More Bedtime Stories for the Apocalypse (9 page)

Dawn crept over the land. Mayor Espe slowly
rose from the kitchen table, spread his hands, and said, “I’ll go
down to the fire house and ring the alarm. Gather the people and
tell them what has happened. They can decide for themselves what
they want to do. I can’t tell them not to move their loved ones.
But I also can’t tell them not to tend to their farms if that’s
what they need to do.”

Pastor Blom nodded. “There will be no
judgment from me.”

Amund followed Bogen back to the cemetery as
the fire bells rang in the distance.

“
You don’t have to do this, boy. You
need your sleep,” Bogen said.

“
I’m fine,” said Amund.

“
I only hope – ”

Amund frowned. “I’m sure she’s fine,
too.”

As Bogen and Amund dug toward Tuva’s grave,
more townspeople arrived with shovels and wagons. Word had gone
out, and the townspeople who hadn’t been there early that morning
when Thune disappeared into the earth, stared for a while at the
hole he’d been dragged into, dragged into by some kind of
monster
. The dirt had already caved back in on itself,
leaving a small depression. The townsfolk steeled themselves for
the task at hand, ready to dig up their loved ones or lend a hand
to those who needed it.

It was solemn work. Occasionally, a soft
crying could be heard. At other times, one of the men digging would
whistle or sing a quiet tune. There was the smell of sweat and
freshly turned earth and the decay of reopened coffins. The women
and children brought food and water and beer to the men, and kept
the coffee brewing in the church.

Bogen’s Tuva was still there, unmolested in
her coffin, and Bogen relatched the lid. He, Amund, and a couple
other men hoisted the coffin out of the grave. “Where will you put
her?” Amund asked.

Bogen shook his head. “I don’t know. On the
farm, I guess.”

“
Do you think it will be safe
there?”

Bogen stared at Amund a moment. Before he
could answer there was a shout of “No, God!”

It came from one of the Mikkelsen brothers.
Amund ran over to them and looked down at the graves of their
mother and father, dead from a barn fire years earlier. Their
coffin had been splintered from the bottom, the corpses removed
from below.

Thunder rumbled in the distance. Amund
squinted at the cloudy sky.

Knute Mikkelsen tossed the remnants of his
father’s coffin up and out of the grave and began frantically
digging in the disturbed earth at the grave’s floor.

More thunder, closer now, but the clouds
were not dark. There was no lightening.

A scream rose from another grave. Two
screams. Amund looked toward the sound. A woman lay on her stomach,
reaching over the edge of another reopened grave, holding onto
something and screaming.

Amund ran to her.

Jacobine Overland, she of the nocturnal
couplings with the much younger Frode, holding onto her husband
Gunnar’s arm as a creature gripped the lower half of his torso. It
bit down on Gunnar’s waist. His screams stopped, cut off abruptly
as gouts of blood erupted from his mouth.

The creature disappeared back down into the
earth, taking the lower half of Gunnar with it. Jacobine continued
holding onto the upper half of her husband’s body. His head
remained tilted up toward her, eyes fixed on her, face frozen in
agony.

“
Let go,” Amund shouted. Jacobine
continued to scream.

“
Please!” Amund said.

Another scream. This time from one of the
Mikkelsen brothers. Amund looked back in time to see the creature’s
head rise from their parent’s grave, grab hold of Knute and pull
him down.

Now Amund joined the chorus of voices
shouting “Out! Get out now! Get out of the graves!”

He turned back to Jacobine, her screams
turned to sobbing. She still held onto the upper half that remained
of her husband. Amund heard more thunder. Louder now.

He knew it wasn’t thunder.

“
Please, Mrs. Overland. Let go. Now!
You must.”

She didn’t seem to hear, or at least didn’t
care. She couldn’t take her eyes from the fixed, dead eyes of
Gunnar.

