Never Fear Page 34

  “I’ll get another.” Gatsby took the empty bottle from her.

  “My prince,” Curtis and Anna said together. They froze, expressions puzzled. Then all three laughed.

  ***

  “Have you thought of where the new Eden, new Jerusalem, will be?” Eve asked Adam.

  “Several areas have possibilities,” Adam responded.

  “I don’t think it should be in the Mideast,” Cain said.

  “Nor I,” Abel added. “Maybe an island, or Australia. Tasmania.”

  “I was thinking somewhere in the United States. Of course, all areas will have new names,” Adam said. “I’m fond of the West Coast.”

  “San Diego has the best climate,” Cain volunteered.

  Eve nodded. “And an ocean breeze as well.” She glanced at Abel. “And not as many dangerous animals for our chosen couple.”

  “Only suggestions,” Abel said, holding his hands up in defense. “San Diego is nice.”

  “Very well, then,” Adam said. “San Diego will be the new Eden.”

  “Eos. For dawn. A new beginning.” She looked to the other three for acceptance. They nodded.

  “But who will be the two to begin the world anew?” Abel asked, not to anyone in particular.

  Adam turned to Eve. “After your ride as Famine, we will look to those who remain, then start making the most important of decisions.”

  They all felt the weight of the decision.

  Who would they choose?

  ***

  As they watched the fate of the world unfold before them on the cold, dispassionate television screen, the three new friends shared everything they thought. There was no reason to hide anything. Who would care? They were their own world now.

  The love between them was palpable, Anna observed. Did she love Curtis? Undoubtedly. Did she love Gatsby? How could she not? Both were handsome, with Curtis’s boyish, blond, good looks, and Gatsby with his dark looks and bad-boy air. She didn’t realize how wonderful it could be to have two such devoted, loyal, and honest friends like them. Ironic that here at the end of times she would find such happiness. And she had. If she had lost either of them to plague, or the famine that had now begun—as predicted—she wouldn’t want to live. As extreme as that sounded, it was how she felt. She looked at the two men engrossed in the television, and smiled.

  Gatsby said, “It’s like watching a live game of Risk. The US has North and South America; Russia has Europe and part of Asia, over to Kamchatka; North Korea has parts of eastern Asia, the South Pacific and half of Australia; China the bulk of Asia, including India and the other half of Australia; and finally the mysterious terrorist faction, with no discernable leader, conquered the Mideast and all of Africa. It’s crazy!”

  “And now they’re after one another,” Curtis said. “Add to that the worldwide crop failure…”

  “The Black Horse, Famine.” Anna’s tone held all the weight of the expected inevitable. “How long can the fighting last without food to feed the troops?”

  “I have a question that for some odd reason no one has addressed.” Gatsby stood up to look at the two when he said this. “Why has no one dropped one dreaded nuke?”

  Anna and Curtis looked at one another, shrugged.

  Anna spoke first. “They’re afraid of destroying the world?” Her voice went up an octave on the last word. She looked to Curtis for help.

  “Don’t look at me for an explanation. I gave up on rationality months ago. Maybe they’re animal lovers?” He looked at the screen and the ubiquitous BREAKING NEWS banner. “It seems Famine is doing her job well.”

  “How do you know Famine’s a she?” Anna said, almost defensively.

  Curtis cocked his head. “I don’t know. It just came out. Sorry, didn’t mean to offend.”

  “None taken,” she said. “Just curious. But strangely… I agree; I think Famine’s a she.”

  “Curiouser and curiouser.” Gatsby raised one eyebrow. “Famine—feminine? They do sound similar.”

  “Ah, perceptive, Gats. You’re more than a wealthy, pretty face.”

  “Are you trying to make me blush, Mr. Ambassador?” Gatsby asked, still standing.

  Curtis stood up next to him—his face mere inches from Gatsby’s. He wet his lips, saying, “It seems I have.”

  Anna laughed softly, feeling the underlying tension between them. They were two of the most beautiful men she had ever seen. But it was their souls that made them so beautiful. Oh sure, outwardly they were movie-star handsome, but they both had such pure, loving spirits. She found herself saying aloud, “You’re both so beautiful.”

