Chet & Floyd vs. The Apocalypse: Volume 1 (15 page)

Chapter 35

Inside
, the compound was utter chaos. People were running in all directions, shooting guns or wielding other bladed or blunt weapons. Fires dotted the grounds. Buildings and cars burned. There seemed to be no meaning to the violence. Floyd pointed off to the west end of the compound.

“Looks like they have a greenhouse in there.
They may be farming,” he said. “I even see a type of water wheel generator. They may have a steady supply of electricity although it doesn’t look like much.”

“This place is very well organized
,” Chet said, dodging a bottle that was thrown at his head. “I could live here.”

“I wonder why the violence
,” Floyd said.

“Let’s go find out
,” Chet said. He jumped down into the compound, landed with and audible thump and lay on the ground.

Floyd climbed down after him.
He leaned over and patted him on the shoulder.

“Misjudged the distance on that drop a little, huh?”
Floyd said.

“I’m just going to lay here awhile
,” Chet said.

“No sleepy time now buddy.
We have to get up and get moving before you end up trampled,” Floyd said. “You dropped like twenty feet.”

Chet got painfully to his feet
; he hadn’t yet gotten back all his wind.

“It’s not exactly record breaking for me.
I’ve launched myself from higher.” Chet raised his Uzi over his head and fired off several rounds. Three men stopped what they were doing and face him, one who held a gun and two who held shovels. All three were bloody and burned. Chet leveled his Uzi at them.

“Take me to your leader
,” he said.

“Kill them!”
the man with the gun said. He and Chet shot at each other at the same time. Both went down.

Floyd pulled the shotgun from behind his back and blew a hole in one of the charging men.
The other dropped his board from the shock of the blast. He raised his fists.

“Drop your gun and fight me like a man
,” he said.

“No thanks
,” Floyd said. He fired the other round into the man’s chest, killing him instantly in a spray of guts and bone.

Floyd pulled Chet back to his feet.
“That’s like the second time in five minutes I’ve had to pick you up off the floor. Get yourself together man,” Floyd said. “Are you hit?”

“In the shoulder
,” Chet said smiling. “That means two things—” Chet was interrupted by a flaming piece of debris that hit him.

He dusted himself off and slapped at his smoking clothing.
“That means two things,” he repeated. “One I am the hero. Only heroes get shot in the shoulder. Two, as a hero, I am invincible. I cannot be killed.”

“That’s crazy
,” Floyd said.

“Tell you what,”
Chet said. “If I live through this I get to say I told you so. If I’m dead, you can say same to my corpse. Take the bet?”

“No bet
,” Floyd said.

“The cards have already been dealt.
We both have injured shoulders. Now is our time. This is our place. We can be heroes just for one day.”

“Stop with the David Bowie.”

“I will be king and you, you will be queen,” Chet said.

“You’re kind of freaking me out here Chet
,” Floyd said. “Go on with your mayhem, and don’t call me your queen anymore.”

Chet smiled and winked.
He grabbed a flaming piece of wood and whirled it over his head. He fired the Uzi over the heads of the rioters, but none of them paid him the slightest attention. There was too much noise and craziness to give any regard to one man with an automatic. This was serious.

“I declare martial law!”
Chet screamed into the tumult. “This is your final warning to disperse.” Nobody listened. The fires burned higher and the screams of the people increased to an earsplitting pitch. There was so much mayhem that all sound dissolved into white noise.

Chet flung himself forward, spraying bullets from his Uzi and lashing out with his flaming cudgel.
Soon Floyd lost him in the crowd but could make out where he was by the arcing sprays of blood.

A moment later Chet bobbed to the surface of the torrent like a bubble rising from the water.
From somewhere in the hoard he had stolen a machete, which he slashed downwards with intense fury. His strength seemed to lag, and the blade was wrenched from his hand as he was viciously ripped back down into the fray.

Floyd thought for a moment that he’d lost him for good, but there Chet was again.
He looked like a Frazetta painting, rising up from all that violence and gore like a phoenix from the ashes. Torn, disheveled and seemingly exhausted, there was Chet.

His guns and weapons all gone, he’d taken off his shoe and was beating anyone around him with all his last strength.
Chet finally floundered completely and passed out, riding the wave of the crowd like a mosh pit. Too crushed between bodies to fall, too tired to fight against the flow. Floyd found an opening in the violence for a moment and dove into the crowd to grab at Chet. He got hold of his jacket and ripped him hard from the group to an open, easily defendable spot behind some rubble. Chet was bleeding from several areas and had enough blood splattered on him that he was almost unrecognizable. He smiled.

“I told you so
,” Chet said.

