“There is a center to all things,” she began. She ripped a page from New Moon and held it aloft. Then she took a handful of cloudy water from the tub and let it fall in the middle of the page. It shook in her grasp.

“The center feeds the rest of the system,” she continued. The drop spread across the paper in a widening circle, and the ink started to bleed. “But it also erodes it.” She poked the growing spot with a talon-like fingernail and left a jagged hole. “A saturated thing collapses in on itself.”

“Aw shoot,” I said off of her significant look. “Now we’ll never find out if Edgar marries the bitch.”

“EDWARD!” she hissed. This woman scared the shit out of me, but I was still doing my best not to show it.

“Fine. So what’s saturated and collapsing that I should know about?”

She smiled, a wide, horrid smile that created a whole new pattern of cracks and wrinkles, shifting the landscape of her features. “Well most of the continent, for starters.”

“Come again?”

“From sea to shining sea,” she continued. “Like a wounded animal, bleeding out. Pest-ridden and wheezing.”

Either Bathtub Lady had the same gift for overblown metaphors as my employers, or everyone was actually being very literal—in a really scary way.

“America,” I said, desperate for less wordplay and more clarity (which was almost never the case otherwise).

She nodded. “A little worse for wear, as empires go,” she said. “Surely you’ve noticed. Or did they not make it clear in your job description?”

“Make what clear?”

She looked at me like I had just asked her what color the sky was. “My word, dearie. You didn’t even ask, did you?” She paused, clearly savoring the living shit out of the moment. “You’re here to speed the process along.”

Travel. Autonomy. Plenty of people to kick and/or punch. And yeah, maybe a little nihilism. That’s what I’d signed up for. I had needed an escape, and my employers had given me a way out. Period. If there was any fine print involved (or hell, even regular-sized print) I had turned a blind eye. I had no idea what I was getting myself into, and I liked it that way. But I suppose I was bound to find out sooner or later.

“Speed the process along,” I repeated. “What does that mean?”

She let out a raspy sigh and raised her right hand in my direction, as if preparing to say a benediction. “Come here,” she said. “I wasn’t planning on spending my whole afternoon giving a history lesson to a mewling infant. It will be faster this way.”

Again feeling like I had lost any semblance of the upper hand, I leaned toward her outstretched palm. I reminded myself that if anything went down, I had three concealed knives on me and she looked to be about three thousand years old. She pressed a water-raisined finger to my forehead, and I felt like I had mainlined something that definitely shouldn’t be in my system.

This American animal she’d been talking about burst in front of my eyes, like a live-action X-ray mashed together with a planetarium laser show, only without the piped-in Pink Floyd. In a flash I saw it all, the whole system—the roots cracking and crazing the dirt like lightning in a sky of soil; and more than roots—rivers and roads and subway tunnels and canals and so many highways, cities like wounds and suburbs like rashes and mountain ranges like scars. How everything was always growing, always pumping, breaking apart and mending behind; how if it ever stopped—well. That was a matter for my employers.

Next thing I knew I was flat on my back on the cheap motel bathroom tile, my head pounding like 2-for-1 night at a death-metal bar. I sat up, and found myself face-to-face with Bathtub Lady once more.

“The fuck?” I said, once I’d found my voice again.

“That, dearie, is the network. The system. The body. Busy and bloody and much too much overburdened. Your employers would like an end to the whole mess. A mercy killing, if you will.”

America was a mess, I couldn’t argue with that. But who’d ever heard of killing a continent? “And what have Scepters got to do with it?” I asked.

“They’re the hot spots. The fixed unfixed. They keep the whole web in place. Pluck them, one by one, and the beast bleeds out.”

“And I’m the… plucker.”

She nodded.

“Why the hell did they pick me?”

“Frankly, I don’t have the foggiest idea why, idiot child.” She looked up, and there was something in her eyes almost like compassion. “I don’t envy you your lot. Truly.”

“Why are you so eager to share with me, anyway?” I asked. There was nothing garden-variety about the beans this old crone was spilling.

“I have had a long life of secrets, and I tire of them. They lose their juice if you keep them too long. And besides, dearie—” she reclined further in the tub and sipped her drink. “I haven’t had company in a very long time.”

“OK, so how many Scepters are there?”

She seemed to chew on this for a moment. “Difficult to say. Depends on the season. And the geology. And a lot of factors, really.”

“Oh for chrissakes.”

“Now hold back those horses of yours. And don’t take the lord’s name in vain. I’m thinking. Somewhere in the ballpark of 15—titchy things, they are—”

Just as I felt like I was finally getting somewhere concrete, our little heart-to-heart was interrupted by the sound of smashing glass and a pair of boots hitting the floor.

“Charlie! Are you in here?”

That motherfucking idiot. Bathtub Lady’s eyes went wide, but she didn’t move. Scats thundered into the bathroom, brandishing my shotgun, the ever-present duffel slung unsteadily across his shoulders. He looked like the most stupid action hero that it was possible to be.

“Charlie? Oh, there you are,” he said, practically stepping on me. “Just um… checking in.”

I wanted to ask him how the hell he even knew what room we were in, but I had a more pressing communiqué. “Fuck off,” I said.

His eyes moved from me to the tub, and he lowered the shotgun.

Bathtub Lady was not looking so hot—not that she had been the picture of health, beauty and sanity before now. Her face was ashen, almost gray, and she looked like she might throw up.

“You,” she breathed, looking at Scats.

I looked from one to the other. “You two know each other?”

They both ignored me. “Is this—? Did I—?” he sputtered, looking around the room.

“Of course it would be you,” she gasped, her voice suddenly bone-dry.

“I didn’t know. I broke the window. Is it—”

“Too late,” she said.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”

She laughed, a pale husk of her former cackle. “Apologies don’t become you, boy. They never have.” She looked smaller, thinner, withering before my eyes.

“What the hell is this?” I cut in, walking over to the tub to catch the whole sick show.

Bathtub Lady looked up at me with a leer, her skin the color of asphalt. “Oh, you are a fool, child.” As she spoke—I shit you not—bits of her began to crumble away. She coughed, and a cloud of dust flew into the air.

“Charlie, you might wanna move back,” Scats said evenly.

