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 —

13

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 —

14

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 —

15

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 –

16

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 —

17

“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 –