Fiction: The Last Hurrah

By M. Kelly Peach

"The world is dead, long live the inanity."

-Eramation Wattforham, Maunderings and Miscellanies

 

Late at night, in the bowels of the Pentagon, a security officer nearing the end of a double shift, accidentally trips the safety mechanism on a top-secret control board arrayed with rows of toggle switches and festooned with flashing lights. It goes unnoticed as does two shorted circuits, a few minutes later, in an infallible computer processing esoteric data in a bunker dug into the heart of a mountain in Colorado.

***

A half-hour later, in a subterranean military installation in Wyoming, a corporal on janitorial duty, tired and thinking about his guy as he swabs the floor, strikes a large, red button on a switchboard with the top of his mop handle. Unaware of the mishap, he continues mopping the floor. A warning bell in the basement of an Upstate New York office ostensibly for the Department of Agriculture never sounded because it was under repair. The redundancy warning buzzer in an unremarkable California institute for research did go off but it was attributed to faulty wiring by the graveyard shift duty officer who left his station for a break and hoped it would cease its annoying noise by the time he got back. If it didn’t, he would leave a note for Maintenance to fix it in the morning.

***

On Capitol Hill, at four in the morning, a presidential “aide” notices a glowing red bulb. Substituting, off the recordand for $200 cash, for a friend and co-worker needing time off to wine and dine and then (he hopes) bed a congressional intern, is not a big deal. Taking full responsibility—when he shouldn’t be there, for a red light he shouldn’t know about—was a huge deal. Such a dilemma. This could cost him his job. His friend’s as well. The solution is obvious, classic: 

1) Do not even think about mentioning it to his friend or the third shift supervisor.

2) Write a report using his best bureaucratese to, most importantly, exonerate himself and, also, by the way, recommend immediate action.

3) Sign his friend’s name to it.

4) File it in a couple of months to give himself plenty of opportunity to look for another job.

***

The failsafe system breaks. The end begins.

***

Deep in the forgotten sub-basement of an large hotel, a bum is sleeping off the effects of a fifth of cheap vodka. A searing white heat, followed by tremendous winds and noise, disturb his slumbers. 

The room is dark and stifling. The air is stale. The floor is littered with garbage. This is his home.

He is continually angry and frightened and confused. He is withered, childish, and old, old.

Life has been harsh for him but he made his life what it is.

Ryan Plankovich, a broken-down alcoholic, is the last remnant of society and he is dreaming insane dreams…

 

In an alley, partially hidden in a pile of refuse, he finds a gold-inlaid, calf-bound tome. It is only two pages of poorly prepared vellum. Each page is dyed ebony. Using candle-light ink, they are inscribed with glyphs that encircle the several small, lacunae in each sheet. It is the never-ending story of eternal strife and perpetual folly…

Barely discernible against the endless fields of snow, a single lavender bravely stands erect. After many centuries of sky seeking, its white petals are beginning to wither in the cold, and yet it is the only thing of beauty still living in this wasted world. The last two men remaining are of different cultures and speak a language the other cannot understand. For the honor and glory of their respective peoples, they set out in quest of the fabled flower. 

Inexorably, they meet at the blossom in the center of the desolate plain amidst wrathful winds and peltingsnow. With all the bullets and bombs expended long ago, they must battle back and forth with dagger and sword. They slash and hack, grunt and bleed. Inadvertently, one of them (it matters not which) crushes the flower with his boot. At the same time and in the same manner, they stab each other through the heart and fall to the frozen ground. With faces close to the flower, their dying breaths, briefly, uselessly warm its mutilated petals.

 

He throws the book against the alley’s brick wall.  No one can understand glowing symbols on unnumbered black pages. Continuing deeper into the alley, he is hungry and again rummages through a pile of garbage. It smells of mold and rotting potato skins. In a crumpled Taco Bell wrapper, he finds the remnant of a beef and bean burrito with red sauce, one of his favorites. It smells okay. He pops it into his mouth and chews rapturously.  

Obscured by shadows, a rat waits at the end of the alley. Savage, blood-shot eyes watch as the man approaches. With evil cunning, the rodent prepares an ambush.  

As Ryan nears the end wall, he is chilled by instinctive warnings of a malign presence. He grabs by its neck a broken, sharply jagged bottle that used to be a fifth of cheap vodka and steps closer.

Snarling and exposing its incisors, the rat rushes forth from the shadows. With valor in his heart, the bottle in hand, and a snarl of his own, he fights the rodent and, like a filthy and mephitic gladiator, kills it. 

Afterwards, during the honors ceremony, he awards himself the Congressional Medal of Honor. The unclean beast was a valiant foe. He pricks himself in the chest while pinning on the medal…

 

When Ryan Plankovich wakes up, he is the sum total of human civilization, its perfect exemplar. He is thirsty. Hangovers always make him thirsty…and he is bleeding. Scurry, scurry, pain in his chest. The rats had been gnawing on him again. Must remember to not spill food on himself.

He arises from the worn and crusty mattress, is unaware as black rodent droppings fall from his torso onto the floor, can’t see anything in the gloom. Stands a moment, waiting for his eyes to grow accustomed to the darkness and for the vermin to settle down. He slowly makes his way to the stairwell and begins to climb. As he ascends, he thinks about many things: ten cent coffee and double-edged razor blades and nightmares of a nuclear holocaust, magnanimous suicides and wasted lives.

Despite saving his life the last time he was bitten by a rabid rat, he thinks, I ain’t gettin’ four or five vaccinations again. Them fuckers ain’t nothin’ but ’bominations.

Still climbing, he remembers cowardice and clumsiness, people staring. They pitied when they should have admired, became disgusted when they should have applauded. Emergency waiting rooms are always crowded. Old perforations in his shoulders are hurting. The enflamed scars on his wrists and the one on his leg are glowing as they burn his mind and soul. In an ongoing agony of failure, he screams, “I tried!”

Dripping perspiration that stinks of alcohol, he enters the hotel lobby. He needs a drink. There’s a bar on the top floor, maybe, this time they’ll see his need and let him in. He goes over to the elevator, presses the button with the arrowing pointing up. Nothing happens. Waits a moment, presses it again then notices, finally, the sun is beating down on his brow. Slowly, he looks up at a cerulean sky.

Ryan Plankovich finds a nearby liquor store. Its windows and door are blasted out but some of its stock is undamaged. The clerk (and everybody else, for that matter) is nowhere around. Drinking all alone once again, he dies of alcohol poisoning the next day. 

Then does red-faced Heimdall, belatedly, blow Gjallarhorn.

M. Kelly Peach lives in the beautiful Upper Peninsula of Michigan. When he is not facilitating Ink Society meetings for a local writer’s group, he is hiking, reading and collecting books, and baking. His work has appeared, or is forthcoming in: Suicid(al)iens, Moss Puppy Magazine, Riddled with Arrows, Unsung Stories, and Lumina Journal.