“And miss all the fun?” Truly, I lived for this stuff.

“Well, at least close your mouth.”

“That’s what she said,” I whispered.

Trembling, Bathtub Lady raised the glass of Ruble to her lips. But before she could take a sip, her arm broke off. With what looked like a huge amount of effort, she used her remaining hand to seize me by the wrist. She pinned me with an intense glare and coughed out, “One down, my dear.”

Just as I was beginning to parse out what she meant by that, her fingers turned to powder on my forearm and Scats pulled me back. Then everything began to crumble, her skin becoming rock becoming pebbles becoming dust, which filled the air and clogged my mouth and nose. I bent over double, hacking up old lady crumbs. By the time I looked up again, there was no trace of her—just a film of ash on the surface of the bathwater, some sinking jewelry, and New Moon floating along the surface like a flimsy lifeboat.

Scats seemed to be determined to take my mind off it all with long, one-sided conversations about nothing in particular. I discovered that he had an uncanny knack for talking endlessly without actually saying anything at all. Every time he dipped into his magical pocket pharmacopeia (which was staggeringly often, even by my measurements), he was guaranteed to spend the next half hour and change careening down some mental byway, full of fantastical dead-ends and cagey detours. Every pill-pop, like clockwork. He was the Old Faithful of bullshit.

“I stole this guy’s ride once,” he said. His feet were propped up on the dash, the passenger-side floor being occupied entirely by his giant, creepy, stinky duffel bag. “Real nice one, too. Hell of a lot nicer than this tin can.”

“There are so many reasons I would like to punch you right now,” I said.

“But you can’t. Because your fist is in a sling,” he replied matter-of-factly. “So anyway, I stole this guy’s ride. It was almost too easy. He kept asking me how I’d do it, steal his car, so I showed him. And drove away laughing my ass off.” He rolled down his window and lit a cigarette, a practice I had given up on giving him a hard time about 100 miles or so back.

“So I’ve got a car thief for a passenger. Aces,” I said.

“A thief? Me? You wound me, truly. I like to think of myself as a—”

“Con man? Vagrant? Asshole?” I offered.

He went silent for a moment, then exhaled a long spool of smoke out the window. “See if I ever stitch you up again,” he muttered.

“So why don’t you have it anymore? The car you so expertly liberated?”

“It left. I didn’t take care of it, and it left.” More riddles, and ones whose punchlines I wasn’t so interested in. He rattled another handful of pills into his mouth and turned back to me. “Oh man, and then there was this one time that—“

I cut him off at the curb. “Gimme a couple of those pink ones, huh? And put something on the radio. I’m sick of hearing the sound of you not shutting up.”

“But don’t you wanna—“

“And by the way: when we get to Sterling City, I got an errand to run. And you’re not invited.”

“Sure you don’t need backup?”

“Pink pills. Pink pills are all I need.”

. . . . . .

After the dryness of the Texas spring, the sticky blast of fetid air behind the door of Room 28 hit me like a waterfall. The paisley wallpaper was all but peeling from the walls, and little droplets of grey moisture dribbled along the light switch. I half expected the floor to buckle beneath my steps, but it merely groaned. Clouds hung around the ceiling, mixed with what smelled like Grade C hookah smoke. Tooty-frooty, or some bullshit excuse for a flavor like that.

I had to catch myself on the slimy wall when my boot slipped against something smooth. I bent down and found an empty handle of Ruble Vodka—80 proof, cheap as dirt. They were all over the floor, in various states of emptiness and fullness, so I had to step gingerly. Manna fallen from Hobo Heaven.

“You always introduce me to the most interesting people, Boss,” I muttered to my absent employers. I forced my way deeper into the motel room jungle, taking in the moldy twin bed, the damp sheets rumpled and butt-creased. I pressed my palm to them—still warm. Gross.

A library book lay open on a pile of pillows. An obscure, ancient text? A clue? Twilight. Any hopes I had for someone swampy but respectful vanished. This particular interrogation would probably necessitate a pummeling.

The source of the sickly-sweet smell was a half-burned incense stick, still smoking. The package next to the burner read “Aftersex.” One word and everything. Swell. I licked my thumb and forefinger and snuffed out the ember.

The sound of a low, hacking cough brought my hand instinctively to the pistol holstered under my jacket. I took off the safety but didn’t draw, remembering my employers’ warning about restraint. Didn’t mean I wasn’t gonna punch a bitch, though. I still had one working arm.

Another cough brought my attention to a closed door to my left. “Who the fuck?” I shouted.

The voice that responded was barely audible, so I pressed my ear to the door and shouted, “What?”

This time, I could just make out the rasp. “I said, I don’t respond to shouting, young lady.”

Weirdtown. Fantastic. “You decent in there?” I called back, trying the knob. It was locked.

“You’re going to come in anyway, aren’t you dearie.”

“Pretty much yeah. You opening this, or am I making with the kicking?” There was no audible response, so I took the door at a run. The wood buckled, and my good shoulder went straight through.

“Sakes alive! I was just clearing my throat.”

I peered through the hole I’d made and saw a bizarre scene, lit by a single, guttering candle. A wrinkled mass was huddled in the bathtub, which was full of cloudy liquid. I reached my arm through and opened the knob from the other side. Minimal damage girl, that was me.

The dim light from the main room shone upon an old, impossibly corpulent woman with a heavily makeuped face. Aside from the tarnished but expensive-looking jewels on her neck, ears and wrists, she was stark naked. One ringed, liver-spotted hand clutched a motel highball glass full of, presumably, Ruble. The other held a moisture-curled book—Twilight: New Moon.

“So. Not decent was the answer to that question,” I said.

She smiled, a hideous, toad-like, greedy smile. “Would you be a dear and fetch me that book on the bed?”

“Come again?”

“I’m cross-referencing,” she explained.

“Um.”

“Oh, but I see you’ve got your hands full.” Her spidery gaze fell on my right arm in its sling and my left hand in which I now held the pistol, unconsciously grabbed.

“You’re not what I was expecting,” I managed to get out.

“Oh, no one expects me, dearie,” she said. “But I expect everything.”

I let my hand with the gun fall to my side. This was a room that encouraged limpness. I suddenly felt unsure. I would take this bitch if I had to, but it would feel unsavory.

