Fiction by Luke Miller
The .32 caliber round took the mutant in the head, spraying green sludge across the back wall. Max watched it slump forward and felt the barrel of the gun roll back, click, and hold. He waited. The bang sometimes brought more out of hiding. Sure enough, another humanoid figure crawled slowly out of the door to the left. The face was melted into a sickly green mush, one arm shrunk to half the size of the other. Taking careful aim, Max took a breath and squeezed his index finger ever so lightly. Another bang and more splattered green. He could almost smell the smoke that would form as the radioactive muck ate at the floor.
“Max? You listening?”
The two corpses disappeared, Daryl’s voice bringing Max unwillingly back to reality. He was in the back part of the kitchen, in the diner he worked at. There was no gun in his hand, only a sponge, his sleeves rolled up and his forearms slippery from sanitizer. Max answered by way of nodding, his eyes settling on Daryl’s chin. It was cleft with a scratchy stubble, and a small mole near the bottom lip.
“I’m sorry, but I wanted to tell you myself,” Daryl was saying. “You’ll be first in line if more hours open up.”
“Okay.” Max couldn’t think of anything else to say. He hoped Daryl wouldn’t need more from him.
“You’re a good kid. I’ll let you know first thing if something changes. Just can’t say when that might be.”
Max wasn’t a kid. He turned back to the massive three compartment sink where he did his work without saying anything in reply.
“I can finish that,” Daryl said. “Why don’t you go home early? I’ll make sure they pay you for the full shift today.”
“No,” Max said.
“No?”
Max couldn’t tell if Daryl was angry. He struggled to think of the words he needed to explain. Max needed to finish the dishes.
“I got it,” Max tried.
“Alright then. You let me know if you need anything before you leave.” Daryl left him to his work, heading back to the grills.
Max plunged his arms back into the soapy depths of the sink, hunting around the bottom for any silverware he might have missed. It had been a slow day and he hadn’t washed nearly as many dishes as he usually did. There had been a lot of slow days recently. That was what Daryl had reminded him, after telling Max he couldn’t come in tomorrow, or the day after that. They didn’t need the extra help, there was enough downtime for one of the cooks to do the dishes. Maybe they didn’t like him. Max knew he wasn’t exactly approachable. He stood in the back, by the huge sink, cleaning whatever was dropped off for him to clean. Rarely did he say anything. That was what he liked about this job. He rarely had to say anything. And as long as the dishes were warm and clean, no one bothered him.
It wasn’t long before he was done. Daryl had told him to go home, but Max’s shift went for another hour and a half. Max didn’t like to empty the sinks either, which he was supposed to do before heading out. The drain plugs were a weird texture, and it felt like a waste of water unless he’d done enough loads to where even the pink sanitizer was turning a dirtier shade. The three reserves of water in front of him were still clear. Max frowned.
No one would wash dishes after the fallout. Max’s other self wouldn’t work here. His other self being the one that had shot the two mutants, the one he saw sometimes when he zoned out, or felt uncomfortable. It was the Max he would be if an apocalyptic event took place. The best version of himself. This time it’d been a nuclear fallout, the radiation turning people into sickly mutant versions of themselves. It’s not that he didn’t like Daryl, quite the opposite actually. Daryl was kind. Exactly too kind to survive. The other Max had to shoot him as a kindness, while raiding the diner pantries for non-perishables. The other Max was good at things like that. He knew how to survive in all kinds of situations, and how to act in all the others. Other Max was confident, capable. And he didn’t get fired from a dishwashing job.
“I thought Daryl said you could leave? What’re you still doing here?” It was one of the other cooks. Max could never remember his name. He was young, much younger than Max, who wasn’t a kid. He didn’t like that Daryl had called him a kid. Max wasn’t a kid, he was thirty. “I came back here to make sure there wasn’t anything left to do. Max?”
“Sorry.” Max looked at the cook’s chin. It was shaved smooth aside from a small scab. He couldn’t tell if it was from a pimple or a razor.
