The Apocalypse Reader (44 page)

That ferry's no problem, she says. Look in the phonebook.

I open the phonebook and the first page lists all the calamities: tidal wave, earthquake, floods, volcanic eruptions, and numbers to call. Such a safe place, I say they say, so safe for children.

We are fleeing, we explain, to some safe place. We're sure this time they'll drop it. We thought, Here's a place we'll be safe and gave the airlines our gold card.

They don't laugh, she and her husband. Just the way she doesn't laugh at the green rock I pull out of my bag, the rock, I say, that must be worth money. Their house is full of toys my baby knows and toys my husband can feel the remote of, and books I have read and admired. Her husband has my husband's charm and why not? They do nothing similar for work but charm makes the men match.

The baby inspects all the toys their boy brings so I can talk while she cooks because cooking is the point of visiting, isn't it, she says, a place where everyone meets. Then you can go back, if you like. After tea.

I look out into the pellmell greeny rain and even in the looking, smell sheep, and hear that growl. When real night falls about two drinks after tea-what is surely dinner-when the rain isn't seen but felt, they won't let us go, they make up beds.

Their boy bounces a ball off the baby's head and the baby smiles.

WE VISIT A gold mine in the morning, their idea.

Maybe they wanted to have sex, I whisper to my husband as he settles a hard hat onto his head.

A little late, he says.

We walk deep into the mines posted Do Not Enter and they say, Don't mind the signs, the baby is fine.

This is where we're going when it happens, says her husband. And he explains what he heard on TV yesterday, how it will blow ash all over the globe in ways nobody knew. Everywhere will be caught in the grip of its terrible winter.

Winter-you are obsessed with having seasons that don't match ours, I say. I look at my husband. So here is not safe either says my glance.

We walk along in the dark.

I expect a room of gold all aglitter at the end, jutting ore burnished to a sun's strength. What we get to is a small cave lit with mirrors which leave little flashes of faraway light on the dull rock.

Our faces facing the mirrors are just one grey ball, then another.

Their boy drops a rock down a shaft and it doesn't hit bottom. While we wait, the baby wakes as if the rock hits hard, and his wails echo all down the tunnel. We walk back through his wails, it's that physical.

WE STAY ONE more night. We stay up late and my husband says, Maybe the threat will blow over.

Blow over. We all laugh, drinking the wine from the grapes that grow among the lilies. Then we talk movies, all the same ones we have seen as if together.

We really came to see you, I say. Does it matter if we flee if you are here?

IN THE MORNING they tell us they do not write, they will not. No letters.

Consider them written, says my husband.

We take the next bus, a dark cave filled with more miners abandoning mines. The settlers we leave behind, such settlers as they are, wearing our clothes nearly exactly, franchise for franchise, who wave as our bus burrs off past the lilies, the big waves behind them lapping and reaching.

THESE ZOMBIES ARE NOT
A METAPHOR

Jeff Goldberg

WHEN THE FULL-SCALE zombie outbreak finally occurred I was the only one prepared. I don't mean with supplies and weapons and secure shelter-though, yes, that is a part of what I mean-but, more importantly, I had the proper mental fortification.

Baxter said to me, "These zombies are a metaphorical scourge upon the Earth. They represent all that is evil in humankind." Then he went outside, got bitten, and turned into one of them.

I held a meeting with the rest of my housemates. "Let's be very clear," I said. "These zombies are not a metaphorical scourge upon the Earth. These zombies are an actual scourge upon the Earth." I pointed out the window. We could see the hordes of walking dead in the streets, tearing into the flesh of the living. "These zombies do not represent all that is evil in humankind. They do not represent anything except zombies."

Yes, yes, Manny and Jeannine nodded at me, blank affirmative stares, eager for leadership in the uncertainty of the world's end.

A half-decayed, blood-smeared face smashed itself up against my metal-barred bulletproof glass window. I flipped a switch and activated the electric current. "Not an allegory, an analogy, or an allusion," I said. "This is not the foreshadowing of the downfall of man. This is the downfall itself."

Yes, yes, my housemates all nodded. But they didn't understand. With the apocalypse upon us, the human race appeared unequipped to process the bad news. So these few survivors were both my wards and my prisoners. I couldn't let them out of my sight for a moment or they'd shut down the defenses, wander outside.

I turned my back to work on the water purification system and Jeannine started fumbling with the locks on the front door. As I pulled her away she said she just wanted to pop out for some Starbucks. "Starbucks is gone," I said to her, "There is no more Starbucks."

She lowered her head. "Reliance on foreign investors puts American corporations at risk in the global marketplace."

That was when I started locking them in the basement.

I'd go down to give them meals and sometimes play a round or two of bridge. It got boring single-handedly holding off the zombie multitude.

Zombie Baxter turned up a few days later. His gray, withered skin; his barren, pus-filled eyes; the shreds of human flesh in his teeth: good old Baxter. I wouldn't have recognized him except he started banging on the front door and shouting "It's me, Zombie Baxter!" I eyed him through the peephole, one hand poised on the switch to activate the electric current.

"I didn't know zombies could talk," I said through the safety of my steel-reinforced door.

"What's there to say, really?"

"I'm not letting you in," I said.

"Come on, I want to eat your brains."

"No."

"What about Jeannine?"

"No."

"Manny?"

I said, "No," but he sensed my hesitation.

"Just give me Manny," he said, "Please."

"I'm going to activate the electric perimeter now."

"Go ahead," Baxter said, "We've built up a resistance to electricity."

"Really?" I asked.

"No," he admitted, "But our best zombie scientists are working on it. It's only a matter of time."

I flipped the switch and Baxter jolted away from the front door, then lurched off down the street. Either he flipped me the bird or his pointer and ring fingers were missing.

He was right: it was only a matter of time. But that was the point. I didn't expect to survive; I just wanted to hold out as long as possible.

Down in the basement Manny and Jeannine had managed to use their teeth and nails to pry the wooden boards away from the one small window. Now the room was crawling with zombies. I couldn't tell if the moaning, undead horde staggering around the former rec room included my housemates. No one seemed to be in a talking mood.

I ran a hose from the kitchen sink, stuck it under the door and started filling the basement with water.

THE RAPID ADVANCE
OF SORROW

Theodora Goss

I SIT IN one of the cafes in Szent Endre, writing this letter to you, Istvan, not knowing if I will be alive tomorrow, not knowing if this cafe will be here, with its circular green chairs and cups of espresso. By the Danube, children are playing, their knees bare below school uniforms. Widows are knitting shapeless sweaters. A cat sleeps beside a geranium in the cafe window.

If you see her, will you tell me? I still remember how she appeared at the University, just off the train from Debrecen, a country girl with badly-cut hair and clothes sewn by her mother. That year, I was smoking French cigarettes and reading forbidden literature. "Have you read D.H. Lawrence?" I asked her. "He is the only modern writer who convincingly expresses the desires of the human body." She blushed and turned away. She probably still had her Young Pioneers badge, hidden among her underwear.

"Ilona is a beautiful name," I said. "It is the most beautiful name in our language." I saw her smile, although she was trying to avoid me. Her face was plump from country sausage and egg bread, and dimples formed at the corners of her mouth, two on each side.

She had dimples on her buttocks, as I found out later. I remember them, like craters on two moons, above the tops of her stockings.