“Twilight, huh?” I said, by way of conversation.

She regarded the book and pressed a palm lovingly to its cover. “Oh, yes. I enjoy the simplicity of it. So wonderfully naïve. Such a basic misunderstanding of blood. It’s refreshing, really.”

Everything about this moment—the caterpillar-curled old crone, the fetid air, the lingering smell of incense—it was annihilating my focus. I could barely stand, let alone think. Had my employers led me into a trap? A really icky, old-persony trap? I shook myself and raised the pistol again with all the energy I could muster. I had a job to do.

“The Scepter. Where is it?” I hoped I sounded threatening, but I doubted it. I thought of Scats, presumably waiting in the car, and regretted not accepting his offer of backup.

“Sit, dearie. You’ll feel better,” she simpered.

Normally I wouldn’t have listened, but my knees felt like water. I plopped down on the rim of the sink. She was right; I did feel better.

“I suppose you know who I work for,” I said.

“They’re the only ones who know I’m here, so yes.”

“Swell. So spill. Scepter. Where is it.”

“That depends,” she said. “Which one did you have in mind?”

“What?”

She clucked her tongue and let out what I think was meant to be a polite titter, but sounded more like a cat scraping its claws against a sidewalk. “Oh, my stars. They haven’t told you anything, have they?”

“I know plenty,” I said. This was patently untrue.

She looked straight into my eyes, studying me. It wasn’t a fun feeling, but I wasn’t about to give her the satisfaction of averting my gaze.

“So young,” she murmured. “And such a blunt instrument.”

“Actually, I prefer edge weapons,” I said.

“I wonder how many they had to go through before they found a specimen like you.”

“You haven’t answered my question yet,” I pressed.

“Or perhaps they made you,” she continued, ignoring my line of conversation. “Took what you were and sharpened it to a point. Took everything away that insulated you.”

With a swiftness, I was up and holding the gun to her face. “We’re not here to talk about me,” I said.

She laughed again, and this time it didn’t sound remotely like a titter. “Enough of this tomfoolery,” she said, looking at me straight up the length of the pistol. “If you’re going to interrogate people, you need to learn how to listen. Now drop that gew-gaw and sit down.”

I drew back and dropped the pistol in the basin, sitting on the counter again. It occurred to me in the process of doing this that I was no longer behind the wheel.

“What did you do to me?” I asked through gritted teeth.

She luxuriated against the rim of the tub and took a long sip of Ruble. “You are in my realm, young lady. You are breathing my air and you are here at my pleasure. You try to threaten me? I could crush you like a mayfly. But I won’t, because I am so very, very polite.”

There was a long silence during which the snide comeback I had prepared would not escape my lips, and I gave up. It had been a strange year, no doubt. Ever since I took this gig, my life kept leading me down these supernatural byways. But this was the first time I couldn’t hold my own. So I bided my time, and listened. The thing in the tub seemed please to have an audience, and I sensed that she’d been alone in this room for a very long time.

“Fuck you! It’s my car!” I was pretty much just growling at this point, steering with my left hand while my right arm bled freely and my right foot slammed on the gas. Yes, this might not have been the best idea. But I wasn’t about to let anyone else behind the wheel of the Old Man, let alone this creepy motherfucker who ate rabbits and talked about basset hound people.

We were on the open road now, but I could still see something looming in my rearview. “Are they still behind us?”

“I think we lost ‘em. Keep gunning it, though.” Scats was twisted around in his seat, looking out the rear window and cocking the rifle I’d handed him. Since when did I have a wingman? He turned back to me and I saw his eyes travel along the shaft of the arrow, which was still very much sticking out of my bicep. “I think we oughta find you a hospital.”

“No way,” I said. For a garden variety of reasons, hospitals were not places I went. Ever. Even when my whole right side was screaming at me.

“Seriously, lady, we gotta get you to a professional here. I don’t know if you got the memo when you were busy trying to prove how badass you are, but there’s an arrow in your arm.”

“Don’t you lady me!” I said.

“Well I don’t know what the fuck your name is.”

“You show me yours, I’ll show you mine.”

“Fine, want me to make one up too, uh… Shelley Duvall?”

Touche. “All work and no play,” I said.

“We headed in any particular direction right now, Shel?” he asked.

“Away from those motherfuckers was where I was aiming.”

“OK, well I think we’re suitably away, so–”

“Ten more miles.”

“What?”

This was my rule number one. Somebody gives you trouble, especially potentially mortal trouble, you put at least ten miles between you and them. These guys were especially freaky for a variety of reasons, so I was going to give them at least 20. I was about to explain this principle to Scats, but I felt my hand slipping off the wheel, and the whole landscape looked like it had been submerged. I felt something warm at my side, and looked down to see blood pooling between my leg and the seat, soaking into my jeans. I was more than used to the sight of gore, so the fact that I could feel myself passing out was just kind of embarrassing.

I felt Scats elbow me aside and grab the wheel. For a crazy second, I thought his hands were mine, and I wondered why they were so large. Then I snapped back, and grabbed his wrist. I was conscious just long enough to get out:

“If you crash my car, I’ll fucking ki–”

. . . . . .

I must’ve woken up a few times, because I remember being aware that I was no longer behind the wheel, but spread out on a prickly surface with a sky overhead the color of rotten liver. At some later point, I felt fingers closing off my nose as something bitter was poured down my throat. Then later still, a scream as my arm was–I was certain–ripped from its socket. I think the scream was mine. Hell of a way to pay someone back for a ride.

When I woke again, it was dark and I smelled the familiar leather-and-tobacco scent of the Old Man. There was a sting and a clatter as my left hand fell sideways, and I looked over to see an ocean of Red Bull cans and fast food wrappers. I was vaguely impressed that Scats had managed to clear a space on the seat. My legs were dangling out the open door, and my right arm–which, to my astonishment, was still attached to my body–was draped across my chest in a makeshift sling. It felt like nothing at all, just a weight I was dragging around.

As I was propping myself up on my one working arm, the man of the hour popped his goddamn head into my line of sight, a cigarette (one of mine) between his lips.