“Well, you put in more time than they deserve. Go on, get out of here.”
Max glanced at the clock. His shift was over. Other Max had distracted him again.
Max took the bus home. He liked the bus more than the subway. Less people. Though sometimes he missed his stop, not wanting to force his way past a stroller pushing mom or a man in a wheelchair. When that happened he had to wait, jostling slightly against the yellow poles, until their stop. He would follow them out, cross the street, and take the next bus the other way. Max had also decided it was better to be on the bus than the subway in the event of an apocalypse. Most natural and human caused disasters wouldn’t favor being underground. Other Max had the wherewithal to take control of a situation if needed. He would be able to direct a bus load of people and get them to whatever safety was possible. More often than not Max imagined driving the heavy rectangle of metal into a zombie horde. On the list of the more unlikely apocalypses, to be sure, but one other Max was ready for regardless. There were no wheelchairs or strollers today, so Max went straight home.
Max’s grandmother was asleep when he let himself into their apartment. Small, two bedrooms, in a concrete building stacked like the pyramids. There was a thin smoke in the air, the culprit burnt down to the filter and lolled in his meemaw’s mouth. She sat next to the open window, but the smoke detector lay unplugged on the table. Her small TV set blared into the otherwise quiet room, a pair of newscasters talking about rising flood waters. Max was going to tell her. He really meant to. He went and stood in front of her, his shadow falling across her slumped form as it blocked the light from the TV. Her chin was wrinkled and gray, with a smudge of ash and the cigarette butt in view. Other Max wouldn’t have had anything to tell her. Other Max wouldn’t live with her anymore. Max went to bed.
Max always rubbed his eyes when he woke up. They felt blurry and in need of a reset before he put his glasses back on. It was annoying because they’d just been closed. Pressing on them until he got the red spots, he saw her face. He’d had the dream again. The one where she cuddled up next to him. The dreams were so vivid, so real. They left him with a feeling that lasted the rest of the day, an emotion deep down, some sort of afterglow. Max had never had a girlfriend, never so much as asked a girl on a date. Throughout his life he’d had many different love interests, though only as far as saying he was interested in them. None had interest in him. He wasn’t an attractive man. And universally people thought him ‘kind of strange’. Max knew these things, but the self-awareness did little to help. It was his body that betrayed him, and he never knew why. The off glance from an attractive woman could make his skin heat up enough to break into hives. Should he dare and try to speak to her, his tongue would swallow itself and disappear. Sometimes his gut would hurt so bad he’d have to sit down. These were all problems that happened with any social interaction, of course, but it was worse with women.
The girl in his dreams was different. She was comforting and he never had any of those problems with her. Her face was unfamiliar, a creation from somewhere he could not place. Outside of his dreams, Max had never seen her before. He’d arrived at a simple conclusion, she must be other Max’s wife. It would make sense, other Max had none of the issues Max had. He would have been able to find a beautiful girl, and more importantly, she would have liked him too. Max named her Savannah. He wasn’t sure why, but it fit. Sometimes if he was lucky, he would see Savannah while daydreaming, arm in arm with other Max. Savannah had green eyes.
Meemaw waited for him in the kitchen. She ate dry cereal. It made a bad sound when she chewed. Max could almost feel it scraping the top of his own mouth. A record played in the corner. Meemaw liked old music, like The Ink Spots and Billie Holiday. Max liked her music. It was different from what everyone else played.
“You’re late for work.” His grandma lit another cigarette, in her chair by the window. Her chin still had the same smudge of ash from the night before.
“I’m not.”
She glanced up at him. One look at his face told her what she needed to know. She dropped her spoon.
“Oh, Maxy. Not another one.”
“They said it wasn’t my fault.”
“They did, did they?”
“Yes.”
Meemaw sighed. “Well you best go look today then. I heard that the call center on Longwood is still taking people. Maybe you can get something there.”
Max was horrified at the idea.
