Tarah and I walked among the tents and tarps until we found one open on two sides, brightly lit from the inside with several candles. A pale woman with dark hair sat cross-legged on a brown rattan sofa likely plucked from someone’s patio. She dug a fork into a can of peaches and slurped a couple down while examining a three-card Tarot spread on top of a cooler. We caught her attention and she quickly set the can down beside the cards, the fork sliding across the can’s aluminum edges with a clank.
Wiping her mouth with a shirt sleeve, she said, “Sorry you had to see me eating like that. I was hungry, I guess. I’m Sue Spirit.”
We introduced ourselves. “Are you here alone?” Tarah asked.
“No…well, I guess I am now. I came this morning with a group from up north. When we showed up, they told me they didn’t want me coming with them when they leave. It’s pretty awkward now because they’re all over there, by those crates.” She pointed to a couple of makeshift tents made from tarps near the wall. “I thought I was making friends but they were just waiting for a good time to dump me off somewhere.”
“Seems little rude,” I said. “What happened?”
My condition keeps me from traveling very fast during the day, so I’m not fitting in with people who are trying to get somewhere in a hurry.”
“Your condition?”
“I’m photosensitive…allergic to the sun. I have to cover myself or I get sick, like the flu. The group I was with didn’t get as far south as they wanted and blamed me for slowing them down.” Her voice lowered to a whisper. “Well, it’s more like the main guy, Red, didn’t like me turning down his advances.” ‘If I can’t fuck ya, you’re not good for much else,’ he told me.” Her eyes watered. “I admit I can be a bit of a burden, but I’m not gonna whore myself out to a bunch of assholes just to travel with them.”
“Sounds like you’re better off,” I said. “At least while you’re here.”
“But then what? Everything feels out of control…that there’s really no place to go, anyway. Not just for me…but for anyone.”
“You think?” Tarah quipped sarcastically, then sighed. “Sorry. It’s been a long day.”
“I get it.” She moved a pillow out from under her, shifting her weight. “Can I help you folks with something? If you’re looking for somewhere to sleep, I’m afraid I’m not much help.”
I gestured to the table. “What were you doing with those cards?”
“I was just looking for some insight.”
“We could use some insight ourselves.”
She gestured for us to sit. “I might be able to shed some light on your situation. I can read for you? I got nothing else going on.”
“Why not?” I replied.
“Because we’re supposed to be setting up camp in this crowded backwoods refugee camp,” said Tarah. “When it’s dawn tomorrow and we’re dragging our tired asses out of here, it’s your fault.”
“See who I have to travel with?” I asked Sue, risking a smack on the arm from Tarah.
Sue Spirit picked up the cards from the top of the cooler and returned them to their deck. Then she pulled out a bottle of clear liquid and three unmatched glasses from a dirty plastic box stashed underneath the sofa and poured a round of drinks. “I’m picking up strange energy from you both. You’re on a journey…” Tarah rolled her eyes and Sue Spirit noticed. “Obviously. But this is deeper than just getting from A to B.” She paused, her brow furrowing. “You two have similar auras that seem to be stuck together, so it’s no wonder you’re a couple-“
“-We’re not together,” said Tarah.
“You could not have said that any faster,” I said. “I think I’m offended.”
“Be offended. You’re good at it.”
“Well, it’s pretty clear you’re in this together,” Sue said, “but I also feel another presence…an energy coming from elsewhere…tugging at you. I don’t think Tarot is going to have the right answers for us.”
Sue stood up, setting her empty glass on the table next to the empty peach can, and rummaged through a large canvas bag until she pulled out a smaller bag—this one velvet with a yellow drawstring—handling it by the weighty palm-sized object within. Placing it on the table, she lifted it from the top of the bag like a magician and revealed a crystal ball.
A gust of wind blew through the tent, rippling the tarp walls like ship sails and blowing out the candles. My spine shivered and I looked at Tarah, who again rolled her eyes.