“The angel awakes!” he said, reaching out a hand. Against my better judgment, I took it. I nearly blacked out again from the simple act of sitting up.

“Take it slow,” he said, catching me as I began to fall.

“What the hell–” I began.

“You need some air.” He lifted me up and leaned me against the car. I hated being yanked around like a rag doll, but I felt too weak to fight it. We were parked in the middle of a mown wheat field. The abundance of stars overhead told me we were still many miles from any city.

“Drink this,” he ordered, shoving a Gatorade in my face. “You puked up all your fluids.”

“Isn’t that always the way,” I said, accepting it and taking a swig. It was warm and awful. I didn’t really feel like saying anything else, because I knew I was in a vulnerable position and that type of position usually prompted in me responses like running, stabbing, or biting. But I felt like I might lose it again so I just slumped down against the wheel bed, cupping the Gatorade like it was a decent cup of coffee.

I looked up at Scats, grinning in the light of the waxing moon. “Don’t make me say it,” I said, “Just explain.”

“You’re welcome for saving your life and not taking you to a hospital when that’s what sane people would do,” he said.

“You’re not sane people.”

“Duly noted. But still.”

I glared daggers at him, and I hoped those daggers somehow maybe said “Thank you.”

He filled me in on how he’d saved my ass. After I passed out, he’d managed to steer us into this field, using the butt of the rifle to slam on the brake. He’d laid me out on the ground and given me some ungodly herbal concoction to keep me under (it hadn’t quite done the trick). Since the head was barbed, he’d had to push the arrow through the other end of my arm to minimize damage. Fortunately, it hadn’t hit bone. He’d put some more sketchy herbal shit on the wound to staunch the bleeding and prevent infection, and finished it all off with a shot of something from his pharmacopeia and bandage made from a t-shirt.

I had to admit I was impressed, but before I could he added, “You’re just lucky I’ve got lots of experience with arrow wounds.”

So much for giving this guy an inch. “I am the luckiest motherfucker alive, clearly,” I said, my left hand spreading wide to encompass the warm sports drink, the busted arm, the jalopy, the mad-eyed hitcher, and the big, stupid Texas sky. He only smiled again.

“Don’t suppose there’s any chance you’d like to tell me who was using us for archery practice?”

“I don’t know much more than you,” he replied. “Other than the fact that they weren’t exactly human.” He studied me and added, “You do have experience with non-human assailants, yes?”

This question genuinely scared me. It was obvious, by now, that it wasn’t chance that he’d showed up in my headlights the night before. But how much did he know? And what was his angle? I wasn’t dumb enough to trust him, but I also couldn’t discount the fact that he’d just saved my life. So I said, “Something like that, yeah.”

“Thought so. Well in any case, it’s best we put as much distance between them and us as possible.”

“You think they followed us here?”

“Nah. They would’ve gotten us already. But all the same, we’d best keep moving.”

I was already on my feet, however unsteadily. “You don’t have to tell me twice.”

“Careful there, sunshine.” Scats grabbed my shoulders to steady me again, but I jerked away. If he thought performing emergency surgery on the side of Route 84 was enough to earn him personal space-invading rights, he had another thing coming.

“I’m driving,” I said simply.

“Check.”

“And I’m not gonna ask you what your game is again, ’cause I’m tired of getting no answer, but just know that you’re my passenger on purely probationary terms. Got it, sunshine?”

“Ay, ay, Shelley.”

Oh right. The Shining thing. “Oh for fuck’s sake. It’s Charlie, OK? My name is Charlie.” I was sure from our accumulated circumstances that he knew this information already, so it’s not like I was giving anything away. “And you are–”

“Scatman.”

“Come on, man, this is–”

“Scatman.” He said this with such uncharacteristic finality that I let it drop. We both got in the car, a new, ill-defined rapport blooming between us. It wasn’t quite an alliance, but it wasn’t the other thing, either. I refused his offer to help me shift, steering with my knee as I pulled into drive. I pulled back onto the road and aimed West.

Charlie wasn’t my real real name either. The people who knew the real one? They’re either dead, or they don’t want to talk to you. So Charlie I was, and Scatman he was. And Sterling City, 293 miles across the state and shrinking, wouldn’t know what hit it.

“Mortal!” Lucifer bellowed when he saw me, pointing a jagged hoof in my direction. I cowered a bit.

“C-can I help you?” I sputtered, trying to collect myself.

“I demand to know who’s in charge here!” he shifted his leg, and flames shot from a nearby phone box. The sound of the displaced receiver’s dial tone filled the air.

This was a difficult question to answer. “Well I’ve heard the Prime Minister’s still at 10 Downing, but he’s a zombie now, so–”

“Fool!” he interjected, “That was a trick question! I, Lord of Chaos and Wicked Deeds, I am in charge!” His loud cackling drowned out the dial tone. He impaled a passing cat on his pitchfork and bit off its head.

“I think,” I said, taking a steadying breath, “I think—that may not be true.” I wasn’t sure where I had gotten this newfound fearlessness. Maybe it was the fact that I’d be undead soon, so I didn’t have all that much to lose. Besides, Satan was being such a git.

He was livid. “You dare to question the Lord of Darkness? You dare to challenge the word of the Antichrist?”

“Oh, Christ, we’re gonna talk about Christ now? That nutter already came and went.” Lucifer looked genuinely surprised by this news. “Or at least,” I continued, “a bloke who said he was Christ. Certainly looked the part, beard and white robe and crown of thorns and all that. Descended from the sky into this crowd of zealots that had been hanging round St. Paul’s. He told them to fuck off, which I thought was a pretty untoward thing to do. Then, he ate one of them. In one bite.

“I thought he was an arse, so if you’re the Antichrist, than logic would dictate that you must not be all that bad. That would make you, like, the Anti-arse. Except, you’re not. You’re just as much an arse as he was.”

His forked tail droop slightly, and he dropped the remains of the cat on the ground.

“If you ask me,” I continued, tucking in a bit of flesh that was drooping off my elbow, “No one’s in charge. That’s exactly the point.”

Satan sat on the ground, and the entire block shook. A small building collapsed at the end of the street. “This isn’t at all how I pictured it,” he said. His voice had lost some of its boomy scariness.

“Pictured what?”

