Valentine

The apocalypse wasn’t as bad as they said it would be. By “they,” I mean all the books, TV shows, games, movies, and general media that liked to glorify the end of the world with zombies, or fire raining down from the heavens, or the great flood 2.0 destroying humanity in one fell swoop.

Don’t get me wrong-- it still sucked-- but it’s actually, well, kinda bearable.

Let me clarify something real quick; it’s still technically the apocalypse.

See, world leaders didn’t exactly have a model for humanity’s reckoning, so they had to make it up as they went. The stages went something like this:

1) No threat of apocalypse- Pretty self-explanatory. Sort of like the “Least Concern” label when describing endangered species.

2) Pre-apocalyptic signs begin to appear- Doomsday cults on the rise, strange weather events begin recurring, things like mass shootings increase, etc. Nothing that screamed “end of the world,” but some warning signs we shouldn’t have ignored.

3) Apocalyptic events begin- This is where Hell’s Gate appeared, and since humanity had no fucking way of expecting that, no one really took action. Whoops.

4) Apocalypse begins- Now we’re Facebook official. Hell’s Gate is open, humanity is being ravaged, governments are dissolving, and anarchists are having a heyday.

5) Apocalypse recedes- We’re kind of here, but I’ll get to that in a sec.

6) Post-Apocalypse- Hooray! It’s over, and humanity can start to rebuild. Only, we’re not here yet. Sorry.

That’s the Sparknotes version of the apocalyptic timeline, which incidentally is all we really have, considering this whole thing is too new to have any reasonable case studies on the subject. Though, I’ve heard somewhere that there is actually a major being offered on Apocalyptic Studies now. Some weird cross between science and theology.

Anyway, back to those stages.

We, and by “we,” I mean the last bastions of humanity, are somewhere between stages four and five. Only about 59% of humanity has been wiped out so far, which compared to a lot of stories is a pretty optimistic number, and the death toll has seemingly plateaued at about a 1% decrease in population every six months.

It started as mentioned in stage 2, with weird weather and people acting out a little more than usual. They were the kind of trends that climatology and sociology could have been the explanations for. That was, until the gate to Hell appeared in Rio De Janeiro. We didn’t miss the irony, and neither did Hell’s army. When the gate finally opened, and demons began to pour out in uncountable masses, the world conveniently noticed them avoiding one particular statue. This didn’t stop the demons from massacring and corrupting mobs of humans, nor did it prevent them from spreading across the entirety of Earth.

But it did give humans a not so tiny hint at how to fight them.

Besides risking outright fighting them, especially when they traveled in hordes, there was a decent arsenal of supernatural tools one could use to ward off the damned. Sacred symbols, blessed substances, objects made from divine materials… Oh, and fire. But, from my experience, fire tends to beat out most things.

Now, you’d think with the overabundance of knowledge on religious texts and the examples of countless stories about fighting evil that this would be humanity’s trump card, and you would be right. At least, for a while.

Demon hunting became a legitimate profession for all of four months, before the commonfolk decided to take divine power into their own hands. The remaining population could live free from fear of demons, as long as they could carry the necessary demon-deterrents, and as long as they could fight! Easy, except for one thing.

Humans are idiots, and fuck up everything they touch.

After one too many assholes blessed their in-home swimming pool to be filled with holy water, or got Star of David nipple piercings, the heavens got a little pissed off at the abuse of their powers.

So, now we have demons, and we have apocalyptic weather spikes caused by angry angels. Or gods. Who really knows. Day time and night time are… confusing, and Earth is basically just a free for all for demons, vengeful deities, and, well, us. The humans left between it all.

And that pretty much sums it up.

It had been three years since Hell’s Gate appeared, and almost that much time since it opened up and kicked off the end of the world. I was one of the survivors, traveling in a band of twenty-three people, and trying to reach The Standing City. Supposedly, this thriving civilization deep in the mountains of Montana was one of the best hopes for rebuilding humanity and the United States, alongside a few other similar settlements that popped up when the apocalypse began.

The travel band consisted of me, my little sister, my uncle Sean, a guy I went to highschool with, my cat, Sassy, and a handful of people we either met on the way, or Uncle Sean knew before. Previously featured party members included my dad (rest in peace), my ex (rest in pieces), my other ex (miss you, boo), and some loose friends and family that hadn’t made it. It was amazing how many of us were still kicking, considering we were armed with nothing but whatever we found along the way, wit, and a healthy dose of pure luck.

Luck, however, did not seem to be on our side that particular day.

I stood back while my younger sister, Camilla, tried to fire up a backup generator on the farmhouse we’d stumbled on. She had learned a lot from our electrician father before he died fighting a Behemoth, and was usually pretty savvy when it came to getting power running at our nightly stops. This particular generator wasn’t even sparking.

