Monsters of the Apocalypse (7 page)

“You still
gonna do your set?”

It took
Nicolette a moment to realize that the words had been directed at her.
She managed to pull her eyes from the wall screen, which had now gone silent,
and looked at the man who had spoken.

“What?”

“Your set,
you still gonna perform it?” the man said with a raise of his eyebrow.

"You
serious?”

“Yeah.”

“Didn’t you
just hear that report? The damn world is ending!”

“Well… not
right now. We have some time.”

"But
it's going to end!"

"Well
yeah, but that's always been the case."

Nicolette
tried to gather herself. She tightly gripped the edge of the bar, feeling
unbalanced and unsteady. The man, the bartender, poured her another vodka
tonic and placed it on a white coaster in front of her.

"You've
always thought the world was going to come to a giant cataclysmic end?"
she asked while reaching for the glass.

"Sure."

"That's
insane."

"No.
I was right."

Nicolette
looked around the room and realized she'd never seen it empty. The story
had appeared on every channel, every social network, and every site and then
just looped. It was a tribute to professionalism in its way, that every
webmaster, editor and programmer, before leaving their post, had taken the time
to loop the story.

The world
had come to its end. And now here it was, only nine o'clock and the bar
was empty and this bartender was just standing there, smiling like an idiot
watching her cry.

"I
know, I know. There's nothing sadder than an empty bar. You should
play your set," he said eating an olive from his garnish tray.

“You don’t
have anything better to do than sit here and listen to me play a set?”

“I’m just
glad you're playing tonight. If the world had ended last night I would
have died listening to whatever was on the jukebox.”

“So this is
it then? You’re just gonna sit here and listen to me play 'til the world
ends?”

“If you got
somewhere else to be, feel free,” he said with his slightly crooked smile.
His deep-set eyes seemed to laugh at her quietly from a forgettably handsome
face.

“I’m the
only other person here, what’ll you do if I leave?”

“Well, the
good part about being the bartender at the world’s end is that I have a lot of booze
and I know how to make an Old Fashioned. I’ll be bummed you left, but
I’ll manage.”

She smiled
and took a sip of the vodka tonic. It seemed a little better than all the
ones that had come before. She noticed the way the ice clinked musically
as she replaced the glass onto the coaster.

“Look, if it
makes you feel any better, the world won’t end for us,” he said, his hand
twisting a knife against the rind of an orange.

“But the
news said...”

“The news
says a lot of things. I’ve seen a million polls, studies, stories -
nobody ever asked me anything, studied me, interviewed me. It’s the same
here. The rich and the important, their world is ending, the TV station's
world is ending. This little bar, in a little town in Ohio? I’m
betting there isn’t a missile pointed at it.”

He took the
twist of orange peel and dropped it into a glass.

“So if
everything else blows up, but you’re alive what will you do?”

“I don’t
know," he shrugged. "I know I won’t go to work, but after that,
I’ll play it by ear.”

She watched
as he poured a small amount of sugar onto the orange twist and then muddled
them on the bottom of the tumbler.

“What do you
do for work?”

"This."

"Just
tend bar? Nothing else?"

He shrugged
and again flashed his smile, his teeth a little too large, but straight and
white. He dropped a few cubes of ice into the glass.

“Not
really. Are you gonna play?”

“I’ve seen
you before, right?”

“Every show
you’ve played for the last two years, I’ve been there, Ms. Riggs.”

"Call
me Nicolette. What’s your name?”

He splashed
bitters over the ice, topped it off with a fair amount of bourbon, spun the
whole mix with a cocktail straw and then reached over to the bar fruit and
pulled out two maraschino cherries. He dropped one in the drink and ate
the other.

“Caleb.”

"Really?"
she laughed.

"My
parents lacked originality."

“Well,
Caleb, it’s nice that I got to meet you before the end of the world.”

He reached
his glass across the bar and clinked it against her own.

“Yeah, we’ll
always have that, right? You’ll see me walking through the wreckage of
our doomed civilization and I’ll see you wearing post-apocalyptic clothes under
a ruined sky and I’ll say, 'Hey, remember that night when the world ended?' and
you'll say, 'Yeah, how you been?'"

Together
they sipped their drinks as the cold water of condensation dripped onto the bar
between them.

"How is
he still alive?" October asked in wonder.

"My
shots just missed his internal organs. One in a million chance. He
was lucky," shrugged Flores.

"Or you
just missed," October smiled.

"I shot
a man three hundred feet away, with a 9mm handgun, in the middle of a gun
fight, in the dark. I hit him in the chest and stomach - I'd hardly call
it missing."