“The apocalypse! It was supposed to be epic, and bloody, and, you know, final! Ragnarok, right? But now that it’s happened, it’s just…” he trailed off.

“Not what you expected?” I suggested.

“Well, yeah. I mean, you spend all of eternity waiting for your moment in the sun, scheming, whacking off in Hell. And for what? You know? The Devil’s supposed to have his due, right? I wouldn’t have been such a git to Lilith if I knew it would all end like this.”

“I think you’re being a bit hard on yourself,” I said. I couldn’t help feeling badly for him, arse though he was.

“Am I, though?” Just then, a deafening crack rent the air. Lucifer and I both turned to see a Hydra rear its heads out of a fresh hole in the concrete further down the lane. We watched as six of the heads devoured some bystanders and several sheep, while seven more crushed the surrounding architecture.

“Aw look, see?” Satan whined. “That Hydra, he’s really doing something. Taking the destruction of All Life On Earth into his own hands! I want to do that.”

“You’ve got to stop feeling sorry for yourself,” I said. “If you’re that bloody desperate for a piece of the action, you’ve got to take it! So you’re not the author of the apocalypse. Boo-fucking-hoo. It’s time you grew some ball and got on with it.”

For a moment, Satan looked as if he was about to melt me with his eyes. “I ought to melt you with my eyes,” he growled, with some of his old menace. “But I just… ugh. You know what? Fuck it. You can have this. I’m done.” He held out his pitchfork, and I took it tentatively. It seared my palm at first, but I got used to it after a moment.

“What am I supposed to do with this?”

“I don’t care. Do I look like I care?”

I took in his drooping horns and his sad, yellow eyeslits. “No, you d–”

“That was a rhetorical question!” he bellowed. I fell silent and leaned against the pitchfork, which was at least twice my height.

“Thank you, Mortal, for making me aware of my utter uselessness.” He picked up the rest of the cat, stuffed it in his mouth, and chewed it with a desolate air. I watched him slink off down the road toward the Hydra (which was now tossing a car in the air as if it were a ball of yarn), spitting out cat bones as he went.

“Hello?” I called tentatively into the haze.

At once, a great clamor of falling bottles and splashing water filled the room. A stumpy figure raced toward me out the black, brandishing what appeared to be an old crucifix.

“Back, demon!” he cried in a Yorkshire brogue, waving it in my face. He smelled even worse than me, which was saying something. “I said back, ye prowler of the night! Ye’ll naught sink your fangs into this neck.”

I couldn’t help but laugh. “You can’t be serious,” I said.

“You think I don’t know a vampire when I see one?”

“Don’t be ridiculous! Everyone knows there’s no such thing as vampires.”

The man’s eyes were trapped beneath a layer of unspeakably dirty hair that hung in purplish ropes over his forehead, but I could tell he looked scandalized. “Ay?” he grunted, “Then whaddya call them things prowlin’ around outside?”

This time I laughed openly. “Zombies, old man. Not some sort of fairytale monster. Just the reanimated undead hungry for human brains. Honestly. And that,” I said, indicating his crucifix, “Won’t stop them. You need one of these.” I held up my pistol.

“Yar?” he chanced.

“Yar,” I replied. “Now be a good chap and tell me what’s still drinkable in this place.”

“Yeh want to drink of the devil’s water in these times of God’s blessed vengeance?”

“If by devil’s water you mean beer, then yes.” I couldn’t help noticing how remarkably old he was—50, at least. He must have been one of the last survivors in his generation. Then I caught a whiff of the sludgy liquid we were wading in.

“Gin?”

“Yar, mostly.”

I dipped my finger into it and took a tentative lick. It tasted like Pine-Sol mixed with squirrel. “Strong stuff,” I remarked.

“Yar.”

Perhaps, I mused, the key to longevity lies in being a dreadful conversationalist. Just then I heard a splash on the other side of the store, and realized we weren’t alone.

“What–”

“Ginkippers,” the old man answered, before I could voice the question.

“Gin–?”

“Wee fish. Live in the bog.”

I looked down around my feet and caught sight of a bronze shimmer. Interested, I reached into the muck and scooped up the oddest fish I’d ever seen. It was barely the size of my pinky, but its head was coated in at least thirty eyes. Strangest of all, they all blinked in unison.

“Fish can’t blink,” I muttered.

“Fish can’t usually breathe gin, either, but there you have it,” the old man said, now standing uncomfortably close to me as he looked over my shoulder. I had to admit he had a point.

“Mind if I erm… take this one with me?” I asked, moving away from him.

“Yar. Take a few,” he replied, with a dismissive wave of his mossy hand. “You should try one sometime.”

“Y’mean, eat it?”

“Yar. They make yeh see things.”

I wasn’t so sure about getting high off the ginkippers; I was more interested in them as biological specimens. Maybe the world that sprang up after ours finally died out would be comprised of gin-based life forms.

They were fairly slow moving, so it wasn’t hard for me to catch a few and scoop them into a plastic bag.

“Thanks for those,” I said to the old man when I was finished. He nodded pointedly. “I don’t suppose I’d be able to get some of that, ehm, beer?” I indicated a still-intact cooler in the corner, filled with various bottles.

“If yeh want to tread Satan’s path, be my guest, laddie. But don’t come cryin’ for me when yer soul’s burnin’.”

“Oh, I won’t. I take full responsibility for the inevitable destruction of my soul.”

Not the clumsy sort, Ned stepped over the body with a hangman’s grace and made it to the second landing, where he let the bulk of the generator fall to the carpet.

“Fuck me,” he muttered.

“Who is that, Ned?” I asked, running up to examine the rotting heap.

“Does it even matter?”

It had fallen face down, so I had to kick the thing over with my boot. “Oh Christ, it’s Mrs. Feebing from 304.”

“Isn’t that the one with all the cats? The ones who thought my trainers were their bloody litterbox? Ol’ bitch had it coming,” Ned grumbled from the landing.

“We all have it coming,” I replied, taking in Mrs. Feebing’s ruined face. Eyes like two strawberries, mouth struck open and a family of maggots already having taken residence inside. Plugging my nose, I kicked the body over the banister, where it fell into an unceremonious pile with the rest of the recently and not-so-recently deceased. Truth be told, we hardly even noticed the smell anymore.

