Daphne Lamb: The Girl's Guide to the Apocalypse

He exited the room. The minute he was gone, the rest of his disciples fell over themselves to get the offending bowl out of the room. Starshine marched up into my face.

“What’s wrong with you?” she asked. “He’s very angry with you, which means he’s going to punish you.”

Tigerlily started to cry, high-pitched sobs that the others tried to quiet by putting their hands over her face.

“It was her fault! He’s going to come after me, but it was all her fault! She wants us to fail! She wants us to fail! Probably works for Batman!”

“Who is this Batman? Can anyone answer that?” I shook my head at Tatiana. “We couldn’t find anything. I asked her what she thought and she just talked about working at the Circle K.”

“She doesn’t like talking about that. Why would you do that?”

“I didn’t—”

“She’s a crazy bitch!” Tigerlily yelled. “Throw her out! She’s garbage! She’s going to mess everything up!”

“Get her out of here!” Tatiana yelled with such force it startled everyone into submission.

She ushered me into another room where I could still hear Tigerlily’s hysterics.

“Listen to me, “Tatiana said. “There’s a lot of BS that goes on here, but if you want to save your life and not turn into a meatball slathered in Alfredo, you play by the rules, you talk the jargon and pretend like your drinking the Kool-Aid. I don’t know when this is all going to end, but at least you’ve got a support system that will protect you. So just follow my lead.”

“I don’t know if you know this, but I saw him kill my boyfriend,” I said. “He ate him. He’s a monster.”

“Yes! We get it! You keep saying that over and over. You lost someone,” she said annoyed. “This is just the world we live in. Unless you’re willing to sacrifice your Judeo-Christian ethics, you’re going to be serving someone who does.”

“So this is where it all ends,” I said.

She shrugged. “Not a lot different from working at Mitchellwide, I’ll tell you that.”

She opened the door for me and made a gesture with her eyes.

“Let’s get this done, lovers!” she sang. ”Let us feed our Lord with the salt of the earth raised in holy unity with the food of the gods.”

As the door closed behind her, the rest of the followers made a unified “oooommmm” sound.

I don’t know what they served Darren, because I was locked in a broom closet, but what I can tell you is that it smelled delicious, which I hated myself for admitting. I knew full well it probably had a face, a name, a family and credit score at one time or the other.

He ate in silence and no one spoke for the duration, even when he got up to leave. I heard the chair scrape against the floor and the door shut. Then I heard dishes being cleared and footsteps approach the closet. I fully expected to see Tatiana, but instead it was one of the gunmen who’d brought me to the house in the first place.

“What’s happening—” I tried to speak, but instead I was just grabbed roughly and pushed into Darren’s presence.

We were in his library—and by library I mean a room that still had remnants of its former tenants. The wallpaper had baseballs and bats on it, there was a giant poster tacked up on the ceiling of a model in a bikini. I must have kept staring up at it because Darren cleared his throat at one point.

“It’s too high for anyone to get down,” he said. “You learn to ignore it.”

I nodded.

He sat at a desk, one that was small and clearly not made for adults. His chair was short and didn’t give him the authority he probably felt he should have, but I knew it was best not to bring it up.

“I took you in as a favor,” he said. “I believe in favors. I believe that in what you put in the universe comes back to you.”

I nodded.

“I also knew a woman’s loyalty and devotion is just as easily managed as a dog’s, but you have to acquire the right woman for that job. Your master assured me that you are easy to please and rarely put up a fight, so I was happy to take you in.”

“Damn you, Robert,” I muttered under my breath.

“Pardon?”

I furiously shook my head.

“I realize you are unfamiliar with the protocol that I lead my commune, so I will not dole out my usual punishment,” he said.

I nodded.

“But I will make sure you remember your mistakes,” he said.

He snapped his fingers, and his two gunmen grabbed and ushered me out of the room. The rest of the house watched as I was escorted out of the house and outside into the van.

“Guys,” I said. “Where are we going?”

They didn’t answer me, but they did drive me to a nearby park. There was still play equipment out, although badly damaged and hardly usable. From there, they dragged me to a tetherball pole, placed a collar and leash around my neck and tied me there.

“Wait, guys!” I said as I strained against the leash. “You can’t just leave me out here!”

Both gunmen walked away, but one of them stopped and watched me for a few moments. I reached out toward him.

“It doesn’t have to be this way,” I said. “I could just spend the night in the van. It’d be our little secret.”

The gunman stared at me, but was slowly following his coworker to the van. They got in, slammed the door and drove away. As if on cue, almost as if God wanted to reassure how much He hated mankind and this story being told, a storm of rain began to fall, light at first, then progressively heavier. It was miserable as I stood there cold.

I couldn’t even sit down. When the rain did stop, I became aware that there’d be roving gangs somewhere, just lurking around, waiting to take the middling healthy white girl away with them. I tried to loosen the collar, but it was locked with a heavy padlock, making the strain on my neck unbearable. I thought back to the day of that earthquake. Maybe I could have run, maybe I could have found my family and been a thousand miles away from here.

I don’t know what time it was or how much more time I had, but I heard an engine approach. I had been half-asleep at the time, but I was aware of it but then the sound of a car door shutting completely startled me. My neck was killing me as were my feet, so I tried to lean on the pole for some relief.

In the darkness, a figure walked toward me. I straightened to look, and the nearer they got the more I recognized one of the gunmen from the house.

“Is it time?” I asked. “Are you coming to take me back? Have I learned your lessons?”

The gunman didn’t say anything, but got really close in my face.

“Um, hello?” I said. “My neck hurts. I’m really tired. I’m pretty sure I’ve learned my lesson.”

He pulled off his mask, revealing a man with a heavily scarred face. It took me a moment, but I realized that this face belonged to Bruce.

I gasped.

“I thought you were dead,” I said. “How are you not dead?”

“Disappointed?” he asked, annoyed.

“No,” I said. “I thought for sure Darren ate you.”

“I told you,” he said. “I’ve got the networking gift. Once I told him that I was that guy who was in the Farnsworth Invention , he let me go. No thanks to you, of course. You just ran off and left me.”

“I didn’t want to stick around and watch you get eaten.”

“Well, now you get to sit and live with it.”

With that, he spun on his heels and walked away.

“Don’t go!” I said. “Don’t go!”

He raised a hand and gave me the finger.

At first, I thought I’d been left to die, but hours later, him and his coworker returned and set me free again. I didn’t say a word as I was exhausted and in so much pain from my head to my feet. So I let them carry me to the van, just letting all my body weight sag just to make it really difficult for them to toss me into the van.