Apocalyptic Organ Grinder by William Todd Rose
Sunday, April 24, 2011 at 7:06PM 150 years after the fall of civilization - Enter a post-apocalyptic world where the cities of man are crumbling necropolises left to the ravages of time and nature, burgeoning settlements cling to life, and the remnants of humanity exist as two disparate cultures locked in a waltz of survival and death. Into this world comes Tanner Kline, a man charged with protecting his community from Spewers, a primitive tribe whose bloodline carries the vestiges of the virus which pushed mankind to the brink of existinction. On what should have been a routine patrol, his path crosses with Lila, a proud huntress whose heart simmers with resentment for the men who killed her husband. Men like Tanner Kline. Together, they spiral onto a collision course with an unertain future where their individual destinies and the fates of their respective cultures hang in the balance.
From William Todd Rose, author of Cry Havoc, Sex in the Time of Zombies, The Dead & Dying, and The 7 Habits of Highly Infective People, comes a new tale of The End; in this apocalypse, the greatest threat lies in the hearts and minds of those left alive.
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I.
This is how our world died …
Once upon a time, in a kingdom called the United States, there lived an evil wizard who thought he was good. He lived in the middle of a vast desert and spent most of his days seeking guidance from a book of stories. One of his favorite tales in this book told of a time when the kingdoms of Earth would be overrun by the wicked. During this time, sickness and death would hang over the world and herald the coming of a great hero. The hero, it was said, would vanquish evil and lead His people into a land far, far away where they would live happily ever after.
The wizard believed in this story so much that he wanted to do everything within his power to help the foretold events come to pass. Because he was a wizard, he was able to cast spells with his words. The frightened, the lonely, the broken, and lost: these were the ones who most easily fell under his spell. Leaving loved ones and possessions behind, they journeyed to the desert on a sacred pilgrimage just so they could stand by his side and learn from his teachings.
It came to pass that the wizard stood before his congregation one foggy morning and announced that the great hero had come to him in a dream. The hero whispered in the wizard’s ear, sharing with him divine instructions and repeating them over and over until they had been committed to memory. So the wizard kissed his wives upon their mouths, closed the oak door on his workshop, and was only seen by his most trusted knights for nearly two cycles of the moon.
When he finally emerged, the wizard had grown a bushy beard and held aloft a vial of magic liquid. What made this liquid magic was that it was actually alive. Tiny creatures, much too small to be seen, swam within the container and the wizard told his people how these organisms were actually bits of the angel Gabriel, who would cleanse the world with his fiery sword.
The magic liquid was then transferred, a little at a time, into other containers that were called cigarette lighters. Cigarette lighters had a little button that, when pushed, would cause fire to jump out of a hole on its top. The wizard’s special cigarette lighters, however, produced no flame. Instead, there was a small tab that could easily be pulled out. Once the tab had been removed, the liquid turned to gas and seeped out through a crack in the plastic that was thinner than a human hair. The gas then carried the pieces of the angel Gabriel into the air, where they could be brought into the body through breathe.
In this time, there were also giant metal birds that flew all over the world. The birds would land at nests where people, like you and me, would climb into their bellies and be carried away to distant lands. And it was to these nests that the wizard and his disciples went.
Instead of allowing the metal birds to eat them, however, they stood outside the nest and watched for people who had normal cigarette lighters that had stopped working. Using a decoy lighter to produce fire, they then swapped it out for one of the Gabriel lighters and told the weary travelers to keep it as they had many, many more. So in the course of a week, bits of the angel had been sent out to every kingdom of the Earth.
And that, dear children, is where the fucking fairy tale ends.
