Gregory Norris - Down with the Fallen - A Post-Apocalyptic Horror Anthology

“…by order of the Fellowship and the Under Shepherd, you are hereby sentenced to summary execution.” His voice is strong and commanding as he utters the end of our lives. I want to hate him so much, to hate everyone around me, the church, everyone. But I can’t. I hate what they’re doing, what they’ve brought us to, but I don’t hate them. I pity them.

In that moment, I glue my eyes to Franco as the sound of the officer racking the slide of his pistol back reaches my ears, a bullet in the chamber, ready. Time slows as I focus on those hazel eyes. I clench my bound fists behind my back and hold on to a scared smile.

Franco grins back at me through tear-stained lips, eyes sad but somehow happy in the same instant. As I hear the faint click of the trigger just before the finale, one last thought rolls through my mind.

What was my crime? I had done a forbidden thing. I loved him.

I put Biya in the lower kitchen cabinet. We go over the rules about quiet, calling out, and listening for our code word: ziggles. She is not afraid of staying in the cabinet anymore. I am not sure if that makes me feel better or just sick to my stomach. I kiss my daughter and the doll on the forehead. The hinge creaks as I gently close the door. I make a mental note to oil all the cupboards tomorrow. I lock up, and head down two flights of stairs to the street.

It’s raw out tonight. Windy. The howly type. Penetrating pores and chilling bone. Searching for vital organs to freeze. A wind with a purpose, my Beth used to say. So far, I haven’t run into anyone, marked or unmarked, for four of the eight icy city blocks I’ve walked to Tommy’s Deli. Lucky. Good . But even unmarked, what a sight I must be. A six-foot-five weirdo, sporting what is clearly a woman’s puff jacket (could not get the bloodstains out of my parka), in a lovely shade of violet blue, oh so carefully positioning my big man tootsies on scattered patches of dry pavement, whipping my head around with every step, expecting who the hell knows what. No doubt I look as if I’m fully prepared to pitch myself into a dumpster, should I hear even the tiniest rattle of a tuna can rolling down the street. My bristly red, mis- self -shaven head is fully exposed to the unforgiving gusts of late January. Ears starting to painfully tingle. But still, it would have been much too dangerous to wear the winter hat. No way .

Shame, though. It’s the hat Biya gave me for Christmas. A really uncool, monstrosity of a cap. Dark grey, with a strip of those white Aztec triangles which scream ski lodge, or marshmallow s’mores, or just, old guy. I don’t know if I fell in love with that hat because it was the first gift my 4-year-old ever gave me, or because it was so freakin’ warm. Berber lining. Fold-down, faux-fur brim. Generous ear flaps. Damn thing is even water repellent.

“You always get so cold, Daddy,” Biya said, eagerly fastening the velcro under my scraggly cinnamon beard. I had barely peeled all the green foil wrapping off the gift and she was on me, smelling of cinnamon apple oatmeal and yanking the side flaps down with purposeful kid grunts.

“It’s for out of doors men,” Biya continued, eyes skyward, carefully repeating what I am sure Beth told her to say. “Oh!” Biya added, remembering, “and trapped men.”

At this point my wife, Beth, could barely contain her giggles and jumped in, “That’s trappers, honey. You know, like hunters?” But Biya was already a hundred miles away. Having officially bequeathed her gift to me, she was now on to liberating her plastic tea set from the overkill bondage of the cardboard display box. The packaging for the set—pot, sugar bowl, creamer, and service for four—was adorned with a hideous mix of lavender, navy blue and popcorn yellow flower designs, making me think of the Scooby-Doo van for some odd reason. She was now tearing into it, kid grunts reemerging, as if she had some game show time limit for getting it free. Biya had no idea that the days of having tea parties with friends were pretty much over now. As were the days of hat wearing, despite the season.

But you don’t really know what I am talking about, do you? Well, if you had asked Beth, she probably would have regaled you with all the details, beginning to end. ‘Cause she followed it, you know? She didn’t work, choosing to stay home with Biya till she started first grade. So Beth followed it night and day while it was happening until— Well. She followed it. I wish I had followed it. I keep going over it in my head now, wondering if I had taken it more seriously at the beginning, if I had seen how quickly it was becoming scary, how I might have decided to get my family out of the city. I heard some people did that. I heard a lot of people say they were going as far as Canada.

Our landlord, Dell, across the hall in 201? He took his family to his sister’s place in some remote part of Maine. Like literally, the tip of Maine. “Whatever,” I said to Beth. “Let him do his paranoia shuffle, just like all the other idiots. So long as he doesn’t kick us out, or expect me to a pigeon to drop him a rent check in Maine” I mighta, coulda, shoulda paid a little more attention to the deep lines of worry on my wife’s face as she relayed the story of how our landlord was abandoning his own building in quite a hurry, or the one about how she had to hit three markets that week to find one with some eggs. Instead, I did what Doyle always does best when anything happened; make his panicked wife feel as if she was totally, and womanishly, completely overreacting.

If you want an exact start date, it was November 14th. My wedding anniversary of all days. I missed the first broadcast that fateful night. But come the next morning at Wheelset Manufacturing, I found several of my work buddies in a cryptic huddle, intensely debating their theories about it, about her. I remember pushing past them to the timeclock. They were way too embroiled in their conversation to even scold me for jumping the line, and that was damn weird.

Anywho, at 8pm on November 14th, everyone’s cable had gotten interrupted, or hacked, or hijacked, or we all got hypnotized (everybody jumped in with their own personal theory and highly credible hearsay… my sister’s cousin’s friend who does the wife of a cable exec said… ) No matter what show or what channel, anyone watching the tube got to see her for the first time; the her I will now refer to as the Gidgidoo. At 8pm, the Gidgidoo materialized on computers, televisions, phones, tablets, to make her first prediction, or whatever you want to call it, and started the damn apocalypse.

So how do I describe her? Well, I am pretty sure she was Indian. Indian, from like, India. Yep. Okay. You’re right. I’ll never be a poster boy for political correctness, and Beth would have scolded me for just making an assumption like that. But this is my yarn, dammit, and the big, bad “G” looked Indian to me. You work in a loud, sweaty machine shop all day with a bunch of old white guys, no radio, and two glorious 15-minute breaks, and let’s see how globally educated you can get. And I didn’t start calling her, a her . That part was not me. Everyone was calling it a her. Maybe it was just easier to think of it as a woman. She sure as hell inflicted pain like one. Yeah, that was probably a sexist remark, too. Congrats on catching it. If your ethical odometer is on overload, you can always stop listening.

So, whatever, there she was. This person on TV. Telling us that the very next day, all child abusers would wake up with a purple mark on their foreheads , so all the world can see the truth. That was her first broadcast, and those, her only words. All of Gidgi’s broadcasts always went down the same way. Any channel you were watching would fade out to a white-grey static, like in Poltergeist with that guy from Coach ? Then this skeletal figure slowly comes into focus. Creamy, light brown skin, dressed in a white gown (looked a lot like those paper napkin gowns they give you at the doctor’s office), seated on a white floor, in a white, windowless room. A crumpled, somewhat dirty, urine-yellow blanket was laid over her skinny legs. Course I never saw the legs. I just assumed she had legs and wasn’t a mermaid or something. Her stick-like body would be turned away from the camera, and her twizzler-ish arms pushed straight down onto the floor, as if supporting what weight she had. But her head would be twisted backwards, looking back at the viewer over pointy and protruding shoulder blades. It looked really uncomfortable for her, but that was how she always appeared. Same way, every time. Like some sexy model position for a magazine that could have been titled Disturborexia or Brittle Broads or some such thing .