A Perfectly Logical Guide to a Superhuman Apocalypse: Chapter 4

A Perfectly Logical Guide to a Superhuman Apocalypse: Chapter 4

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Wordcount: 2500

Commissioned by Arksoul

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A lot of people equated getting superpowers to winning the lottery.

They’re right and more so than they probably wanted to be.

Lottery winners tended to find their lives utterly fucked after they received their winnings. Every single relationship they had was suddenly just about money. They ceased to exist as anything more than a resource to be exploit by other people. If they’re lucky, they’ll find themselves right back where they started after a few years living it up and giving everyone else all their cash, before settling back to a normal existence.

Or, they’ll find themselves in divorce after divorce, family argument after argument, lawsuit after lawsuit, and bcome utterly destitute without anything or anyone to their name.

That was if they weren’t murdered.

The lottery analogy worked for the darker side of the heroic life too. Villains and a few heroes lived it up with what whatever they got. Drugs, sex, and all that jazz flowed for whoever had the cash or the power to get it. Alcoholism, substance abuse, and other addictions filled the superpowered community, because a lot of them were practically gods… gods that did what you wanted if you got them hooked on what you wanted.

Now, I’m not going to say that getting superpowers is the worst thing that’s ever happened to me. In fact, I’ll go ahead and say that they’re the best thing that happened to me, because I got myself an avenue to acquire large amounts of money, solve a lot of my problems, and get myself all the things that I wanted before the world ended.

But I’m an exception to the rule, because I’m square and boring as people get. My vices were hamburgers and milkshakes, I had acquaintances instead of friends, and I cut off people who were after me just for my power. All my romances failed, and I got a dog for companionship, and I was leaving my perfectly-safe bunker to acquire cows and a dog.

Logically speaking, I’m pretty damn nuts for leaving my perfectly-safe and well-stocked bunker for a dog and some cows.

But most people with powers had worse vices than me and clung to relationships even when they shouldn’t.

I wasn’t going to blame them for it or call them out for it.

Most people probably weren’t raised in the hicks, in a town dying from the opioid crisis with a single-father deep in the drink and with a flagpole stuck up his ass. They saw the good side of people, experienced a lot of things about society that they liked, and couldn’t stop themselves from partaking in it like a normal human being, even though they weren’t normal.

They got swindled and suckered like most lottery winners did.

It wasn’t their fault.

Past all the power, they were just humans around other humans who wanted to exploit them for everything they had. Which meant that the world was going to go to shit, because one in ten people got superpowers, and ten percent of THOSE won multi-billion-dollar lotteries instead of millions.

It was a numbers game in the end.

There were just too many people falling over into addiction, depravity, and other shit, while heroes got worn out, used up, and died trying to be literal messiahs. Society wasn’t built for people who could lift cars or fly, let alone people who were living nukes or could slap aside entire conventional armies in an afternoon. A lot of superpowered folk got pulled down, they lost everything they had besides their power, and that fucked them up.

They were the majority in the end, so Walker had more than enough evidence to shake up the entire world, but it didn’t work out as she’d hoped.

Instead of a movement for the entire world to come together and be better, Walker found the world imploding around her.

Bless her heart for doing the right thing… but even if she didn’t someone else would’ve done it eventually.

I knew all of this.

Hell, I lived through it and witnessed it.

So, I had every intention of doing my best to get what I needed to do done and go back to my bunker with my spoils, before washing my hands of whatever Walker had planned.

Unfortunately, things were never that easy when it came to anything she was involved in.

The woman was a magnet for trouble.

…

Five minutes after I deposited a rapist, pedophile with a sex dungeon with unspeakable horrors within it, Walker offers my payment for my services.

Gallons of milk in drums. Soft cheeses. Ground beef. Buns.

And, finally, a puppy who I promptly named Jack.

I got what I wanted out of human interaction for the foreseeable future, so I should’ve left.

In fact, I would’ve left, if not for the bombshell that Kaede Walker decided to drop on me with a smile.

