Terminus: A Novella of the Apocalypse (7 page)

This time, Darling deliberately swerves hard left to squash one of the fat, acorn-fed squirrels, and I nearly topple out of the little cart’s open door onto the street.  Immediately, I wish for a helmet or a safety belt.  I feel along the crevasse in the seat beneath me, but fail to find one.  The Girl hangs onto the overhead canopy supports with both hands, her face flat, as ever, and her eyes sparkling gleefully.  This is great fun, I suppose.

“Then, about six months ago, something came up.  Well, to be more precise, something came down.”  Darling points with her right middle finger straight up through the cart’s canopy.  We both look up, only to find the dome light and not much more.  For the first time, I notice a bullet hole there and a black splatter, which can only be the dried remains of someone’s brains.  “We thought it was a meteorite.  It landed about ten kilometers west of The Village near a little lake, but just short of its shoreline.  We think the soft, sandy loam there cushioned the fall somewhat.  It made a helluva bang, though.  Three people killed themselves that night, just because.”

Darling suddenly yanks the little wheel again, and I’m looking for squirrels.  This time, though, she has merely steered us left into the entrance of a small hotel.  Over the awning that once kept rain off loading or unloading guests, the villagers have hung a hand-painted sign.  With uneven lettering, it announces, “TOWN HALL”.

“This is it,” intones Darling, as she slings the electric car under the awning, and then onto the ramped curb.  With a screech, she stops it just short of punching through the plate glass, which sounds gong-like at the tap of the cart’s fiberglass bumper.  “Did I mention we have most amenities by now?  Including some really quality pharmaceuticals.  Consequently, I drive better in the morning.  Come on, kiddos.  Follow me.”

She jumps out of the driver’s seat to lead us through the little hotel’s double doors, which swish open and shut around us.  Long unaccustomed to powered anything, I jump at the sounds of it, both coming and going.  A bored middle-aged man sits behind the reception desk clearly ogling hardcore pornography on a computer screen while apparently pinching his penis through the crotch of his shorts.

“Howdy, Bob!” gushes Darling with a salutary wave.  “Say hello to The Scientist and some girl.  They’re going to save the world.”

‘Bob’ groans and rolls his eyes.  Smoothing back the comb-over atop his thinning pate and grinning at The Girl, he growls, “I told you a thousand times, lady.  The name is Jerry.  Jerry, god-damn it!”

“Fine, Bob.  Fine.”  Darling waves him away as she leads us through the lobby to the right side corridor.  Over her shoulder, she whispers, “His real name is Bob, but he hates it when I call him Jerry.  So I do.  I think.”  Louder, she asks, “Hey, Bob, did The Engineer stop in?”

Jerry-Bob growls again, but makes no reply.  Inside, the hotel is tidy enough, I suppose, but it appears to have seen numerous parties and very little of a vacuum or broom.

Darling pushes through the heavy doors leading into its first small meeting room.  Waiting inside, a handful of grimacing recoverees confront us.  Continuing her attempt to sell us Jerry-Bob, she concludes, “He’s as bald as a bowling ball, you know, and that half-assed toupee ain’t fooling nobody.  Fortunately for Bob, though, he’s hung like a horse.  I highly recommend the ride, if you get down to the orgies sometime.  It’ll loosen you up deep inside.  Yes, sir.”

Now she raises her arms magnanimously, declaring, “Here he is, folks.  The Scientist.  And some girl he’s been screwing.  Another campaign promise fulfilled!  Now it’s on to New York and let’s win this thing!”

Darling sweeps through the room, attempting to shake hands that aren’t offered and generally missing each.  Then she drops with a laden sigh into the center seat positioned against the far side of an oblong table, which stands near the outside wall of the chamber.  A machine-printed placard placed in front of that chair reads, “Mayor”.

