Go-Go Girls of the Apocalypse

XXIX

“Good evening, sir. My name is James. I’d like to direct you and your party through our checkpoint, at which time you’ll need to check your weapons with our clerk. He’ll be happy to give you a receipt, and you’re free to reclaim your weapons upon departure.”

The man who’d uttered this well-rehearsed speech was young, with neatly cut blond hair and a smile full of straight, white teeth. He wore impeccable black trousers, black wingtips, a starched white shirt with black tie and black blazer. He held an M16 automatic rifle on Mortimer and his companions. The men behind James were dressed and equipped in the exact same manner.

Bill clutched one of the deer rifles to his chest like he was being asked to give up his firstborn. “Like hell.”

The smile never wavered from James’s face. “I’m afraid you will be denied entrance if we are unable to secure your firearms. For the safety of our drunken, irresponsible patrons, we must forbid all unauthorized weapons. Joey Armageddon thanks you for your cooperation.”

Mortimer admired the young man’s professionalism. Mortimer was confident James would remain polite and friendly the whole time he and his chums were shredding Mortimer and his companions with a lethal rain of automatic gunfire.

He edged closer to Bill, nudged him in the ribs. “Just pretend it’s Dodge City and you’re giving up your guns to Wyatt Earp.”

Bill frowned. “Ha-fucking-ha-ha.”

“Come on,” Sheila said. “I just want to go in.”

“Okay,” Mortimer said to the guards. “We’ll check the hardware.”

James seemed genuinely delighted. “We appreciate your cooperation. Please follow the path through the gate. The clerk is on the other side.”

The gate wasn’t some half-assed blockade of dead cars like he’d seen in the small towns to the north. They’d put a cinderblock wall across the road. It was eight feet high with sporadic guard platforms on the other side, crisp men in starched shirts staring down over the sights of their M16 rifles. An iron gate swung open on well-oiled hinges, and Mortimer followed Sheila and Bill through to the other side.

It took a moment for the little village to snap into focus. Mortimer wasn’t sure what he was seeing at first, but recognition dawned in ten seconds. They were on St. Elmo Avenue, and Mortimer could see St. Elmo Station a block and a half away.

Mortimer took another few seconds to realize why everything looked so strange. It looked like an actual town, a place where people lived and worked and hadn’t endured nearly a decade of doom. If there had been cars on the road, Mortimer might have believed he’d finally awakened from a long, detailed nightmare. The village around St. Elmo Station bustled with commerce. The goods and services from various shops spilled out onto the streets, giving the place an open-air-market feel. Everything was clean and organized, the streets and buildings in good repair.

And light. With the oncoming darkness, a man walked the street lighting oil lamps set high on thin iron poles. They did not fear the dark here. There was no starvation or danger. Even the men with machine guns were courteous.

“Sir? Excuse me, sir?”

Mortimer blinked out of his stupor, turned to see a squat, round gentleman with a sweaty red face watching him expectantly.

“Sir, my name is Reginald, and I’m the master gun clerk. Please step to the kiosk.”

The gun kiosk was some kind of converted ticket booth with a kid barely out of his teens at the window. Behind the kid hung all manner of rifles and pistols. Even a sword or two. Sheila and Bill were already folding receipts and putting them into pants pockets.

Reginald said, “If you please, sir, hand your weaponry through the window to Steven. He’ll tag it for you and make out a receipt.”

He handed the kid the shotgun, then the pistol he’d taken off the Red Stripe. He felt oddly naked without the guns. They’d become an important part of his personal inventory. The kid handed him back a receipt, which Mortimer shoved down the front pocket of his jeans.

“What if I need to defend myself?”

Reginald smiled with practiced patience. “You need only defend yourself from quality service and premium female companionship. I’d surrender.”

Good suggestion.

Mortimer, Bill and Sheila made their way toward St. Elmo Station, walking in no particular hurry, craning their necks and gawking at the village. At one point, Sheila uttered a muted squeal and skipped toward a shop with dazzling women’s clothing hanging in the window. She pressed her face against the glass like a five-year-old gazing longingly at a candy store display.

Mortimer came up behind her. “Buying a dress for the ball?”