“Put on some nice clothes, perk up, and go sell yourself.”
“Yes, ma’am.” He couldn’t tell if she was mad at him. He wanted to say it really wasn’t his fault. But couldn’t.
Max sat on a bench on Longwood Street. The call center was down the way, but he wasn’t sure what time it was. They said they opened at half past three, when the first of the double shifters got off from their morning job. Max had left the apartment around two, but there had been a wheelchair in the bus, and he’d gotten lost after. Now he didn’t know what time it was, and the sickness in his stomach was keeping him from going into the building. It was in times like these he wished he still had a phone. Meemaw had taken it away. The people online were taking advantage of him, she said. Max didn’t understand why people would lie about who they were. Maybe the apocalypse would be a solar flare. There would be no social media after that. The sun would wipe out the internet, scrub their connection to the satellites. Other Max would thrive in such a world. Other Max preferred all interactions to be in person, and was suave enough to handle it. Without a phone, current Max didn’t have the time. His mind picked up where it had left off the day before, with the nuclear fallout.
They lived in a shelter and had danced on their wedding night. Savannah and other Max. That doesn’t sound special in itself. But it was. The ceremony was a formality, there was a birth quota set up, and people needed to get together to keep being people. But the dance wasn’t. And Max remembered that night, more clearly than any other. He’d found an old record player. There was little music in the shelter, resources going to surviving instead of living. They had danced together. Just the two of them. A song had played as he twirled her around his arm, and she smiled and laughed and struggled to keep as close to him as possible. He muttered lyrics under his breath as he got lost in the memory, singing the song quietly to himself and to the wasteland.
“I don’t want to set the world on fire,
I just want to start a flame in your heart
In my heart I have but one desire,
And that one is you, no other will do”
Someone sat down next to Max.
“You say something?”
Max stopped his lips from moving. He hadn’t noticed he’d been singing out loud, caught up in the world he’d constructed for Savannah and other Max. His new companion was looking at him, Max could feel it.
“Were you singing? It’s okay if you were. Don’t stop because of me.” It was a man’s voice, raspy and jittery. In his peripheral Max could see his legs bouncing up and down and side to side. “Really you won’t bother me. Please continue.”
Max did not continue. He kept his face pointed straight ahead, the nervous feeling in his gut getting steadily worse. He felt trapped, anxious about going inside, but with a strong desire to escape this stranger. Sneaking another look at the man’s legs he saw dirty and ripped jeans paired with crusty mittens. It wasn’t cold out.
“You speak? It’s okay if you don’t. Maybe you only sing.” The stranger cackled. “Only sing. That’d be good. Sing me a hello, why don’t you. I promise I won’t bite.”
“I have to go,” Max blurted. He looked over at the man. His chin was covered by a thick and wiry black beard.
“No one’s keeping you here.”
Max tried to stand up. His legs wouldn’t work. The thought of going into the call center before they opened gave him more anxiety than talking to the stranger.
“If you don’t have to go, or ain’t gonna go, maybe you’ll do me a favor?”
“No.” Max shook his head.
“I ain’t even tell you what it was.”
Max kept a firm look on his face and remained facing forward.
“Suit yourself, then.” The stranger stood and wandered away. “Weirdo.” He muttered before he was out of earshot.
Max stared at a billboard across from him. It advertised a new way of living, a carbon neutral community in the west. It had a smiling family, surrounded by a lot of green. Make a difference, just by living! was plastered next to their washed out faces. The other most common apocalypse he found himself imagining was the natural one. Where the earth slowly boiled around the unsustainable standard of life humans had set for themselves. Max decided he didn’t like the nuclear fallout apocalypse. It would be too dangerous for Savannah, and the daughter she would have with other Max. Other Max was adventurous, and capable, and wouldn’t be happy in the shelter. He would want to explore the wasteland, putting his family at risk to do so. Max didn’t like that thought. However, the more he’d thought about the climate change apocalypse, the less he’d been able to see other Max existing in it. Other Max would do something to help stop it. He and Savannah would be activists, not the kind that post on social media, real activists. The kind that did so much good, people weren’t sure whether they were doing anything at all. Other Max would make a difference, so that his daughter could grow up in a world as green as the billboard.
