Post apocalypticon, p.4
Post-Apocalypticon, page 4
part #2 of Apocalypticon Series
He leaned in to inspect the boxes of ammo more closely, but then he heard the bang of the shotgun blast from the next car. Horace had fired the gun. “Son of a bitch,” Ben muttered. “He’d better not have offed himself.” He grabbed one of each of a half-dozen different boxes, loaded them into his arms, and hurried back toward Horace’s car. He kicked the rectangular switch plate near the base of the door. It slid open, and Ben cursed under his breath.
The bandits had boarded the train.
“I told you to shoot them harder,” Ben seethed through clenched teeth.
There were seven bandits in the car, with more mounting the stairs in the back. They were lean, but they didn’t seem hungry, like so many did in this post-apocalyptic world. They were ropy, but strong, and not a single one of them had the ashen pallor to their skin that usually signified malnourishment and desperation, as if they were well-fed. They wore bandanas over their mouths, and their hats were crammed down on their heads, but judging by the hair that tumbled out from under some of the brims and by the general shapes of their bodies, Ben estimated that between one and four of them were women. The others might have been men.
The one Horace had shot was lying on the ground, clutching his leg and whimpering in pain. He was roundly ignored by the others.
“Drop them boxes,” said a tall man who stepped forward and pulled the bandana away from his nose. With his other hand, he leveled a six-shooter at Ben’s chest. Ben figured this was probably for some sort of effect; six-shooters were stupid, and also impractical for hijacking a train. The man had probably tossed his real gun just before boarding the car and pulled this one out of his waistband so everyone would think he was a real rootin’ tootin’ asshole. Ben was not impressed.
“Drop ’em,” the man said again, and by the way he set his jaw when he said it, everyone in the car knew he meant business.
“But they’ll go all over the place,” Ben said, not taking his eyes off the man in charge. “It’ll take, like, an hour to pick them all up.”
The man’s eyes blazed. He took a step forward and lowered the gun so it pointed at Horace’s good leg. He cocked the hammer. “Drop. Them.”
Ben shrugged. “You’re the boss.” He threw the entire armload at the bandits, then dove out of the way, ducking into a row of chairs and covering his head with his arms.
The boxes of bullets scattered in the air and collided with the front line of surprised bandits. A few of the boxes burst open, spilling rifle slugs and shotgun shells across the carpet. The rest just fell harmlessly to the floor, fully intact. The bandits looked around at each other, raising their eyebrows and shrugging their shoulders.
The leader let his arm fall slack at his side. He tilted his head and gave Ben a curious look as Ben cautiously lifted his head above the seatbacks. “What…did you think was gonna happen?” he asked, genuinely interested.
Ben glanced down at the bullets that lay scattered across the train floor. He stood up straight and put his hands on his hips. “Honestly? I thought they might all explode on impact,” he admitted.
The bandits murmured their disapproval. “Do you have any idea how bullets work?” the leader asked.
Ben shrugged. “No. I guess I really don’t.”
The bandit frowned. His henchmen and henchwomen chattered to each other, confused, and he silenced them with a hiss. They fell silent and straightened up. “Listen, idiot,” he said, “why don’t you tell us where you keep the cargo, and we’ll—”
But he didn’t bother to finish his sentence, because Ben was suddenly no longer listening. He juked left, toward the train window, then right, toward the aisle, then left again, then he dove right, throwing himself into the space between the seats and hurling his body through the door and into the next car.
The lead bandit sighed. He looked down at Horace. “Is he always like that?” he asked.
Horace shrugged. “Yeah.”
The bandit motioned toward the door with his revolver. “Come on,” he said to his crew, stepping over the fallen conductor. “Let’s go.”
•
Ben was a panther—a lithe, graceful predator who moved with the power and fluidity of water.
“Ow,” he said, cursing as he collided with a metal shelf.
