vacation for you. You’ve been a
lot of help to me. I’ve treated you poorly, and I’m sorry.”

“Whatever. Let me know when
you’re ready.”

She closed the phone before he
could speak again. Who knows? Some time or other they might have actually been
in love.

Out of
habit she turned on the TV and switched it to a news station. She couldn’t
remember how long it had been since she’d seen nothing but rapes and murders
and robberies. No prophets, no alien overlords, no countdowns to doomsday. Here
was a place where they really believed things would just go on forever. Sarah
could get used to that.

She made a sandwich and poured
herself a glass of wine. She was half dozing when the doorbell rang.

Crawling across the porch was a
man in a blue uniform and a jaunty hat. His neck was swollen and his face had
turned the shiny blue –black color of an overripe plum. Greenish pus oozed from
his sores and his eyes were filled with blood. The man was choking, his mouth
opening and closing trying to speak. Spit flecked his lips and misted up into
Sarah’s face. She touched the dampness with the tips of her fingers. Fever heat
rolled off him like evil thoughts.

In his outstretched hand was a
smooth cream colored envelope.

“Post Apocalypse.”

She tore the end off the
envelope and the yellow sheet fell on the ground at her feet.

The color of plague.

Oh no, Ian, you dirty son of a
bitch. How could you?

The mailman pitched forward
across the welcome mat, sputtered and died.

A breeze caught the paper, and
it tumbled end over end down the walk into the street and out of sight.

These Days

Katherine Sparrow

April is pure rot.

Posters with body parts are
wheat-pasted up and down our block. Radio stations are mid-theory about why
women get the wild, men get the crack, and kids get the numb, when the signal
just bleeds out into howls. No one works at the grocery store anymore, and you
can take what you want, but all that is left is unlabeled canned goods.

Our band only leaves the house
as a pack. We carry tin foil balls, tasers, and baseball bats. No one we see is
normal. Only a couple of people show up to our gigs, and they throw bricks and
bottles at us.

At the end of April we get
evicted for the fourth time in three months. Our landlord, who is at least half
with it, lets us know by nailing demolition signs to our front door. At least
he doesn’t blow it up while we’re inside.

We stir-fry the last of our
veggies, eat them with undercooked rice, and pour gasoline over the living-room
floor. We torch it and leave.

Outside on the concrete we
watch the house turn from wood into fire. Flame fingers dance up and down the
walls of the living room. The windows crack and shatter. We take a step back.

“Where do we go now? Any ideas,
Tom?” Zaki One asks.

“Nada,” I say.

“At least we’ve got lots of
options,” Miranda says. She knuckle-rubs the shadows under her eyes. “At least
there’s nothing to be scared of.”

We watch fire climb up the
stairs of the house.

“Let’s get out of here.”

“Think it will be different
anywhere else?” Zaki Two asks.

“It has to be. There has to be
somewhere...” I pull down my sleeves and check to make sure they hide my
arm-cuts. I do little ones to let out some of my pain. I never look at Zaki and
Miranda too closely. I don’t know what they have been doing to get through
April. I don’t want to know.

We have to hitch out of our
neighborhood because the roads have been blocked off for days. National
guardsmen with flat faces and big guns have locked it down. They pretend they
don’t have the crack but shoot people all the time for no reason.

A big rig stops for us a couple
miles out from the bridge. If you can drive and are rich enough to own a car,
they’ll let you out. We walk toward the trucker’s cab, but he opens up the
empty cargo container in back instead.

His shirt has an old patch that
reads “Bob.”

“What do you call a man with no
arms and no legs who swims in the ocean?” I ask, as I step into the container.
The smell of rotten vegetables, trash, and rough-cut steel sours my mouth.

Bob throws the door shut and locks
us in.

That’s how we get out of the
south side three hours before the riots start and five hours before the
carpet-bombing. We learn about it from Zaki’s radio, tuned to a station that
has news some of the time.

