The Long Weekend After the Apocalypse
The Long Weekend After the Apocalypse
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Knife looked wary, as ever.
Dancer popped another pill into his mouth but took little notice of his surroundings, preferring instead the silent head-chant of his new found church which transported him
to that other place, albeit temporarily.
Grimm, nothing like his name, smiled at his companions and fidgeted gently, trying to find a more comfortable position on the slimy, ridged concrete parapet.
Voice didn't. Just stayed quiet.
Fist sat a little apart from the rest, his demons stirring up an inner rage that turned his face red, and occasionally made him hiss, snake-ish, between fiercely clenched teeth.
A full crew for the night's pranks.
A fog, yellow as pus, curdled around them. Voice pulled up his collar, rose stiffly to his feet, stamped the chill from his feet and legs.
"Time," he said, and walked slowly away from the edge, stretching as he went. Knife and Grimm hastened after him, Knife returning after a second to shake Fist and Dancer, in case they hadn't heard.
Fist erupted to his feet, with murderous eyes. He pushed Knife roughly aside and marched off after Voice, while Dancer slowly uncoiled and rose languorously, a cat in human form.
Knife remained, ever watchful, fearful, squinting into the yellow blackness. Only a couple of days ago they had been caught on the hop by a boatload of armed monks, the Angry Buddha Brigade, and without Fist they'd never have pushed them back into the sea. After a few seconds he realised he was alone, and sprinted off after the others. He caught up with them shortly, on the path down from the artificial cliff of the harbour wall, cuffed Dancer semi-playfully on the shoulder as he drew level.
"Be OK tonight, won't it? D'yer think, eh, Dancer? D'yer think?"
Dancer was still buzzing from the head-chant, performed with about double the dosage of pharmaceutical enlightenment that his shaman had recommended. There had to be a short-cut, after all. He stopped walking, graced Knife with a beatific smile and inclined his head towards him, a not quite bow.
"The question should not be will things be OK, but whether indeed things can be any other way when nothing that we could possibly do, or any fate that could possibly befall us, can in any way affect the passage of time, or the movement of our planet through the eternal cosmos. Do you see?"
"Yer fuckin' crazy, man." He looked at Dancer in disgust. "Fuckin' cosmos. We gonna get stomped again tonight, or what?"
Dancer took a deep nasal breath of the damp air, clearing his head a little.
"Let me put it this way. This is the apocalypse, so as far as I know we're dead already, or something like it. Therefore it doesn't really matter, does it?
"I don't feel very dead. Anyway, it still fuckin' hurts when we get done over, dunnit? So what d'yer reckon?"
Dancer sighed. "Option one. We get stomped, we come back another day. Option two.We get totally trashed, we never have to worry about it again. Or then again maybe we do, depending on your religious leanings. Option three, everything'll be OK, and we worry about if we get stomped next time. Makes no sense to think about it. See what I mean?"
"Yer fuckin' crazy, man," Knife spat, and trotted off after the others, his voice drifting back. "Fuckin' weird bastard won't even talk fuckin' English, fuckin'........."
Dancer shrugged, then followed. He tried to re-initiate the head-chant, but found it too difficult while he walked. He increased his stride so he could gain on the others. There may be no point in worrying about what was to be, but it would be better not to get caught out alone. He had heard rumours that more bands of renegade angels were about, holding kangaroo courts and dishing out summary chastisement. Immolation, apparently, was a current favourite. Then again, they had already suffered the consequences of being caught in the crossfire between the Neo-Jesuit faction and the Jehovah's Reformationist Witnesses. Their group had originally numbered ten, but since the apocalypse the Witnesses had proved to be particularly vicious, and they took no prisoners.
By some miracle (as if miracles really happened anymore) some of the sodium lamps were still functioning in the car park, painting the rusting motor-hulks orange, and putting flesh on the fog. Dancer met up with the others crouched in the shadow of a derelict bus. Fist was conspicuously absent, no doubt scouting the area. Voice was crouched, tense, eyes closed and staring hard. His lips moved soundlessly, forming words in a language even he could not decipher.
