Geoff North - How the World Ends

“You’re really fucking brilliant, aren’t you?”

Louie looked down at him. “Huh?”

“So maybe your tick-infected birds and insects won’t make it in here—how are we expected to breathe in here with the door and window sealed off?

Louie closed his eyes and thumped the side of his head against the door. “Well… shit. I never thought about that.”

Eight hours earlier—or somewhere thereabouts—Louie and Roy were lying face down in the middle of a dirt field, choking on dust, and listening to the sky around them being torn apart by half a dozen nuclear detonations over the already ruined city of Winnipeg. They had struggled through the remainder of that bleak plain and come across the farm. The house, barely standing after the latest round of explosions, had been abandoned days before. Louie had insisted they find someplace smaller—a manageable area they could seal off. They had seen animals become infected with the ticks, and Louie suspected even smaller, more mobile creatures, would be able to spread the infection.

Roy had said it was all a bunch of bullshit. You can’t defend yourself against the insect kingdom. If the bugs wanna get you, the fucking bugs are gonna get you. Louie suspected Tick-LDV3 couldn’t be carried by living organisms much smaller than a bumblebee—the microscopic arachnids would require larger, more complex organisms to control—but what did he know? He was no scientist.

They found a bulk six-pack of duct tape left behind in a drawer in the farmhouse kitchen. There wasn’t much else; no food, water, nothing of real value to a couple of men trying to survive in a nuclear wasteland now becoming inhabited with tick-infested hosts—living and dead.

Louie finally won the argument and convinced Roy to help him clear out the small storage shed. He truly believed whatever animals there were left roaming the blasted countryside would soon starve to death, or die from drinking the irradiated water sitting in the lakes and running in the rivers. Even Tick-LDV3 couldn’t survive long in an environment like that. Or so he had hoped.

Louie opened his eyes, slid down, and sat on the small shed’s plywood floor across from Louie. The area was small, their feet almost touched. There was nothing left in the shed except the two men. All the milk crates, every stinking bag of garbage, and every box filled with empty liquor bottles, had been removed to allow them room. “Okay, so maybe sealing ourselves in here wasn’t the brightest idea, but it was safer than staying out in the open.”

“At least we could breathe out in the open. It still fucking reeks in here. Goddamn… I’m already feeling lightheaded.”

Louie ran his fingers along the narrow panelling set over where the walls met the floor. The tape—if they’d had anymore to spare—wouldn’t have held. There was too much dirt and crud on the floor for the adhesive to stick to. If any insects were going to get in, they would crawl through there. “Okay, we’ll open the door every few minutes and let some fresh air in. But you have to promise me to only open it an inch or so, and not leave it open any longer than a few seconds. We can’t risk those ticks getting a lock on us.”

“Can I at least step out and take a leak?”

“I wouldn’t advise it.”

Roy clambered back up to his feet and started tearing tape away from the door. “Then I’ll stick my dick out and let it flow.” Seconds later he was urinating out onto the ground through a six-inch crack of open door. “Christ, that feels good.”

Louie listened to the muddy splattering sound for another half minute. “Can’t you go any faster? We have to shut that door and keep quiet.”

“Going as fast as I can.” Roy could see a bit of grey field to the south side of the house through the door crack. He thought he saw something moving out there in the pre-dawn light. He pushed out the last bit of urine and leaned forward for a better look. “You aren’t going to believe this… I think our food shortage problem is about to become a thing of the past.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Cows, Louie. I can see three or four cows grazing out in the field.”

“Shut the door,” Louie said. “Quietly.” There was nothing left for the cattle to graze on out in the fields, he realized. Whatever it was that Roy had seen out there was no longer chewing grass.

“Why are you freaking? Let’s get out there and kill one of the fuckers. We could be eating rib eyes for the next month!”

“You’re an idiot.”

A full ten seconds passed as the two men glared at each other in the early morning light.

“What did you say to me?”

Louie had spent the majority of his life being pushed around by assholes. It was the number one reason he’d trapped his co-workers deep underground and unleashed TICK-LDV3 into the world. And now here he was, confined inside a small space with the biggest asshole of them all. Roy may have kept him safe up to this point, but Louie was getting awfully sick of his mouth.

“Read my lips. You… are… a… fucking … idiot.”

There was no time for Louie to react, and nowhere to move. Roy’s shoulder squished into his face, and he felt the back of his skull grind into the metal wall. He heard the bigger man’s grunts and smelled the sour stink of his breath as he worked Louie’s neck beneath one thick arm.

“Gonna fucking kill you for that, man. Gonna squeeze that greasy fuckin’ head right off your skinny fuckin’ shoulders.”

Louie bit down into his wrist hard enough to draw blood. Roy squealed and released him. He slammed back into the far wall and stared down at the bite marks on his skin. “You… You bit me. Fuck… You got the sickness. You’re one of them. Goddamn… I’m gonna turn now, too!”

Louie was wiping the man’s sweat away from his neck. “That’s why you’re an idiot—thinking you’re infected because I bit you.”

“So why’d you do it? Who bites someone in a fight?”

“You said you were going to kill me. What was I supposed to do? You outweigh me by at least a hundred and eighty pounds.”

“You saying I’m fat?”

“No, I’m saying I’m a hundred and thirty pounds. Little shits like me have to gouge eyeballs, kick nut-sacks, and bite.”

There was a look in the man’s eyes that worried Louie. It was a quiet, predatory stare. He had seen it seconds before Roy had murdered the woman running the Sandman hotel. It was the same look he’d seen before he punched Tracy Klausburg, breaking her nose and shattering her teeth. “You think I’m over three-hundred? Is that what you’re saying to me? You think Roy Rodger is a three-hundred-plus fatty? You slimy little cocksucker.”

“Your last name is Rogers?” Louie started to giggle. He couldn’t help himself. “Roy Rogers—like the singing cowboy?”

“It’s Rodger. With a ‘d’ in the middle and no fucking ‘s’ on the end.”

Louie laughed out loud. “Still… that’s hilarious. Roy Rogers. Seriously, your parents were real dicks naming you Roy.”

Roy was on him again in a flash. He smashed into the smaller man with enough force to crumple the wall outwards and tip the entire shed up off the ground. Louie bit into his arm again, but Roy Rodger was oblivious to the pain. He picked Louie up and threw him into the opposite wall. The shed rocked the other way. He charged again and the shed crashed down onto its side.

The infected cattle feeding on the remains of the farm’s owner and his daughter two-hundred feet away lifted their bloated heads. One of them snorted black fluid out of its nostrils and kicked at the dirt with its back hooves. It started towards the noise, and the others followed.