“A crusade? Are you shitting me?” I pet my new very good, amazing, and special puppy with one hand, while looking over the dossier of the next threat to Walker’s community. I flipped through the pictures, read the statements made by the resident Private Investigator, and calmed myself by looking at my cute puppy. “Holy fuck, you’re not.”

Picture after picture showed men in stark, white robes with red crosses on their chests preaching to towns. They were guarded by people armored in plate armor with white tabards and red crosses. I was experienced enough with powered armor to see that they had servos at their joints and the suits were pressurized. I couldn’t tell if they were newly made, or built up from a military armory, but I knew that they were strong, especially since they were carrying light autocannons for small-arms.

Then, in one or two pictures, there were their superpowered assets… dressed to the nines in white armor and white wings with touchups of gold. Their faces were obscured, they were flying, and they were probably strong and tough… before even taking into account whatever power they were hiding. In other words, they were being aggressively competent with their assets, and I they were a serious power that I had to pay attention to.

Did the States not get nuked enough or something? Why were there so many people around and capable of organizing to this extent? Shouldn’t America be a radioactive wasteland? What was up with Pacific Fleet staying strong in Hawaii and the Bible Belt mountain a crusade? Shouldn’t there be a few years between an apocalypse and rebuilding?

“They call themselves the Paradists and they wish to create heaven on earth with the aid of angels. The angels, of course, are individuals with superpowers. They’ve arisen from the grain belt after rebuilding there and they’re spreading through the west.” Kaede Walker crossed her arms and explained, while I took a seat on one of the ice-boxes to help it stay sealed, until I zipped over to my home. “Towns who declare themselves believers are supported with security, infrastructure, and deliveries of food. They are working quickly, especially with the assets they have available, but as you might have noticed… it’s not as religious as it seems.”

“Yeah, I see it. The people with superpowers are in charge. They’re literally posing as divine messengers and aspects of divine will.” Kaede raised a brow at my words. Probably because I was used a few words she didn’t expect me to. It was easy enough to explain. “I went to church and Sunday school before I got my license. Some of it stuck.”

I took a theology class online too, so that I could get some expert opinions, and never looked back afterwards.

That stuff wasn’t for me, even if it worked for a lot of other people.

“I see. Well, my concerns are simple. I see many signs of this movement becoming a renewal of the middle ages and its social policies. Serfs working beneath nobility ordained by divinity.” Walker had a lot of screws loose, but I could see where she was getting at. “However, from a few sources, I’ve received reports that they are truly acting for the betterment of the people and staying out of local governance.”

“Huh. Neat. Maybe they’re actually just religious and want to do the right thing.” It was a strange, alien, and terrifying thought. People using religion and actually following its teachings, instead of just using it as a precedent to validate claims for war and violence? I suppose that it would be a lot easier, if you actually believed the superpowers came from divine intervention and aspects of the divine were actually in front of you doing divine stuff. “But you wouldn’t be telling me this, if they were.”

“Correct. The reports of their good deeds and actions are many, but there are many reports of corruption. They have a policing force, an inquisition, but it's hardly seen.” Walker provided me with what information she could. Most of it was already in the dossier that I was reading through. The sources of the allegations were neatly timestamped and attributed to people with locations. I could verify them, so I planned on doing so. “I will continue to supply you with the supplies you wish in exchange for helping Alexis with her investigation into the Paradists, Egress.”

That got my attention, but I kept my mouth shut.

I was willing to do a lot more for a way to rapidly fill up my freezers with meet and go for a prolonged retirement with massive stores, but I wasn’t going to tell Walker that.

“Six jumps a day from Monday to Friday between noon and midnight. I’ll take the pay every month.”  I offered Walker my hand and she took it. Was it dangerous to put my hand in someone’s who could crush a tank like a sheet of paper? Absolutely, but I held onto a tradition here and there. “I want it in writing, too.”

Walker offered me a small smile and a nod at my request.

Which made me worry, because I felt like she knew something that I didn’t, which meant that I was somehow getting shafted and getting less than I should.