Sue Spirit grabbed a box of matches and re-lit the candles before focusing on the crystal before her. Her hands were relaxed on her lap. There was no woo-woo or dramatic hand movements like movie psychics…Sue simply gazed at the crystal ball, her eyes alive in the unsteady candlelight. “Darkness. A battle in the dark. Shadows running…scattering. Advance and retreat. Climbing walls and falling, but never stopping. They are chasing after figures high above, on a ledge…or a roof.”
“I was hoping for something a little more encouraging.”
She continued: “Daylight now. Dead soldiers marching, carrying bodies hanging from telephone poles. A city filled with fire and shadow, chaotic energy flowing from a warehouse or a factory on an island of steel. Heavy industrial. The island is connected to the mainland by a bridge…a white bridge.”
“Whelp, I’m convinced,” I said. “Sue, do you see anyone in particular? I’m looking for someone.”
She shook her head, dazed. “It’s like a dream…like I’m right there with you…details changing…shimmering in time as we travel.” Then she broke her gaze and looked at us and her surroundings, as though reacquainting with time and space after a long afternoon nap.
“There is a great struggle on the fringes of this material plane…this reality.” Then she looked at us. “I don’t know how to put it into words…I wish I could tell you more. Everything I see is fractured and out of context.” She waved her hand to fan her face. “I feel like a panic attack is coming on.”
“Great,” said Tarah. “We gave the oracle PTSD from what she saw in our future.” She stood up and pulled on the shoulder of my jacket. “We need to leave this lady alone and keep her out of our drama.”
Sue Spirit smiled weakly and held up an open palm. “I’m okay. I think the day just finally caught up with me. Maybe I’ll see you in the morning. Be careful out there.”
Tarah elbowed me in the ribs and whispered: “Give her something. For her services.”
“Oh, right.” My eyes looked to the tarp above us as I took a mental inventory of my belongings. What’s the going rate for prophetic visions these days? Then it came to me and although it was a risky gesture, it felt right. I reached into my jeans pocket for the Magic 8-Ball. “This thing saved my life once. Maybe it’ll save yours.”
Sue Spirit took the 8-Ball and held it close to her chest. “Thank you. It’s wonderful. But I hope it won’t come to that.”
Tarah and I returned to the fire. Some wise soul realized the loud music was attracting every rev within earshot and turned it down for the sake of their dwindling ammo.
My head ached and the illusory shadows floating in my periphery transformed into shimmering mirages in the forefront of my sight, as though the world had waves of heat emanating from it like a sunny desert road.
It was closer to dawn than midnight when the party wound down, smaller pockets of people breaking from the main group around the weakening bonfire to locate their sleeping spot for uneasy rest.
Tarah spotted Sam leaving a tent for a portable toilet and told him we’d be sleeping in the truck. Then we shared the truck bed while we looked at the stars until she climbed into the trucks back seat and ducked out of sight, covering herself with a dark blanket. I hunkered down in the truck’s bed, underneath a couple of spare tires I’d leaned against the bedside in lean-to fashion. But I never got a chance to admire my simple ingenuity because I passed out from exhaustion.
***
I startled awake from the depths of an uneasy sleep, the clear vision of my dreams livelier and more realistic than the hallucinations and, even if they made little sense, dreams were preferable to what I saw when my eyes were open. I woke thinking I’d heard something that was enough to pull me from slumber, like a whispering warning, and my eyes popped open to gaze at the gray pre-dawn sky. How long had I been out? It felt like five minutes. Then a woman’s cry echoed off the metal walls of the truck’s bed, obscuring the origin of the commotion. Had there been a breach of the walls?
I sat up, trying to flush my brain fog with nothing to my advantage other than sheer will. I peeked above the bed’s top edge and, not seeing any immediate danger, felt some relief. I couldn’t see anyone running nearby, but alarm rippled through the makeshift shelters as chaos whirled through the junkyard like a tornado.
A few feet away, Tarah poked her head up from the truck’s rear seat, the confusion on her face mirroring mine. I turned to say something and spotted a revenant just beyond the truck’s hood, rearing back for a jump onto the truck like that brute she’d saved us from the day before. “Tarah! Look out!”
