Waiting for the Light
John Bowman rolled to a halt in the left lane of Main approaching the intersection with Division at exactly 5:52 in the morning. He had eight minutes to reach work before he would be late.
John worked at Cup a Crude, a new franchise combining a quick order coffee house with a gas station. It was a very profitable business. While filling their gas tanks with cheap petroleum extorted from Africa and the Middle East, customers could order rich lattes and cappuccinos prepared from pesticide laden coffee beans hand picked by starving Latin American Indians. Of course, the pesticides that gave the beans their distinct flavor were manufactured from the same petroleum they pumped at Cup a Crude, pesticides manufactured by Monstroso, the chemical and agricultural giant and parent company of Cup a Crude. The same oil was used to ship the coffee beans across the continent and distribute them throughout the franchise.
On the retail end, Cup a Crude was striving to maximize profit and promote equality throughout the working class by lowering the pay of sales clerks until they reached parity with the bean farmers and oil workers. Meanwhile, they had very strict rules about employee attitude, dress, health, and in particular tardiness. No one was allowed to miss the morning pep rally, which began at six o'clock on the dot.
John Bowman had been late twice, and knew that if he was late again it would cost him his job. Fortunately, Cup a Crude was just a block away, down Division. Ideally, he would be there in less than a minute.
However, ideals are for dreamers, and John Bowman knew the crossroad of Main and Division was the slowest intersection in the world. Ahead of him was a line of a dozen vehicles waiting to make the turn. Directly in front of John was a garbage truck.
Main Street was backed up from the intersection. There seemed to be a lot of people in front of the pharmaceutical factory, he observed as he pulled up. Wait, was that a news van?
John pulled up so close to the garbage truck he could no longer see anything but the great unwashed sphincter of the truck. He quickly regretted his rashness. He could only see what was at his sides.
On his left, across Main Street, was a cracked, empty parking lot and an abandoned strip mall, where business did its tease for a little while and then disappeared. The site once held a school and a medical clinic, both of which were bulldozed to give corporations a moment to appreciate the commercial value of the property. Now it was worthless. The factory workers wouldn't even park there.
To the right, running along Main Street on both sides of Division was the sprawling Uber Meier pharmaceutical factory. This was where they made the drugs that ran the world, starting with compounds first developed under the Nazis using Jews and criminals for trial subjects. Uber Meier is also, of course, a subsidiary of Monstroso.
If John could back up, he would have. But the car behind him had moved ahead as he did. Anyway, he was sitting in the leftmost of four lanes, with three lanes running the other way to his left, across the traffic island. He thought he saw a crowd around the front of the building ahead. The truck stank. Was that a siren?
John turned off the commercial radio station he kept on in the background. A band called the Dead Catfish was cut off in mid lunge. Yes, he heard sirens. John rolled down his windows to hear what was going on. Off across the parking lot, he saw police making their way through traffic along Division, heading for Main Street and whatever was happening in front of the factory.
O crap, man, that's enough to make you vomit. John rolled up the windows. What was in the back of that truck? It smelled like something fucking died in there. What were they hauling around?
John turned up the air and flipped the radio on, surfing the dial for traffic news; anything that might give him a clue as to what was going on. He could see the Cup a Crude beyond the empty strip mall, a block down Division. It might as well be miles away. The lights at Main and Division were long, even without the traffic and whatever else is going on. John thought of hopping out of his car and legging it over to report for work, but he could not abandon his vehicle. Instead he ran down the radio dial.
There, what is that?
"It is confirmed," Bert Truheart, the smooth talking head news anchor announced, "the End of the World will occur at 6:15 today off Division, very close to the intersection of Division and Main. We are assured that everyone will witness it in due course. For those of you who are on the road, head into the light."
Plucky and slightly alluring Miranda Godaily broke in. "Except those poor fools stuck in traffic at the intersection of Main and Division. If that's where you are, lay low in your car, keep your doors locked and wait for your turn. Hopefully you won't be caught up in the revolution. I suggest you head north on Division if at all possible, into the light. And above all, do not make eye contact with the clowns."
What the fuck?
John flipped the dial but found nothing else. What was that? Don't make eye contact with clowns? End of the World? Sitting as close as he was, John could not avoid looking up into the partially open sphincter of the garbage truck. Up there, in the shadowy mounds of garbage, John saw something move. Naw, it couldn't have been. It was just some of the garbage shifting in there. And oh the stench it released. There had to be something dead in the back of that truck.
The air conditioner drew the odor into the cabin of the car, where it just seemed to permeate everything. John fought to ignore the stink. He found an old fast food napkin and tried to use it to filter the stench as he breathed. He hoped traffic would begin to move soon, stuck as he was with his head stuck up the dirty ass end of a garbage truck.
What were garbage trucks allowed to carry anyway? John had never smelled anything this bad in his entire life.
Scores of riot police were making their way up Division on foot, heading for the intersection. John turned off the radio. Now he heard the crowd in front of the factory making a big noise, yelling and chanting.
John heard a sound sort of like a mini-bike approaching from behind. Looking out his side view mirror, he saw a whole brigade of mini cars, each stuffed with an oversized clown. They weaved in between cars and around each other, slowly making their way toward the intersection.
