The End Has Come

Jingo was different. Maybe it was part of his faux optimism, but he rarely looked at any face, and like a lot of the guys in the collective, Jingo tended to refer to the infected as zombies, zoms, stinkers, rotters, grays, walkers, stenches, fly-bait, wormers, and any of the other epithets common since the plague. Moose had long ago decided that Jingo was afraid to do what Moose had to do — which was connect with the humanity, however lapsed, of those they killed. Jingo couldn’t afford that kind of cost. And Moose knew that if his friend ever spent that coin, it would break him.

That thought saddened him. Jingo was a bit of an idiot at times, and he was far from the sharpest tool in the woodshed, but he had light. The kid definitely had light, and the world had become so god damn dark.

So, as they worked through the afternoon, Moose encouraged Jingo to talk, to expostulate and expand on his new theory. To elaborate on his latest theory on what would be his ticket out of the hell of the now and into a brighter future. However fictional or improbable it might be. So what if the kid had become a post-apocalyptic Professor Pangloss? Who knows, maybe this was the best of all possible worlds, with a promise of greater possibilities tomorrow.

Skewed logic, sure, but Moose figured, what the fuck. Listening to Jingo was a crap-ton better than listening to his own moody and nihilistic thoughts. Maybe the kid was saving them both from that fractured moment when they’d lose their shit, cover themselves with steak sauce and go skipping tra-la out among the hungry dead.

“It all comes down to what we believe,” said Jingo as he chopped down two more of the dead. Hands flew into the air and legs buckled on severed tendons, dropping them right in Moose’s path. Whack, chop, fall, smash. Rinse and repeat. “That’s what Tony Robbins wrote about. I mean . . . what’s a belief anyway? I’ll tell you, man, it’s a feeling of certainty about what something means. What we need to do is make sure that we shift what we believe to align with what we want to happen.”

“Okay,” said Moose, playing along, “and how do we do that?”

“Well . . . I’m just reading those chapters now, but from what I’ve read so far, it’s all about taking an idea you have to find things that support it. That gives the idea what he calls stability. Once an idea is stable like that, you can go from just thinking about it to believing in it.”

Moose saw Jingo’s blade flash out and take the delicate hands from the slender wrists of what must have once been a truly beautiful woman. Even withered he could see that she had been gorgeous, with a full figure and masses of golden hair. The blade swept down and cleaved through a leg that had slipped out through a long slit in a silvery gown. Moose swung his sledge at her head and silently said what he always said.

I’m sorry.

“So, Tony said that the past doesn’t equal the future, and I figure that our present doesn’t either. We know things have to change. Either we’re going to wipe out the rotters and rebuild, or we won’t. I’m thinking we will because even though they outnumber us, we’re smarter and we can work together. Once we finish the fences, we’re going to start planting crops. This time next year we’ll be eating fresh veggies, and maybe even steak.”

Moose almost made a comment about the challenge of finding useful seed that wasn’t the GMO stuff that grew into plants that wouldn’t breed. They’d have to find seeds that had never been genetically-modified, and how would they know? How would they test that stuff?

He almost said it, but didn’t.

Whack and chop, fall and smash.

Jingo said, “Tony wrote a lot about how there’s no such thing as failures, only outcomes. So, we shouldn’t look at all this as us having fucked up. It happened, so we need to sack up and deal and move past it. We need to make the future we want rather than moan and cry about the way it is.”

His face was alight with the promise of what he was saying, but Moose wasn’t fooled. He could see the doubt, and the panic it ignited, right behind the sheen of those bright eyes.

“Okay,” Moose said, keeping the kid on track, “tell me how we go about getting to this shiny new future? ‘Cause personally I’d love to get there.”

That was exactly what Jingo needed to hear, and he went on a long, convoluted rant about the seven steps to maximum impact.