We sit in the pitch black and
eat our cans of food one by one, guessing what they are from the taste: peeled
mandarin oranges, refried beans, and metallic tuna, maybe. After that we play
music.

We were lucky to get out before
the riots.

Rewind to five years ago and
press play. Imagine any given day at any boring high school. I sat out behind
the portables, smoking stale cigarettes stolen from my dad. Three kids walked
toward me. I knew everyone at school, but I’d never seen them before. There was
one cute girl and two smaller twins. A senior and two freshmen? The girl
stopped a couple feet away from me and looked me up and down.

“We’ve been searching for you,”
she said. “I’m Miranda. This is Zaki. Zaki’s twins, but just one, get it?”

Zaki One spat. Zaki Two glared
at me.

I didn’t get it. “Do you even
go here? I’m Tom.”

Miranda didn’t answer. She
started singing instead. She wailed.

The sound hit me like water
flooding into the desert.

She sang and I believed.

Her voice drowned out my
fogginess. I could breathe even though I hadn’t noticed I’d been holding my
breath. Zaki One started playing his flute. Zaki Two played the harp. Animals
and desert flowers woke up from a hot, dry summer. Frogs slipped into the water
and started swimming.

When they stopped, Zaki One
said, “That’s your song. We wrote it for you because we need a guitar player.”

“I’m not musical,” I said with
regret. Piggybacked on my words was shock that I felt regret. That I felt
anything.

“Come on.” Miranda led us to
the boarded up band room. We broke in. Teachers never left their classrooms, so
it was easy. Miranda let me choose and the second I saw my dreadnought fender
sitting all lonesome in a dusty corner, there was no other.

“Things are going to get a lot
worse soon. We need a tight band. You with us?” Miranda asked.

“Sure. Why not?”

I started eating lunch with
them, just like real friends.

I started
practicing my guitar all the time. When I wasn’t playing, I thought of chords
and moved my fingers. I hummed constantly. I got blood blisters, then sores,
and then half-inch calluses on my fingertips. It took me two months, and then I
could play any sound I could think of.

“We’ll need to start playing a
lot of gigs. We’ll need a band name,” Miranda said.

“Well there are four—” Zaki
glared at me, “—I mean three of us.”

“I like dragons,” Zaki One
said. “They’re fierce.”

“I like carnies,” Zaki Two
said.

“Three Ring Dragon,” Miranda
said.

So that’s who we are.

The cargo container grows hot
and bounces us all over. Roads suck these days, and even if Bob is just headed
to the north end, it takes us hours to get there. Days, maybe. Who knows?
Everything lasts longer in the dark.

“There’s an enclave I’ve heard
of. Full of kids. They have a resistance ‘zine,” Zaki One says.

“Have you seen it?” Miranda
asks.

“No.”

Of course he hasn’t. I scratch
a scab running along my shoulder blade. I dig my nails into it. There’s always
that place people talk about—Eugene, Doswallops, Glacier—where it’s better.
Where the food is safe and no one’s sick with any of the diseases. Yeah, right.

“We’ll find it,” Miranda says.

Even in the darkness, I can’t
conjure up belief in a safe place. I don’t ask if Miranda and Zaki believe. I
need them to have more faith than me.

The truck stops and Bob opens
up the rig. He holds an axe in one hand. Rope lies draped over his shoulder.

“There’s no more cargo. I have
to sell you,” he says. His voice is flat. His eyes are angry. He has the
crack—maybe he isn’t that far gone yet, but he is traveling on that road.

He raises his axe and steps up
onto the rig. The axe catches the sun and reflects light into the cargo
container. It blinds us for a moment.

Then the Three Ring Dragon
smile at each other.

Did Bob think we couldn’t see
him coming from a hundred miles off? These days you always have to have a plan.

Zaki plucks his harp and plays
his flute. Miranda lets sound grow in her throat. I drop notes around
everything. I strum an E minor and a B flat.

Bob unfurls lengths of rope.

As we start to play Bob’s song,
I hope we’d get at least some of it right.