As they approached, John watched them in his mirrors. They were clowns with painted happy faces and colorful, baggy costumes. But under the face paint he saw eyes smoldering with rage and lips closed yet trembling with anger over teeth that gnashed in barely contained violence.
In the rear view mirror, he thought he saw them looking into vehicles as they drove by. And the occupants looked straight ahead and held their breath in fear of the clowns. John felt his own fear mounting as they approached the driver's side of his car. Then they were alongside and John was doing his best to make a thorough study of the inside of that garbage truck's sphincter. He was sure the nearest clown looked him over good as he passed by. John could feel his malevolent gaze even as he kept his own eyes on the pile of foul garbage revealed by the gaping hole.
Wait a minute. There was an arm. That was a severed arm lying on that garbage pile. There was a rotting body in the back of that truck. That was why it smelled so bad.
John almost barfed at the thought of an overripe body picked up with the trash. Maybe it broke apart in the process, releasing noxious death fumes and leaking putrescent juices all over the garbage.
Oh, that was too much. John leaned over and barfed on the floor of the passenger side. Then he did it again just because the first time was so repulsive. Finally, he wiped his mouth with the fast food napkin.
Carefully looking about, he saw the clowns were gone. He needed to tell someone about the arm hanging out of the sphincter of the garbage truck. There was no way he was leaving of his car, not with those bozos out there. He pulled out his cell phone, but the battery was dead. Huh, when did that happen?
The shouting grew louder. There were gunshots, and some of the shouts turned to screams. John looked over at the Uber Meier factory.
Many of the windows were open on the various floors. People were stationed at these windows, some of them holding signs. Better Wages. Better Safety. UM is Unhealthy. Others pointed hoses through the windows. John leaned into the passenger seat to get a better look. There were people atop the factory. They were armed with large gas tanks and hoses. Some of these workers ran out of sight, toward the center of the ruckus. Others turned on their hoses and began releasing some sort of gas down onto the streets. Those at the windows all did likewise. What sort of chemical warfare agent had these workers whipped up in the pharmaceutical factory?
John's foot slipped off the brake and onto the gas as he was stretched across the front seat, trying to see what was happening. His car lurched ahead, banging into the back of the garbage truck. The arm tumbled out and landed on his hood with a sickening thud. It was bloated and green, with maggots crawling on it.
John almost added another pint to the passenger floor, but before he could react to the arm, something reared up in the bowels of the garbage truck. John thought it was a body destined to follow the arm out onto the hood of his car. Then this corpse leapt down out of the sphincter of the garbage truck.
It landed in a crouch on the hood of John's car, directly over the arm. This rotting corpse looked down at John with its empty eye sockets as its spoiled eyes leaked down its cheeks.
There was a grunt from the bowels of the truck as another zombie in slightly better shape charged after the first. The undead thing on his hood snatched up the arm and tumbled off the car, lurching away through the motionless traffic.
A whole army of zombies tumbled out of the bowels of the garbage truck, over John's hood and into the streets. One of them reached out and snagged a woman by her hair. Poor woman probably didn't have AC. The zombies dragged her through the window as her car crashed into the one ahead of it.
Well at least the odor from the garbage truck let up some. Lying low in his car, John turned on the radio with the volume down. He found the station that made the previous announcement about the End of the World.
"Once again," slightly flirty Miranda Godaily announced, "for those of you stuck in that traffic jam where the pharmaceutical workers are staging their revolution at Main and Division, we are told traffic should be moving shortly, so hang in there. And don't bother holding your breath while you wait. The hallucinogen they are spraying from the Uber Meier building is absorbed just as easily through the skin. So try to relax, lay low in your seat and enjoy the trip. Oh and keep your car windows rolled up and your doors locked so the zombies can't get you."
"We hear a few drivers have learned that the hard way," Bert Truheart spoke up.
"And whatever you do," Miranda emphasized.
("And whatever you do…." Bert echoed.)
"Don't look the clowns in the eyes," Miranda finished.
And as Miranda ended her report, the garbage truck belched out carcinogenic fumes and began to move ahead. At last, John was able to pull his head out of the garbage truck's ass. Sitting up, he took the wheel and looked out on what was happening there at the intersection of Main and Division.
It is a riot of factory workers, riot police, reporters, pedestrians, drivers who left their vehicles, and zombies. They are laying into each other, tearing each other apart. No they are tearing each other's clothes off.
It is a huge orgy. Everybody was fucking, even the zombies. Only the clowns seemed immune. They were directing traffic. Though when anyone accidentally looked at them, they would pull the unfortunate out of the vehicle and throw him or her to the zombies for an undead gang rape.
John kept his eyes on the garbage truck as he approached the intersection. In front of him, the back of the garbage truck became a giant hairy butt, parting its cheeks to direct its opening anus at him. And as John made his turn past the bozos, the ass sent out an explosive blast. Shit, garbage and body parts rained down on his car and flooded the road ahead of him.
John looked away, only to find himself locking eyes with a clown. And in that eye contact, John knew it was all over for him. This bozo wanted to rape his soul.
There was only one thing he could do; as the bozo marched toward him, he gunned the engine and headed right through that monstrous pile of shit. His car cut through it like margarine.
He sprayed the windshield and ran his wipers to clean the shit off. Nothing could stop him now. He drove right into the light.
When he is not stuck at traffic lights, Colin Morehouse writes short fiction and works as a telephone solicitor.