“Take your seats!  Take your seats!  The orgies will have to wait tonight!  We have urgent business before this court!”  Conspiratorially, she motions to a portly man, calling him to her, and she asks, “Say, Doc… do you have any methamphetamines?  I need to be up for this meeting, so I want something to take the edge off the barbiturates.  Yeah, I didn’t expect the guy to show up tonight, either.  Who knew?  But here he is.  What’s that you say?”  She accepts a pair of tablets from The Doc, nodding, “Yeah, yeah.  I know.  I’ll take them with wine.”

Now Darling reaches under the table to retrieve a bottle of Chablis hidden under the tablecloth, and she bangs this down hard to draw the room’s attention.  “Let’s get into our seats, people!  We got shit to do!”  Then she swallows the speed with a few chugs straight out of the bottle.  “Okay,” she gasps, coming up for air, “everybody, meet The Scientist.  And some chick he likes to ball.  We’ll try to get her down to the orgies later, since she says she wants a ride on Bob’s Big One.”  The crowd chuckles blackly.  Apparently, everybody knows about Jerry-Bob’s tool.  “Scientist, this is the Doc, whom you already met.  He’ll keep you high as a kite without an overdose.  Unless you want to overdose, of course.  And The Teacher,” this is a slender, bug eyed man with a shifty gaze and apparently sweating palms, which he continually drags across the thighs of his slacks, “he was the smart one here until you showed up.  I bet he’ll try to assassinate you soon so he can get back on top!  He’s also the vice-president or deputy mayor or whatever.  Next to him,” points Darling two seats to her right, “is our village manager.  Also known as Mary-Ann, the town madam.  She’ll set you up with some poontang, if you want.   Just kidding.  Actually, Mary-Ann is a Mormon.  Or a Mennonite.  Something like that.”  Mary-Ann is not a she, but a he, dressed for a tall, muscular and rather hairy redhead with a beak-like nose, angular countenance and bushy strawberry eyebrows.  He-she wears an elegant black ankle-length evening gown, sequin heels, and a simple string of real pearls.  “Over on this side,” continues the mayor, pointing left, “we have… we have… hey!  Who the hell are you?”

A stocky body-builder type wearing a ‘Surfs Up!’ t-shirt and swimming-trunks sits at her left hand.  He might be the only sober, sane person in the room.  Grimacing, he pushes Darling’s pawing hand off his shoulder and announces, “I’m the new chief of police.”

“What happened to the last one?”

Chief drags a forefinger across his bulging Adam’s apple.  His dimpled chin, slate eyes, and flat cheeks are the stereotype of a ‘roid-abusing jock.

“When?”

“Last week.”

Darling blinks owlishly for several pregnant seconds, glances around the room, and then upends the bottle once more.  Dragging the back of her hand across her lips, she sits straighter, her face suddenly flushed as the meth kicks-in.  “Okay.  I guess that about does it.  We’re only missing the most important member of the board, though!”

As if cued, the doors open again behind me, and a short, wiry man enters the room.  Wearing loafers, khakis, a knit shirt, and spectacles, he is fit, confident and serious.  His hair is dark and he sports a beefcake mustache that seems two sizes too large for his face.  Without offering to shake hands, he rounds the table to sit next to The Chief.

Darling slams her palms down on the table and the bottle jumps.  “Engineer, this is The Scientist.  That’s his girlfriend standing next to him, so don’t get any funny ideas.  Bob already has dibs on her, anally speaking.”  The mayor hoots joyfully, “Man, wouldn’t THAT be fun?”

“Shut up, Darling,” orders The Engineer softly, “and drink yourself sober, will you?”

She complies with a long, breathless pull from the bottle.  Then she runs her fingers through her hair, her eyes bulging wildly, and she declares, “Man!  That’s some good shit!  Pharmaceutical speed is the best!  I bet I could screw all night long!”

“Ignore her, please,” announces The Engineer.  “She’s normally not so out of sorts, but it’s late.  Most of us start early, these days.  You’re a scientist?  A real scientist?”