"And
yet, here he is, Agent Flores."

“Sir, we should go.”

“No, Miho. I want to be
here when he wakes up. You don’t know how long I’ve wanted to stand over
this man and watch him die.”

“There are risks.”

“Miho, he’s tied to a
chair. We turned off his camera. We’re twenty miles from
anyone. What could happen?”

“With all due respect, Mr.
President, if anything has been proven to us recently, it is that Jacob is
dangerous and can think ahead. He knows how to play all of us and for all
we know he’s doing just that again.”

“I’m not afraid of Jacob.
I’m not afraid of Nestor Bravo. I’m going to be here when he wakes
up. You go out there and make sure nothing goes wrong," October
snarled.

“I insist you keep a guard in
here,” she snapped.

“You insist?! Who are you
to insist? I’m the President, not YOU!”

“Very well, Mr. President, I’ll
be outside if you need me.”

October watched Miho and Flores
leave the room. He locked the door behind them and then turned back to
Nestor. Nestor had been twitching for the last few minutes, which October
assumed meant he would soon be waking up… or never would.

He wished he'd brought in a
snack. He considered opening the door and ordering Miho to get him one,
but he knew that would lead to another argument about leaving. She was a
worrier. Sometimes it was a good thing, it covered his blind sides from
time to time, but it could wear a man down.

"That's why I didn't get
married, eh Nestor? Yeah. You know there was a time where a single
man couldn't be elected President of the United States? You had to be
married; it proved you were a family man. People liked that. A lot
of people blame the biases against homosexuality at the time, or the religious
sentiments of the majority. But, I came to a conclusion the other day
that I think is pretty smart. Men don't like to give power to a guy who
thinks he's better than them. They are willing to follow a man, but only
if they think he's been there, been a follower, a servant. They want a
guy who's gotten yelled at because his shirt wasn't tucked in right. Of
course it changed, eventually
only
single people could be President, but
they had to be soldiers. Which is about the same as getting married I
expect."

Nestor twitched again.
October stared at the man.

Nestor didn't seem so tough tied to
a chair, unconscious, but at the same time he didn't look as vulnerable as
October would have liked. Nestor, somehow, even unconscious and
restrained, looked deadly. It was in this moment that October realized
how to truly humiliate the man, to make him the most human kind of
vulnerable. He leaned down and began unfastening Nestor's pants.

"What are you doing,
October?" Nestor asked.

"Oh, um… nothing."

"Why are you taking my pants
off?"

October stood up and turned to
face the wall. His hands bunched into tight fists.

"Answer the question,
October, why were you taking off my pants?"

"I wanted you to be nak…
look today has been a very hard day for me, so, you know, just let it go okay,
Nestor?"

"Were
you going to have sex with me?"

"No."

"Then why were you taking
off my pants, October?"

"You weren't supposed to
wake up until I was finished!"

"Finished what?"

"It's just… I wanted to…
never mind. Just forget about the whole thing. Please?"

Nestor shrugged and grew silent.

“You thought you killed me didn't
you, Nestor? Well, you didn't. You killed a man who looks just like
me. But don't feel bad, he knew the risks, it was part of the job.

“What’s that job called?
Target? Dummy?”

“Hero. I believe that’s
what they call people who give their life to protect the President.”

“Well, I hope he wasn’t your only
one, from what I hear, this won’t be the last assassination attempt.”

“You mean Jacob's little theory?”

“Theory? Is it necessary to
lie to me? You’re going to kill me any second and then kill everybody
else, why bother lying.”

“Not everybody. Not those
who God’s chosen to live.”

“You’re God in this scenario?”

“No, I’m the one who was
unfortunate enough to be in charge when God unleashed a plague on the
world. I didn’t want this. But, I will do what’s best. That’s
what being a leader is.”

“Fine. So you build your
little island. You didn’t have to kill everybody else.”

“Do you remember what happened
when the news came out about the genetic crops making everyone impotent?
There were riots in every city. You know what the most attacked thing
was? Not crop production plants or science labs, not even billionaire's
mansions. No, it was electronics stores. People were so mad - they just
had to steal a new Plasma Screen."

"What's your point?"
Nestor said, trying to shift to see his bullet wounds.

"People are greedy, stupid,
violent and unpredictable… and we have all the TV's."

"People trusted
you."

