More Bedtime Stories for the Apocalypse by Joel Arnold Page B

set Harry back
up in his lab.
    “ Find me something to feed it,” the
Mayor pleaded. “That’s all I ask.”
    Harry got right to work.
    The high points of Oxycrete were its
durability under pressure, its release of oxygen into the
atmosphere, and its consumption of not only carbon dioxide, but
carbon monoxide as well. It even purified acid rain.
    But what to feed it? Harry knew this would
come up eventually, but not this soon. It was supposed to be fairly
self-sufficient.
    He felt a tenderness in his back and
shoulders where the straight-jacket’s constraints had pressed
especially hard.
    If they want me to feed it, he thought, then
feed it I will.
    Meanwhile, the Oxycrete’s color turned to a
sickening vomit green. It smelled bad, too, as if all the
pollutants it consumed were stagnating in its cells. The Mayor
called Harry every day, every night, sometimes ranting, sometimes
pleading.
    When Harry finally came up with a solution,
he went directly to the Mayor’s residence. He was greeted at the
door by young Bobby.
    “ Here kid,” Harry whispered, slipping
the boy some Bliss. “Have a piece of gum.”
    The Mayor appeared. “Harry! Thank God.”
    Harry told the Mayor of his plan, while
Bobby slouched in the corner, drooling happily.
    Two weeks later, the slow moving rain-hovers
poured oceans of water onto the city of Bushton far below. Water
mixed with Harry’s special Oxycrete Feed Formula.
     
    * * * * *
     
    Soon, the buildings took root, their walls
creeping with vines. Parking lots became carpeted with thick, tall
grass. The streets of Bushton grew slick with moss.
    The Oxycrete, luxuriating in its new food
source, excreted not just oxygen, but oxygen rich with a fine mist
of Bliss Arcana extract. Despite the difficulty going to and from
work with the pavement sprouting flora left and right, and the
buildings becoming self-contained jungles, the citizens of Bushton
found themselves quite content. Very content. Very happy. They
smiled a lot. They giggled as fortresses of trees surrounded their
homes. Even though their automobiles became useless, the busses and
subways unable to maneuver through the incredible growth, Bushton’s
citizenry didn’t seem to mind.
    As the city’s inhabitants happily drooled,
the streets, the buildings, the parking lots of Bushton, breathed
like never before.
     
     
    * * * * *
     
    * * * * *
     
     
The Coffin
Bell
     
     
    St. John’s Lutheran Church sat a mile out of
the town proper of Vidar, a small Minnesota town whose weekly
newspaper announcements were filled with Norwegian names. A
cemetery spread out from the back of the church, and the
gravestones, too, were heavy with Norwegian names; Isaksons and
Johnsruds, Morstads and Wolds, Ullands and Sandviks. Beyond the
cemetery was an apple orchard, and beyond that, forest. n front of
the church a dirt road took carriages and those on horseback and
foot all the way to Mankato, where one could catch a train if one
so chose.

    By now, Amund Grotberg was comfortable among
the gravestones. The first few nights had been hard, and he was
spooked more than once by owls hooting and deer treading on the dry
grass, but now he was used to it. The job paid him in food – a pint
of beer and a lard sandwich made by the pastor’s wife for the night
(and any apples he desired from the orchard) and a nice breakfast
in the morning when his shift was over; coffee, eggs, a hunk of
cheese, bread, the occasional slice of ham. It was the breakfasts
that kept him from running those first few nights. He was all of
sixteen and done with school. His parents were both gone; mother
dead long ago and father – at least according to the town’s gossip
– had run off with a caravan of gypsies.
    Reading troubled Amund; the letters appeared
jumbled and backward. And math – not his strongest suit. He liked
working with his hands, and he helped the undertaker when needed.
It was the undertaker who recommended him to Pastor Blom.
    His job here was two-fold;