Corn, Cows, and the Apocalypse

This is the End, or is it the Beginning?

So, the apocalypse came.

It wasn't nearly as impressive as the religious gurus said it would be. There wasn't any fire or brimstone. The seas didn't boil, and the skies didn't fall. There wasn't even a bad storm or an earthquake. If the four horsemen were scheduled for it, they must have gotten lost on the way. Aside from 4.2 billion men, women, and children simultaneously falling over dead across the globe, there really wasn't anything to mark the moment.

If you must know, it was on August 22nd at 8:46 a.m. Nothing significant about the numbers. Nothing special about the day. It was kind of disappointing.

Don't get me wrong, seeing everyone around me suddenly drop dead definitely spiked my WTF-scale, and the deafening silence that followed caused an uproar in my brain that threatened my sanity. But once the panic attack subsided, it was all just a matter of letting go of any preconceived ideas I had about the rest of my life.

Post-apocalyptic life is a lot like retirement. You don't have to work anymore, you get to take lots of naps, and there's no reason to worry about the future, because you're probably going to die soon anyway.

The key to avoiding the suicide-garnering boredom of a life without purpose is keeping busy. The saying goes, "Idle hands are the devil's playground." In the godless aftermath of the reckoning, that statement is gospel. Or maybe it already was. Sorry, I'm a little behind on my Bible readings. Obviously, since I'm still here.

Religion had always ranked pretty high for my friends and neighbors. Church on Sundays, soup suppers, and fish fries were the core of social networking for our farming community. I, on the other hand, found the entire religious structure to be manipulative, dogmatic, and bigoted.

After that catastrophic day, most of my home town's population of 20,000 remained right where they fell, in a surreal crystalline state. The bodies didn't rot, but their skin took on an unmistakable silvery sheen. The apocagees—apocalyptic refugees—started calling them the "crystalline dead," the "silver saints," and eventually they gained the name "glimmer grim."

I'm not going to bore you with the three months of emotional plateaus and speed bumps that led me to the realization that I was not just feeling alone in the world, but I actually was. I also won't detail my intense self-flagellating prayer sessions, which, let's face it, was kind of like trying to un-bake a cake. To sum it up—for those of you hoping for an honest, meaningful discussion about the trials and tribulations of someone dealing with the end of the world—I cried... a lot.

When I thought life couldn't get any worse, the crystalline dead started to animate. I won't use the Z-word to describe their behavior, but I will say that they did not have good intentions. There was a lot of talk about their sudden resurgence being a miracle—that's when the "silver saints" designation became popular. Unfortunately, soon after, it became clear that the mobile corpses were hosts to puppeteering demons that wanted to kill, rape, maim, and—well, you know—all that stuff that makes a devil's playground into a carnival of carnage.

It was around that same time that I met up with three crazy apocagees from Chicago. On that particular day, I was in the process of having my arms broken by one of the glimmer grim. No one I knew, but he looked like a nice old man. Had he not been dead and possessed by a demon, I imagine he might have offered me an ice tea upon passing his home, instead of tackling me like a football player.

I'd like to say that I was putting up a good fight, or that I had gotten a good hit in before he got the better of me, but alas I am not the heroine you seek. I'm not even the sidekick in this one. I'm not even the sidekick's sidekick. I'm more like the kickstand. If the heroine rode around on a horse, I would be the one to hang out in the stables and guard it—which is funny, since as the kickstand rather than the sidekick, I wouldn't even have the skills to stop a horse thief.

Anyway, I digress. One of the three apocagees, August Smith, rescued me from the glimmer grim. It might have been the angle of the sun, or the fact that I had lost a significant amount of oxygen from screaming like a ninny, but August seemed to radiate light the first time I saw her.

To thank her for her heroic gesture, I passed out against her. When I woke up she was holding me in the bed of a pickup truck on its way down Highway 81. She smiled down at me, and pushed the hair out of my face as it whipped into my eyes. She said something—a greeting of some kind. But I couldn't hear it over the rumble of the Dodge. I didn't say anything back. I just stared at her. I looked into her eyes through my snarled hair, and I wondered if it was possible to have love at first sight in a platonic version.

When the formal introductions were over, I gave them the short version of my life story, and August invited me into her group. I didn't even consider any other options. She was now my heroine, and I was her third sidekick. I may not have had any horses to guard, but I had damsel in distress written all over me, and August was always going to be there to save me.

Or so I thought.