She reached down and returned with her rifle, hoping to smack it with the butt stock by the time it got to her, but the beast was already across the hood, scrambling to the dashboard’s edge, without a windshield to buy her a few seconds. Tarah swiveled her body and began pushing herself through the cab’s small rear window, before getting stuck at the hips. I grabbed Tarah from under her shoulders and pulled as she wriggled the rest of the way, twisting out of reach from the rev’s flailing claws.
Tarah landed beside me on the truck bed’s bottom while the rev thrashed around the cab in a bewildered tantrum. Not wanting to wait around for its enlightenment, I stuck my shotgun through the opening and blasted away, its twitching body collapsing across the front seats in a spray of black blood and buckshot.
“It sounds like there’s more where he came from,” I said. “Grab what you can.”
We jumped from the truck and ran opposite of the invasion’s nucleus, calling for Sam here and there as we moved toward the nearest wall, for something solid at our backs. We passed a tent and Sam suddenly appeared as though he’d been in mid-stride right beside us the whole time, wearing a tight pink t-shirt with a unicorn flying over a glittery rainbow, once belonging to his new friend…and he didn’t seem too happy about it.
We found a rickety tool shed and regrouped among the remains of a rusting lawn tractor with flat tires, dusty brown bags of mulch, and various landscaping tools. The shed had no door, so we crouched off to the side of the entrance, using the wall more as cover than a hiding spot. The crushed remains of a car in the process of being added to the wall had been dropped nearby, giving us a little more cover from any passing glances.
“I need my bearings,” said Sam. “Where’s the truck?”
I threw a thumb over my shoulder. “Back the way we came, near the gate…on the other side of the yard. I shot a rev, but it’s still in the cab. We took what we could take and skedaddled.”
“Shit. I guess we’re traveling light.” Sam rifled through his pack and pulled out a pistol inside a leather holster, with wide handmade stitches. He tossed the holster aside and onto the dirt just as I was admiring it. “I woke up alone with all this chaos coming down. That bitch took off with my shotgun and went through my bag before I even woke up. She missed my .45, though, because I know she’d grab it if she found it. Then all the noise erupted, and I thought I was a goner. I can’t say I was upset when you called my name.”
“Must be your lucky day,” said Tarah. “We were just about to leave your ass.”
He scoffed, slapping my shoulder. “My man here wouldn’t do that.”
“All right, what’s the plan?” I asked. I poked my head around the corner of the shed and realized the crushed car was also working against us, preventing a wider line of sight. I stood up for a good look and then returned to a crouch with the others. “I see the gate from here but it’s closed and I can’t tell how it opens from here…wait…” I stood back up for a second look. “OK, it looks like the gate’s attached to a metal rod with a car tire for wheels, so the whole thing should just roll open with a push. In theory.”
Sam tossed his bag back over his shoulder and moved to the front of the line. “All right, fellow Americans. Let’s get that gate open and get the fuck out of here. I’ll take point.”
There was a shuffling nearby, and I pulled on Sam’s sleeve before he moved, in case it was into the line of sight of some monster. We both peeked around the corner of the shed’s opening and saw Eddie standing on the other side of the crushed car, his enormous cowboy hat now stained with blood and sitting crookedly atop his head. He looked around lazily, like a lost shopper after a store remodel, as sentience faded away and the curtain closed on life as he knew it. Another person was turning in front of my eyes.
In my awkward position, I lost my balance and shifted my foot on the gritty concrete, my shoe scraping the gravel loudly enough to catch Dead Eddie’s attention. Sam leaned back, trying to keep me upright and avoid Eddie’s searching eyes, but we scrunched too close together like idiots, leaving Sam exposed and the three of us almost falling over in a heap like a collapse of drunks at a bus stop.
“Better now than never,” said Sam. “Let’s go!”
Then we were off, crouched with our weapons and packs like scrambling hunchbacks. Dead Eddie jumped across the hood after Sam, but his bulky, stiffening frame defied his atavistic expectations and he lost momentum, splaying across the crushed car’s flattened hood like a trophy buck and leaving his skull exposed for a shot from Sam’s sidearm. Dead Eddie’s giant hat flew off and landed on its side, spinning like a bottle at a teen party.
