Jesus is late. He missed his appointment
and people are starting to get anxious. There are people outside of my house who have spent more time on their knees than
a Hollywood hooker. The knees of their pants are torn and crimson puddles pool beneath them. Their palms are caked in blood
from all the time they've spent groveling. They're waiting for the rapture. They were pious all their lives and they're wondering
why they haven't been swept into a blissful eternity.
I'm writing from the front lines of the
United States of Nothing. Yep. We finally did it. We're obliterated, but I'm sure the corpses of the politicians have wide
grins because everyone else is obliterated too. Lots of people had speculated how the world would end but they never expected
it to end like this.
I had always been a big proponent of the
nuclear winter idea if global warming didn't hit us first. My friends and me used to bet on how the world was going to end.
They're all dead so none of them can gloat. Jenny was killed by a satellite that fell out of the sky, Ben was killed by a
helicopter blade, and Leo was drowned in a septic tank. It was a hell of a way to go.
My house is still intact. Most of it. I
don't have a backyard because of a "Black Hawk Down" moment where a LifeFlight Helicopter fell out of the sky, its razor sharp
blades cutting open my dog and severing the legs of the coma patient the doctors were transporting. The pilot's dead, but
a doctor and nurse are still alive. I let them have my room. I don't need it. I have my study and there is chronicling to
be done. I need to chronicle the end.
Who's my audience? That doesn't really concern
me. I like to think that my audience will be aliens. Humans are stupid. I look outside to remind myself how stupid they are.
The people who aren't praying are shooting each other. A demented motherfucker tried to rape one of the women praying. It's
the only time I've gone outside today. I grabbed a priest's hardbound bible and bashed the rapist's skull in. Call it divine
retribution. No seed was spilt, and no virgin corrupted. Sweet Jesus, it's the first miracle of the End of the World!
Oh yeah, End of the World. You probably
want to know what made every civilization fall into chaos and disrepair. It was a poorly tailored suit.
The president had convinced Iran that we
were not ignorant infidels and that nuking our ally, Israel, would be wrong. He did a decent job at convincing them that there
are some virgins left in the United States. He may not know any, but that doesn't mean they're not out there. By the end of
his long talks and negotiations with several uppity nuke-holding anti-Semites, he waved goodbye from the steps of his plane.
This is where the tailoring errors caused
worldwide chaos.
The president is a size 36"x32". The pants
were "38"x34"s making them a bit baggy. One of the Secret Service men stepped on the back of his pants, they came off, and
the president realized that he picked the wrong day to not wear underpants. He turned around, his penis bobbing as he looked
in horror at the angry crowd of uppity nuke-holding anti-Semites who now felt very disrespected by the West. Especially since
the president had a partial erection.
That was just the beginning.
I have to go now. It's not safe to be seen
after dark. I'll explain later. If I'm alive in the morning. Which I'm pretty confident I will be. It's the people outside
that I'm worried about. They've spent two days outside. They haven't been paying attention to the sources that I have.
#
Alright, honesty is important. I'm not going
anywhere, but if I told you what I was about to videotape without trying to intervene, you might think I'm a bad person. And
maybe I am. But it's the end of the world and the footage I'm going to get will remind me of the good old days, kicking back
and watching old George Romero flicks with my now-dead-friends.
#
My favorite end-of-the-world-type story
was The Stand by Stephen King. I thought about heading to Colorado to see if Stephen King was a prophet or simply
a talented and prolific writer, but I decided it would be safer to stay here a little longer.
Everyone outside is dead now.
Don't worry. I got it all on videotape.
According to Darwin, one day humanity will
evolve and make good old fashioned us look obsolete. Well, Darwin was close. Apparently, the military decided not to wait
for genetic variants. They made them. Most of them are humanoid.
Most.
I had convinced most of the people in the
street to get inside before nightfall, but religious zealots normally don't listen to buzzkills like me. I guess marine trained
soldiers with biological upgrades trained to ravish whatever community they're set loose in, don't worry people as long as
they've got a crucifix.
Whoever made these genetic variants, they
did a good job.
I gave them names based upon what fictional
character they reminded me of.
There were the Draculas: dressed in black
combat gear, black hair, and a tendency to leap straight towards a person's jugular. They moved with catlike grace, pouncing
through the crowd of people, grabbing them as if they were about to put them in a headlock and then tearing open their throats.
They don't drink blood, they just have a genetic memory of going for the throat.
They were my favorites to videotape. Unlike
real vampires, these guys show up on footage just fine. They even have reflections, so they can marvel at their hideousness
as Dracula would have marveled at his own features had he been able to.
Then there were the Frankensteins---not
the doctor, the monster---who weren't green with protuberant bolts in their necks, but were tall and had square heads. They
also had the most powerful punches that I've ever seen. They would swing a fist at one of the poor fuckers that was in their
way and an eruption of gore was left like a lingering cloud. A classic comic book spatter.
After the Dracula and Frankenstein soldiers
were done slashing and thrashing, the Feeders came.
War is a messy business and it's bad for
morale to look at a big old pile of corpses. So, soldiers were created with a digestive tract that was specifically designed
for a diet of human corpses.
When there was nothing left but bones and
loose pieces of flesh the feeders put the bones in an orderly pile. They're nothing if not efficient.
The soldiers turned their attention to my
house.
I pulled out my ace.
I turned on the floodlights. The creatures
fell to the ground, pulling at their eyes.
Ah, the foolish things the military does.
Like making a billion-dollar-soldier's eyes a replication of night vision goggles. A bright light would leave them blinded.
Like the twitching creatures on my lawn.
I could have done it earlier. But then I
wouldn't have this sweet horror video to kick back and watch, remembering the days when me and my friends watched George Romero
movies. Before the world ended.
Copyright David G. Montoya
2007
