Apocalypse Soonish

Read previous entries:
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5

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Day 6

Dear Journal,

I awake to an empty home and find a note next to my “V” badge.

Take this. Find Hank in the sky. With, well — you might say — love, -GR

I grab the badge and make my way back to Hank’s Mad Ape Den. I don’t know what the gummi bear meant by “the sky” but…

Now I understand, for in the eastern sky, silhouetted against the sun, I see an enormous flying machine. It is in the shape of a chicken, with a zeppelin-like body and many whirring motors along its feet, wings, and coxcomb.

I run, desperate to reach the contraption before it takes flight. I reach the airfield and hide behind a rock as I look for a way in. Dozens of apes are loading large tubs filled with oysters and pearls into its metal bulk.

Suddenly I hear from behind me a pair of marching primates. I scuttle behind the far side of the rock and see, with amazement, that they are —

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Carrying Virginia. And she is … ALIVE! (In her way.)

I stifle a cry. They are marching her, bound as before, to the flying metal chicken. I watch them drag her flattened, broken body on board but can see her head lolling from side to side in a not-dead fashion. My heart swells. Of course! She wasn’t really dead — she was playing possum.

The engines of the flying machine roar to life, lifting its massive bulk. Many strong ropes tether the craft to the earth. I run forward, desperate to get on board before Virginia and Hank take to the skies. I see an ape sawing the ropes one by one and recognize him as the leader from my initial capture. He sees me.

“Man!” he yells, and charges at me wielding his saw.

We enter hand-to-hand combat — his simian strength against my human wits, the saw poised above my head, now his. We crash against the final tether, which frays and strains with the enormous effort of grounding the flying chicken contraption. The ape leader wrests the saw from my hands and backs me against the taut rope.

“Now,” he says, “you die!”

He swings the saw at my midsection and —

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Cuts the rope as I leap over his swing. At the height of my leap I grab the tail end of the rope and soar with the flying chicken machine into the clear blue sky.

I hoist myself into the monstrosity’s metallic belly. Another guard stands among the tubs of pearls. I grab him my the scruff and throw him into the abyss.

The time for diplomacy has passed, Journal.

I climb through a labyrinthine series of bulkheads, and emerge into the cockpit — situated at the beak of the avian airship. There I see something I will never forget for the rest of my days, however many or few they number —

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Virginia, the necrotic possum with whom I had formed such a tight bond in so short a time struggles with all her feeble might as her ape captors lash her broken limbs to the very tip of the ship’s beak. They stand on a rickety scaffold that was built, it seems, for this very purpose. Wind shrieks through this open-aired cockpit

“You monsters!” I yell, stepping forward. They bear their yellowed teeth.

“Do you not get it?” a sardonic voice behind me says about the howl of the air. I don’t need to turn. I know who it is. “The ape, he can not get it as you say it in the way you did.”

“I’ll get to you next, chicken.” I say, and crouch into an athletic martial arts pose. The apes do the same from the scaffolding. They pounce at me and —