But, as I wracked my brain for possibilities, I found nothing.

“Of course, Egress. I’ll do that right now.”

I had no qualms with religion, so I wasn’t going to go out of my way to fuck over the Paradists. I didn’t have qualms with fucking with them either, but I wasn’t going to do that unless I could get paid for it. Since organizations with massive followings were hard as hell to put down and get off your back, especially ones with strong ideologies, I’d accept nothing less than an entire, working farm to supply me with what I wanted and set me up for life.

So… why did my gut tell me that I needed to figure out what Walker knew before I signed the dotted line on our contract?

…

I dropped off all the food and had Walker look after my puppy, before going over to the Bible Belt.

A few of the cities that I popped into were still recovering, but it looked a whole lot more normal than I thought.

Until I saw the craters, I thought that the Midwest was spared getting bombed into the Stone Age, because someone thought it’d be stupid to ravage one of the most fertile lands in the world. But the craters told me that wasn’t the case… yet there were still fields and fields of grains in every direction, as well as large herds of cattle roaming through pastures.

I said it once and I’ll say it again: the apocalypse didn’t hit nearly as hard as I’d expected.

But it wasn’t because the former powers of the world didn’t hit it each other.

I underestimated how well superhumans could rebuild, because none of the new settlements and rebuilt cities I looked at could’ve existed without the bombs dropping or the superhumans existing.

I felt like I was looking at some alternate Earth where religion stayed dominant across human history and took over the modern world.

There was a church in every settlement, a shrine to Jesus on every street corner, and a cathedral in every city. They took after Gothic and Baroque styles and they stood tall. Work crews making new ones wore exoskeletons for armor to help them work, as did anyone else who had a job that involved manual labor. Superhumans weren’t on patrol most of the time, but instead working and assisting people who needed help whenever they could.

Something about it all worried some part of my hindbrain, as though I was looking at something unnatural.

After looking through all the settlements and cities I could find, I realized what it was.

Markets.

There were no markets or places to conduct business.

People ate together in communal kitchens when bells rang. They worked until their shifts were over and returned to their homes. Everyone wore the same clothes, white with a red cross, which were unflattering. A few people had an accessory or two, maybe a keepsake or a trinket, but they were handmade. There wasn’t a single store to sell anything. There wasn’t a café to enjoy some food beyond what the state provided. There wasn’t a single sign of commerce existing anywhere.

The Pardists, much to my horror, didn’t even have a barter system.

My heart raced at the sight, while my hands shook, and my eyes were burned with the horrific sight. I could barely withstand the mental damage wrought upon my mind at what I saw: an entire society bereft of commerce living lives of necessity and prayer.

So, that was why Walker thought I would stand against them with all my might.

She thought I’d go against anyone who worked against commerce and someone’s right to earn money from their own sweat and hard work.

But this time, she was wrong.

I already had everything that I needed and more.

Unless the Paradists went after my bunker, I had no issue with them.

At most, I’ll probably have issues with anyone who didn’t follow their mission statement of prayer, hard work, and living simply.

I doubted that the Paradists would last past a generation before it’s upper echelons became fat and corrupt, but that was going to be after my time, therefore it wasn’t my problem.

So, after seeing all that I did, I allowed myself to breathe a sigh of relief and got ready to return home… only for a shadow to fall upon me.

“Ah, good evening, Egress. It has been the longest time.” The voice was velvety, yet sweet. It came from above from a helmed face with a figure clad in armor. However, unlike all the other “Angels” of Paradise, this one’s wings were real. I felt a cold sweat drip down my back, as my ex removed her helm and gave me a smile. “Have you come forth to finally assist me in spreading His word and way?”

An angelic visage framed by white hair with golden eyes bore down upon me, pleading with me to agree.

Memories of arose within me of very pleasant days, even more pleasant evenings, and finally the absolute goddamn lunacy that had me fake my death.

“Nope.”

With that singular word, I fled from Lorraine Anderson without a second thought.

Of course, the craziest girlfriend I’d ever had would survive the apocalypse and start a religious theocracy.