March 2, 2012

Andy’s seething anger had me spooked.

After slicing apart numerous nasty, armed people, something I was beginning to believe gave him fabulous boners, and flying us through an almost neon blue sky over a landscape harking the beginning and end of time, in a helicopter obviously maintained by a do-it-yourselfer, as it occasionally sputtered and shimmied sideways, Andy grew incrementally snarlier.

In the short time that I had known him, I hadn’t seen him behave in this way. The horror vibes he cast to others, which didn’t normally get to me, were blasting through my dense, damaged brain directly into the sphincter of my soul. For several hours on the morning after we landed at a desolute Gardiner, nestled at the Montana entrance to Yellowstone, I was convinced I was about to be sliced to pieces.

Andy plopped the helicopter in the center of what would have been Gardiner’s main street. Eerily, it looked normal as we swooped down from Yellowstone, the old highway switchbacking below. The usual chaos wasn’t evident. My first thought was the place had been ‘cleaned up,’ and nearly suggested we keep going but Andy landed the copter with an angry, ear-stretching thump.

“Just saved your life,” he shouted over the powering down machine, and snapped open his door. By the time I spastically unclasped myself from the protective clutches of the copter and slid out my door – Andy had disappeared.

Once the helicopter blade stopped moving and the machine hummed and hissed to silence, I determined that Andy wasn’t coming right back or was half joking/half mockingly standing near by, enjoying my ‘easy-to-kill’ prey demeanor.

I armed up and slowly made my way into the small town, which was once home to perhaps 750 people. From the lack of screams, gunfire and small explosions, I assumed the town was clean of psychos and demons. With that in mind, I deduced the only reason the place could seem so ‘as it should be’ must hinge on the fact it was ‘local time’ sleepy during the disappearance.

Yellowstone would have been closed at that point, I thought as I arrived at a row of western façade buildings – squat, boxy and wooden. Store types one would expect lined the short street. I came to an older era gas station and my newer instincts reminded me – ‘easy gas.’

There was a mountain trouncing truck parked at the pumps. Wrapped at the base of the right rear tire was a twisted, stiff pile of clothes. Jeans, a plaid shirt, a wool sock, wound together by high winds and blasted into the tire. Against the wall, near the door leading into the gas station, was a down vest – likely once green. Mister Montana stopped for gas. It was probably a cool, cloudy November day in the middle of jackalope nowhere when ‘PFFFFFT,’ Mister Montana’s hands came off the pump and his non-corporeal bits flurbled to the ground.

Yet, unlike every other place I had roamed or sneaked through, there were no vehicles through buildings, or on their sides. There were no signs of great fires or carnage of any kind and I briefly thought, crossing the street to the Iron Horse Bar & Grill, that Gardiner might be a good spot to hunker down for a while. The odds of any kind of winter hitting seemed remote, but it was only March and being a mile above sea level, snow and winter could come at any time.

With our backs to Yellowstone, to serve as an escape, it possessed strategic value.

I stopped at the door to the bar and looked up at the sky. The opaque, neon blue was fading to northern lights green. A shiver trickled over me, a sense I was being watched. I gripped the Glock and stepped into the murk of the bar – which smelled of the elements, because the front door had been left ajar, and stale smoke. I expected to see Andy sitting at a table.

The bar was empty, including no signs of anyone once wearing clothes. Either all the people in here were naked, or there was no one in the joint when the disappearance happened. I snapped open a Bud from a beer cooler and looked around the bar, taking in the signs of the lives that were just a few short months ago.

My butt hit a bar stool and I took a long gulp on the can of beer. The Glock was in my left hand, resting against the top of the bar.

The windless silence of Gardiner suddenly shattered, from a blood-curdling scream and me freaking and squeezing the trigger. I stumbled to the door, smacking at my right ear, which rang like a schoolbell.

I peeked outside and tried to listen for… anything. The sky was glowing green – dancing and shimmering and pulsating – the result of recent fuss and hullabulloo on the sun.

Three separate, gigantic coronal mass ejections (CME) had occurred since Nov. 11, 2011. The first one missed and the second glanced off the Earth. The third one, a Carrington Event-scale monster, hit the Earth right on the button – smashing into our magnetosphere and frying whatever radio communications existed. Most of the power grids still miraculously operating around the globe went silent. The darkness that had become hell on Earth was, from my vantage point, merely an intense performance of the northern lights with sidebars of terror that Andy would suddenly appear and slice off one of my numbed ears.

I had no idea from which direction the scream had come, so I fired a shot into the air and darted back to the murk of the bar. No voice shouted, or screamed. For a nanosecond I pondered, ‘maybe Andy was killed; maybe that was him screaming.’ I cracked open another beer and slugged it down with a lengthy, burpy, “ahhhh.”

Meanwhile – would-be Republican Party candidate Mitt Romney was having a chat with his shadow. It was the same chat he had with it earlier that morning and similar to the one he had with it just a few hours before the sky exploded with “rapturous green,” as he called it with a sincere smile, his well-groomed helmet of cow-anus-greased hair shimmering.

Romney found himself alone on the morning of the disappearance. He went to the toilet, counted the change in his pocket and wondered why his poop didn’t stink, and then returned to the boardroom to plot out ways to further dick over 47% of the population. He stepped into the boardroom and his five cowering minions were gone. His secretary did not answer his lows for assistance; his wife did not answer her phone, nor did anyone else.