Knife and Grimm were involved in a whispered discussion, something about fruit, as if any of them had seen so much as a tinned pear in over five years. Dancer squatted next to Voice, closed his eyes, and moved into the headchant. Fist wasn't possessed of the finest sense of direction, and it could be a while before he came raging back.
Dancer had just started to establish his rhythm when Fist stormed around the side of the bus and angrily crushed a hole in its flank with his elbow, rust to dust.
"Ain't nobody here." he hissed through viciously clenched teeth. "Never was, not for weeks." He stormed off again into the night.
Dancer wearily opened his eyes while Voice slowly rose to his feet, his lips still voicelessly reciting some genetically remembered litany. He began to pace unevenly, each step a different length and a slightly different direction to the last, and as he paced his hands and fingers became animated, conducting a puzzling and alien sign-dialogue with eachother. Now and again he would drop to his knees and draw some mystic symbol or talisman in the air in front of his face.
After some few minutes of this complex genuflection he paused and regarded Dancer curiously, though his feet kept shuffling impatiently.
"There are many ways of reaching out, Dancer. Why not try my way? I could teach you, really I could. What do you say? It could be our only way out of here."
"That's what they all say. Sorry, but I've had it with everyone else's ideals, that's what sent everything crazy in the first place. D'you know what?" Voice raised an eyebrow.
I was caught out alone the other day, when we were scouting the town for cans. Scientologists." Voice winced. "Yeah," Dancer continued, "Exactly. They tied me up and wouldn't let me go until I'd filled out a personality profile. So no thanks," Dancer shook his head. "I prefer to get there chemically, take the short cuts to grace. And I can feel it, I'm sure I'm nearly there, really I am." He paused, popping another pill. "But thanks anyway."
Voice shrugged his shoulders and with a subtle but convoluted twist of the wrist bestowed a blessing on him anyway before recommencing his shambling invocation.
In the distance they heard Fist screaming, venting his rage on some defenceless, inanimate object. Voice paused in his devotions and cocked his head gently to one side, puppy-like. Dancer smiled. Grimm wrapped both hands around his face, suppressing a naughty-boy giggle while Knife tried to stuff a fist into his mouth, biting on white knuckles in a bid to suppress the panic that was always within.
The din showed no sign of waning. Voice and Dancer, Voice as always slightly in front, started out towards the hullabaloo, homing in on the sounds of destruction. The others followed on behind, anxious not to split the group.
By following the sounds Fist wasn't hard to find. He flailed hysterically in the ruins of a small wooden shed, the ticket-collector's citadel, it's structure already crushed to little more than match-wood. One of the remaining spars was being now pressed into service as a cudgel, encouraging the ticket machine to spill its viscera onto the tarmac. Every vein in Fist's arms and face stood out, every muscle flexed stringily under the taut skin, giving the appearance of an undernourished Schwartzenegger. They watched in silence for several minutes, waiting for the anger to end. Not that it could go away, but finally the skinny body would run out of steam and instead would collapse into a sullen, futile, glowering, steaming silence.
And the end came, as always, as swiftly as had the beginning. With one final, furious thud the machine surrendered its internal mechanism, springs and bits of plastic and metal spewing out across the floor, irreparable. Fist sank to his knees, bowed until his forehead brushed the cold tarmac, sobbing quietly. Knife was terrified by this weakness and crouched down next to him, cradled Fist's head in his arms and made calm gentling sounds in his throat. Grimm capered happily around, oblivious of the maternal tableaux laid out before him, preferring instead to gather up the plethora of surplus parts and stuff his pockets with them.
Voice kicked aimlessly at the splintered wreckage. "We could've slept in here tonight. Out of the damp." The fog was turning into drizzle, finding its way in though any gap in their clothing, of which there were legion, chilling the parts that fog couldn't reach.