  Wordlessly, Gatsby reached for her and pulled her to them, then said, “You two have made my life… and for that I will be forever grateful.”

  Anna saw the tears in his eyes.

  “I do believe we have been blessed as well,” Curtis murmured. Anna saw his tears reflected there, then realized her own eyes had welled up.

  Gatsby swallowed hard before saying, “This will go on record as the poorest taste for a pun of all time, but… all I can say is: Till death do we part.”

  They both pushed him hard onto the couch.

  ***

  Eve sat between Cain and Abel, while they waited for Adam, discussing the remaining meager population left and the possibilities for their new “Adam and Eve.”

  “There is a man in France that has the qualities we are looking for,” Abel said.

  “There is a woman in New Zealand—”

  “Ahem.” Adam entered.

  “Adam,” Eve started, “we have our choices made.”

  “As do I,” Adam returned. “There will only be two chosen, as you know. Two to begin our new Eos. Let us carefully review our candidates.”

  Cain said, “I feel quite strongly about my choices. I don’t see how we can come to an accord.”

  Adam smiled gently. “It will all come right, and as it should be. We will be in perfect agreement before Earth beholds the Pale Horse.”

  ***

  As bizarrely wonderful as their unpredictable meeting had been, the three couldn’t have been more grateful for one another.

  Gatsby sat silent, watching his two beloved companions, both silent as well. They stared at the enormous screen. There was one news station that still aired, and even that one now only aired sporadically, a few die-hard (poor choice of words, he thought) dedicated reporters, doing what they loved to the bitter end. Or in his, and Anna’s and Curtis’s case, the bitter sweet end.

  He smiled at them, content. Yes. Content. He couldn’t remember ever feeling so content. Dare he say happy? Well, to himself he could.

  They all knew the days were numbered, and then they would be no more. The Pale Horse would come and take the remaining with it.

  “Contemplating the secrets of the universe, my friend?” Curtis pulled him from his reverie.

  “Something like that. I was thinking how ironic that the world leaders set out to conquer a doomed world… instead of enjoying their last days. Pathetic, really. And… I wasn’t going to say this, but why the hell not? I’m happy. I know Death, literally, is near, yet your love—yes, love, because what we have is so much more than friendship—has brought me to a place that I never thought could exist. You and Anna have given me what we all strive for: a life fulfilled by people who unconditionally love you. What more could I ask?”

  “More time?” Anna said wryly. She got up and moved to the overstuffed chair where Gatsby sat. She plopped down on one arm; Curtis mirrored her on the other side. They both put their arms around him.

  Gatsby could feel the love radiate from them. “Yes, more time would be nice.”

  “I have an idea,” Anna said. “Let’s turn off the TV for good and play some games. Maybe pop on some CDs from your extensive collection of musicals and sing along.”

  Gatsby felt his eyes burn. “I think that’s the best idea I’ve heard for a long time.”

  “I second it.” Curtis gave him a hug, leaned over, grabb
ed the remote, and clocked the television off. Under his breath, he said, “It’s not like we don’t know the ending.”

  “Gallows humor. That’s the spirit,” Gatsby said and clapped Curtis on the back. He got up and headed to a wall cabinet.

  Curtis raced by him and grabbed the cabinet door. “I get to pick the show.”

  “And I get to pick the game,” Anna said from another corner of the great room where she was opening a large door.

  “How did you know where the games are?” Gatsby asked.

  “After all this time, did you think we wouldn’t snoop a little? Please. I even know where you hide your sex toys.” She gave a little giggle.

  Indignant, Gatsby said as he strode over to her. “I don’t have sex toys.”

  “I know.” She smiled coyly. “But you’re so cute when you get riled.”

  “True,” Curtis said, crossing the room to them. He produced two CDs. “Camelot or Brigadoon? I’m feeling a Lerner and Lowe mood. I thought about On a Clear Day—”

  “That’s Lerner and Lane,” Gatsby corrected.