Halfway through the armory car, he gripped the edges of the shelf and pulled. The whole steel structure came tipping over, lodging at an angle against the shelf on the other side, creating a barricade through the car and sending dull sabers and sharpened mop handles scattering across the floor. Satisfied with the obstacle, he turned and leapt back into panther mode, pouncing through the next door and through the Red Caps’ quarters, on into the cargo car beyond, only running into three seats and colliding with just two Red Caps, and given how crazy everything was and how much everyone was running around covered in blood and reeking of confusion, Ben thought that was pretty good.
He dashed into the cargo car and tapped his foot impatiently as he waited for the door to slide shut. Finally, it did, and he threw the locking mechanism that one of the Red Caps had rigged up. It wasn’t a very good locking mechanism, but it was a small wedge that could be jammed into the back of the door, and though it wouldn’t keep anyone out for long, it would keep them out for a minute or two.
And a minute or two was all Ben needed.
He dashed into the shelves and gave himself only a brief second to wonder why the cargo shelves were bolted to the ground, but the armory shelves were just shoved loosely into a stack. It just seemed inequitable. The cargo hold wasn’t nearly as well-stocked as it had once been, back when Ben and Patrick had boarded Horace’s train for the first time. Those had been the heydays of the apocalypse—the caviar days, the days of good and plenty…when post-apocalyptic capitalism was at its best, and there were men- and women-of-plenty in every corner of the country selling off their excess to the rest of America and paying people like Horace for safe, timely, and reliable transport.
But so much had changed in just three years. The M-Day survivors were being pulled to their wits’ end by the stresses of post-apocalyptic life, and this led to harsher words, which led to bigger fights, which led to meaner battles...which ended in general slaughter. People were picking and losing fights in record numbers, and seeing as how ninety-nine percent of the population had already been melted into goo by the Flying Monkeys, that didn’t leave a whole lot of folks standing…add to them all the people who were getting sick, and that meant there weren’t many folks still paying to ship goods across the country.
But even though the shelves were sparse, that didn’t make them any less important.
Oh, no. Not by a long shot.
There were plenty of high-value items in the cargo hold these days. There was a full Confederate Civil War soldier uniform, complete with gloves and sidearm. There was a fairly worn but wholly-intact copy of Uncanny X-Men #266—the first appearance of the mutant called Gambit. There was a tin of Spam that the owner claimed was the last remaining can of spiced ham on Earth, and for all Ben knew, he was right.
But more valuable than all of these things was the polycarbonate briefcase.
And it was more valuable by far.
It wasn’t the briefcase itself that was particularly valuable, though it probably hadn’t come cheap back when such things could be purchased in stores and swiped through on credit cards. It was a heavy duty piece of work, a custom Zero Halliburton with six different locks, a biometric scanner, and an indestructible hinge system. It was said to be untamperable, unbreakable, and unopenable by anyone who didn’t have the keys, the code, and a properly programmed thumbprint. So it wasn’t exactly a slouch in the “has some value” department.
It was what was inside, however, that made the briefcase the most valuable cargo Horace had ever carried.
In the years after M-Day, a dull shock had spread through the world, an unwillingness to accept the new reality. A lot of survivors couldn’t handle the fact that they’d survived; suicides were common, depression was rampant. One of the few things that held what was left of society together—that gave people hope—was that when everything else collapsed, one rule remained: if you survived the Flying Monkeys, it meant you were immune to the dust. You were healthy; there was something within you that could combat the effects of the poison, and even though you could still die in a knife fight, or be shot in the face, or be ripped apart slowly and eaten by dusters, the dust itself couldn’t hurt you. That was the rule.
But in the more recent days of the apocalypse, that rule was being challenged.