Max was scared sometimes, because he was becoming more and more sure he lived in the world where the environment collapsed. And if he lived in that one, there was no other Max. And if there was no other Max, there was no Savannah. And if they didn’t exist, then who would carry out the instrumental steps to save the world? That would leave only Max. Which would be him. If that was the case, he had no idea where to start. He had no one to help him.
Sometimes he wondered if he’d missed a class on life. A class that explained things like how to talk to other people, how to find a job you cared about, how to be passionate about things. Max didn’t understand where people learned it all. Everyone around him seemed to know things he didn’t. Things other Max would know.
Max swallowed hard. It must be time to go into the call center and ask about a job.
Max sat in the lobby, in the building on Longwood. He’d gone to the front desk, where the secretary had stared at him expectantly.
“Can I help you?” Her chin was smooth and covered in makeup.
Max’s tongue felt swollen. He stuttered.
“What was that?” She was chewing something. Gum maybe. Or a mint.
“Here for the job.” He got out. She nodded and handed him a form.
“Fill this out and someone will see you in.”
Max filled it out. Now he was staring at the door into the rest of the building. It was really small, the lobby he was in. There were a few chairs and the desk with the one secretary. Every once in a while a man or woman in a suit would walk through and when they did Max tried to look through the door at what lay beyond. He couldn’t see anything, not from the angle he was at. It was annoying, he wanted to move to the other chair, but was worried the secretary would think it weird. Max knew first impressions were important. Nothing about it made sense, you only get to know someone after a long time of back and forth, but everything he’d read said first impressions were important. Other Max was very good at first impressions. That’s how Savannah fell in love with him. She fell in love with him over a long time, of course, as they built their relationship steadily and the right way. But she gave him a chance because he was good at first impressions. Max wished he could get it right the first time, like other Max did.
Max wondered if the secretary believed in aliens. Another unlikely apocalypse he entertained sometimes, like the zombies. Not because Max didn’t believe in aliens, no, mostly because he’d read about how big the universe was. The time scale it operated on was so massive, the likeliness of Earth existing within the range of another civilization seemed impossible. And that was looking at Earth’s existence as a rock in a billion year context. Max and his life was thirty of that billion. The odds an alien species would invade while he was alive, well, they were probably as small as the odds of him existing in the first place. Smaller he supposed, since him existing was a prerequisite for them invading while he was alive. Other Max dealt with the alien contact well. He was old when they came, him and Savannah’s daughter had long been out of the house. She had a husband of her own, and they were expecting grandkids. It was for these grandkids that other Max fought. A hero pilot, despite his age.
Before getting into his fighter, and assaulting the mother ship, other Max held Savannah close to his chest.
“We’ve been running from the end of the world for as long as the world’s existed,” other Max told her. “Sometimes I think its already ended.”
Max was surprised at other Max’s words. That wasn’t how other Max usually talked. Sometimes he wondered if other Max thought about him. Wondered if he was as capable, as suave, as handsome. He hoped other Max would understand. He didn’t want to be like this. He really was trying. Maybe other Max would spit at him, call him a weirdo too. Call him a kid, even though he was thirty. Maybe other Max would go find a better Max. A new Max.
“Hello? Sir?” The secretary called to him. “You can drop that form off with me and they’ll see you through the door.”
He tried being new Max. The woman behind the front desk had blue eyes. She smiled at him.
Luke Miller studied creative writing at both St. Olaf College and the University of East Anglia. Since graduating in 2020, he’s pursued various teaching positions abroad, most recently teaching in Madrid. While not writing, Luke enjoys hiking and climbing, and is currently embarked on a thru-hike of the Appalachian Trail.
Photo by the blowup on Unsplash
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