John Adams: Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalipse

On the stage he had cleared the music stands to one side, leaving the grand piano alone and uncluttered. Now he dusted the polished surface one more time, buffed the brass lettering, raised the lid, lit the candelabra, and sat before the keyboard. The bats twittered tumultuous applause. He bowed his head slightly toward the moth-eaten velvet of the empty seats, and began to play.

He began with ii Beethoven Piano Sonata, Opus 109. It flowed; it swelled; it poured from the strings of that magnificent piano as his hands moved and fell, remembering what his brain was unsure of. And he knew, listening, that he had not lost his skill, that somehow it had been kept somewhere safe within him, sleeping through the years of torment. He wove a web of music, cast motion and light and harmony into the darkness, wrapped himself within its sound, and played on. And as he played, he wept.

The piece ended; he began another. And another. Beethoven, Mozart and Chopin were resurrected. The music expanded through the hours, a torrent of joy, of sorrow, and of yearning. He was blind and insensate and deaf to all but his music, insulated from the outside world by the castle of sound he was building around himself.

At last Parnell stopped, his hands throbbing and aching, and raised his eyes above the level of the piano.

Standing before him was a Vandal. In his arms he cradled the sledgehammer Parnell had traded to the Tumbledown Woman. There was blood on its head.

The Vandal stood and regarded him contemptuously, all the time stroking, stroking, the shaft of the hammer he carried. He was dressed in roughly cured leather and rusted metal. Around his neck he wore a dozen metal necklaces and chains that dangled on his bare and hairy chest-crosses and swastikas, peace symbols and fishes clinking gently against each other. He was dirty, his hair was greasy and awry, and on his forehead was burned a V-shaped scar. He stank.

Parnell was unable to speak. Fear had made stone of him and his heart flopped around inside him like a grounded fish.

The Vandal uttered a hoarse giggle, enjoying the shock on Parnell’s face. "Hey, old man, you play real pretty! Tell me now, Music Man, how well do you sing?"

Parnell’s voice was a rustle in his throat: "I can’t."

The Vandal shook his head in mock sorrow. "That’s too bad, Music Man. But I tell you, you’re gonna sing real good when I’m finished with you. Real good and loud." He shifted the sledgehammer to bring out a long knife. It cast fiery gleams about the stage as its edge caught the candlelight.

Parnell felt as though he was about to be sick but, insanely, his old anger grew in him even in the face of his fear. "Why?" he asked, his voice trembling. "Why do you want to kill me? What harm am I doing you?"

The eyes of the Vandal narrowed in concentration and fierce humour. "Why? Why not?" And the knife flashed yellow at Parnell’s eyes.

"All that you do… destroying all the beautiful things, the books, the pictures…" Parnell was becoming excited in spite of his fear: "Those things are all we have left of our heritage, our culture; of civilization, of Man’s greatness, don’t you see? You’re no more than barbarians, killing and burning…" He stopped as the Vandal waved the knife toward him, his face losing its mirth.

"You’re pretty with your music and pretty with your words, but you talk a lot of shit. You know what you’re pretty culture gave us? Gave us dirt and fighting and eating each other, man. You’re nice and old, pretty man; you were old when the murdering and the hunger started. Me and mine, we were just kids then. You know how it was for us? We had to run and hide so as not to be food for grown-ups; we had to eat dirt and scum to live, man. That’s what your pretty heritage was for us, pretty man, so don’t bullshit me about how great Man was, cause he ain’t."

The Vandal was leaning over Parnell, breathing his foul breath hard into the old man’s face. Parnell grew silent as the Vandal drew back and glared. "And you sitting here in the dark playing that nice music-all you wish is that it was back the way it was! Well, me and mine are making sure that it ain’t never back that way again. Now you tell me, man, what good did that music, that culture, ever do, hey?"

Parnell’s thoughts were tumbling. At last he said simply: "It gave people pleasure, that’s all."

The Vandal regained his sneer. "Okay, Music Man, killing you is gonna give me lots of pleasure. But first, man, it’s gonna give me real kicks to smash up this pretty music thing in front of you just so you can enjoy it too. How about that?" And, turning, the Vandal hefted the sledgehammer and raised it high above the strings of the grand piano.

Something snapped within Parnell.

He leapt up and grasped at the Vandal’s arms. Surprised, he let the hammer drop. Parnell clawed at his face. The Vandal swung out a hairy fist, catching Parnell a jarring blow on the jaw and almost striking him to the ground, but Parnell’s hands were about the Vandal’s throat. Parnell’s hands were the only part of him that was not weak and trembling-hands made iron-firm by decades of exercise on the keyboard-and his thumbs were digging into the Vandal’s windpipe. The youth began to choke, and tried vainly to tear Parnell’s hands away, but the gnarled fingers were locked in a murderous grip; they tightened with hysterical energy. For a seemingly endless moment the two hung together in a bizarre embrace. Then the Vandal crumpled to the stage, with Parnell on top of him, throttling the life from him, until the Vandal was dead.

Parnell let out a choking cry and retched violently over the edge of the stage. He crouched on his knees for some time, transformed by reaction and horror into a mindless animal. Eventually he turned around and stared with strange emotion at the body of the Vandal. Outside the hall, very faintly, he could hear the yells and shouts of the rest of the pack of new barbarians as they burned and looted. Inside, there was only the quiet of death and the soft twittering of the bats.

He crawled toward the piano where the sledgehammer lay. He stood, using the hammer as a prop for his trembling legs, then took it into his arms.

With one anguished swing, he brought the sledgehammer crashing down into the piano strings.

The shock jarred his whole body. The strings snapped with violent twangs and wood splintered, filling the air with jagged sound. The candelabra, toppling, plunged to the floor and went out, spilling darkness throughout the hall.

The silence seemed to last for a long time.

John Langan has published several stories in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction , two of which—”On Skua Island” and “Mr. Gaunt”—were nominated for the International Horror Guild Award. A collection of his short work, Mr. Gaunt and Other Uneasy Encounters , is forthcoming from Prime Books. Langan’s reviews and essays have appeared in Dead Reckonings , Erebos , Extrapolation , Fantasy Commentator , The Internet Review of Science Fiction , The Lovecraft Annual , Lovecraft Studies , and Science Fiction Studies . An adjunct instructor at SUNY New Paltz, he is in the process of completing his dissertation on H.P. Lovecraft.

“Episode Seven” is reinvention of a story Langan wrote in his early twenties. This current version was influenced by another story in this volume: “The End of the World As We Know It” by Dale Bailey. “Dale’s story is a great revision of the classic, mid-century post-apocalypse story,” Langan says. “I admired what he’d achieved, but I also felt a bit of rivalry, a desire to show that not everyone would roll over and go gently into that good night.”