“Need any help?” I asked from where I waited a few yards behind her. Most of the party was inside, searching through the farmhouse for any salvageable food, or scouting the area around the building for demons. I would usually be with the scouting crew, but I didn’t want to leave Camilla alone. She was smarter than anyone I knew, but she wasn’t a fighter. That, and at six years her senior, I had always considered myself her protector, even before the world was raided by demons.

“I don’t think so?” she replied, sounding unsure of her answer. “Everything looks like it should be in working order, but it’s just, you know, not.”

“Do you think there is something wrong further down the line?” I wondered, leaning over her shoulder to see what she was working on. Nothing about the inside of the generator made sense to me, but her nimble fingers moved around the switches and wires with confidence.

“Possibly. The connection could be severed, but we’d have to find where to fix it, and that could be anywhere from here to thirty miles out.” She wiggled a few more wires before flipping a switch, and shook her head when nothing happened.

“Well, we can’t always win,” I told her with a pat on the back. “We still have decent charge from the last house. We’ll be fine for tonight.”

“I guess,” she said with a slight frown. “It just doesn’t make sense that it’s not working. Your theory could be right, but--”

A movement from between the generator and the house caught my eye, and I yanked Camilla behind me. As a slimy, black shape slithered out, the generator kicked to life, and I faintly heard the group inside cheer.

“Well, we found the problem,” Camilla said from behind me as we slowly backed away.

“See, I knew you could do it,” I called back to her. My new battle axe was heavy in my grip, and I lightly swung it back and forth at my side to get a feel for it.

“I specifically remember you saying we can’t always win,” Camilla reminded me helpfully. “That’s not exactly what I’d consider a vote of confidence.”

The Leech, a type of demon attracted to electrical currents, slithered toward us in a leisurely fashion, as if it wasn’t about to try and zap us to death and devour our crispy corpses.

“I don’t think he takes us seriously,” I quipped, readying my axe and planting my feet. “Watch my back in case there are more!”

“On it!” As Camilla called out, the Leech sprung up from the ground, and I had to resist the urge to flinch back. Leeches were named as such not just because of their power-sucking nature, but because of their long, slimy bodies and gnashing, circular mouths. The beast stood a foot above me, and was leaning over with its mouth gaping. A drop of bluish saliva fell from its tooth to the ground, and burnt a small patch of grass where it landed. When I tightened my grip on my axe, the creature screeched, and lunged forward.

I wasn’t a particularly large person, so much of my fighting relied not on charging the enemy, but on reflexes. When the Leech made its move, I darted to the side and let my axe fall onto its midsection. Black blood oozed out around my blade, crackling with electricity, and the Leech began to writhe. I tried to yank my axe out to deal another blow, but found my blade stuck in the demon’s side.

“Uh!” I panicked, and tried to use my foot as leverage whilst staying clear of razor sharp teeth. When it snapped a little too close for comfort, I kicked out at it, but missed as it flailed away again.

“Seriously?” Camille called, and I glanced over to see her crossing her arms.

“It’s a new axe!” I snapped, finally dislodging it with a squelching sound and falling onto my ass.

“Better get used to it, because we have another coming from the woods.”

I didn’t have time to look for what she was talking about, as the Leech thrashed its head in my direction, and I had to roll backwards and up onto my feet to avoid its jaws. Once I regained my balance, I lifted my axe again, and swung down directly into the demon’s mouth. This time, I tried to follow through on my swing, and my blade cut through its throat and came out the bottom with half its teeth hanging off my axe.

“Yeah!” I shouted, and spun toward Camilla. The demon squirmed next to me, spouting bursts of charged blood, before stilling at last. “Easy.”

I jogged to her side, brandishing the half-rack of demon teeth, and looked out to where she watched a Specter demon slip in and out of the treeline. On its tail was Uncle Sean, and I searched the forest in front of it to see if it was a flush attempt. When my eyes locked onto our pyrotechnician, Joey waiting in the shadows, my suspicions were confirmed.

“Looks like they have that one handled,” I told Camilla, who nodded slowly and then turned to face me.

“And, the generator works,” she grinned, her left dimple showing. “I knew I had it all right.”

“I never doubted you for a second.”

Above us, a sudden bolt of lightning shot across the sky, and my hair stood on end.

“Looks like we have a spring storm rolling in,” Camilla thought aloud, and we both turned to see a wall of clouds approaching from the west. The smell of rain pricked my senses, and I inhaled deeply.

“And here Karen said we were expecting a flash winter…”

Camilla scoffed.

“Of course it was Karen.”

From the woods, the Specter screamed.

“We should warn the others of the weather,” I suggested, watching the formidable storm make its way across the land. From the corner of my eye, I saw Camilla nod once.

“Probably.”

The demon jaws slid from my blade and together we watched it fall to the ground.

“Yay, apocalypse!” Camilla mock-cheered, and kicked the jaws back toward the rest of the Leech corpse.

“Yay, apocalypse,” I chuckled. With the spring storm, a sporadic night was falling, and I guided my sister toward the now lit house.

With any luck, we would eat well that night.