“I’m not sure you’re still alive here buddy
,” Floyd said. “You’re bleeding pretty bad.” Chet looked out at the riot. His smile deepened.

“It’s good to be a part of society once again.”

Chapter 36

Chet flashed in a
nd out of consciousness while Floyd dragged him to safety. Safety was an occupied home. Floyd kicked the door in and shooed the family out at gunpoint. Having secured the door and windows, Floyd hefted Chet upstairs and put him in a cold shower to wash away the blood.

Once most of the blood and gore was rinsed off
, Floyd picked him up and laid him in a bed, tucked him in and left. Chet thought it was nice to have such a good friend. He closed his eyes and slept.

When he dropped off into dreamland, he felt uneasy.
It felt like he saw God and God told him he was an accident. Again the music of David Bowie accompanied his dreams.

Want an axe to break the ice

Want to come down right now

It all comes down to Cheerios and those four walls. Chet was a child again. He would rub his fingers over the mesh of his port-a-crib. Faster and faster, he would rub until his fingers burned from the friction and his senses ran into overdrive. He would hesitate for a moment and let the feeling pass, then rub again. Over and over and over. If he stopped rubbing everything would stop.

There was nobody
there to talk to him. There was nothing in the crib except a soiled blanket. There used to be a yellow and pink stuffed bear as well. Like the ones won at a carnival. But he had thrown that out days ago, and nobody had placed it back in the crib with him.

The silence was too much of a void
, so he would rub and rub and rub. The mesh wove patterns of light as his fingers raced back and forth. Millions of rays played a game of light and shadow. Sometimes he would get lost in them. He could get so involved that he would just stare at the little holes. Those were the best times. It was like he wasn’t even there.

There
were those delicious times where he found his voice. He would shout loud and louder. The air would expel from his lungs. His muscles would tense with the joy of it all. There was no purpose to it. Just to make noise was enough. The volume was delicious in his ears. He could push everything else away with the sound.

He would close his eyes tight and a torrent of white and black spots would dance in the darkness behind his eyes.
The sound would sometimes bring something else. Something beautiful or painful. It was only a matter of time. It all comes down to Cheerios and those four walls.

Sometimes she would come. Staggering with eyes closed from light and pain. Heavy hands would land on the frayed edges of his port-a-crib. She would regard him and he her.

If only he could stop screaming for a moment.
But he found that he could not. He could just scream and scream. Sometimes she would tell him to shut the fuck up. Sometimes she would hit him. It made no difference. The screams would come from somewhere inside of him. They were as regular as breathing and as normal as his beating heart.

There were the moments of silence.
Sometimes a slap would come so hard that screaming was impossible. The spots in his vision would become swirling stars and his skin dazzling explosions of sharp pain.

After, there was a tingling numbness as he sucked in air.
Not enough for another scream. Focus came back as often as it did not. When it did, she was gone. It all comes down to Cheerios and these four walls.

Sometimes when she came it was different. She would coo and pick him up. His body would tense against her touch. So much in his little body wanted to press into her. To feel her skin. To be close to her.

But t
here was something in her touch that repelled him as much as it drew him. He found himself fighting against her, pulling at her hair, biting her. Sometimes she would throw him back into the crib and be gone again. Sometimes she would place him on the ground on his back. She would take off his foul and dripping diaper, clean him and put on a new one. She would tell him that he smelled like shit. She would say he was disgusting. She would tell him she wished he was dead.

He couldn’t look into her eyes.
There was so much he didn’t like to see there. He would lie on the floor, let her clean him, avoid her eyes and concentrate on the touch. It all comes down to Cheerios and these four walls.

Sometimes he would drop. Legs just didn’t work after awhile. He would lie very still and look toward the ceiling as it spun and spun and spun. She would lounge on the couch and pick her nose. Sometimes she would forget to take the needle out of her arm, and it would bob with the motion of her hands. She stared and stared, smiling all the time, nothing behind her eyes.

He would cry sometimes.
The pain would make him cry. There was something missing. She would drift off the couch and move to the kitchen as if in a dream. She would get the yellow bow and float back toward him. Then the rain would come. Small tan circles rained into the crib, bouncing off his face, arms and body. He would open his mouth and some would drop in. The crunch was delicious.

He would crawl through his stained and foul crib and eat every one he found.
Sometimes she would only drop in a little. The best times where when the yellow box would fall from her fingers completely and it would all be his. Then he would sleep. When he awoke, he found his legs worked again and he could stand up.

“I have to shit,” she said. “Oh, man I have to shit so bad. Where’s the fucking bathroom? I have to get to the fucking bathroom.”

She stood up and wobbled grotesquely, bumping against the wall as she staggered to the bathroom.

