Terminus: A Novella of the Apocalypse by Stephen Donald Huff Page A

king crab.  Lobster.  The best.”  The Guide tips his head, conceding, “All of it canned or bottled, of course.  Still, it’s very good.  Won’t you join me for dinner?”
    I growl.  My impatience shows.
    “Of course, of course!  Get down to business!  No time for frivolities.  No time for fun!  Ah, it reminds me of the old-world!  Work!  Work!  Work!  Now, where were we?  Oh, yes.  Expanding the business.  Growing The Clan for the future.  Now that’s a funny thought, isn’t it?  The future!  I know you suicidal types don’t much care for the future.  You don’t believe in it.  Nevertheless, the future exists!  It’s coming!  They want you to be a part of it, Scientist.  A big part of it!  That’s why they hired me.  To find you.  To bring you into the fold, so to speak!”
    Here, he puffs the cigar and then slides along the desk to a cabinet standing at its end.  Gingerly, ever mindful of The Girl standing danger close with her big knife ready, he reaches into one of its drawers and extracts a crystalline bottle of fine whiskey, using his other hand to retrieve three tumblers while he clenches the stogy between his teeth.
    “A bit of celebration is in order, that’s all.  It’s been a long time coming, our first meeting.  Did you know?  How could you?  Drink?  Drink?”  He turns first to me and then The Girl.  We both refuse, but he pours all three glasses a third full, lifting the last to his lips.  “A toast!  To The Scientist and his lovely protégé!  To the future!”
    He sips.  He puffs.  He cocks his head to ponder.
    “Of course, that was a tricky bit of business.  The hiring process.  Naturally, I came among them to kill them all, to choke them all to death and finish the glorious work of Terminus!  Yes, indeed!  An empty planet!  That’s what I wanted for so many years afterward.  For a long time, I believed the process had failed.  Imperfect!  Why leave so few of us alive?  It didn’t make sense to me, so I thought it must have fizzled somehow.  I thought it needed a bit of tidying at the end.  I’m still not so sure.  Then again, how do you pay a man who has everything?  Everything!  Diamonds.  Sapphires.  Gold.  Platinum.  Fine cars.  Big houses.  That’s what it means to hire someone.  Doesn’t it?  Pay?  How to pay me, the head of a Clan?  A god!  Oh, I’m not a megalomaniac.  I recognize the fact that I’m not THE god, just A god.  Still.  A god!  What could a god possibly need?”
    Another sip.  Another puff.
    He asks, “Give up?  Nothing!  That’s what!  Nothing at all!  They couldn’t offer me anything in the here and now, BUT they could offer me something that’s not in the here and now.  They could offer me the future!”  He hisses this last word like a gameshow host, his cigar-laden right hand sweeping wide.  “It’s a brand new world!”  More showmanship.  “As I slipped the garrote around the headwoman’s throat, she started talking so fast I could barely understand her.  Lucky for her, though, I just managed to keep up.  By then, I was already thinking about some of the same things, myself.”
    Again, with that smoking right hand, he sweeps the monitors, all filled with his monstrous horde, which mills psychotically back and forth in the space surrounding the truck, occasionally erupting in violence when one of them kills another and is attacked by the remainder, in turn.  “Look at them!  They’re falling apart!  Ah, it was fun while it lasted, but then nothing lasts forever.  Does it?  No.  It does not.  A smart businessman plans for the future while the present provides, not after everything has failed.  So I decided to branch-out.  I decided to diversify.  Bounty hunting is the next big thing.
    “Actually, that presents a bit of a problem, doesn’t it?  I mean, nobody will hire a bounty hunting firm that calls itself ‘The Clan of the Immaculate Strangulation’,