I nod.  “Bona fide.”

“What sort?”

“Biology.  Chemistry.  Computer science.  A bit of math and physics.”

“Don’t forget the MBA!” cackles Darling, her eyes bulging.  She licks her lips like a lizard and she can no longer sit still.

It’s my turn to ask.  “Are you a real engineer?”  Mustache man nods sincerely.  “And are you a real doctor?”  The portly physician shrugs and pops a tab of unannounced type, following it with a pull from the mayor’s Chablis.  “Well, then,” I declare, dropping myself into a spare chair positioned across a second table facing them all, “I guess we’re ready to get down to business.  The Guide said you might have a lead on the Terminus phenomenon.  Your mayor claims something fell from the sky.  Are the two related?”

Chief nods.  He says, “We think they are.”

“Well?”  I demand.  “What does it all have to do with me?”

“Nothing, directly,” concedes The Engineer.  “Indirectly, maybe everything.  I already asked for the… ah… the artifact… to be brought from the freezer.  It should be here shortly.”

Darling cackles again and waves her arms wildly, “But it ain’t so short!  No, sir!”

“As you might imagine,” offers Chief, “since we found it, the thing has us all wired a bit tight.  Tighter even than normal, Post-Terminus.  It’s one of the reasons we’re losing so many people.  My predecessor included.  Once you see it, you’ll understand why we sent The Clan to find someone who might help us.  See, The Teacher there has a science degree, but it’s in geology.  And it’s only a bachelor’s.  No offense, teach.”

Teacher waves easily and arranges the crease of his slacks.  “None taken.”

“And the doc is not a real doctor, he’s an old army medic.  Close enough for handing out the drugs, but not a real authority.  Not like we need.  Again, no offense, Doc.”

“Screw you.”

“Then there’s me,” adds The Engineer.  “Again, only a bachelor’s of civil engineering.  I’m hardly qualified to opine on anything so… weird.”

“That’s it,” concludes the mayor, suddenly returned to lucidity, though her words bunch tightly together.  “This is the best we got.  The rest of us are too whacked out to do much good, or they are nothing of any use to this situation.  We need an expert to examine the… thing… and tell us… something.”

“Like what?” I ask.

“First, we want to know if it’s a hoax.  Second, we want to know if it’s what we all think it is.  Third, if possible, it would be good to have some idea what we should do about it.”  Teacher blinks owlishly, as though unable to believe he had actually spoken.

Shrugging, I clasp my hands together across my knees, and I respond, “I can’t make any promises, but I must say you have my curiosity piqued.”

“Have you considered… what happened… much?” asks The Engineer.

Tipping my head sideways, exchanging glances with The Girl, who has drawn up a chair beside me, I concede, “It occupies a bit of my time on occasion.”

“Have you figured anything out for yourself?”

“Nothing you don’t already know, too.  It happened the way it happened when it happened.  The why of it all is just guesses.”

Behind me, the doors open again.  Rising, The Engineer asserts, “Maybe all that will change, once you see our spaceman.”

THE SPACEMAN

Turning to confront the bustle in the doorway, I watch Bob and the heavily scarred kid from the gate push a gurney into the room.  Scratch that, I silently amend my thoughts.  Make that two gurneys strapped together.  They are of the type used in ambulances.  Something lumpy reclines inside a pair of body bags, which The Villagers have glued together end-to-end to accommodate the form inside.

“Spaceman?” I croak, watching the gurney roll past me into the center of the room, where they leave it standing between The Village governance board and me.

Shuddering and clearly anxious to return to his pornography, Bob locks the carts into place and then turns to scurry away.  The Kid sidles over to one corner of the room, but lingers anxiously.  He stares at me with an expression I have not seen in a long time.  Hope.