“You doing the beer run then, Alex?” Ned had heaved the generator back onto his forearms.

“Yeah.”

“Well then stop navel-gazing and get a move-on. Everyone’ll be here by sundown. Whoever makes it till sundown, anyway.”

“We said eight, right?” I glanced at my wristwatch, an ancient Casio Calculator whose batteries hadn’t needed replacing since the late ‘90s.

“Fucking Christ, what’s the difference? Nobody knows what time it is anymore.” He was right. The Earth had tilted 14 degrees on its axis six months before, and the old calendars meant next to nothing.

I ran a bluish forefinger over the Casio’s face. “Watch still works, though, which is more than I can say for most stuff. No sense chucking it away.”

“Whatever you say, you sentimental shit. Go get the booze before we both keel over. I’ve got syphilis coming out of my fucking eyeballs, and it smells funny.” It did smell funny, but not funnier than anything else smelled.

“Right. Goodbye,” I said. I always said “Bye” now instead of, “See you in a few,” or, “Later,” because there was about a 75 percent chance I’d never see that person again, due to one or both of us having kicked it during our period of separation. Ned didn’t retaliate in kind, but retreated up to our flat in ponderous silence.

I double-checked my pistol, stowed in a pouch I had sewn on my pants for just the purpose, before leaving the building. Five bullets left—definitely enough to make it the three blocks to the liquor store and back.

As students, Ned and I had got our flat in Enfield, London’s northernmost borough, with a mind to save a few quid.  Admittedly, I chose the World’s End district for its romantic, doomed connotations. These days, living round here was laden with an irony too ridiculous to put into words. Still, it was far safer than Central London—the zombies in World’s End weren’t nearly as gung ho as those in the city proper.

The air on the street smelt of sulfur and bad meat, and a grey light was rising to the West—or maybe setting. The sun moved willy-nilly in the sky these days.

None of us ever thought it would end this soon. Well, not the optimists anyway, of whom I still counted myself one. Ned and I and all the rest of us had always imagined sharing our slow decline into old age together. We’d be those balmy old men you’d see wandering down Tottenham Court Road, the kind of buggers who hadn’t gotten a haircut in years and wore cut-offs and Birkenstocks on their wrinkly feet.

But we were declining much faster than anticipated, I thought, prodding a finger around my empty left eye socket; we wouldn’t get the chance to grow senile. By the time the first wave of rats cleared out of London, the religious nuts were already crying apocalypse. The Bible-thumpers called it God’s vengeance on us lot of sinners, the treehuggers called it a climate imbalance due to our tampering with the environment, and the paperpushers called it just another shit day.

Whatever it was, no one could deny that we were all fucked. The Prime Minister swore Mother England would make it through just like she made it through Napoleon and the Blitz and whatever other storms Britannia had braved, toga streaked with mud but erect with Union Jack still flying high—but we all knew better than that.

By the time we’d learnt that half of North America was under the Atlantic, most people began to take serious stock of their lives. Anything productive effectively ceased, and the city became a sort of wilderness. A good deal of Londoners relocated out to the countryside, but I had a strong sense it was no use; in any case, I had no intention of leaving World’s End as long as the Parrot & Shortsword was still open and serving Belhaven.

“We’re out of Belhaven,” Tommy the barman told me one day. I glared at him over my empty pint glass.

“Bad luck, mate, but the tap just started running blood.”

“Are you sure it’s blood, and not just a funny batch?” I asked desperately.

“Definitely blood.”

“Shit.”

“Nah, it’s the Strongbow that’s started running shit.”

I slapped my fist against my forehead. “Can you give me anything, Tommy, to get pissed on? My mum just died of gangrene.”

“Oh, like that’s so fucking special,” Ned tossed in next to me. “I don’t think you’ll find a soul in Western Europe alive over the age of forty-two.”

I cuffed Ned on the nose as Tommy went to pour me a Smythwycks.

“Does this have spiders in it, Tommy?” I demanded as he handed me the pint. Many-legged bodies floated ominously in the dark amber liquid.

“It’s still beer, isn’t it?” Tommy shot back.

I swore heartily and took a long, chunky swig. Some of them were still alive, and fanned out along the gaunt lines of my cheekbones as I drank.

By now, Tommy was long dead, stabbed in the Adam’s apple with a rusty knife. Murder wasn’t uncommon nowadays, societal order having broken down entirely around the time the House of Commons had resorted to biting each other in open session.

So what was it, you may ask, that kept me going? Alex of the bad constitution, Alex of the scrawny chicken legs, Alex who could hardly withstand a rainy January?

In spite, or perhaps because of, everything that had happened, I refused to believe in a world that would and could pull the rug out from beneath my feet. What first drew me to meteorology was the inherent logic, albeit merciless, of the natural world. Better than most, I understood that this was not the end of the world—merely the end of mankind’s dominion over it. Even if the sun did—as it was threatening to do—burn out, and all sunlight-dependent life perished and the oceans dried up and even the leviathans were left gaping on an endless shore, there would be life again. An utterly different form of life, to be sure, but life nonetheless.

Lost as I was in my thoughts, it wasn’t until his teeth pierced my flesh that I noticed the zombie toddler sucking on my right calf. In its ruined grammar school uniform, with its big, red, hungry eyes, it looked plaintive, almost thoughtful; at any rate, as thoughtful as a zombie can look.

“There’s a good chapper,” I cooed as I cocked my pistol and blasted the frail thing between the eyes. I bent down to examine the bite. Leave it to me to get so caught up in my own bloody head, I don’t notice the undead scourge until it’s got its jaws round my leg.

The bite wasn’t deep, and it didn’t seem to be near any major arteries. I guessed I wouldn’t turn into a zombie for at least 18 hours. I’d have to remember to warn Ned, though—common courtesy in these peculiar times.

I pulled the uniform blazer off of the tiny body and wrapped it tightly round the wound before continuing. As luck would have it, the gunshot had frightened away most of the zombies in the vicinity of the liquor store. Soon-to-be-undead or no, someone had to do the booze run.

I proffered my ketchup-stained menu, which I hadn’t bothered to open. “Coffee, black. Toast, white, no butter. Tabasco, if ya got it.”

