Apocalypse Soonish

Read previous entries:
Day 1

12

Day 2

Dear Journal,

We awake to a blaring voice echoing across the Horrorscape. It seems to come from all directions at once. Virginia and I jump from our shortrib-induced slumbers with a start.

The man is to be put in. Get the man. Put him in.

Knowing who this “man” almost certainly is and not wanting to find out what being “put in” means, I seek the source of this strange alarm and find, to my surprise —

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A speaker dock! Its 30-pin port augmented with some receiver. I yank at this receiver and quiet the speaker, but the announcement runs on.

The man is to be put in. Get the man. Put him in.

It blares from all directions. I realize with horror that —

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I am surrounded by thousands of speaker docks, all receiving the same transmission. There is no hope of silencing them all, Journal. I call off Virginia, who was gnawing on a dock, and we flee toward the hazy red sun as it rises.

We run, hoping to find where the speaker docks stop. Maybe it is the exhaustion or maybe we have reached the outskirts of this “city, ” so we have stopped to rest a moment. Suddenly a figure looms before us.

I shield my eyes and gasp, for the figure before us is —

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A primate!

Virginia hisses through her broken jaw and skulks behind me for protection – clearly afraid. The primate flails its arms and screams at us, jumping from side to side madly.

At first I take its hoots as mere nonsense, but soon begin deciphering them as a garbled form of English.

“The man!” it howls, “the man! I got the man and the man got me ha ha ha! It is a bit of wit, you see?""

I am terrified of this insane, sentient simian and have backed away slowly, averting my gaze as I had been taught in Primate Body Language 101, when I bump against something soft. I turn, thinking I have nudged Virginia, but see instead –

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An entire horde of apes. They have captured Virginia and are dancing and screaming with insane glee.

“Unhand that possom!” I say, with more conviction than I would have thought possible given the circumstances.

The primate horde stops, cocking its collective head.

“We do not get it.” says one, who looks like a leader.

“Let go of that marsupial!” I try again.

“We get ‘let go of,’ but not the big bit.”

Now it is my turn to cock a head. What strange language are these insane simians speaking? Did they only speak with words no longer than —

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“To the den!” the leader calls, cutting off my question. Hairy arms grab Virginia and I from all directions and bind our arms. The apes march us back from where we had fled, laughing and gibbering in their strange mongrel tongue.

We are led to a large cavern mouth ringed with strange burning totems. Screams bubble up from the cavern depths — some hysterical like the apes, some almost human-like. Virginia shrinks at the sight and sound of this dire place, dislocating her shoulder in a futile attempt to free herself.

“Peace, noble possum,” I say. “Everyone knows humans are smarter than apes. I’ll get us out of here.”

Just then the screaming from the cave stops. The fiery totems gutter out. Our captors prostrate themselves on the ground. And –

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A chicken emerges. An enormous white chicken — twice the size of a human.

“Did I let on re: the hen I dig?” it speaks to the assembled throng.

“You did not let on,” they reply in unison.

“She had bad ova. I let her in on it. Yes, yes …” the chicken struts across the mouth of the cavern while the crowd’s excitement builds

“…It was an egg neg.”

The apes burst into fits of insane laughter, rolling on the ground and wiping tears from their eyes. This, it seems, is a good one.

“Now …“ the giant bird continues, pointing its pure white wing directly at me —

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“Get the man in the den.""

Rough hairy hands again grab my bound arms and shove me towards the mouth of the cave. I look back at Virginia, terrified of losing my only friend in this mad post-apocalyptic setting.

“And,” the snowy chicken continues. “Nix the rat.” It pulls a wingtip across its neck in the universal symbol that made the meaning of “nix” unmistakable. The apes gibber in delight.

What happens next I’ll never forget —

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“Not a rat!” a clear and refined voice breaks through the animal hooting, like a superior kitchen knife through semisoft cheese.

The crowd turns toward the source of this strong, confident call. Who is it? I wonder.

“I am known by many names. To the Utes I was Land Master. To the Crow and Cree, Snaketail. To the white man I am known as a Possum, and by him I am called —""

“Virginia!” I cry, flabbergasted.

“Indeed,” she says, and raises her broken bulk upright. ”My tale goes back many years, before the Blasted Days as we now call them. I shall now recount my —""

But her tale is cut short by –

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A blow to the head from a refurbished Dyson wielded by one of her imbecile captors.

“Nooo!” I cry. I try to free myself, but I must have been bludgeoned also, for suddenly I am on the ground and overcome by an enveloping, dark sleep as I write these last words…