Geoff North - How the World Ends

“Careful,” one of the women warned as the iron door started to slide open. Fiona jammed the gun barrel into Roy’s back, forcing him to push the jack onto a metal platform. Louie followed him into a cage.

Louie felt a familiar dread begin to gnaw at his guts. “Where… where are we going?”

Fiona and Grace stepped into the cage and the iron door rattled back into place with an echoing clang. Fiona opened a control box welded onto one of the interior bars and pressed a big red button. A klaxon blared out, and Louie felt the metal plate under his feet drop away momentarily. The cage started moving down.

“We’re going into the heart of Odessa Shaft 168. A mile underground where there’s no radioactive fallout and blood-thirsty cattle.”

“That’s great.” Louie sat on the pile of stacked toilet paper and hung his head. “Just wonderful.”

They found the Audi half a mile back in the ditch, lying on its roof in a cloud of dust. Smoke was pouring out from the completely crumpled-in front end. Hayden yelled at Nicholas to stay in the back seat of the Buick while he rushed out.

Fred, a few seconds slower than the younger man, called out behind him. “Be careful! They hit something on the road. The doctor crept towards the twitching creature. A big hoofed foot struck against the bloody pavement repeatedly. Fred kept his distance and walked slowly in front of it. A massive antler scraped along the highway, dragging the remains of the Audi’s windshield wrapped within it. Black liquid oozed out of the moose’s nostrils and mouth.

“My God… it has the disease.” He felt his chest start to tighten as he ran for the destroyed vehicle. A scream tore through the heavy, stinking air. Fred stopped. “Hayden?” He pictured the reanimated Fulger twins crawling out from the back—their bodies burned, their arms and legs bloated grey, their fingernails black, scratching in the dirt.

Another scream. It was Caitlan. “Goddamn it! Quit pulling so hard! My leg’s stuck in the console!”

Michael and Amanda appeared out of the smoke. They headed towards Fred, shaken and scared, but definitely not bloated and grey. The doctor ignored the pain in his chest and went to them, checking for broken bones and any sign of head injury. “Are you two okay?”

“My ears are ringing,” Amanda said.

Michael coughed and spit on the ground. “ Uuck … that smoke tastes like ass.”

Fred steered them away from the thrashing moose. “Looks like you two are going to be alright. Go wait by the other car and I’ll check you over more thoroughly in a minute.”

Hayden and Angela emerged from the smoking car wreck, supporting Caitlan between them. “Told you not to pull so hard,” the big woman complained. “I think you broke my fucking hip.”

“Would you rather I left you there to asphyxiate?”

Fred helped them back to the Buick. Caitlan leaned against the hood with a noisy grunt. “Is it broken, Doc?”

“Not now , Caitlan,” he said. Fred grabbed Hayden and started pulling him back to the moose. “The sickness has spread,” he whispered. “We can’t outrun it.”

The big animal was no longer moving. Its hooves and antlers were completely still.

“It’s dead,” Hayden announced.

The blood pooled around its gargantuan head was deep red, not black. Fred ran his fingers through his thinning, white hair. “I thought… I could’ve sworn…”

“After everything we’ve seen, I’m not surprised what you thought you saw.”

Fred actually laughed. “I’ve never been so happy to see something so dead in my life.”

A low whumping noise sounded from the car wreckage. Orange flames lit up through the smoke. “Come on,” Hayden said. “Nothing more to see here.”

A minute later the Audi’s gas tank blew. Caitlan’s treasured ride was no more. She sat dejectedly on the Buick’s hood as Fred checked her over. Her hip wasn’t broken, but he suspected her spirit had been. The seven crammed into the remaining vehicle and turned back north.

An obese black bear lurched out of the trees a minute later and started feasting on the moose’s spilled steaming intestines. Black liquid ran from its dead eyes and dripped from its red snout. Birds swooped in and pecked at the remains as well.

The moose’s broken body jerked back to life.

Louie watched the roughly hewn rock slip by as they descended into the earth. There was a six-inch space between the bars of their cage and the mine shaft wall. Sometimes that wall sank back even further, allowing a foot to a foot and a half between jagged rock and dropping cage. The bars surrounding them were spaced approximately eight inches apart—not wide enough to actually fit through, but definitely enough room to push a human head into and inflict major damage. Louie considered briefly doing just that to Fiona. It would rip her head off. Worse yet, it could drag her body through and damage the lift. And then we’d be stuck here, a quarter mile beneath the surface.

“How long does this fucking drop last?” Roy asked.

“Fourteen minutes,” Fiona replied. “It could be worse. Shaft 292 is a twenty plus minute descent. Why, you afraid of deep holes in the ground, Piggy?”

“I’m going to bury you in one.”

She jabbed his forehead with the barrel end of the rifle. Roy cried out and a trickle of blood ran down the bridge of his nose. “Don’t even think of pushing me between the bars. I’ll hold this trigger down and tear you all to pieces if you try.”

Even with the warning, Louie figured Roy might be psychotic enough to try it anyway. He tried to change the subject. “292… Are there really that many shafts going down?”

Grace answered from behind him. “There are only two main shafts in Odessa. Shaft 168 was the first, drilling began in 1968. Shaft 2 was dug out in—”

“1992,” Roy interrupted. “We get it. We’re not stupid.”

Fiona stabbed with the rifle again and broke out one of his front teeth.

“Fucking cunfff!”

“Keep it up,” she warned. “Shoot your mouth off a few more times and you’ll likely bleed to death before we reach bottom.”

The four traveled the last nine minutes without speaking another word. The only sounds were those of Roy repeatedly spitting blood and tooth fragments onto the pallet’s edge, and the mournful twang of the heavy steel cable carrying them down. Finally they heard the blare of a second klaxon beneath, and the cage started to slow. It thumped softly at the bottom and the door opened automatically before them.

Fiona backed out first into an immense dimly lit cavern, her rifle aimed at Roy’s face. “Bring the pallet out and park it by the others.”

Louie pushed from the other side as Roy pulled on the jack handle. His eyes wandered up along the curved rock walls, up into the dark shadows fifty feet above where hundreds of stalactites hung down like monstrous fangs. They pushed their load into place next to a pallet stacked with drinking water bottles. The other pallets were similarly loaded with more emergency living supplies and dry foods; enough to last the four of them a year, if not longer.

Louie spun around in a slow circle, taking it all in. “How did you two find this place?” He looked at them apologetically. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying two women are any less capable of looking after themselves than two men are… but to find a working mine shaft, and then figure out a way to transport all this stuff underneath? It’s just… well it’s incredible.”

Grace raised her eyebrows. “This coming from a couple of resourceful men that locked themselves in a tool shed with duct tape?”