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

So once upon a time…

Yelling on the street about how there is a purple left.

Yelling on the street about how she has a little girl.

Mob forms (same way you’d imagine it would, just no torches or anything.)

Wife tucks daughter into cabinet to hide her.

“Be very quiet, honey, no matter what you hear!”

Mob breaks down apartment door.

Child is missing.

Mob demands to know where kid is.

Wife tells them it is none of their mobby business.

Wife is thrown out of window.

Mob’s Colombo-like detective skills match paint on wall to paint on wife head.

Mob disperses quietly.

Husband stands over crumpled body of wife.

Franny Fishwife tells story and holds husband’s hand against his will.

Husband thinks of sticking a paintbrush through Fishwife’s eyeball.

After that, you’d think I’d never leave my little girl alone again. You probably think it’s atrocious that I do. That I tuck her in three cleared out lower kitchen cabinets, equipped with blankets, pillows, an LED battery-operated chili-pepper light string, an exciting array of plush pastel animals, a few picture books, a Hello Kitty! thermos, and some of Beth’s lavender sachets from her lingerie drawer. What am I? A monster? Leaving my daughter in the dark, after what happened to her mom?

Okay, Smartie. Let’s take Daddy Doyle’s Multiple Choice Quiz, shall we? Don’t worry, you don’t have to study to pass the test. Ready?

When you are running out of food, and it is the end of the world as you know it, you should:

Go out onto the street holding a kid with a blue head in one hand and a tire wrench in the other.

Go out once a week, tuck your kid in a safe hiding space, and pray nothing goes wrong.

Starve

So, how’d you score, everyone?

Tommy’s Deli has three aisles of tall metal shelving that run back to a wall of four glass-door refrigerated cabinets. One door has a long crack in the glass, and it runs the length of the door, hastily taped over with black gaff tape. The tape barely holds it together, but somehow I don’t think the city code officer will be stopping by tonight. Over one of the glass doors is a sagging vinyl Pepsi sign pushed into the sheetrock with two rusty thumbtacks, the famous red and blue logo chased by some dingy orange flames. And while there are indeed soda cans in one of the glass cabinets, they are not cold and they are certainly not Pepsi. Just a mish mash of bargain brands, mostly lemon-lime, and a few cans of birch beer covered in what looks like dried mud. The other glass cabinets, also sans-frigidness, are filled with everything and anything. Blankets, flashlights, Christmas wrap, folded Great Adventure t-shirts (all small), a few random board games that my kid would have recognized, about 25 boxes of semi-crushed bran flakes cereal, a few soiled boxes of gingerbread pop tarts (Kelloggs execs musta tied one on before the new flavor conference meeting that day) and enough cans of chicken-n-star soup to build a small fort.

Except for some of the flea market items bulging from aisle shelves, the deli looks the same as it always had, even before the mantis propelled her bony shoulder blades into all our lives. The walls of the narrow store are dark pumpkin, roughly painted over bubbled sheetrock. A checkerboard of half-decayed fiber tiles remain in the drop ceiling. Ugly ass, uncovered fluorescent tube lighting. A green plastic house plant in a brass pot suspends from three chains in the center of the store. A large wall clock, reminiscent of grade school, minute arm missing, hangs on the left wall, its lower rim touching a pyramid of powder cleanser cardboard tubes. And the award for reverse feng shui goes to…

I grab six cans of soup from the glass cabinet, hang a quick left to swing back up aisle two, and crash into the ponytail lady, knocking her armful of naked baby food jars to the floor. And yep, they all broke.

“ What the hell- ” I hear Tommy bark from up front. Ponytail has already dropped to a squat, frantically searching through the mess, fingers be damned, for a jar that might have avoided the carnage. There aren’t any. Just broken glass and carrot mush, some of it on the tips of her pointy black boots.

She looks up at me, eyes all a tear, and the most pitiful voice I ever heard says, “Bobby likes the carrot flavor.” But here’s Tommy now with a dustpan and broom, scooting me out of the way, and asking us who’s paying for these, and I know it’ll be me. Does chivalry get a mark? And if so, what color would it be?

I’m standing there. Looking down. Just watching Teddy sweep the scratchy mess into an ancient army green metal dustpan, all the while emitting exasperated puffs and mumblings about his linoleum floor, a very “old man” thing to do. My dad used to do that, too, right after he beat me up. Murmurs and overdramatic exhales, like I had totally inconvenienced him by making him take off his belt and reset the toppled furniture he had thrown me into.

Ponytail, the young mother whose week I just wrecked, is still in a squatting position. I am assuming she is a young mother, and sincerely hoping the famous Bobby who likes carrot flavor was not her husband or some long-haired rabbit she owned. She is still staring down at the slimy glass fragments, seemingly waiting for some of it to magically reassemble into jar form.

As I am standing, and those two are still playing carrot catastrophe, my eyes scan the place and I catch Wick Carmien, the only other customer in the store, make a beeline to the register and steal two cans of beans. I say that like he was being smooth. Like he was some sort of crafty rascal. Like if you weren’t looking straight at him in that moment, you would have missed it. What I really saw, though, was an ancient shaky twig hook his walking cane over the top of the register, and for a moment look like he was gonna take one of those old man tumbles, catch himself, slowly select two cans, actually checking them for dents like he was buying a used car, attempt to stuff one into the left pocket of his red Gore-tex windbreaker, realize it was too small, and then actually try the same thing with the matching right pocket and be sincerely surprised by the no-go of it. Actually it was freaking hysterical. Guess Wick thought he had all the time in the world for the lentil heist of the century. He finally gives up, and then, get this, takes a fucking shopping bag, fumbles with the plastic opening for what seems like half my life, drops the cans inside it, procures his cane, and leaves the store, dreamcatcher bells happily announcing his daring escape.

I barely turn my head to check back on double-feature carrot tragedy still in progress on the floor, and hear the bells once more. Tommy and Ponytail hear the second set of bells as well and stand up. The three of us are now staring in awe at what seems to be five kids (or midgets, yes, yes, Beth, little people ) standing in a perfect chorus line across the inside of the front entrance to the deli. They are all holding kitchen carving knives in their little digits. How cute. They are donned in white plastic ponchos, hoods up, and they each have the same mask on. Okay, I shouldn’t even call them masks, ‘cause this seemed way worse. They had copy paper print-outs of the Gidgidoo’s face over their own, attached with purple produce rubber bands over their ears. Eye holes roughly cut out of the face prints, undoubtedly with the very same carving knives they were holding. Two of them have got Wick, now cane-less, by the arms, and he’s probably moments away from a coronary, as communicated by his eyeball popping oh Christ, this is going down look on his face.