In the fourth year after the apocalypse, people started getting sick. Not a lot of people…not the majority of people…but a few of them. They would come down with a fever, or their skin would take on a sickly, jaundiced yellow hue, or they would break out in hives; the early indicators were different in everybody, but eventually, the coughing fits would set in, and the sneezes...and they would start choking up globs of an emerald green mucous, and they would sneeze strings of green snot flecked with blood. The sickness would get worse quickly from there, and soon a yellow ooze would leak from their noses, from their ears, from the ducts of their eyes. Dark stains would spread across the fabric of their pants, both in front and behind, and that was when they knew it was almost over…because the next stage was the excreting of the yellow-green Monkey fluid from their pores, little drips and drops squeezing out from the skin, coating their limbs in slick, sulfurous goo, dripping down their cheeks, dribbling down their legs, pooling in their shoes. Most died of dehydration; they were considered the lucky ones. Those who pressed on passed the leaking stage moved on to the next and final phase of the sickness: their bodies would swell and expand from the inside at an incredible and horrifying rate; their skin would bubble out into thick blister boils, and they would rupture—their flesh would burst open, squirting greenish slime and blood, until their bodies spilled out most of what had been inside. What remained was often nothing more than a soggy sack of skin and bones saddled with strings of yellow-green muscle and tendon splaying out in the wind.
They called it the Green Fever, and it was spreading.
It was just a rumor at first, a story whispered in the shanty towns along the tracks—a warning, a nightmare, a bedtime story that was whispered to misbehaving children. But the stories became more and more frequent, an accepted mythology, and before long, everyone claimed to have had an encounter with the fever…this person’s brother, that person’s friend. Soon, Ben was seeing it for himself every time the train rolled into another town. He saw a woman coughing green in Elko…a little boy leaking green from his skin in Newton…an elderly man sneezing bloody goo in Gallup…an advanced-stage teenage girl, stumbling into the street in a fit of fever, bursting right in front of his eyes in Altoona.
He’d had to wipe the bits of her skin from his cheek.
It was in all the towns now, and all the spaces in between all the towns. People were dying everywhere. The apocalypse was having its own apocalypse.
Once you came down with Green Fever, your chance of survival was zero percent.
Everyone who got sick died.
Everyone.
But the silver case was going to change that.
Because according to the man who entrusted it to Horace’s care, inside the case was the cure.
And if it was true—if the serum or powder or pill or whatever it was inside the silver case could actually cure the Green Fever—that made it the single most valuable item on the face of the planet. Which also made it the likeliest reason for the ambush.
Ben rushed forward and snatched the silver case from its shelf. He pulled at the latches, but of course, they didn’t budge. “Goddammit,” he cursed under his breath. He needed to open that case.
He reached up and grabbed another piece of cargo from the shelves, a bowling ball that had been signed in gold marker by some nerd who bowled for a living and who probably had zero chance of having any real respect from any real person when he’d been alive. “Your life was wasted,” Ben told the signature as he pulled the ball down. He lifted it over his head, then brought it crashing down on the silver case.
The latches popped open.
Ben stared at the case, incredulous. “Wow. Let me guess: made in America?”
He shook his head as he heaved the ball away and pulled open the case. Five Dasani water bottles were lined up along the inside. At some point in their mostly-inconsequential lives, the bottles had been emptied of their water, and they had been filled with a syrupy, almost viscous bright-orange liquid. Then they had been sealed, with the caps screwed on tight and dipped in thick yellow wax. A ring of white medical tape had been wrapped around the seal, and the letters JRB had been scrawled on the tape by a hasty hand. Ben picked up one of the bottles from the case. “This isn’t an antidote,” he said, screwing up his face in confusion at the thick orange liquid inside. “This is LiveWire Mt. Dew.”
A gunshot pinged against the train car, and Ben snapped back to attention. He pulled the other four bottles from inside the case and loaded them into his arms. He nudged the case closed with his elbow and pushed it back into place on the shelf with his knee. Then he hurried across the car, dropped to one knee, and unloaded the bottles on the floor. He pulled out the purple Jansport—old, ragged, and perfectly unassuming—and shoved the bottles inside. Then he zipped the bag shut and stuffed it back onto its shelf. “Perfect,” he said, proud of himself. “Just like Patrick would do it.”
That is not at all how I would do it, the voice of Patrick insisted inside Ben’s head. I haven’t been gone nearly long enough for you to forget how well I would do things.
Ben sighed. That voice had been haunting him more and more lately.
“Shut up,” he grumbled. “It’s exactly how you would do it.”