Licking my lips, I wish he wouldn’t.  I rise to stride around the double-gurney and the cold-steaming plastic bag reclined atop it, and then I take the mayor’s bottle of Chablis and charge it.  I find it tart, dry and refreshing.  Turning my back on the governance board to examine the thing, I wonder what sort of jest is at play here.  Clearly, more than one of these characters has come un-sprung.  I offer no blame, since we are all at least slightly mismanaged since Terminus, but this… it must be some kind of sick joke.  On them.  Or by them.

“You really want me to inspect that thing?”

Behind me, they all nod.  Mary-Ann, his-her voice base and deep, begs, “Please.  The sooner we figure out what it is, the sooner we can get rid of it.  Most of us want to burn it.”

“What makes you think it’s a spaceman?”

“We already told you,” groans Darling, her tone reflecting my apparent stupidity.  “It fell from the sky.  Duh.”

“How do you know it fell from the sky?”

Though I can’t see it, I feel her exchange “is-this-guy-cracked” glances with her fellow governors, and she retorts, “We see a big flash of light.  A long trail of fire streams down from above,” her voice is that of a camp counselor telling a tall tale, “then there is a huge BOOM!”  The room jumps, me included.  “An explosion cooks off back there.”  She points behind her.  “A fireball.  Then a small forest fire.  We all pile into our cars and drive to the lake where trees are burning.  We find a spaceship.  And… that.”

“Did you find it inside the so-called spaceship?”

Suffering from speed-induced impatience, Darling slams her hands down atop the table, jumps up, and declares, “That’s it!  This guy is a moron!  He’s probably a ‘scientist’ the same way my pussy is a ‘cat’!  Meeting adjourned!  Let’s go get laid!”

Chief reaches up to pull her back into her seat, saying, “Let’s give him some space, Darling.  We invited him here.  Let him do his job.”

Upending the bottle of Chablis to finish it, I inform them, “It’s called ‘scientific skepticism’.  Anybody know what the word ‘empirical’ means?  Anybody?”

Teacher raises his hand.  Then he lowers it and answers, “It means knowledge through direct experience.  Something like that.”

“Right,” I intone, dropping the bottle to the floor and reaching behind me pointedly.  Darling gets the message, as she has already popped the top on another, which she reluctantly hands to me at the Chief’s insistence.  “This part is called ‘establishing context’.  If you found the alleged spaceman inside the alleged spacecraft, then that’s one thing.  Outside it, that’s another.  In the first case, you might, stress the word ‘might’, be able to associate the two directly.  In the second case, the possibilities for association diminish considerably.  Maybe it landed on top of an ordinary citizen.”

Darling cackles and then makes a dismissive raspberry noise through her lips, saying, “Yeah.  Right.  Like maybe an alien spaceship just fell out of the sky on top of a pro basketball player from hell!  Or a circus freak!  Look at that thing, mister!  It’s three meters long!  That’s nine feet!”

Grimacing, I wish she hadn’t said that, because it begins to speak to a nagging set of questions I have been mulling for years.  Humbly, I offer, “Have you ever heard of a pituitary giant?”

To his credit, Doc replies with, “We don’t see those in the States much these days, thanks to childhood intervention and hormonal therapies.  I already thought of that.  Besides… well… just take a look, that’s all.  It ain’t human.  I already told them that.”

“It might be a hoax,” asserts Mary-Ann, hopeful but unconvinced.

His voice incredulous and sarcastic, The Teacher responds, “A hoax?  What kind of sick mind survives an apocalypse and then keeps a ten-foot-tall fake body on hand in case a flaming spaceship should fall from the sky?”

Pulling from the second bottle of wine, which I determine to be a Burgundy, I tell them, “Let’s keep an open mind here, okay?  Just for a bit.  Alright.  Kid!  Get that bag open.”

“M-m-me?” he stammers from the corner of the conference room, his voice mumble-bound for all the scar tissue on his face.  “Why me?”

“’Cause I said so!  Just do it!”