We reached the far wall, and I surveyed the gate’s hardware as though I knew what I was doing.
“What’s it look like?” Sam asked, turning around to cover me. “Can we get this thing open?”
“Let’s see…the metal bars here look like the frame…it’s a gate taken from a park.” My eyes moved along the hastily assembled home craft, following its simple skeleton along the sheet metal panel. “Okay, it looks like the frame connects to this thing here and…oh, wait! Here’s a long bolt. Let’s see what happens if I pull this out.” I yanked on the thin metal ring attached to the cylinder bolt and it came out with some resistance. The bolt was heavier than it looked, but then it also had a pretty big job. I dropped it and the bolt swung from its keeper chain, scraping across the ground and leaving designs in the dirt.
A voice yelled out from above. “Hey! What are you doing?” It was the guard on the corner platform watchtower made from metal crates, taking shots at anything hostile from his vantage point.
I heard a dirty engine revving and turned to see Carl’s buggy barreling around the corner of the garage, Carl simultaneously trying to steer the buggy and fend off two revs crawling around the buggy’s roll bars like rabid monkeys, seeking a path through to his flesh.
“Watch out!” yelled Sam. “He’s heading right for the gate!”
“All right…push!” I leaned onto the frame and, with the others, moved the gate to the side with a scraping sound that grated on my rear sets of teeth like a piece of tinfoil caught on a filling.
The gate was heavy, but physics took over about halfway and it soon rolled easily, revealing the highway heading south and a dirt side road leading to a nearby wood. Just as Carl reached the open gate at full throttle, the guard in the tower took a shot at the buggy and hit one of the revs in the shoulder, forcing its grip loose. It dropped from the buggy’s frame like a discarded doll. But still in the fight, it returned to its feet, only to have part of its head taken off with the guard’s second shot.
As the buggy sped past my position at the gate, I watched the remaining revenant find an opening through the cage, tearing at whatever it could reach. The buggy continued under its own velocity but then veered off and collided with the only tree around, launching the monster into the air and onto the road beyond. Flames erupted from the smoking rear engine and the entire vehicle quickly caught fire, sputtering tiny fireballs that popped and hissed.
The guard in the tower cleared the area of revs before climbing down to confront us. “We can handle it from here,” he said, “but you guys are probably fucked,” before closing the gate and leaving us outside of the wall.
I felt a presence in my personal space and jumped, turning to see Sue Spirit next to me as though she’d just spawned in a video game. She was covered head-to-toe in a long cloak, like a monk traveling incognito.
“Where did you come from?” I asked.
“I’m lucky I made it out of there,” she replied. “Mind if I tag along?”
“What? Look, I appreciate your insight last night, but you saw for yourself what’s ahead for us.”
“Not to mention she’s allergic to the fucking sun,” said Tarah. “Like a vampire.”
“I’m not a vampire!” She looked me in the eye. “You don’t get it. I’m supposed to go with you. Those visions…at first, I thought I was just outside looking in, but then I realized I was there, with you.”
This wasn’t a hill I wanted to die on. After all, I was suffering from my issues and felt like a liability as it was. So what if she had a “condition?” We all have conditions…it’s just some are not as debilitating as others. Hell, the only reason society worked at all is because our “conditions” play well together on any particular day.
“If she can handle herself, why would you care?” I asked Tarah.
“I guess whether she can handle herself is the big question, isn’t it?”
“I can handle myself just fine,” said Sue. “I’ve made it this far. But I can’t do it alone. And I doubt you could, either, or you’d be doing it.”
For once, Tarah didn’t have a snappy comeback.
“We should have this conversation somewhere else,” said Sam.
We headed to the crashed buggy to see if anything could be done but only found Carl, now turned to a rev and on fire, thrashing about the cage and unable to free himself as he cooked. I covered my nose from the smell. Sam put Dead Carl out of his misery with his .45 and we found a walking path along the highway that headed south, with trees and brush providing natural cover on each side of our route. It was the end of the End of the World Party, but as we returned to the road like orphans, I felt the real “fun” was just beginning.
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