New York - 2105
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Laughter
Frank Burns Jr jerked the steering wheel hard to the left to avoid an overturned sedan, tossing his family across the interior of the beat up minivan. The States were in ruin within two months, and the internet infrastructure was gone, so there was no way to get news from outside the country, though Frank had left the radio on 24/7 in case a broadcast from the north might reach them. The Archangels had appeared three years ago, and their untold powers caused global catastrophe, not to mention the damage from losing the Crowns. Gabriel had taken control of a major portion of the Eastern seaboard from New Philly by communicating with the locals and spreading some sort of telepathic virus. Apparently Michael had done the same thing to the Mediterranean from Rome, or so the news sites had said before the internet went down. There was another one in New York that hadn’t been named officially, but Frank had heard someone call it Saraquel. Apparently it was completely taking control of humans en masse and for some reason it was turning them into clowns and aggregating them in the amusement park of New Times Plaza. Frank shuddered to think of this, he was creeped out enough by the seven giant eyes of Gabriel that could be seen back home, from miles outside Philly; he had no desire to see a legion of mindless clowns.
Frank’s wife, Reagan, had a sister who went off-grid in the North Canadian Isles a few years back, and they had kept in touch on at least an annual basis, so they were going to her compound to wait for whatever eventual end would come and hope it was something more pleasant than mind viruses from giant eyes or clown brainwashing. Their route to this safe purgatory was based mostly on wishful thinking propped up by shaky logical conclusions about road integrity and resource concentrations, on account of the media silence. Most people were cowering in their homes, or else had committed themselves to a swifter end than the Angels would provide. Other, stronger-willed people were going south, to some apparent resistance camp where they were plotting to kill the Angels. Frank had to give those people credit for their bravery, but he also thought they were plain stupid. How could anyone imagine fighting these entities? The kind of fear he felt when he would stare into those distant neon eyes above Philadelphia was indescribable, far worse than the terror of the First and Second Eucharist when he was a child, which had turned the Atlantic red and the Midwest to sand respectively. Frank was five the last time he felt the kind of fear the Archangels instilled, when the Old Angels disappeared and the Sixty Days of Fire transformed the world. When Agatha Jones was god, she once passed near Frank’s home, and she vaporized the entire neighborhood across the street, converting it back to natural woodland before his eyes. He had witnessed the raw, unfeeling power of a god first hand, and they say it was an Archangel that killed her. Frank couldn’t imagine looking at one of them and thinking he had an ice cube’s chance in hell of fighting it.
And so there are the last kind of person in these end times, besides the total cowards and the fighters: the Frank Burns Juniors and Families of the world, who had a slightly better place to be a coward in, and who were willing to fight a little bit to get there. Frank had been able to reflect internally while they were on a stretch of relatively clear highway, but they were approaching the New York Megalopolitan Area now (so the road signs had suggested for the last 30 miles), and things were getting messy. There was no sign yet of angelic clown powers at work, but Frank was extremely on edge. When they passed into the dark maw of the Megalopolitan Bypass tunnel, Frank flipped on the high beams. The tunnel used to be lit with the particular blue glow of Crown Jewel bulbs, which enhanced Crown array connections underground, but with the Crowns gone it seemed the bulbs no longer did anything at all. What a life it had been for Frank Burns so far, he thought. He’d lived through not only the birth and death of a god, but the entire era of humanity’s Coronation by the Angels. What Frank wouldn’t give to be able to thought-transfer to a cluster in the North for some kind of news, even just a feeling of safety or reassurance. Frank had been in middle school when the researchers finally figured out how people could attune technology with the Crowns that they had been given when Agatha was killed, and by high school his friends were thought-beaming into dreamscapes instead of doing math work. Not long after his generation graduated, they started installing abdication field generators in schools so kids couldn’t do that kind of thing. Frank was snapped out of his reminiscing by his wife’s voice.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
“Honey look out!” Reagan screamed, pointing frantically ahead of them.
Frank slammed on the brakes, “What the fuck is that?!” despite the circumstances, Reagan gave him the you-just-cursed-in-front-of-my-darling-children look. Their attention was snapped back front by their children’s terrified screams.
The thing they had stopped for was unsurprisingly but dreadfully a clown. The reason the kids were screaming, Frank now saw, was that the clown’s lower jaw was no longer attached, so its mouth hung open much too far, and various dark liquids oozed from the sagging hole. It was approaching them slowly.
“What do I do?!”
Reagan gripped her armrests and furrowed her brow as she answered stone-cold, “Run it over.”
Their daughter Amy was immediately in hysterics at this, but their oldest, Carter, chimed in, “Yeah, get ‘em Dad!”
Frank hesitated for a second, but didn’t want to risk catching clown from this once-human. Trying to forget that last part, he floored it. With a considerable bit of bumping and crunching, the minivan went over the clown and continued through the tunnel. The Burns’ thought they were in the clear for a minute, but then the sound started. Carter heard it first.
“Dad, what’s that sound?”
“What sound? I don’t hear anything.”
“Wait a minute, I think I hear it too,” added Reagan.
“What are you talkin-- Oh nope wait, I hear it now, I hear it. Like a low thrumming.”
The sound was growing quickly now, and as they rounded a bend in the tunnel the source was apparent. The legion of clowns was so large by now that its numbers extended into the tunnels below the city, and Frank reckoned they were almost directly below the Times Plaza amusement park now. He slowed the car as they assessed the situation ahead. The clowns were all singing, just one word or sound over and over again, and they were all out of sync so it had a sort of revolving effect. They didn’t seem to notice the minivan approaching them yet. The clowns completely spanned the tunnel, and there were enough of them that Frank couldn’t see through the crowd to even the tiniest glimpse of open road beyond. Mowing through probably wouldn’t work, so they’d have to go back out and find a different route past the city.
As Frank shared this conclusion with his family and put the car in reverse, Reagan gasped. Frank turned from looking out the back to see what his wife saw.
“They’re chasing us.”
Frank pressed his foot all the way down on the gas, but the van had never done too well in reverse, and the clowns were inhumanly fast. As the clowns overtook the van, he could finally hear what they were saying.
“Haaaaaaaaaaaaa Haaaaaaaaaa Haaaaaaaaaaa,” came their horrible chorus.
“Oh my god,” Reagan declared as the clowns brought the minivan to a halt, “they’re laughing at us.”
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