Will McIntosh - Soft Apocalypse

“Oh, god. Not again.” Tears poured down my cheeks; I was trembling all over like I was freezing cold.

You suck , Tara Cohn’s voice said inside my head. I sobbed.

“Cut, god dammit. Cut her. Do it now,” the doctor shouted.

I screamed, and kept screaming as I cut, wider and deeper. Bird thrashed, but the fight was bleeding out of her. She seemed only half-conscious, only the whites of her eyes visible.

“What do you see?” the doctor asked.

I pulled on the flap I’d made, and it tore a little wider, exposing something gray and puckered, a fat snake folding in on itself. It was an organ. Christ, it was her liver or gall bladder or something. I described it to the doctor.

“Good boy, Jasper, that’s what you want. That’s the colon. Fish around, find the bottom of it, where it meets the small intestine. You’re looking for a small, tubelike appendage attached to the colon.”

I poked around inside Bird, trying to ignore the moist squishing sound, the blood pouring down her side, dribbling onto the tan bamboo husks that littered the ground.

“I can’t find it,” I said.

“Get your damned hand in there and move the colon around. This isn’t some dainty parlor game. Get your hands bloody.”

I dug, squeezing my fingers between the slimy tubes, pushing one section up with my finger. Behind it was something that looked like a swollen maggot. I described it to Doctor Gabow.

“Cut it off and pitch it away, Jasper.”

I cut it off. Sandra sewed the end of the colon closed while I held the knife over the flame, getting it good and hot. Then I pressed the flat end of it against the wound, to cauterize it and stop some of the bleeding. Bird didn’t flinch as the knife hissed against her insides; she’d passed out somewhere along the way. Sandra held the edges of the wound closed while I sewed. Doctor Gabow explained that someone needed to get to the nearest town and buy antibiotics, or Bird would likely die of infection, and all his good work would go to waste.

People slapped my back as I stumbled out of the camp. I found a quiet copse and collapsed onto my back, staring at the half-moon through the narrow leaves. I felt… strange. Calm. Like a buzzing had turned off in my brain for the first time in years. I held my hand in front of my face, looked at the blood covering it, starting to dry and cake. I’d done it.

I closed my eyes and let myself drift off to sleep, thinking that I’d had enough of the simplicity of the hunter-gatherer life. I wanted to go home.

I caught a whiff of jasmine, waited at a crosswalk as a cluster of men pedaled by on bicycles wearing helmets with built-in gas masks, semi-automatics dangling from their belts.

Across the street, a tattered teal awning read: Francis McNairy Antiques and Collectibles . Yeah, right. I’ll trade you my mint condition Spider-Man number one for your slightly used bottle of Cool, what do you say?

A block further I could see my house, its porch looking inviting to my aching feet. I put my head down and trekked the final few yards, then plopped into a chair on the porch.

The screen door swung open almost immediately. “How was your trip?” Colin asked, unfolding a mildewed lawn chair and joining me.

“Do I have a story for you,” I said.

“Really?” Colin scooted his lawn chair until it was at a ninety degree angle from mine. “I could use a good story; the TV’s been out for three days.”

I told him the good stuff, where I was the good guy, saving a life.

“So, you’ve decided the right woman for you is a semi-primitive, illiterate teenager with bad breath?” Colin asked when I’d finished.

I shook my head, blew out a long breath. “I just needed some affection. She offered, and I took her up on it.” I stared off toward the far end of the porch, at a weight-lifting bench that had been abandoned by some previous tenant. Padding jutted from the rotting vinyl fabric. We should really throw the damned thing out.

Then again, it added a certain character to the porch. I felt a sudden wave of affection for our crappy little apartment, and the people I shared it with. It was good to be home.

From our seats in the upper deck the players looked like tissues dropped in the grass, yet it was so quiet I could hear the shortstop scuff his foot on the infield dirt, smoothing an invisible divot.

I fished for a peanut. Even the crackle of the cellophane bag seemed loud, as if we were in a movie theater. I half-expected someone to shush me as I cracked the peanut under my thumb, peeled off the top half of the shell, popped one red-skinned peanut into my mouth, reached over and fed the second to Ange. She closed her lips over my fingers, grinned when I glanced over at her. Lately Ange had been way more affectionate than she’d ever been before. We’d been through so many waxes and wanes; at times I’d felt certain that we had drifted so far apart we would never again be more than acquaintances who’d once been close, but we always seemed to drift back into our not-quite-dating netherworld. I’d long ago given up thinking about the possibility of a real relationship, squashed any romantic feelings I had for Ange so that what I felt for her was a (somehow workable) mix of lust and brotherly affection.

The pitcher wound, threw a high fastball. The lanky batter swung and missed, and the inning was over. No one clapped. The Macon Mets took the field, and the pitcher began his warmup tosses.

“Whatever that shit is in the atmosphere, it sure makes the sunsets pretty,” Ange said.

“Mmm,” I said. The sun was setting over the left field fence; the clouds were a gorgeous pastel of pink, peach, indigo, violet.

On the first pitch the Sand Gnat batter yanked the ball into the right field corner. The right fielder took a few listless steps after it, then gave up. He squatted on his haunches and watched it roll. He covered his face in his hands as the ball rolled to a stop on the warning track. The center fielder trotted over to him, put a hand on his shoulder, said something. The right fielder shook his head.

The batter trotted to second base and stopped, probably figuring that’s where he would’ve ended up if the play had been made. Winning didn’t mean as much with so many people dying.

“His family was in D.C. All dead,” the man in the row behind us said. I glanced back at him. His face and neck were a swirl of burn scars, and his right arm ended in an uneven stump. A China War veteran, probably.

“Shame. I’m surprised he’s playing,” An older man beside the scarred man said.

I wanted to tell them to shut the hell up. I didn’t want to think about D.C. That’s why I was at a baseball game instead of watching fucking CNN.

“I wonder if the people who killed the president had propped him in the chair for effect, or if he died in the chair,” Ange said.

“I bet they propped him there,” I said.

CNN kept replaying the video of the president in the oval office, behind his desk, his head rolled back, his tongue huge and black like he’d choked trying to swallow a tire. He’d been a Republican; the vice president had been a Democrat. That was supposed to change things. The man on the videotape they kept showing on CNN was neither a Republican nor a Democrat, but he claimed to be in charge. Or not in charge. It was hard to understand him because he talked fast and used a lot of Jumpy-Jump slang. The newscasters weren’t sure anyone was in charge. They looked scared. The streets of D.C. were a madhouse, and some of the other big cities didn’t seem far behind.

It wasn’t clear whether the teams were going to finish the game. The managers and umps were standing near the first base coach’s box, arms folded across their chests, talking.