Go-Go Girls of the Apocalypse

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Mortimer left Buffalo Bill snoring in the Emperor’s Suite and smelling like Dial soap.

The Emperor’s Suite had come with Dial soap and Pantene shampoo and a small tube of Aim toothpaste. The suite was normally one hundred Armageddon dollars a night. For Platinum members it was only sixty.

Mortimer trudged the ten blocks from the armory to his old neighborhood. He wanted to find his old house before nightfall. A few people passed him on the street. Nobody said hello, but nobody seemed terrified either.

Some houses looked perfectly normal. Others were clearly abandoned, and a few had been burned down to the foundation. But there was something else. Mortimer couldn’t quite put his finger on it. He stood in the middle of the street, turned three hundred and sixty degrees trying to figure it out.

No cars. None driving, none parked in the driveways or along the streets. The gas might have gone stale, but where did the cars go?

He kept walking.

He turned onto his street, spotted his house about halfway down. It came into focus as he trudged closer. The windows were dark, but so were all the windows along the street. No power. His house looked dirty and unpainted. The shrubs grown long and wild. It hadn’t been such a bad house, three bedrooms, two baths, a fireplace. Now the gutters hung loose at one end. He stood watching the house for ten minutes but didn’t see or hear any signs of life.

He climbed the three steps to the front porch. The wood creaked under his boots. Someone had painted graffiti on the front door, a blue circle with a triangle of three dots inside. Some gang?

Concern for Anne suddenly welled up inside him. What had happened to her? Did she make it okay when the world went crazy?

He knocked on the door. It felt strange, even after all this time, to knock before he entered his own home. He pushed the door open and entered.

The living room was nearly barren, a sofa with stuffing oozing out of the cushions and a beanbag. He stood there trying to remember the good times with Anne, long nights in front of a cozy fire. Mortimer’s eyes grew misty as the past formed a picture in his mind.

The old screaming woman with the frying pan in her hand broke the spell.

“Whoa!” Mortimer flinched, backed away.

She was wild eyed, gray hair exploding in all directions. She rushed at Mortimer, the frying pan swinging savagely. Mortimer threw up his arms, tried to duck away. A glancing blow on the tip of his elbow shot hot pain up his arm.

“Lady, please. Jesus!” Mortimer attempted flight, tripped backward over the beanbag.

The old lady loomed over him, mouth a feral, toothless grimace, ragged dress billowing around her like the tattered cape of some obsolete superhero. “My house. The place was empty, so I puts my mark on the door. Them’s the rules.” She lifted the pan over her head for a killer blow.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry.” He reached into his pocket, came out with a handful of coins and tossed them at the old woman’s feet. “Here, take them.”

She stepped back, blinked at the glittering coins on the floor. “Are those…?” She knelt, picked one up and held it in the light. “It is. Armageddon dollars!” She scooped them into her trembling hands. “Thank you. Oh, my God. Thank you.”

Her head came up suddenly and she met Mortimer’s gaze, one eye half-milky with cataracts. “Wait a minute. I know what this is about.”

“It’s not about anything.” Mortimer struggled to his feet. “I’m sorry I barged in.”

“A strapping young buck like you. I know what you want from a woman.”

“Oh, shit.” He backed away, headed for the door.

The old woman ripped open the front of her dress, buttons flying. “Take me, you randy bastard. I’m bought and paid for.” Her breasts flopped into the open like deflated hot-water bottles.

Mortimer screamed and dashed for the door, made it outside and kept running.

“You goddamn pussy,” she called after him. “Come back here and deliver the sausage!”