Amund felt the earth shake. As he reached
down to grab Jacobine by the shoulders, the creature rose again
from the grave, grabbing the rest of Gunnar. As it gulped him down,
it opened its jaws wider, rose another foot from the ground and
snapped over Jacobine’s head. Amund fell backward as the creature
burrowed back beneath the earth. Blood from Jacobine’s neck spilled
into the dirt and splattered onto the remaining splintered coffin
boards.

More than one. There has to be more than
one.

People ran to the church, dropping shovels
and picks along the way.

Pastor Blom was already in the bell tower,
ringing the church bell. As townspeople gathered in the church,
Amund watched Blom and finally put his hand on his back. “Stop!” he
shouted. “Stop now, Pastor.”

Pastor Blom looked over his shoulder at
Amund and slowed down his frantic tugging of the thick rope. Blood
dripped from his palms. He struggled to pry his fingers off the
rope.

Amund’s ears rang. “Go talk to your flock,”
Amund said. “They need you.”

Pastor Blom looked at Amund, perplexed.
Fearful. “But – I don’t know what to tell them. This – whatever it
is that is happening – what do I say to them?”

Amund thought a moment as the sound of
thunder rose outside. “You will know what to say.”

“
But there are no words,” Blom said.
He paused a moment as the echo of the church bell died. Then he
walked down the bell tower’s spiral steps and strode into the
middle of his congregation. Amund followed.

Blom glanced around at his people, those
he’d known for so long, those he’d baptized and confirmed and
counseled. He cleared his throat. “Let us sing,” he said. “
A
Mighty Fortress is our God
.”

They sung.

“
A mighty fortress is our
God,

A Bulwark never failing…”

Amund joined in.

“
And through this world,
with devils filled,

should threaten to undo us…”

They sang it loudly, boldly, defiantly.

“
The Prince of Darkness
grim,

we tremble not for him…”

As the hymn ended, all was silent.

Until…

Until softly at first, they heard the
ringing of a coffin bell outside. It grew louder and was soon
joined by the ringing of another. And another.

The sound of thunder grew louder.

The congregation didn’t move from their spot
inside the church, even as the foundation of the building
shook.

They listened. Again, they started to sing.
This time
Rock of Ages
.

Because…

Because there was nothing else to do.
Nothing else to say.

From one cemetery to the next, from town to
town, across the farmland and prairie, across river and forest and
marshland, the coffin bells –
all
of them – began to
ring.

* * * * *

* * * * *

The child grew in an incubator of deep-sea
pressures, grew to the size of mountains, of deep oceanic gorges,
its skin pasty green, eyes blindly bulging from cavernous sockets.
Now it seeks escape from its watery womb and rises, rises, rearing
its head from the liquid surface.

The child thrashes at the sudden hit of
newly felt atmosphere. Tidal waves form. Air patterns change. The
seismic wind flips the first wave of fighter jets over, knocking
them into ocean swells the size of which has not been seen in eons.
They smash like thin glass bulbs dropped on cement, not even
registering on the newly risen babe’s senses. The child calms. It
decides it likes the feel of air on its warped doughy face.

More jets come; tiny mosquitoes. The child
smiles faintly at the pop of broken sound barriers. A bubble forms
and bursts from its toothless maw, the membrane of spittle knocking
out aircraft and aircraft carrier alike, crushing the highly
trained crews and equipment into a mist of blood and metal.

The babe takes its first tentative steps,
its pod-like limbs disrupting the ocean’s flow. Submarines spin out
of control, their steel skins peeling back like heated popcorn
hulls.

The babe’s long memory is mostly of the
simple feel of deep ocean pressure, but it remembers Mother, too; a
faint, faint memory deeply stored somewhere in its thick, ropey
membranes of cerebellum. It wonders where she is, not knowing she
died millions of years ago, that her carcass has long since
dissolved, her molecules dissipated throughout the far reaches of
the globe. It only knows she was once there, and now she is
not.

It wants her, but Mother is all around, in
the water, the earth, the sky. It can smell her, but so can all of
us, although the scent is so long ingrained in our brains that we
have forgotten its origin. But the child smells her. The child
knows the source of the scent.

