John Adams - Wastelands - Stories of the Apocalipse

"Something’s not working just right."

"Well, I can see that, Del. Jesus, what’s that!" Ginny twisted the wheel as a large part of the desert rose straight up in the air. Smoking sand rained down on the van.

"Rockets," Del said grimly. "That’s the reason they figured that crazy-fingered Possum was a snap. Watch where you’re going, girl!"

Two fiery pillars exploded ahead. Del leaned out the window and looked back. Half of Fort Pru’s wall was in pursuit. Possum sprayed everything in sight, but he couldn’t spot where the rockets were coming from. Underwriter assault cars split up, came at them from every side.

"Trying to flank us," Del said. A rocket burst to the right. "Ginny, I’m not real sure what to do."

"How’s the stub?"

"Slight electric tingle. Like a doorbell half a mile away. Ginny, they get us in a circle, we’re in very deep shit."

"They hit that gas, we won’t have to worry about a thing. Oh Lord, now why did I think of that?"

Possum hit a semi clean on. It came to a stop and died, fell over like a bug. Del could see that being a truck and a wall all at once had its problems, balance being one.

"Head right at them," he told Ginny, "then veer off sharp. They can’t turn quick going fast."

"Del!"

Bullets rattled the van. Something heavy made a noise. The van skewed to a halt.

Ginny took her hands off the wheel and looked grim. "It appears they got the tires. Del, we’re flat dead is what we are. Let’s get out of this thing."

And do what? Del wondered. Bearings seemed to roll about in his head. He sensed a malfunction on the way.

The Fort Pru vehicles shrieked to a stop. Crazed life agents piled out and came at them over the flats, firing small arms and hurling stones. A rocket burst nearby.

Possum’s guns suddenly stopped. Ginny grimaced in disgust. "Don’t you tell me we’re out of ammo, Possum Dark. That stuff’s plenty hard to get."

Possum started to speak. Del waved his good arm to the north. "Hey now, would you look at that!"

Suddenly there was confusion in the underwriters’ ranks. A vaguely familiar pickup had appeared on the rise. The driver weaved through traffic, hurling grenades. They exploded in clusters, bright pink bouquets. He spotted the man with the rocket, lying flat atop a bus. Grenades stopped him cold. Underwriters abandoned the field and ran. Ginny saw a fairly peculiar sight. Six black Harleys had joined the truck. Chow Dogs with Uzis snaked in and out of the ranks, motors snarling and spewing horsetails of sand high in the air. They showed no mercy at all, picking off stragglers as they ran. A few underwriters made it to cover. In a moment, it was over. Fort Pru fled in sectional disarray.

"Well, if that wasn’t just in the nick of time," Del said.

"I hate Chow Dogs," Possum said. "They got black tongues, and that’s a fact."

"I hope you folks are all right," Moro said. "Well now, friend, looks as if you’ve thrown an arm."

"Nothing real serious," Del said.

"I’m grateful," Ginny said. "Guess I got to tell you that."

Moro was taken by her penetrating charm, her thankless manner. The fetching smudge of grease on her knee. He thought she was cute as a pup.

"I felt it was something I had to do. Circumstances being what they are."

"And just what circumstances are that?" Ginny asked.

"That pesky Shepherd Dog’s sorta responsible for any trouble you might’ve had. Got a little pissed when that Possum cleaned him out. Five-card stud, I think it was. ’Course there might have been marking and crimping of cards, I couldn’t say."

Ginny blew hair out of her eyes. "Mister, far as I can see, you’re not making a lot of sense."

"I’m real embarrassed about this. That Dog got mad and kinda screwed up your gear."

"You let a Dog repair my stuff?" Ginny said.

"Perfectly good technician. Taught him mostly myself. Okay if you don’t get his dander up. Those Shepherds are inbred, so I hear. What he did was set your tapes in a loop and speed ’em up. Customer’d get, say, twenty-six times his money’s worth. Works out to a Mach seven fuck. Could cause bodily harm."

"Lord, I ought to shoot you in the foot," Ginny said.

"Look," Moro said, "I stand behind my work, and I got here quick as I could. Brought friends along to help, and I’m eating the cost of that."

"Damn right," Ginny said. The Chow Dogs sat their Harleys a ways off and glared at Possum. Possum Dark glared back. He secretly admired their leather gear, the Purina crests sewn on the backs.

"I’ll be adding up costs," Ginny said. "I’m expecting full repairs."

"You’ll get it. Of course you’ll have to spend some time in Bad News. Might take a little while."

She caught his look and had to laugh. "You’re a stubborn son of a bitch, I’ll give you that. What’d you do with that Dog?"

"You want taco meat, I’ll make you a deal."

"Yuck. I guess I’ll pass."

Del began to weave about in roughly trapezoidal squares. Smoke started to curl out of his stub.

"For Christ’s sake, Possum, sit on him or something," Ginny said.

"I can fix that," Moro told her.

"You’ve about fixed enough, seems to me."

"We’re going to get along fine. You wait and see."

"You think so?" Ginny looked alarmed. "I better not get used to having you around."

"It could happen."

"It could just as easy not."

"I’ll see about changing that tire," Moro said. "We ought to get Del out of the sun. You think about finding something nice to wear to dinner. East Bad News is kinda picky. We got a lot of pride around here…"

Dale Bailey is the author of three novels, The Fallen, House of Bones , and Sleeping Policemen (with Jack Slay, Jr.). He’s published more than 20 pieces of short fiction — mostly in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction — a selection of which has been collected in The Resurrection Man’s Legacy and Other Stories .

This story, which was a finalist for the Nebula Award, grew out of Bailey’s attempt to understand our rather morbid fascination with the genre and the prospect of our own extinction. “The End of the World as We Know It” is about the lone survivor of an apocalypse attempting to grapple with the emotional dimension of his loss. But more than that, it’s an end-of-the-world story about how end-of-the-world stories actually work.

One thing Bailey realized in writing the story is that the world is ending for someone every minute of every day. He says, “We don’t need the destruction of entire cities to know what it’s like to survive a catastrophe. Whenever we lose someone we love deeply we experience the end of the world as we know it. The central idea of the story is not merely that the apocalypse is coming, but that it’s coming for you. And there’s nothing you can do to avoid it.”

Between 1347 and 1450 AD, bubonic plague overran Europe, killing some 75 million people. The plague, dubbed the Black Death because of the black pustules that erupted on the skin of the afflicted, was caused by a bacterium now known as Yersinia pestis . The Europeans of the day, lacking access to microscopes or knowledge of disease vectors, attributed their misfortune to an angry God. Flagellants roamed the land, hoping to appease His wrath. “They died by the hundreds, both day and night,” Agnolo di Tura tells us. “I buried my five children with my own hands… so many died that all believed it was the end of the world.”

Today, the population of Europe is about 729 million.

Evenings, Wyndham likes to sit on the porch, drinking. He likes gin, but he’ll drink anything. He’s not particular. Lately, he’s been watching it get dark—really watching it, I mean, not just sitting there—and so far he’s concluded that the cliché is wrong. Night doesn’t fall. It’s more complex than that.