She sized me up for a moment, as if daring me to get weirder. But I won. I always win. “Fancy lady we got here with us today,” she muttered into her notepad.

“Rabbit fritters,” said Scats with a smile. “And a coffee. Also black.”

To my surprise she said, “Comin’ right up, buddy” without so much as a blink, and made a beeline to the counter.

I stared him down. “No way. How’d you know they’d have those?”

“Rabbit fritters? Like I said, they got ‘em everywhere.”

The time had come to sound out this guy’s game, but first I needed inspiration. When the coffee arrived, I used it to wash down a small handful of Ritalin tablets. It burned all the way down.

“Medical concerns?” Scats said.

“None of your damn business.”

“Can I bum one?” he asked.

I just glared, and he raised his palms in fake penitence. “OK. Sorry. Here. Gesture of good faith—have one of mine.” I heard the maraca-rattle of a pill bottle and he spilled a gleaming pile of mystery caplets into his palm, all the colors of the rainbow. I looked from the hoard to his face. He was grinning like Santa Claus.

“So that’s it. You’re a dealer.”

He closed his palm and pulled away, stung. “Please.”

I leaned in closer. “No?”

“What do you take me for?” he huffed.

“…A dealer,” I said.

“Geez. Can’t a guy just have an absurd amount of prescription drugs in his possession without attracting the third degree?”

“It’s the only degree I know.”

Something gamey and rich hit my nose, and I realized the waitress had been standing there for probably longer than either of us knew with our steaming plates. Well, Scats’ was steaming. Mine just sort of sat there.

“Mmm. Looks delightful. Thanks ever so much,” Scats beamed weirdly, and tucked his napkin into his shirt collar like the whole world was the 1950s and fictional.

“What is your deal?” I asked, once the waitress had left and the weird smile on his face had dissolved into a scowl.

“Just trying to be nice,” he said. “You know–nice?”

“I’d say picking your bony ass up at 3am in the middle of fuck-all-nowhere Texas was pretty fucking nice. So spare me the etiquette lesson,” I said.

He shrugged. “Fair enough.”

There were a merciful few minutes of non-conversation in which Scats–the only word really is gnawed–on his fritters, and in which I timed the chews of my dry, hot toast to the rhythm of my fast-increasing heartbeat. Chew chew chew. Gnaw gnaw gnaw. Chew-chew-chew-chew. Gnaw-gnaw-gnaw-gnaw. Like the animals we were.

When I finally broke the silence, I found that words couldn’t come fast enough. Good morning to me, courtesy of three different kinds of uppers. Sleep is for people whose subconscious doesn’t want to eat them.

“Alright, bucko-with-the-weird-fritters-where-the-fuck-am-I-dropping-you,” I said. No question marks, not enough hyphens in the universe.

“That depends,” he said.

“Oh yeah?”

“On where you’re aimed.”

“Like I told you last night–North.”

“To…” he prompted.

“To… none of your damn business.”

As if rigged to save my ass, my cell phone started to buzz in my hip pocket. Finally.

“Fuck off, I gotta take this,” I said to Scats. He merely stared. “Fine, you stay put, I’ll fuck off.”

I shot up way too fast, headed in what I assumed was the direction of the restrooms, and flipped open my bleating Motorola.

“About time!” I blurted into the mouthpiece. “How long were you planning on keeping me dangling?”

“Manners, Ms. Desoto.”

“Yeah well fuck your manners. I’m stuck in southern Texas and it’s hot as balls and I have fuck-all to do.” This was mostly the Ritalin talking, at this point.

“We thought you would have enjoyed the respite.”

“I don’t need any fucking respite, thanks.”

“You will treat us with respect, Miss Desoto.”

“Far as I can tell you hired me for my uh… persuasive personality, not my sense of propriety.”

There was a silence in which it sounded like a lot of people were breathing all at once. That part always wigged me out. Finally the voice spoke: “The Country Mainstay Motel, Room 28, 245 Garnett Street, Sterling City, Texas. Are you writing this down, Miss Desoto?”

“Yeah, yeah.” For wont of paper, I was scribbling on my forearm. Thank the almighty for ball points.

“You’ll find an individual there who knows the location of the Scepter.”

“The Scepter?” I said. These guys and their Narnia-speak sometimes, honestly. “Any chance of you telling me what that is?”

“You know better than to ask that, Miss Desoto. But the fellow in Room 28 may give you more information–if you use your, as you say, persuasive personality.”

“Guns blazing, check.”

“Restraint, Miss Desoto. We don’t want to deal with the same level of cleanup as your Kentucky escapade.”

“Restraint. Check.” I said, and hung up without a goodbye. We weren’t exactly talking buddies, these guys and I.

I must have returned to the table with an extra bounce in my step, because Scats was all grins and commentary.

“Booty call?” he asked.

“Sure. With my huge boyfriend. Who is coming here to beat your ass if you do not tell me where the hell I am dropping you off right immediately now.”

Scats smirked. “You don’t have a boyfriend.”

. . . . . .

We stepped out of the diner into the gloom of the cloudy morning. Even this far south, it was still cold enough that I could see my breath imposing itself on the air.

Scats began to roll a thin, sickly cigarette on the hood of my car. “So you say we got an errand to run.” It was more of a statement than a question.

“Hey, hands off the paint job,” I snapped.

“Oh yeah, cause it’s real nice.”

“How come you want to play my spaniel so bad?”

“You seem like you could use the company.”

“Hey now, I’m not looking for a poke. Not this week, anyhow.”

“Not like that, sunshine,” he smirked. To my surprise, he passed the anorexic little cigarette my way.

“…thanks,” I said, guard up but accepting the token. Nobody ever did anybody a solid without expecting something in return.

“I wanna help,” he said simply.

“You don’t even know what you’d be helping me with.”

He shrugged. “I dare you.”

“You dare me?”

“That’s right. I dare you to bring me along.”

“I don’t trust you as far as I can throw that goddamn duffel of yours.”

“Fair enough.” He squinted at me like there was sun in his eyes, though there was none, and held out a plastic lighter.

“Got my own,” I said, taking my trusty Zippo from my jacket and lighting up.