  “I actually knew that, my musical maven. I was checking you.” Curtis poked him in the side. “But I do like that show too.”

  “Touché,” Gatsby said. “Camelot first?”

  “Done.” Curtis walked over to the state-of-the-art sound system, fiddled with it a bit, and soon the overture was playing, resounding throughout the room from the cleverly concealed speakers.

  “Monopoly?” Anna asked.

  “Not against the real estate mogul here.” Curtis said, and gave Gatsby another poke in the ribs.

  “Risk?”

  “Too ironic.” This time Gatsby poked Curtis back.

  “Life?”

  “The same,” the two men said together, and attempted to poke one another again. They laughed.

  “Behave, boys,” Anna gave them a mock severe look.

  They returned the same mock contrite looks.

  All three laughed.

  “Trivial Pursuit?” Anna continued.

  The men nodded their approval.

  “All right, then.” Anna pulled the blue box from a shelf. “Just remember four-point-oh from Vassar…” She let the threat linger in the air.

  “Bring it on, girl,” Curtis said.

  Gatsby moved to the bar. “I think martinis all around.”

  “You read my mind,” Curtis said, sitting at the large coffee table and slipping off his shoes. “I need to be comfortable for this,” he said off Anna’s quizzical look.

  “Absolutely,” she said and slipped her own shoes off as well.

  Gatsby set a large tray with a glass pitcher and three martini glasses on the table. Each glass sported two olives. He poured.

  They raised their glasses.

  Anna said, “To you both. Thank you for everything.”

  Curtis said, “To the finest people I have ever met.”

  Gatsby’s throat closed. He felt his eyes filling. “To love.”

  “To love,” the three said.

  ***

  “As I said, Cain,” Adam began, “we would all completely concur with our choices.”

  “Yes, they’re perfect,” Cain said. He held Abel’s hand and squeezed it.

  “Yes, perfect,” Abel added and squeezed Cain’s hand in return.

  “I believe the woman is an even better choice than the one we had originally thought of. Eve,” Eve said. She gave Adam a small hug. “are you ready to finish this, Adam?”

  “I am. The final ride of the Pale Horse.”

  ***

  The world came to an end.

  ***

  Then… the beginning…

  ***

  They awoke on the beach, stirring slowly, rubbing their eyes.

  They were naked, but not embarrassed.

  They stared at one another, puzzlement in their eyes as they tried to remember.

  They stood and brushed the sand from their bodies.

  “Where are we?” Anna asked, looking around her.

  “I don’t know, but it’s warm and beautiful. Idyllic,” Curtis answered her.

  “Yes, it is,” she said. “Calm and serene.”

  They looked inland, but they saw nothing but land and trees.

  “My guess is Coronado… San Diego area. I was here many times, when it was inhabited,” Gatsby said as he rose and began brushing himself off.

  “What do you think this means?” Anna asked.

  “I think it means we’ve been given a second chance,” Curtis said. His head slowly nodded, knowingly.

  “I do too.” Gatsby moved between his two fellow survivors. “I don’t know how, or why us—why we’ve been chosen. But I do know I thank God for this inexplicable opportunity.”

  He took both of their hands.

  “Let’s make sure we get it right this time.”

  THE WRONG KIND OF RENAISSANCE

  Lee Lawless

  “It seems, more and more, that the world is a race between education and catastrophe.”

  -H.G. Wells

  Chapter One - The Curriculum

  NEW BEDFORD, MASSACHUSETTS

  Valentine’s Day, 2027

  I can’t fucking believe they’re squaring off with swords in my bar. I mean, I can believe it (bullets are worth their weight in gold, and Manny’s not going to risk hurting his capable, valuable hands by pummeling this guy to death), but this is the shit that usually goes down at the pirate spots down by the docks, not the private-bar second floor of my Officer’s Club.

  Oddly apt, Manny’s foe is clutching an old US Army officer’s dress sword, though he doesn’t look like he’s ever had training with it, or any other weapon for that matter. He clutches the sword two-handed even though it’s clearly a one-handed saber. Light on his toes, Manny’s noting how his foe is bent forward, like he’s maybe gonna take a baseball-style swing. Manny’s drawn his Spanish sword, forged from fine Toledo craftsmanship, its startlingly gorgeous blade gleaming in the lustrous lamplight. Exquisito, si, though I’d never seen him use it as more than a fashion accessory.

