More Bedtime Stories for the Apocalypse (17 page)

Probably. But he’d worry about it when the
time came.

For now, he went back into the living room
to clean the media center. If he wanted it to last, he’d have to
take better care of it.

* * * * *

* * * * *

What can one do at the end of civilization
but smoke a last cigar, have a last shot of whiskey, and sit on the
hood of one’s car taking in the last of everything? I remember back
before the start of all of this, someone asked me, “What makes a
writer a real writer?” My answer was that even if you knew no one
would ever read your stuff, you’d
still
write. At the time I
said it, I didn’t really know if that was true. It just sounded
like the writerly thing to say.

Now I know.

All will be smoke and ash soon; no one can
survive this. But here I am, writing. I guess it helps me think.
Contemplate. Bring order to the chaos of a frantic brain. It’s the
only thing that can help me come to some kind of peace about this
whole thing.

My family is –
was
– on the Pacific
coast, and that is now gone.
They
are gone. So what do I
have left? A cigar that I may not get to the end of, a red Solo cup
half-full of Black Velvet whiskey, some sheets of paper, some
photographs, a pen, and the hood of my car, where I sit, looking
out over the North Dakota badlands – hills of slowly eroding
sedimentary rock, the different strata exposed in varying rusty
hues; reds, yellows, oranges.

There are others here at this rest stop off
of I-94. Some sit together holding each other tightly, saying their
goodbyes. Some pray. Some wander the grounds muttering. There’s a
rest stop attendant – an older gentleman – walking around to all of
the potted plants at the rest station, watering them with water
from a Coke can. He dumps the contents on a plant, then goes to
refill the can at the drinking fountain, and repeats. Three bison
munch away at the grass next to a picnic table.

I wonder if there are others like me, in
those areas yet to be hit, that are doing what they love, what they
must do, one last time. What works of art are being created at this
moment? What works of brief magnificence?

The attendant talks lovingly to the flowers
he waters. Every once in a while, he breaks out in song. I can’t
make out the words, but I recognize the tune. He bends down every
so often to breathe in the scent of the flowers, closing his eyes
as he does so, as if trying to hold in the scent for as long as he
can.

Someone a few cars down cries softly,
sweetly; the cry of someone mourning the loss, the waste. I cried,
too, at one point, when I realized I would not see my family one
more time; my wife Jillian, daughter Evelyn, son Reed, my mother
and father, my brother. I had their pictures in my wallet and now
they are spread out on the hood of my car next to me. If there’s
some warning before the end, before the
very
end, I will
make sure they are the last things I see.

A trucker offered the cigar to me, and I
took it gratefully. I’m not a smoker, but I’ve had a cigar every
now and then, smoking them on our porch back home. Jillian would
make me take off my clothes and throw them in the wash the moment I
walked in the door smelling of smoke.

God, I miss her.

There’s no chaos here. People pulling in off
the highway seem to be at peace. Their own kind of peace.

The rest stop attendant unlocked the vending
machines and came around offering us cans of soda, bottled water,
candy bars, bags of chips. Another trucker came around with the
cups and whiskey.

The eroded hills spread out before us are
amazing. I could not have picked a much more beautiful setting to
witness our end. See, that’s how the world was supposed to end – a
slow beautiful erosion over the millennia. Not like this. Not so
sudden.

Ah.

Well.

My cigar won’t burn evenly, but it tastes
good, feels good to breathe the warm smoke into my mouth and lungs,
watch the smoke curl and billow in front of my face. Now isn’t the
time for regrets; not the time for the what-ifs and the
wish-I-would-haves. It is only a time for...

What, exactly?

Just being alive? These last moments are for
feeling alive as best as we can. The time for panic is over.

My cigar nears its end. Perhaps I’ll have
the time to finish it after all. I will keep smoking it for as long
as I can. I will keep smoking it until it is nothing but ash
between my fingertips.

The winds pick up. There is a glow in the
distance, intensifying quickly.

Dandelions dot the groomed grass of the rest
stop’s picnic area. The rest stop attendant picks them and gives
them to us, stopping at each car, each truck, each person and
family gathered together, and hands them to us. He doesn’t say a
word, just offers them to each of us with a shy, wistful smile. I
thank him and he answers with a humble nod and moist, caring eyes.
I put the dandelion up to my nose and inhale deeply. I set it next
to my photographs.

Bits of smoldering ash fall from the sky.
The bison are skittish. There’s only time for one more slow, deep
inhalation of cigar, one or two more sentences. The wall of fire
nears. I feel the coming heat. Yes, indeed, it ends with a whimper,
a fiery exhalation washing over the earth like a final puff on a
cigar. Now is the time to set down pen and paper and stare at the
faces of my family laid out on the hood of my car.

Love to all things that were.

Love to all that is.

Love to you.

* * * * *

* * * * *

Joel Arnold’s work has appeared in dozens of
publications, including
Weird Tales
,
Gothic.Net,
ChiZine
and
Cemetery Dance Publication’s
anthology
Shivers VII
. He’s the recipient of a Minnesota State Arts
Board 2010 Artists Initiative Grant, as well as a 2010 Gulliver
Travel and Research Grant. He lives in Minnesota with his wife and
two kids. He’d love to hear from you at
[email protected]
, or
stop by his blog
Beneath the Trap
Door
sometime to say hello.

If you enjoyed the stories in this
collection, please check out his other work:

Novels
:

Northwoods Deep –
Take a ride over the
river and through the woods straight into terror.

Death Rhythm –
Sometimes madness is
buried deep, waiting for just the right moment.

Story collections
:

Bedtime Stories for the Apocalypse

Bait and Other Stories

Fetal Position and Other Stories.

Fetal Bait Apocalypse (the above three
collections combined into one)

Daniel Pyle is the author of
Dismember
,
Down the Drain
,
Freeze
, the
upcoming
Man vs. Himself
, and many short stories. He's also
the editor of
Unnatural Disasters
and an Active member of
the Horror Writers Association. After studying creative writing at
Amherst College, he moved back to Springfield, Missouri, where he
now lives with his wife and three children. You can visit him
online at
 
www.danielpyle.com
.

Rotten Fruit
originally appeared in
the anthology
Bits of the Dead
, 2008

Black Bags
originally appeared in the
anthology
Carnival of Horror
, 2004