It won’t help to tell them I worked as a computational scientist because I didn’t like the wet stuff.  Snot, blood and guts used to really gross me out.  I’m only slightly over it since Terminus.

As he hops over and begins to pull the plastic zipper on the first body bag wide, I drink from the bottle one last time and then deposit it on the table behind me, where Darling eagerly snatches it up.  To her credit, she magnanimously passes it both ways along the table.  From inside the slowly opening bag, a wispy cold steam issues forth with a slightly musty bar-be-cue smell.

When The Kid flips back the top half of the bag, everyone gasps, though they had all seen it before.  My mouth hangs open.

Blackened, shriveled and both frozen and dried by an intense flashfire, I see a hairless giant with large, pointed, crispified ears lying on the double-gurney, face up.  Its small mouth gapes open in the rictus of immolation, and I see it possesses only four rodent-like incisors, two positioned at the forward aspect of both the top and bottom jaw.  These appear to have been filed down nearly flat.  Its chin is greatly reduced, its nose almost non-existent, whether by fire or development I can’t say, its brow line flat, and its cranium overstated.  It possess four eyes, two of which occupy relatively normal orbitals, while the other two are fixed into the forehead, fly-like and bulbous.  Its flesh presses paper thin over a ribcage that appears to contain way too many ribs, and its arms curl over its sunken abdomen.  Its skeleton is stretched and finely made, delicate like a bird or… maybe… a bat.  Its fingers are extremely long and spindly.  The second body bag hides the rest of the corpse from the waist down.

“Uh,” I stammer, unable to finish.  Beside me, having jumped up to cross the room, The Girl tugs on my sleeve.  When I turn my attention on her, she clearly wants me to leave with her.  Maybe she wants to go back to the gate and take our chances with The Clan.  Jerking my arm away, I manage the guts to tell The Kid, “Undo the rest of it.  I might as well see the whole thing all at once.”

Swallowing stiffly, the scarred youth unhappily complies.  The zipper reveals the top of a diminutive but vaguely humanoid pelvis and then things go from strange to stranger.  Oddly lumpy, the bottom end of the bag opens to reveal four legs connected together like… like… an insect?  A praying mantis, maybe?  They are twisted and tangled around one another, but I can see how the spine extends past the first pelvis to a second, larger one, where the final pair of legs attach.  The feet are claw-like and seem adapted to gripping tree limbs or… something.

Distracted and absent-minded, I ask, “Doc, did you perform a necropsy on this thing?”  When the old man refuses to respond, I bark, “Doc!”

He snaps to attention, blinking and sucking a sour tongue, ultimately responding, “Yeah.  Kind of.  Mind you, it was after two bottles of Jack Daniels, but, yeah. I cut it open.”

“And?”

“No lungs, instead the thing seems to breathe through a system of tubules attached the skin at the ends of those little holes you see arranged along its ribs.  Like a crustacean.  No heart, neither, instead it seems to move a syrup-like liquid through the body cavities by motion of its skeletal muscles.  Then there’s a whole slew of other organ-like tissues I can’t describe.”  Now the old man jumps to his feet, pointing an accusatory finger at The Engineer, “See!  I told you it ain’t human!  Any damned fool can see that!”

Despite my better angels, I concur.  “With certain analytical qualifications, I have to agree with The Doc, there, people.  You say it came in a spacecraft?”

“Not just a spacecraft,” supplied The Chief.  “Show him, Kid.”

Realizing his place in the group, The Kid tips his head and returns to the gurney.  From under the platform holding the body, he drags a bundle of sheets, dropping this onto the floor at my feet.  The Girl hisses and scurries around behind the governance board, her hand at the ready on her huge knife.  The Kid unbundles the loose knot keeping the corners of the sheet tied together, and then he unfolds everything to reveal…

“Son of a bitch!” I growl.  “A spacesuit!”