It takes another step, destroying ships,
islands, and shorelines hundreds and hundreds of miles away. Long
dead putrefied whales drip from its nasal passages.

Cruise and Minutemen missiles arrive, some
finding their way to this gargantuan child-thing. They burst on its
skin, punching tiny pinpricks in its vacuous eyes, into its dumb
maw, into its rolling mountainous neck.

They tickle the babe, and the babe claps
bulbous appendages beneath the surface in amusement. More shoreline
is laid waste with its enthusiasm; coastal cities are
destroyed.

Nuclear warheads are released from the
U.S.A., France, Russia, Pakistan, all merging on the wonderstruck
babe, exploding in multi-layered mushroom clouds.

And now – now somewhere deep inside its
ancient brain, it believes it has found her, mistaking the soft
caress of falling bombs for Mother.

And so soothed, it sinks deep into the ocean
for another nap of dreamless millennia.

* * * * *

* * * * *

Bodies lay sprawled across the roof of the
Rapture Express. Rain makes the surface slick. There are three-foot
long spikes set here and there at random intervals.

The matron walks with ease on the roof, but
the man can’t even stand without getting thrown to his knees from
the earthquake-like shaking of the train.

“
Let me give you some advice,” the
matron says. “Hold onto those spikes. Hold on tight! Rap your arms
around them, do whatever you have to do. Remember, the important
thing is making it to the end. Because if you make it to the end,
the gates of glory will open just as wide for you as anyone
else.”

He reaches out to grab a spike, misses, and
falls flat on his stomach. He slides to the edge of the roof. His
feet and calves kick in the open air. The woman grabs his arm and
hauls him to his feet.

“
Believe me, you do
not
want to
do that again.”

As she finishes the sentence, Johnson sees
another man, about his same age and build, slide off the roof and
into the air, his screams mingling with the thunder and chug of the
train. Others are huddled around spikes, holding on for dear life,
while others who can find no place left on the spikes to grab, hold
onto the legs and waists of those who can.

Someone else goes sliding past Johnson out
into the grey void. Johnson tightens his grip on the matron’s
forearm as she leads him farther along the roof. She nods at a few
of the people around them. “See, they got the right idea.
They
have what it takes.”

Johnson stares in disbelief. There are three
men and two women who sit still, some eyes open, some shut,
breathing, some mouths open, some shut, but they sit there, the
movement, the violent shaking of the train having negligible effect
on them. They remind Johnson of the Buddhist monks he’s seen on
television, meditating.

“
See, they’ve found the proper
balance,” the matron says.

Balance? Johnson wonders. But how?

He looks at them closely. One of the women
in particular catches his attention. Her head is tilted back, eyes
closed, mouth open. Her mouth fills with rain, and then she closes
it slightly. As her throat muscles contract, the rain sluices up
and out, over her lips. Tinged with blood.

Why is she...?

Then he sees the point of the spike
protruding from the side of her neck. She has impaled herself on
it.

The perfect balance.

The others here, too – the ones sitting so
perfectly still, so perfectly
balanced
– have placed
themselves on the spikes, rectum to throat, in the hopes that they
can last just long enough to make it to the end.

“
See,” the matron says, prying
Johnson’s fingers off of her forearm. “
They’ve
got
gumption.” She lets him go. “What about you?”

Johnson drops to his knees and starts
sliding to the edge of the roof as the train bumps and shakes. He
grabs one of the spikes. It’s wet. His hand is wet. He wraps his
arm around it so that the spike is nestled in the crook of his
arm.

The matron watches him for a moment. “Best
of luck to you,” she says and walks with ease back down the length
of the train car’s roof and disappears down one of the ladders
between the cars.

The train shakes violently. Johnson is flung
in a semi-circle around the spike, and he almost straightens his
arm, but catches himself. For now he holds on.

He looks at the impaled ones. One of the
women tilts her head toward him and her eyes slowly flutter open.
She can’t talk around the spike protruding from the side of her
mouth. But it does look like she’s smiling at him.