Soft Apocalypse

The cop shook his head. “Three armed men? You think I’m Wyatt Earp or something?”

“Please. Please officer,” Jeannie said. “We’ll help you.”

He shook his head again. “You shouldn’t of screwed around with them.” He rolled up the window.

“Call for backup!” I shouted. The cruiser pulled away. Jeannie pounded on the back of it, pleading for him to stop.

I looked at Colin. Sweat was pouring down his filthy face. “We have to go in there,” I said.

Colin nodded. “I know.”

“What do we have to fight with?” Jim asked. He was standing at my shoulder.

“Here,” Jeannie said, holding kitchen knives and utensils. I grabbed a black-handled butcher knife, my hand shaking.

There weren’t enough knives for everyone. Jim grabbed a rusted shovel off the driveway, Edie grabbed a two-pronged barbecue fork out of Jeannie’s outstretched hand.

“Some should go in the garage door,” Colin said. “We need to hit them all at once.” He looked at me. “We have to do this. We can’t let up.” He looked so scared. I nodded, not sure if I could do it for real. I wished Cortez was here. Cortez was the action guy, we were the sarcastic clowns.

We ran to the doors. I eased the screen door open, flinching as it squealed, and saw them in there. They were circled around Ange, who was on the dining room table; her shirt and bra were on the floor in pieces. One of the men had her arms pinned, another was tugging her jeans off as she thrashed and screamed. They were grinning, joking, taking their time. A part of my mind kept insisting this was a movie, but the knife felt so real in my sweaty fist.

The guy with the glasses looked our way and shouted a warning. He grabbed the rifle leaning against the table. I froze in the doorway.

“Go,” Colin said. I went.

Jim came crashing through the side door, shovel raised. The guy swung the rifle around just as Jim hit him. The rifle went off, but missed.

I reached the bald guy just as he got his hand on the other rifle, and stabbed him near the collar bone, felt the knife sink.

He screamed. I couldn’t believe I’d just stabbed someone. He raised his free hand to ward off the knife and I stabbed again—hard this time—down through his hand, slicing between two fingers. The knife sunk halfway to his wrist.

They’re so sharp, I thought.

He shouted something, but I didn’t understand because it was garbled and wet. Edie was behind him, and the barbecue fork was in his back. The guy’s split, bloody hand hit me in the face as he turned. He dropped to one knee, then fell, scrabbling on the floor like a roach sprayed with insecticide.

I spun and saw Jim slam the shovel down on the back of the struggling war vet’s head. Jeannie was on the vet’s back, trying to hold him down. There were a half-dozen bloody wounds in his back. Both Jim and Jeannie were crying hysterically. Jim brought the shovel down again and the vet lay still.

Colin and Carrie and Ange were staring down at the third guy. The plastic hilt of a steak knife was buried in his throat, in that spot where you give people tracheotomies. There was a spray of blood across Colin’s face. There was blood everywhere. The TV, which was playing a DVD of some stupid comedy, was splashed with it. The bricks on the fireplace were speckled with it. A framed picture of a clean-cut family was lying on the floor, drenched in it.

We ran, past the dumbfounded stares of neighbors gathered on the sidewalk in front of the house.

“I keep thinking of Lord of the Flies,” I said as we walked.

“We didn’t have a choice,” Colin said. His wavery tone was not terribly convincing.

Jeannie was taking it the hardest. She cried and cried. Her eyes looked haunted.

No animal instinct had taken over as we stormed that house. We had remained a bunch of scared suburban college graduates doing the last thing in the world we could ever imagine doing. We have to get tougher, Jeannie had said a million years ago. Well, we were tougher. Hooray for us.

My phone jingled; a rope of adrenaline ripped through me, clearing my sinuses and sending my heart racing.

I’m sorry. I know you asked me not to. Have news! Call me? Miss you so much.

Can’t. Not right now.

The phone jingled again within seconds.

Pls meet me? Pls? It’s important.

I was aching to see her, but I couldn’t face her. I couldn’t tell her what we’d done.

Another time. Soon.

A moment later, it jingled again.

And then again.

I need to see u!

We arranged to meet.

I read the messages over a few times, the way I always read Sophia’s messages, looking for nuances I might be missing, drinking in every last scrap of meaning. Then I put the phone away.

I don’t have much of a poker face. Before I’d even gotten in her car I was crying. She held me close, waited while I told her between sobs.

She told me we’d had no choice, that we’d done the right thing. She said she would have gone in with us to save Ange if she’d been there. But she hadn’t been there; she hadn’t stabbed people while they screamed. There was so much distance between intent and action. I’d had no idea how much until I had to act.

The screensaver in my mind no longer held a picture of a beautiful smiling Sophia, it held a screaming man, his hand sliced between two fingers, nearly to the wrist.

“I have a job interview arranged for you in Savannah. It’s not much, just working in a convenience store, but it’s a start.” She was so remarkably clean, her clothes so crisp and new.

“I can’t leave my tribe,” I said. “They need me now; we need to stick together.”

“No,” she said, pulling me to her, holding me tight. “You have to come to Savannah. You can help them more that way. You can get an apartment and they can all stay with you and look for jobs.”

You can get an apartment. Not “we.” Three’s a crowd, after all.

“I can’t leave them now.”

“How will any of you ever get out of this if you refuse to ever separate?”

“I don’t know.”

She pressed the interview information into my hand. “Just go to it.”

I took my phone out of my pocket and held it out. “I’ll always love you, Sophia. Always.”

Fresh tears rolled out of her dark eyes. “No. I don’t want it.”

“I can’t answer it any more.”

“So don’t answer it.”

I kissed her, long and deep, and for the first time since we’d been in that movie theater, she let me. Then I got out of her car and headed into the woods to find my tribe.

So don’t answer it, she’d said. But I knew I would. If she called, I’d answer.

There was a cypress swamp below the tracks, trees with roots like melting wax, branches draped in Spanish moss. I threw the phone in a high arc. It ricocheted off a tree and splashed in the brown water.

Chapter 2 ART SHOW

Fall, 2024 (Eighteen months later)

The buttery-sweet smell of the candy bars made me a little nuts as I stacked them in the wire receptacles near the register. I fantasized about squatting behind the counter, out of sight of Amos the Enforcer, and scarfing a