“You should duck,” he said.

“What?”

“Duck. Really.”

“Fuck you.”

“Duck, asshole!” he shouted, and lunged at me. He pushed my head down on the hood of the Impala just as something hot sang past my ear. I looked to the side in time to see a thin streak pierce the wall of the diner. I didn’t need to grasp what it was to know what I had to do. I grabbed Scats’ wrist and slung him and myself against the passenger door. He fought against my grip and peered over the bumper.

“Get down!” I hissed.

“Just assessing the situation,” he said with a smile I can only describe as perverse. Finally, he joined me in an unmanly crouch against the mudflap.

An arrow bounced off the pavement in front of me with a pock. I jostled it with the tip of my boot, disbelieving. “Arrows? Really? Arrows?”

“Welcome to the Wild West, champ,” Scats said. Astonishingly, he was rolling a fresh cigarette against his thigh.

“What happened to guns? Knives? Who the hell are these people?”

“You’re dealing with a different breed out here. And I mean that literally.”

“What, you saying they got floppy ears or something?”

“Some.”

Never stop to gape, because that’s when they nail you. This one hit me square in the bicep. A “Shitfucker!” escaped my lips in the high, clipped soprano of my mother on a bad night. It was her style, if not her content. And anyway, there was a fucking arrow sticking out of arm.

And I know, I know, you don’t need to tell me that it’s just a piss-stupid idea for a woman alone in this day and age to pick up a hitchhiker—particularly in the middle of the night, particularly when the hitcher is a man, and particularly in Texas.

He looked nearly as strung out as I did—which is to say, pretty goddamn strung out. He smiled as I leaned across the seat to open the passenger door, but the smile didn’t extend past his lips.

Joni Mitchell’s “Woodstock” started to play off my iPod when I first caught sight of him, and I remember thinking it seemed too ridiculous to be real: “I came upon a child of God, he was walking along the road…”

“Back to the garden?” I offered as he ducked his head in.

“What?” he asked. I was wrong; he looked even more strung-out than I did, his eyes like two freshly formed craters in the tortured geography of his face. Sleep deprivation? Illicit substances? Too much time on the road? If he was anything like me, all three.

“Sorry. Inside joke with myself,” I said. “Where you headed?”

“Where you headed?” he parroted, but it was a new question. Hard to answer.

“South?” I said.

“South’s the Gulf. You goin’ swimmin’?”

“Er. Sorry. Long… year. North. Going North.” I hoped I sounded decisive.

He seemed to consider for a moment. The engine hummed. “I can do North.”

He climbed into the car. Instead of shoving his big black duffel into the back, he brought it into the passenger seat with him. A good deal of clanging and jingling accompanied its arrival into his lap.

But it was the smell that hit me hardest—a wild brew of sweat, tar, tobacco, and cash, with old piss underneath it all like a bass line. I couldn’t tell if it was him or the bag. Maybe it was both.

“There’s plenty’a room in the back, you know, if you wanted to–” I jerked my thumb toward the rear, where a dedicated archaeologist, if so moved, could form a pretty accurate timeline of my past few weeks by pulling a core sample from the accumulated trash.

His fingers gripped the bag tighter. “I’d rather keep it with me, thanks.”

“Suit yourself.”

He slammed the passenger door too hard, and I told him to ease up on The Old Man. The Old Man being my 1986 Chevy Impala, which if you tried to pin down its paint job, you’d be hard-pressed. I liked it that way (“And what color was the car you saw fleeing the scene, sir?” “Brownish blackish maroonish… greenish?” “Could you be a little more specific?” “Asphalt-colored… barf?”).

The hitcher settled into the seat, which was leather and hissed against his jeans like a cheesy whore. I felt a new heaviness pushing down the chassis as I pulled back onto the highway, and it was more than just the weight of a scrawny vagrant and his luggage.

Hugging the duffel to his chest like a teddy bear, the man released a long, uncoiling sigh and I knew he had closed his eyes. “Wake me when there’s breakfast.”

Joni finished out on her rhythmless wail, and “The Circle Game” began to play, which was just too much at 3am. I switched back around to “Morning Morgantown,” lit my fourth cigarette, and gunned The Old Man on through the hazy night.

. . . . .

It was morning again, somehow. The night had slipped by like a bad bit of gossip, hastily told. Another day gone past, and I was no closer to finding him. Her. It. Whatever it was that I was supposed to be looking for. And anyway, I hadn’t gotten any instructions in three days. Longer than usual.

My passenger was still down for the count as the sun rose over the flatlands and we rolled into Kirvin, Texas–population 122. I glanced over at his face, blue and drowned-looking in the dawn light. I couldn’t remember whether he’d told me his name.

“Hey, Scatman Crothers,” I said, nudging him awake with my elbow. Why names of actors in The Shining were running through my head at sunrise, you’ll have to ask my therapist about. If you can find her. “Hey, Scatman Cruthers. Rise and shine. We’re hitting civilization. Or what passes for civilization around here.”

“Hrmm? Yeah,” he mumbled, in the voice of the freshly-risen undead.

“What’d you say your name was again?” I was hoping to catch him off guard.

“How ‘bout we just stick with Scatman.”

“Wow, I must be a good guesser. So uh… Scats, you mentioned something about breakfast?”

“Mmm, rabbit fritters.”

“Rabbit fritters? That’s a mighty specific request.”

“I’m a choosy guy.”

“They even got those in Texas?”

“Sister, they got those everywhere,” he said, lighting a cigarette.

“I didn’t say you could smoke in here,” I said, snatching it from his lips as I rounded a turn.

“Seriously? You been chain smoking since you picked me up.”

“Yes, but I didn’t say you could smoke in here.” Now I sucked on his, which tasted like morning breath.

“Suit yourself,” he sighed, leaning back and scratching his chin. “But about those fritters.”

“On it. Scats.” I was gonna call him that stupid fake name as often as I could until it drove him crazy enough to tell me his real one. Not that I would ever tell him mine. I spied the metallic glint of a diner as we rolled into town. At least I was onto something, even if it wasn’t the thing I was supposed to be getting onto. I took another drag from his cigarette before shoving it back into his surprised mouth.

“When we get inside, brush your fucking teeth.”