"I don't think anyone has
trusted a president in two hundred years, Nestor, but I am helping them. We
over populated, the world couldn’t sustain us. We were using up every
resource, too fast. I mean, perhaps if at some point people had decided
that getting along, compromising, and having intelligent discussion was a
better way to spread their ideals than having shitloads of sex and filling the
world with likeminded people… but they didn’t. So we run out of
food. Nature, God, whatever, says 'Fine, if you won’t control your
population, I will.' So what do we do? We design plants, crops to
fight back... and He poisons those. You can’t argue with God! So,
I’m the one who’s stopping the argument. I’m humble enough to say, 'I’m
listening, God.' I’m taking His chosen few and treating them as special,
like He wants. Which means protecting them from those that He has
forsaken. If I thought they were as noble, as humble as me, to do as He
wished and peacefully fill their time and then die, I’d let them. But,
they aren’t.”

“You talk too much,
October. It's always been one of your annoying habits.”

“Look, I was hoping you’d do me a
favor.”

“A favor?”

“Yeah. Kill Jacob.
He’s still on the continent. You’re still on the continent. He left
you to die here. Get even and I’ll personally come get you and bring you
and his corpse back to The Island.”

“Go to Hell, October.”

“I understand why you’re
angry. Why it feels unfair... but life’s unfair. There are those
who weren’t given all that others were, the power to make the world right, but
they can sacrifice on the behalf of those who can fix the world... like that
hero you just killed. He couldn’t save mankind, but he could save me so
that I could.”

“You'll just screw it up."

"Nestor, look at me.
You're going to die if you don't agree to do what I want. Come work for
me."

"No."

"Okay, then beg. Beg and I
won't kill you."

"No," Nestor smiled.

"You think I won't?!
You think I won't kill you?!"

Nestor sighed softly as October
pulled out a gun he'd borrowed from one of his security guards and pointed it
at Nestor's head. Neither man moved or blinked. They were perfectly
still and silent. The screaming and pounding seemed distant at the
beginning, as if rather than a door Miho was pounding against an ocean.
But, after a few seconds, the screams became clear and focused, and Nestor's
smile grew.

"DO NOT SHOOT NESTOR!
STOP RIGHT NOW AND OPEN THE DOOR!" Miho boomed from the other side of the
door.

The gun in October's hand shook
as Nestor's smile stretched even further.

"OPEN THE DOOR, MR.
PRESIDENT! DO NOT KILL HIM!"

October stopped and turned from
Nestor, the door now shaking under an outside impact.

"How did you know I
was…" October mumbled.

"He's filming! His
feed, it's broadcasting! Open the door!" Miho's shouts came between the
booming impacts.

"What?! I thought you
turned off all the feeds!" October said while still frozen, too stunned to
move.

"I did," Miho's voice
came from the other side of the door. "But… Jacob… I don't know how
he did it. It's only his, only Nestor's! Only Nestor's feed, but
it's broadcasting! OPEN THE DOOR! I don't know how, Mr.
President! And it doesn't matter! What matters is that you can't
kill him!"

"Go turn off the
feed!" October shouted at the door's vibrations.

"We don't have time!
People are rioting. There is a war on the street right now, our planes
are being attacked. The Migration is under threat! Mr. President,
the moment is now!"

October turned back to Nestor,
the door cracking off of its top hinge.

"What was the point of all
of this, Nestor? None of it stops me, none of it kills me.
Why?"

"You always wanted so badly
to be loved."

"Nestor…"

"No one will ever love you
again."

October looked down at Nestor.

“I still win, Nestor. You
and Jacob are dead. I’m the last man standing.”

Nestor smiled.

“Say I won! Say it!”

Nestor kept smiling.

October hit Nestor with the butt
of his gun. Then again. Then over and over. Nestor's laughter
rang out between the impacts, his eyes filling with blood as the door came
crashing to the ground.

“Sir, stop! Please,"
Miho reached over and stood between the two men, "we have to go.”

“I’m going to kill him!”

Flores pulled October into the
corner and held him solidly against the wall as Miho moved in front of
him. Nestor felt the swelling begin around the base of his eyes and his
ears rang. The blood was hot and sticky as it covered his face. He
could see nothing but red.

"You can't beat a man to
death… again. You need to seem in control! The Island is watching
and waiting. We have work to do. Do not ruin everything you've
built in a moment of rage," Miho hissed.

"You don't understand…"

“We’ll leave him. When the
bombs begin, the sensors on the building will go off. The house will go
into lock down and since he doesn’t know the override code he’ll never get
out. He’s dead - just let him die!”

October struggled to gain control
as he processed the small woman's words.

“You hear that, Nestor?
You’re going to die! You’re going to die!” October shouted.

Nestor just laughed through the
blood. October tried to push past Miho and Flores.

"Let me go, I'm gonna wipe
that look of his face! I'll kill him!"

“Sir!”

October could hear Nestor
laughing as they dragged him out.