She sighed. “Not likely without money.” She brightened slightly. “But I’ll get a job as a Joey Girl again. Then I’ll get clothes even better than these.”

“I don’t doubt it.”

“What gets me about these clothes is that some of them are only pretty,” she said. “Not made to keep you warm or dry. Just to be pretty. Can you believe they’d make clothes just for that? I guess they used to all the time.”

Anne had always wanted the most impractical clothing and loathed Mortimer for pointing that out. “Every girl should have at least one dress just to be pretty.”

Mortimer didn’t know if he quite believed that, but it was the right thing to say. A smile flickered across Sheila’s face, and for an instant the hardness fell away and she wasn’t a teenage whore and killer. She was just a young girl looking at pretty dresses in a shop window.

They realized they’d lost Bill. It was bound to happen, so many things to catch the eye and turn the head. Soon Sheila was off looking into another store window. Without vehicular traffic, the middle of the avenue had become a sort of town square. A man played a banjo while a small monkey performed acrobatic feats. Mortimer was glad the monkey hadn’t been eaten. How many escaped zoo animals roamed the countryside? A few yards down, another performer juggled flaming batons. Someone else dealt three-card monty. He smelled cotton candy and some kind of meat on a stick.

He realized he didn’t have any money but hoped he could get the same credit here he’d gotten at the Joey’s in Cleveland. He really wanted to sleep indoors tonight. It would be a great gift to Bill and Sheila to buy them both a big dinner, a few bottles of wine. Hell, maybe he’d even get Sheila a new dress for the occasion. Mortimer admitted to himself he was thinking about everything except why he’d come all this way in the first place.

Somewhere at the top of Lookout Mountain his wife, Anne, waited.

Now that he was here, the idea of marching up to her and saying, “ Hi, honey, it’s me, your husband. Long time no see,” seemed ludicrous. A juvenile part of him did relish the surprised look he hoped to see on her face, but mostly he didn’t know how she would react, and that made him nervous.

But Mortimer owed her something. He couldn’t articulate what that might be, not exactly, but he needed to see her, and he honestly believed she’d want to see him. Sure she would. They were married after all.

He was stalling. Was it possible Mortimer no longer wanted-or needed-to see Anne? He’d come down the mountain alone. It might only be natural for him to seek out his wife. To connect again with the world via the only person he could think of who might want to see him. But Mortimer wasn’t alone anymore. He counted Bill as a friend. Sheila…well, he didn’t know what to think of Sheila and her “apology.” She was more than an acquaintance but not quite anything else, yet Mortimer still felt he wanted to call Sheila friend. Even if she was a scary, ferocious demon child.

So what did he want from Anne? What did he think she might want from him? He stood in the town square, eyes going unfocused as he thought hard about it, jugglers and monkeys and cardsharps plying their trades around him. He blotted them out. Something was coming to him, some significant thought coalescing from all the loose ends knocking around in his head.

Sheila emerged from the crowd to stand next to him, tentatively touched his arm. “Are you okay?”

“Shhhhh. Don’t talk,” Mortimer said. “I’m having an epiphany.”

He had come all this way, fueled by the misguided notion that he still loved Anne, that he needed to find her again, win her back somehow. What he really wanted was to stem his abject loneliness, the hollow ache that had clawed and gnawed his gut for nine years, until finally he had to fill that burning hole with…something. His desperate mind grabbed for something familiar and had latched on to the memory of Anne. Mortimer had not wanted to march into the gray unknown of a shattered world without a destination, without hope of the familiar, so he’d fabricated the myth of Anne and their possible reunion.

But Mortimer found that he wasn’t alone. He had Bill and Sheila and a Joey Armageddon’s Platinum card. He was doing all right. He was reinventing himself in a new context. This different, surprising, shocking world might disgust him, confound him, bruise and terrify him, but so far it had not knocked him down, not so badly that he couldn’t find his feet again. Mortimer Tate could stand up. He did not need his ex-wife.

He thought maybe that he loved her still but wasn’t in love with her. Is that what women meant when they said that bullshit? Yes, Mortimer understood now. His mind had broadened to understand this simple truth. All it took was the end of the world.

He blinked himself out of his daydream, clapped his hands and rubbed them together. “Okay, figured that out. Now let’s go get something to eat.”