Geoff North - How the World Ends

Hayden continued turning the engine over, but it was draining the battery quickly. It was beginning to slow-churn. If he kept cranking it at this rate much longer, the entire thing would be dead. It’s an older car , he told himself. Like my old Ford pick-up. You have to tromp on the accelerator—pump the fucking thing up and down to work the gas through.

Hayden did just that. He pushed the accelerator pedal down and released it. Fat fingers were working their way in through the slit of open driver’s side window next to his face. Hayden ignored them. He pumped on the accelerator repeatedly and kept the key cranked over in the ignition. The engine was still making that mournful dying sound, like a helicopter rotor whirring down. Three bodies were now on the hood of the car. Their faces were pressed up against the windshield. Fat grey tongues were licking at the glass.

Hayden pressed the pedal down and kept it there. The old Buick roared to life three seconds later. It continued to scream until Hayden remembered to lift his foot off the pedal.

Drive. I have to put it in drive.

He had driven his first car at the age of eleven. It was like learning all over again. The windshield cracked. Hayden dropped the car into drive and punched down on the accelerator again. The Buick leapt forward and one of the bodies on the hood slipped away before its weight could push through the windshield altogether. He cleared the cluster of bodies around him, running over half a dozen more along the way. He drove north, towards the man he’d seen stumbling across the field. They hadn’t gotten to him yet, he was running west, keeping ahead of the things, but just barely.

The corpse on top of the car slid down onto the hood and Hayden slammed the brakes. It spun the body around, but the thing’s fingers dug into the hood’s edge where the windshield wipers met. It started pulling its grotesquely swollen form up towards him. Hayden recognized it as the young soldier from town that had given him and Caitlan directions to the supply tent. He wasn’t old enough yet to shave, Caitlan had said.

Hayden sped up, swerving hard to the left and then to the right, attempting to dislodge it from the hood. Its throat swelled out, like a giant bull frog taking in air. Hayden heard the skin pop over the roar of the car’s engine, and black liquid splattered all over the cracked glass in front of his face. It was how they spread whatever it was inside them, he realized. That crap would work its way through the cracks in the windshield and enter into his body. Hayden slammed on the brakes again and the thing finally fell away. He turned on the wipers to clear the black shit away, and slammed into two more bodies standing in the field. An arm detached and smacked into the side mirror of his door tearing it clean off. Hayden swerved and the car bounced up, crushing one of the bodies up into the wheel well. He could no longer see where the man in the field was. Hayden’s sense of direction was lost.

It’s too late for him , he thought. He’s dead already. He’s become one of them.

It’s too late for him , Tommy thought as he veered away from the Buick and started running to the west. Those things are going to tear him to pieces and eat his fucking brains. Fuck him. Fuck his car. I can make it on my own. I don’t need him. I don’t need anyone.

Pain shot through his chest and Tommy dropped to his knees, gasping. The ribs. Those goddamned ribs. He could hear the creatures gaining on him. “No! I’m not going to let you fuckers get me! No fucking way!” He continued on his hands and knees, but the cracked ribs only made crawling even more painful. He couldn’t get a full breath.

One of the things pounced on his back, another started biting into one of his legs. Tommy tried rolling over, but they had him pinned on his stomach against the ground. He cried out as he felt the flesh being torn from his back. They’re eating me! They’re fucking eating me alive!

A bloated grey face appeared in front of him, snapping its teeth and salivating black slime onto the earth. It started flowing along the dirt towards Tommy. It crawled up onto his cheek and slithered into his mouth. He tried spitting it out, but more flowed in. It plugged up his nostrils and crawled into his eyes. Tommy could feel it entering in through both ears.

Make it stop. Make the pain stop.

The pain didn’t end. It only got worse. The black stuff worked its way down his throat, like a monstrous fist, spreading into his lungs and collecting around his heart. Something was biting into the top of his head. It was tearing hair and skin away from his skull, but Tommy could hardly feel it. The vision in his right eye cleared just enough to see his arm being torn out of its socket. He watched the thing as it began eating the muscle of his bicep away. I know him , Tommy thought dully. We were in the tank together. We laughed like hell when we shot that fucking horse.

Joanna had made a promise to herself at the age of twelve that she would one be the Prime Minister of Canada one day. She would’ve preferred being president of the United States, but she hadn’t been born in any of the fifty states, so Canada would have to do. She had made this promise because of her shitty up-bringing. Her father had beaten her mom regularly, and the bastard had molested Joanna every night from the time she was old enough to remember. The beatings and molestations stopped shortly after Joanna’s tenth birthday when a tramp he’d been screwing around with at work planted a pair of scissors into the side of his neck. Joanna had always regretted not having the guts to do it herself.

She had hated men for a long time after that, but eventually Joanna learned to live and work with them again. She never became Prime Minister, but she did become the first female mayor of Brayburne at the age of forty-four. Not too bad considering the crap she had gone through. A lot of people in Brayburne said she had done a terrible job running the town, and when elections were held again, she would be booted out after only one four year term. That didn’t happen either—a few hundred nuclear bombs dropping across the surface of the earth had kept her in office.

And now it was time for Joanna Hensky to release that old hatred for men once again. She wasn’t the weak-willed, overweight dunder-head all the men in town accused her of being. She didn’t appreciate having her office overrun by the military, and seeing her position diminished. Men had been responsible for that, and the single man rushing at her in the tunnel was going to pay for it.

The corpse of Corporal Adam Stevens charged, and Joanna swung the axe upward in a vertical arc. It caught in his distended throat and sliced his lower jaw into two pieces. It split his tongue down the middle, and finally lodged up into the roof of his mouth. She tugged the axe out and a spray of black blood followed, coating her face and splashing across her heavy bosom. She took the axe blade in her hands and drove the sharp end between Adam’s empty eye sockets. He made a wet grunting noise as she pushed it in deep.

They said I was a coward—said I was afraid to get my hands dirty. How’s this for dirty?

She pushed the axe harder and Adam fell back into the tunnel wall. His skull cracked against rock and dirt. Joanna twisted the axe’s blunt end and she heard the cartilage in his nose begin to break. The corporal’s hands found her throat and started to squeeze. His shattered, wet face leaned forward and he tried biting her nose off. Joanna stepped back and Adam pushed her against the other side of the tunnel. Something fell from the belt of his uniform and rolled off into the dark.