Dancer had popped a couple more pills on the walk from the bus and was starting to buzz. No, cards on the table. Dancer had popped several pills on top of the several pills he'd popped earlier, and buzz was a state of being that had been left behind a while ago. The headchant ripped through his brain like a chainsaw, now that was a buzz and a half and -JESUS CHRIST THAT WAS REALLY A BUZZ AND A HALF LIKE SNORTING AJAX- the angels, so long sought after, were all around him now, their voices all clamouring for attention, drowning out all else. His body temperature rose by several degrees and steam started to rise from his skin and clothing and a beatific smile spread across his face. Indeed, Dancer felt the smile go beyond the confines of his face and spread out, wider even than his face, widening out to encompass the whole of the troupe, taking the extra heat he was generating with it. They were all touched by his munificence, although they could not yet feel it. Voice was looking curiously at him and said something, but the angels drowned him out. Dancer spoke, and his voice rolled around his head like thunder, magnificent and powerful, the voice of God.
"I speak with the voice of God!" His whisper was an eruption of sound, silencing the babble of the angels (somewhat to Dancer's relief - whoever had coined the phrase 'the voice of an angel' had obviously never heard a gaggle of them at close range). All faces, even Fist's, turned towards him. The angels, incapable now of speech, laid their hands on him as if seeking alternate means of communication. Dancer's body temperature rose another couple of degrees, and he felt his feet gradually lose contact with the earth as the energy of the angels flowed into him.
"Hear me, vile mendicants, for I am the mouthpiece of the Lord, and the time has come for you all to be judged!" His companions fell to their knees, wailing and shrieking and clawing at their ears. Even the angels fell back, their lips moving soundlessly.
"The time of judgement has come, and I am your Nemesis. Fall down on your faces, foul beings, and let the rod of righteous justice fall upon your backs!" Blinding white light now spewed forth from Dancer's mouth and eyes, searchlights probing for souls not yet lost. The prostrate forms before him were trying to crawl away, to escape the terrible vengeance that they had been so long searching for. Dancer was now floating six inches from the ground. His clothes smouldered, then flared briefly before falling from his body. His naked form hung suspended, arms outstretched, cruciform. Grimm and Fist had somehow managed to crawl out of his field of view, but that was of no consequence. They should be judged in order.
"You who are known as Voice, who would seek to lead those that are weak. You first will be the first to suffer the Lord's munificence. Stand up and be counted." Against his will, Voice felt himself tugged up to his feet by the unseen hands of the attendant angels. He looked Dancer/God/Christ knows who defiantly in the eye. "Voice, you have led a life of no account. You have sinned almost ceaselessly, without care for the consequences of your actions. The few acts of kindness you have performed have always had an ulterior motive, and have always been to your own advantage. The judgement upon your soul has been passed. You shall....."
Thwack!!!
The light flickered and failed, the body fell. Dancer looked around groggily. Fist stood over him, a length of timber in his hand. That vein was throbbing on his temple again.
Thwack!!!
Grinning like the maniac he truly was, Fist brought the timber down again and againand again over Dancer's head, once more venting his anger in the only way he knew how, raining blows down until the face was no longer recognisable, the head no longer the right shape, the pasty body no longer lily-white but red and torn and still and ripped and bleeding and....
Thwack!!!
For a short eternity, for as long as he had the strength to wield the makeshift club, Fist administered his own retribution while the others gathered around, silent witnesses to the death of God.
The blows came slower, lighter, and at last Fist stopped, the club now needed as a prop to keep him on his feet. Grimm, Knife and Voice gathered around. Just for once, Grimm was not giggling and Knife was not cowering. Voice stepped carefully around the pool of gore and touched Fist's arm tenderly.
"You did good, man." Fist stared at him, his expression dim incomprehension. Voice gripped his arm, reassuring. "No, really, I mean it." He looked around at the others."This is the bloody apocalypse, after all . The last thing we need now is a God to fuck things up even more."
End
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