“Shut the fuck up
,” he would say. “You’re just coming unplugged from all that shit. It has to happen sometime.” He laughed and laughed.

I rubbed my fingers over the mesh and watched her.

“Go and get some more shit
,” she said.

“I think I will
,” he said. “I don’t want to be around when you take a super dump anyway.” He walked out of the house and closed the door.

She pulled her pants down and slumped onto the toilet and shuddered.

I rubbed the mesh on the port-a-crib
, trying to leave and get lost in the light. But I couldn’t; I had to watch. I had to be there.

“Oh, shit.
Holy shit,” she said. She lifted her body off the toilet and it tensed as her body shoved forward. A baby dropped from her vagina, cradled in a wet weave of afterbirth. The tiny body thumped on the bathroom tile.

She stood there looking down at the baby.
The umbilical cord still snaked into her. It looked like a grey dead snake. The tiny baby cried. So did she.

All of a sudden the flickering light from the mesh caught his eye
, and he was lost in the sparkling light. He could feel the heat from his fingers rubbing back and forth, faster and faster. It all comes down to Cheerios and these four walls.

Chet woke up from his dream and stared at the ceiling.
His body ached with pain from the riot. Now was not a time for getting up and doing things. Now was a time for sleep. The problem with sleep was that it led to dreams. Most of the time that was okay, but Chet found that he couldn’t always trust his dreams. Sometimes there was too much reality in them for his taste.

Chapter 37

“I am feeling much more myself!” Chet said. He roused himself out of bed and stretched mightily.

“Good news for us all
,” Floyd said. “Not a moment too soon anyway.”

“What’s going on?
Is there still trouble outside?”

“You’ve been out for a week
,” Floyd said.

“A week!”

“Yeah,” Floyd said. “You would have probably slept longer if I didn’t come in here and wake you up. You really should begin to understand the limits of your human body, Chet. One day you’ll push it too far. We have some things to attend to.”

“I’ve been out a week.
That must be some kind of record,” Chet said. “What gives here?”

“We’re in some sort of community here.
Kind of like a commune.”

“I don’t like hippies Floyd
,” Chet said.

“I know you don’t.
Don’t worry. It’s not that kind of commune. These are pretty regular people who are trying to make a new go of things. They’ve built greenhouses and planted food. They’re working out forms of energy and have even developed a type of democratic government.”

“The riot?”

“Was basically and overthrow,” Floyd said. “The last guy in charge was taking advantage of his position I guess. He wasn’t doing what was right for the people who put him in charge. Whatever that means.”

“What happened to him?”
Chet asked.

“They shot him.
He’s dead. Then they rioted and messed up a bunch of things. I asked them about the riot, and they weren’t sure why things went that far. They told me it was something like exuberance. I have my own certain zest for things from time to time, but it never makes me want to hurt someone or burn something.”

“That’s where we differ Floyd.
When I’m excited, I always want to burn something,” Chet said.

“I know
,” Floyd said. “Way to conform to humanity. What I need to talk to you about is the upcoming election. We’re a part of this community now, and we both have been chosen to run for the open spot of leadership.”

“I accept
,” Chet said.

“You haven’t won anything yet.
You have to be voted in.”

“I accept
the position in advance of the counting, so there is no lack of leadership until the elections are over. I declare myself the intermittent leader between now and went the votes are cast.”

“You can’t do that
,” Floyd said.

“I then declare myself…”

“You can’t declare yourself anything,” Floyd said. “You vote on things here. Everyone gets a voice.”

“Even women and children?
What about those people who don’t own any land?” Chet said.

“Everyone
,” Floyd said. “Consider yourself lucky to be let into the election at all. You know your crooked character. Think of it, if you were in charge of things, would you let yourself have a vote?”

“You make a good point.
Why am I a part of the election?”

“Because of your crazy stunt during the riot.
For some reason they think flinging yourself towards certain death and causing mayhem makes you leadership material,” Floyd said.

“Bravery cannot be bought Floyd
,” Chet said. “What about you?”

“I was with you
during the fight, so I’m in the election. I guess. I don’t really know.”

“Do you ever get tired of riding my coat tails Floyd?
You should really step out of my shadow once and awhile and make something of yourself.”

“I don’t want to lead anything
, let alone this place. I would like nothing better than to be left alone,” Floyd said. “According to the people, I don’t seem to have much to say about the matter. They want me, and I have to step up to the plate and take a leadership role.”

“George Washington didn’t want to be president, but he did so for the good of the country
,” Chet said.

“They said the very same thing
,” Floyd said.

“You’re going to be the next George Washington Floyd
,” Chet said. “I would be Andrew Jackson.”

“Lord save us all
,” Floyd said.