  I can’t kick them outside. I can’t let them downstairs. Captain Arturo’s crew are everywhere, and one or both of these guys will be shanghaied before I can make it down the back stairway.

  I can’t let either of these guys out of my sight, actually until our little payment issue is resolved. So I’m left with the only option, unsavory as it might be to my sensibilities, to my fine dark-wooden bar, my masterpieces on the walls, my exceptional leather furniture. I’ve gotta let them fight it out.

  The resonant undercurrent notion of you’re in a lot of trouble was a theme that had played through my mind many times, like an earworm song that you couldn’t shake and just had to sing along to, like it or not. I mentally hummed its malignant melody in the background of my main thought, another frequent strain that, for better or for worse, harmonized with the original theme.

  I thought what I always thought when two, or more of the 6,000-odd known remaining humans of the region undertook armed battle against each other.

  Someone’s really gonna get their feelings hurt.

  ***

  Look, I know it sounds crazy, but nowadays, we look out for each other. Even me, though I’m one of the surliest sweethearts you’ll ever meet. I just don’t like being unnecessarily too mean to people. We’d already had so much of it. Six years’ worth of dealing with the fallout, both literal and every level of metaphorical.

  Six years ago, on an event we now referred to as A-Day, an electromagnetic pulse weapon had gone off in low earth orbit, somewhere over an otherwise-unremarkable expanse of Kansas. It had been enough to wipe the year 2021 straight backward, about a century and a half previous. The ensuing droughts, famines, disease, and general barbarity of our (dear departed) civilization made it seem like we’d gone much further back, at least for a good year there after the end.

  But like all bad ends, it was the chance for fruitful new beginnings. The slate wasn’t clean, pe
r se, but a lot of us were determined to not lose the lesson, despite losing basically everything else we were used to.

  It was a weird Renaissance, but some of us tried to make it work.

  Like artists reusing a canvas to create a fresh masterpiece over an inspiringly inept attempt, we rebuilt. The going wasn’t easy. At several points, nuclear weapons had been thrown around in a spiteful free-for-all, a final “fuck you” from superpowers and terrorists alike, all determined to bring everyone else down with them. The nukes had ironically been one of the few things that had been treasurably well protected, ensconced in suitcases or silos with Faraday cages shielding them from any sort of circuitry malfunction that would stop them from seeing through their eventual missions of mayhem.

  The snow had only stopped falling gray this year.

  So it was a hard, long enough time after the collapse (six years after the EMP blast, five after nukes sealed the remaining deals, three and a half after humanity had eaten or beaten most of our fellow risen apes into extinction) that we started feeling secure enough in our survivor status to actually take tally of things.

  That was where my job came in. I run Trooley’s Tourist Tavern, same name as the place I had in NYC, R.I.P. Except this one is on Union Street in New Bedford, former whaling capital of the world and current cradle of resuscitated civilization. Not the only hive of humanity remaining, but by most standards, one of the best. Amidst that, my spot has become a de facto trading post for, well, basically everything. Whatever’s left from everywhere.

  Overall, America is ironically back the way it started, populated with tightly insular, judicious (if not judgmental) enclaves nestled into the northeast coast. Below that, the climate had bullied its way down the border, causing flooding and tsunamis on a scale that would have been singularly deadly on its own. We still caught pieces of it, but had been lucky that the south (now nearly fiction, as far as we knew) had taken the brunt of the hits. Judging by the scant communications we had with the rest of the world, we figured they hadn’t fared too much better either, after all was said and done. Still, at least the initial war/famine/pestilence/death toll had already relieved hundreds of millions of the burden of dying slow. But nowadays, we had decided that starving or dying of exposure was no way to go for the other survivors, and here in town we made sure all the folks who flocked to our streets and shores, at the bare minimum, wouldn’t have to worry about those things anymore.