Apocalypse Soonish

Read previous entries:
Day 1
Day 2

22

Day 3

Dear Journal,

I awake in a damp, dark room. Possibly a cell. I shake my head free of sleep and a likely concussion and try to remember the salient events that led me here.

• I was frozen in 2017 but have been prematurely thawed
• The world as I knew it has been destroyed
• I have befriended a well-spoken possum named Virginia
• We were captured by a band of apes capable of speech, albeit monosyllabic
• We were lead back to their den and encountered their seeming leader, an enormous white comedian chicken
• I have been separated from Virginia and find myself imprisoned in the den

I must learn what happened to cause this destruction and madness. Then I must try to undo it. I remember that Virginia was on the verge of describing these events when she was clobbered into unconsciousness. Maybe if I find her, I can …

Hold on, Journal. Don’t make a noise. Someone or something approaches my cell —

23

A window high above me opens, sending in a blinding shaft of light. Three objects clunk to the hard floor. The window closes again.

I blindly reach for these mysterious objects and discover that they are —

24

A bottle of fetid but welcome water
An enchilada wrapped in foil (even more welcome)
A box containing a beer koozy, three ethernet cables, a t-shirt, and what seems to be a clip-on light or lamp of some kind, and a patch or badge emblazoned with a single “V”

I contemplate this strange assortment of goods while wolfing down my enchilada. With no power supply I cannot use the light. And the other products seem absolutely … worthless.

Are they gifts from a benevolent stranger? Or some kind of strange joke courtesy of my insane primate captors?

I have little time to contemplate, for as I write this more footsteps approach. I hurry to hide my “goods” in a corner just in time before —

25

A door swings open, sending more light into my dismal cell. I see it is shaped like a large well — circular with high stone walls leading up into darkness. And somewhere up there a grated window from which my “gifts” fell.

I have little time for contemplation, however, as I am seized (for the umpteenth time) by two large primate guards and forced into the lit hallway.

We pass a row of cell doors much like mine and I strain my neck to see into the open ones, hoping to catch a sight of Virginia. But to no avail. I fear I shall never behold her sweet, mangled visage again, Journal.

At the end of the hallway I am thrust onto what seems to be a forklift and driven up and up through the subterranean den until we reach the light of the outdoors, where I am deposited like so much cargo on —

26

The banks of a river.

An especially large and brutish ape waddles over to me. It looks at me, grunts, and whips my back.

“Get up, man,” it says, and to my surprise hands me a stumpy steel knife. “Use it to get an orb.”

I can make nothing of this whatsoever, Journal. This barbaric baboon leads me to a group of apes huddled over the water. I see that they are wielding the same short knife.

Then I realize something about these apes —

27

They aren’t apes at all — they’re human! They are so ill-kempt and covered in filth I mistook them for more mad apes.

I am overjoyed at the sight of my own species. I will tell you now, Journal, that I had harbored secret fears that I was the last Homo sapien to have survived into the “Blasted Days.” I begin speaking to them in a confused way.

“My God, I thought I was alone! What are you doing? How did you get here? Tell me what happened!”

They look at me with a mixture of shock and opprobrium. A woman close to me shakes her head and tries to shush me, but it’s too late for shushing as I find when—

28

The guard’s whip cracks on my back again.

“You no say in man-way, man,” the cruel guardsman (guardsape?) says. ""Say in mad ape den way. Now —“ he kicks me into the river. “Get the orb.”

I crawl back on shore with the other humans and, terrified of further punishment, try to mimic their behavior. I see that these human workers are retrieving rocks from the river bed and jamming their short knives with them.

I begin to do same when I realize these aren’t rocks at all. They’re —

29

Oysters!

Of course — “get the orb”! They — we — are being forced to harvest freshwater pearls for our ape masters.

I try my hand at the task, stabbing my knife ineffectually into the oyster’s shell. The woman next to me — the shusher — again shakes her head at my ineptitude, inches toward me along the shore, and demonstrates. In goes the knife. A twist. A turn. Out comes the oyster with its pearl, both of which she dumps into a pail at her side.

I try again but fail.

“I don’t know how to —“ I begin, but she shushes me for a third time.

“No say the man way,” she says in a terrified whisper and retreats back to her eddy.

Do the humans speak this strange tongue as well, Journal? Have they been utterly broken by their mad ape masters? As I write this another bedraggled human hops near me and answers my question in a most extraordinary way —