Will McIntosh - Soft Apocalypse

“That’s bullshit!” I said. “You can’t raise the prices at the register without posting them first!”

“I just work here,” she said, just as loudly. “You think I like this? How am I going to feed my little boy?”

We stared at each other for a moment. She was chewing gum— probably her last piece for a while, because it was now about three bucks a pack, and she had her little boy to think about.

“This is bullshit!” I repeated.

Deirdre fished an apple out of the bag, reared back and fired it toward the produce department. “Bullshit!” she shouted.

She had a good arm. The apple sailed over the management guy’s head and nailed a shelf of bread, sending loaves scattering. She grabbed two more apples. A security guy ran toward us, fumbling with the clasp on his holster.

Deirdre threw an apple at him. He ducked.

“Bullshit!” a young guy in surgeon’s scrubs two registers down screamed. With his shoulder-length white hair, he was clearly not a surgeon—he was a Jumpy-Jump. He hurled a can of soup at the security guard. It hit the guard above the eye. The guard doubled over, clutching his face while the Jumpy-Jump reached for another can.

Deirdre threw more apples, rapid-fire, toward the back of the store, laughing with delight.

Over in produce, the Hispanic guy threw a pear at the security guy, who was still doubled over. Blood was dripping onto the linoleum from between his fingers. The Hispanic guy grabbed another pear from an enormous pyramid of them and hurled it toward the registers. He grabbed another and took a bite.

The Jumpy-Jump whipped items from his cart at the checkout girl behind his register. She was ducked down, hands covering her face, screaming.

There were things flying everywhere.

A shot rang out, then screams, then angry shouts and more shots. The Jumpy-Jump ducked behind a rack of impulse items, pulled a pistol with a silencer, and squeezed off a shot.

A security guard ran from the back of the store, his gun pointed in the air. A fat guy threw a TV, box and all, at him. It missed, crashed into a clothing rack, and spewed ugly v-necked shirts into the aisle. The Jumpy-Jump shot the guard in the chest.

“Let’s go!” I said to Deirdre.

“Are you kidding?” she said. She was laughing like this was a Three Stooges film.

The management guy was down; four or five people stood over him, their fists rising and falling. The price-change girl was down too. At first I thought her head was splattered with pink bits of brain, then I realized it was watermelon.

It occurred to me that the mob might kill all of the employees.

“Stay here,” I said to Deirdre.

She shrugged. “Whatever.” She licked at the white creme center of an Oreo she’d pulled from the shelf of impulse items.

I crawled along the front of the checkout aisle. “Hey,” I said to the checkout girl huddled on the floor below her register, “lose the vest!” I pantomimed pulling it over her head. She nodded, pulled off the blue employee vest and flung it toward the rest rooms. I ran along the registers and told the other checkout people.

By the time I got back to Deirdre, the shooting was over—people were either looting or smashing things, and no authority types were around to stop them. A beer-bellied guy in hunting fatigues, running toward the sporting goods department, slipped in a puddle of blood and fell on his ass.

The big crane game by the entrance crashed to the floor, spilling stuffed animals and cheap watches. The tweenaged girls who’d tipped it dove to retrieve their prizes. There were old people, mothers with kids, you name it, all filling shopping carts.

“Come on,” Deirdre said, tugging me toward the free stuff. I ran to get a shopping cart.

We took our ill-gotten booty to Deirdre’s place—a penthouse condo in one of the historic houses on Gaston, with high ceilings and a big old chandelier. High on the adrenaline of having started a riot, she wasted no time in introducing me to the world of sex with Deirdre.

She liked it fast, furious, and violent, just like her music, just like her life. It was filthy, and I loved it, because she loved it, and I was with a rock star that hundreds of guys wanted to be with, and that was so cool.

Yes, she had started the riot, and yes, people had died. But (I reasoned as I ran my hands over her body) she’d only thrown apples, which was playful, really. Others had turned it violent.

Afterward, I lay there panting, one arm wrapped across Deirdre’s lightly freckled shoulders.

“Go home,” Deirdre muttered into her pillow. “I hate sleeping with someone in the bed.” The sweat on her pale white neck hadn’t even dried yet.

I gathered up my wrinkled clothes and pulled them on (except my socks, because I could only find one and didn’t dare dig around in the blankets), took a long last look at Deirdre—one leg straight, one bent, her back rising and falling with easy, even breaths—and headed home.

“Put the damned phone away,” Colin said, shouting from the roof. “This is gonna turn into Sophia all over again.”

“Deirdre’s not married,” I called up to him, but I stuffed the phone into my jeans pocket, and picked up the shovel.

She hadn’t returned my call. I could barely see the dirt in front of me, what with flashbacks of the night before last dancing before me.

I heard Jeannie shout something to Colin.

“Jeannie heard on the radio that Wal-Mart isn’t reopening for weeks,” Colin said. “People are squatting in the building, and the company has to fly in a security force to take the store back before it can restock.”

“Maybe this will boost business at the convenience store,” I said. “We may actually profit from Deirdre’s stunt.” I finished filling the big plastic bucket, motioned to Colin. He hauled it up, grunting with the effort as the bucket danced and swung at the end of the rope.

It was getting dark; a couple more bucketsful and we’d have to call it quits.

“Oh. That’s just lovely. And here I thought the Jumpy-Jumps were responsible for digging all the holes I keep tripping in.”

Deirdre was leaned up against a light post. Her outfit was reminiscent of an S&M dominatrix: black and red, plenty of leather, plenty of straps. No mask. Deirdre never wore a mask. She strutted over on spiked heels, took in the excavation with hands on hips.

Suddenly I felt all filthy and sweaty. I’m not a macho enough guy for manual labor to make me seem manly. Clean and scrubbed is a much better look for me.

“Now, you’ve just got to be Deirdre,” Colin called down.

Deirdre looked up, shielding her eyes. “And you’ve got to be someone I don’t know.”

Colin laughed.

“What are you doing up there?”

“We’re making a vegetable garden,” Colin said. “Some young hoodlums went and ruined the Wal-Mart, so now we have to grow our own food, someplace where others can’t get at it.” Although that meant no longer spreading the solar blanket up there to offset our energy bills.

Deirdre pressed a finger to her lips and grinned. She turned to me. “You want to come out and play, or do you want to stay in your sandbox?”

“Give me five minutes,” I said, leaning the shovel against the porch railing.

“You kids have a good time, but don’t stay out too late,” Colin called after me as I trotted into the house.

I pulled off my clothes and jumped into the shower. The icy water made me gasp. I was busting inside. Deirdre had come to find me! I wasn’t boring!

I was dried and dressed in moments, knowing that Deirdre probably wasn’t good at waiting.

“I’ve got a show at midnight,” she said as we started walking. “We’ve got—”

We both gawked at what had come around the corner.