A dark tower of black smoke rose above the north shores of Lake Winnipesaukee from a Portland-bound jetliner that crashed earlier.

Romney laughed like a lode-finding gold miner who’d spent decades in a fool’s game. “I bet someone opened a window to get some oxygen,” he howled, wrongly feeling redemption.

The distant ‘boom’ of the airplane crash was the first thing that told him something fishy was up. So Romney went roaming. Down the hall, alone, to a door. He had to open it himself and he marveled at the skills he didn’t know he possessed. Soon he was outdoors but his feet were cold. He realized he had no shoes. No matter, he smiled warmly yet just distantly enough to declare ‘I am a fucking terrible actor but I don’t care you nimrod suckers.’

A car sat in front of his lavish Wolfeboro home and he looked around uncomfortably. The doors didn’t open and he scratched his manicured chin, indented from so many poorly aimed sharp-tipped bankers’ penises.

Five simpering, sobbing, freezing cold and hungry hours later, Romney went back inside his house and, once again announcing to all who would listen, that he was powering up “at least 47% more skill sets that will make me the richest man alive. Hoorah hoorah!” He said that because he made himself a chicken sandwich.

I would like to relate, for the sake of common human decency, that Romney had been able to avoid the demon hordes roaming the countryside after the disappearance, but sadly I cannot.

Blessed only with a mind that works when other people are carrying out it’s blurtations and pronouncements, often considered stupid and blatantly moronic, he foolishly rushed out to greet the first group of gnarled souls that happened upon his mansion – a week after the disappearance. Romney assumed it was his people, returning to save him and carry him to the presidency, but it was four rapists, two murderers, and for a touch of spice and irony, Pete Rose and a Ted Kennedy speech writer.

Romney became their servant, after he was first sodomized by the rapists and nicknamed ‘Fetch-it-Boy’ by Pete Rose, who enjoyed driving golf balls from Romney’s roof deck onto his sprawling lawns and gardens. Once the bucket of balls was empty, Rose ordered Romney to “fetch” and off Mitt went, often needing hours to find all the balls. Meanwhile Rose and Ted Kennedy’s speech writer wagered on how many ‘Fetch-it-Boy’ would bring back.

In his spare time, Romney would have complicated conversations with himself, and he would attempt to write great orations. Occasionally he would try one out on his “friends,” as he called them but it would only result in another demoralizing anal raping.

Several hours and countless beers later, a clanging, growling old Ford truck clunked to a halt outside the bar. I drunkenly gawped at the sight of headlights in the shimmering green evening and with a snap of sudden realization, lunged over the top of the bar.

Kenneth, Stacy and Serena were long-landed at West Yellowstone when the CME hit with its full force – a good thing because the chopper he was flying was an older model that would have been highly susceptible to an electronic systems fry-out.

They returned to their cold former home and Kenneth ordered a one-night stay over. Instructing Stacy and Carrie to secure the B&B for the night, he disappeared into the growing green flare light.

Kenneth, being a skilled pilot and watcher of the skies, assumed correctly that a CME had hit the Earth. That meant he needed to find a basic old vehicle capable of the cross-country journey they had to make back to Long Valley. Judging from his growing irritability, he knew the journey had to be made right away. The time was coming.

He scoured West Yellowstone, which featured a fair bit of post-disappearance chaos as it was a busier place than Gardiner, where at that same moment in time I was drinking my sixth Bud, while staring at the front and rear doors to the bar – my Glock on the bar in front of me and a shotgun leaning against the bar sink.

Drinking beer and waiting for a gunfight is a truly bizarre experience. I am, not sure if I blinked in over an hour’s time. Try to swallow constantly and not blink! The old Ford idled outside and the lights beamed into the Chiller Thriller evening twinkle. My back was to the wall, I had cover from the bar and and I was heavily armed. The beer was making me brave and foolish.

Thankfully, it was Andy’s dark figure that finally filled the front door to the bar – silohetted by the headlights from the old bush romper truck.

I shouted that he was lucky I didn’t “shoot him dead” and he chuckled. I mistook that as him having altered his previous mood.

At about that same moment in time, Ridley was watching headlights moving slowly toward the old lodge. His task was to stay behind and ensure that no one or thing, especially Andras, went after Serena and Madeline.

The approaching vehicle was jam-packed with bady disturbed, lost and desperate hombres. The CME had done a number on them – knocking out two of three vehicles they had left after tangling with Andy. It took them several hours to regroup and continue advancing. Not one of the seven unharmed men cared a whit for the others, but they lingered as two of their number died miserable, gut-torn deaths, before they nervously pushed on in a damaged Humvee.

They headed down into Grant Village to find a place for the night – their minds shredded by the ass-kicking they’d taken and from the roiling green sky.

The CME also messed with Jess Oliver’s column, knocking out power in two of the four vehicles. The military vehicles remained operation in every instance, but the newer model trucks were kaput – their computer brains puffed out by solar winds that hit the world with an intensity that would have thrown the entire world into terrifying darkness and uncontrollable mob chaos, had there actually been anyone left except for souls deserving of such a fate.

They came to the West Yellowstone junction and Oliver pondered whether to turn west or head north to Gardiner. Heading west would be more dangerous, he presumed, because of the prevalence of the Idahoan militia. Still, venturing even farther north from any support could prove fatal, too.

After a few seconds, Oliver ordered the two jeeps with 10 tired, frightened and extremely angry men in them to head toward West Yellowstone.

Ian Cobb/e-KNOW

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