Switching the bottles isn’t a terrible idea, Patrick admitted. It’s not the best idea...but it’s not a terrible idea. We’ll call it ‘Ben-smart.’ But if you’re going to do something ‘Ben-smart’—which, to be clear, is ‘Patrick-stupid’—then you’re going to need to go all the way.
“What the hell does that mean?” Ben demanded.
Go all the way, Benny Boy. Go Ben-smart all the way.
“What do you mean?!” he said, getting irritated.
I mean, Patrick-stupid harder! Patrick cried.
Ben closed his eyes and shook his head. “If you weren’t dead already, I’d kill you all over again.”
A fist slammed against the window set into the train car door. Ben jumped. “Shit,” he said. “Out of time.”
Okay, okay, said Patrick. In the interest of the current timeline, I’ll just tell you. Okay? Not because you deserve a quick answer, but because if I don’t help you, you’ll probably get all butchered up, and then I won’t be able to lord my genius over you later. For that reason, I’ll just tell you: the suitcase is empty.
“Yeah. I know.” Ben rolled his eyes. “I emptied it, stupid.”
He imagined Patrick burying his face in his hands and shaking his head sadly. No, no, no, he said. I know you emptied it. You didn’t refill it. That’s the problem.
Ben gasped. “Shit,” he said. He allowed himself a frustrated sigh. “I hate it when you’re right.”
I know you do, Benny Boy. I know you do.
Ben dashed back across the car and threw open the briefcase again. If it was the case the bandits were after, they’d pick it up and know instantly that it was empty.
He glanced up at the door window. The King of the Bandits was standing on the other side, but he wasn’t looking in; he was shouting directions over his shoulder, directing the others off the train and around to the back of the car. Ben snatched the nearest thing on the shelf, the Civil War uniform, and stuffed it into the briefcase. He tested its weight. Still light. He threw in the can of Spam, too, and two stuffed rabbits they were supposed to drop off in Albuquerque. He hefted the briefcase. “Perfect,” he decided with a smirk. “I am Indiana Jones and the motherfucking bag of sand.”
The bag of sand in Indiana Jones was too light, Patrick pointed out. It made that big rock ball crash down, Alfred Molina died, everything went to hell.
“Shut up,” Ben said. “Alfred Molina was already dead by then.”
Oh yeah, Patrick said thoughtfully. You got me there.
The door behind Ben slammed open, and he dropped the briefcase. Three of the bandits stormed into the car...he had just enough time to flick the clasps closed before they came around the shelving, guns held at their hips, barrels pointed in the general direction of Ben’s crotch.
“Hands,” one of the bandits growled from behind her handkerchief.
Ben raised his hands into the air and twisted his hips a bit, cocking in one knee to protect his precious nethers. “What do you want?” he asked. He intended to sound stoic and pissed off, but his voice didn’t quite get the memo, and it squeaked like a balloon being rubbed by a sugared-up toddler.
The bandits didn’t reply. One of them lowered his gun and jogged up the length of the train car, kicking away the shim and sliding open the door. The leader strolled in, walking casually down the aisle, glancing around at the windows and the shelves, taking stock and nodding thoughtfully, as if he were some bigshot tycoon who might like to buy this particular train car someday soon.
Ben gritted his teeth. If there was one thing he hated, it was casually murderous dickholes.
“Put down your guns,” the leader said, his voice suddenly smooth as cream. He motioned downward with his hands, and the other two bandits lowered their revolvers. They stepped back and took up sentinel duty by the door. The leader stepped down the aisle and strode up to the shelves where Ben stood, crooked and self-guarding. The bandit holstered his gun and spread his hands wide in a show of innocence, or maybe peace—which Ben didn’t exactly buy, since he and his friends had just rained bullets down on the outside of the train until the metal resembled the surface of the moon, and they’d likely killed a whole mess of Red Caps and recruits in their attempt to enter this car, too. If Ben survived the hour, he’d probably be responsible for tallying up the bodies, and then burying them, and then finding new recruits in the next town, and then starting all over with the training, and goddamn it all if that didn’t make him want to stab himself in the heart.