“That’s what we thought, too,” supplies The Engineer.  “If it’s a hoax, the prankster went to a lot of trouble.  We had to peel it away from the body, including the lower limbs and… feet… or claws… or whatever.  Though badly damaged in the crash and fire, it remained intact enough to present a piece of work getting it off.”

Slipping his hands into a pair of leather gloves, The Engineer stalks round the table, reaches into the bundle, and lifts another prize from the heap.  “This was on its head.  You can see it took a hit.  The thing’s face was normally probably a bit more extended than it is now, since the helmet mask seems caved in by an impact.  You get the idea.”

He turns it round and round.  At the rear quarters of the helmet, two severed tubes flop uselessly.  Fibers protrude from a plug at the base of its rearward aspect.  The remains of a shattered visor grace the forward aspect, but this piece is largely missing.  When The Engineer upends the thing, I can see apparatus inside, possibly for ears and a mouth, maybe for its four eyes, too.  Undeniably, it seems to be a piece of alien technology.

“Well?” demands Darling.  “What do you think?”

Rage swells up from deep inside my guts like some hellish geyser.  My teeth grinding together, I spit, “Show me the rest of it.”

“The rest of it?” asks The Kid.

“He means the spaceship,” offers Chief.  He is already rounding the table, heading for the door.  “Let’s go, then.”

To shortcut the procession, Darling jumps onto the table, bounds onto the floor, and then across the room to be first into the hallway, declaring, “I’ll drive!”

“No, you won’t!” protests Mary-Ann.

“To hell with it,” groans Doc, trailing us more sedately. “Let her drive.  Maybe she’ll wrap the van around a tree and kill us all before we get where we’re going.”

The Spacecraft

I follow the governance board through the hotel lobby, into its administrative offices, and then out its back door, where a shuttle bus waits, glinting dully in the overcast moonlight.  Darling is already bouncing up and down at the wheel, and I contemplate her offer to drive combined with her state of intoxication, and then I consider Doc’s placation.  I know he’s right.  Even Mary-Ann eventually agrees.  The board piles into the bench seats behind the blasted mayor.  I take shotgun and The Girl sits on the floorboard between me and our wasted driver.

They have obviously made this trip before.  Strange, alien debris litters the van’s console, and I have my choice of flashlights, headlamps and even a string of battery-powered Christmas lights.

As soon as the last door slides shut, Darling drops the gear lever and punches the accelerator.  Thrust harshly backwards into our seats, we all surrender ourselves to our fates.  It’s a scary ride.  Nobody much cares, and The Girl’s green eyes sparkle gleefully.  The trip passes in a blur of trees, buildings, teetering street signs and parked automobiles.  In the aftermath, scores of fat, happy squirrels will never return home to feed hungry families.  Perhaps half an hour later, we arrive at an overgrown park of the type made for a recreational lake.  I see picnic tables, playground equipment, signage, and trailhead markers.

Positioned between the parking lot and the gently lapping shoreline, I see an irregular hulk obscured by moon-shadow.  Darling maneuvers the van with a series of jerky reverses until she can get the headlights shining directly onto the thing, and I better see it.

If I had doubts about this being a spaceship before, I can no longer entertain them upon bearing witness to the wreck.  Even before I climb out of the van and across the fifty meters of weeds separating it from the lot, I know what I’m seeing.  Standing beside it and then circling it slowly with a powerful flashlight in hand, I examine structures that are obviously thrusters of some kind.  Stubby aerodynamic planes.  Shattered sled-like landing gear.  Massive, wing-like cargo bay doors.  Strange equipment inside, some of it smashed beyond repair and some of it yet fixed onto a twisted deck, ready to be deployed.  Near the front of the craft, I briefly explore a cavity that is clearly crew space.  Cramped living quarters.  A cockpit.  Two torched and mangled pilot seats.  More strange gear, some of it handheld, other parts clearly wrenched away from bulkheads and other fixed mounts.  The whole thing is the size of a double-decker passenger bus.