Hope and Undead Elvis

chapter Two

Hope and the End of the World

"I'm not going to stand for this," said Hope. "We've got to do something. Call somebody and tell them."

"What are you going to tell them?" Undead Elvis leaned back in his chair and kicked his booted feet up onto the tabletop. Bizarre, mismatched playing cards flew in every direction. "The world ended. What am I supposed to do now, go find a helmet?"

"You're no help," said Hope. She picked up the old, rotary-dialed bar phone. As she'd expected, there was no dial tone. Still, she hit the cradle button a few times, because she'd seen that in the movies.

Something fell into her ear. She yelped and dropped the phone, brushing frantically at the side of her head. Whatever it was fell out. She stuck a finger in her ear to check for anything that shouldn't be there.

"What happened?" asked Undead Elvis.

Hope picked up the phone and shook it. Grains rattled inside the hard plastic shell and some bits of sand fell out through the holes in the ear and mouthpieces. "God, how long has it been since anyone's used this phone, anyway?" She started to set it down, but sand still streamed from the holes. She shook it again. It seemed heavier.

She set it back in its cradle and sand poured out in two neat little piles on either side of the phone. "What the hell? Hey, Elvis, come check this out."

Undead Elvis sidled across the barroom floor, like he was listening to a beat nobody else could hear. "What you got, Li'l lady?"

"Sand, like what's outside." Hope held up the receiver as evidence. Tiny torrents of sand rushed from it, far more than it could have held. She wondered if the sand was pushing its way in through the phone cord. The way the world had changed and gone all wonky in the past few minutes, she wouldn't have been surprised in the least.

"Huh," said Undead Elvis. He poked an unnatural finger at the sand and looked at the few tenacious grains that clung to his skin. "That ain't natural."

"Says the undead guy."

Undead Elvis didn't reply. Instead, he yanked on one of the beer taps by the bar. Damp sand splattered into the drain tray. He went down the line: Coors, Coors Light, Budweiser, Bud Light, Miller High Life, Miller Lite, and Fat Tire. Every single tap released sand. As Hope watched, the trickles became torrents that didn't shut off when Undead Elvis let go of the taps.

Hope took a step back from the bar as sand overflowed the drain tray and spilled onto the floor. "What's going on?"

A wave of sand pushed out from the bathroom door. They retreated from its onslaught. Inside the bathroom, through the dust in the air, Hope could see fountains of sand spewing from every spigot and every drain. She looked at Undead Elvis in real fear. Behind him, sand was trickling out of an outlet on the wall and the windows were beginning to darken from the bottoms up.

"I think we all oughtta get out of here," he said.

Hip-deep sand poured in through the front door of the bar as Hope yanked it open. It was like the desert was trying to eat them. Choking dust filled the air, making Hope's eyes sting and her lungs burn.

Beside her, Undead Elvis pulled a microphone from somewhere inside his sparkling jumpsuit.

Hope coughed. "What are you doing?"

"I move better with a mic in hand." He cocked his hips in that way only Elvis could. "Uh-huh!"

"Oh, for God's sake!" Hope grabbed his outstretched hand and plunged into the onrushing sand. It was like trying to wade through deep snow. She knew somewhere above her was sun and clear air. The entire world couldn't be turning to sand, could it? She held fast to that belief as sand blinded her and tried to force itself into her nostrils. Undead Elvis's hand was like her compass; as long as she could feel his weight behind her, she knew she was still heading in the right direction.

Then instead of climbing, she was crawling, pulling herself up the side of a slippery sand slope as Yancy Cleveland's sank without complaint beneath the silica tide. The rushing hiss of the sand lessened to a whisper and Hope wasn't being pulled downward any longer. She gasped for air and coughed grain after grain of sand out of her lungs. At last, she rolled onto her back, eyes streaming from being scratched and felt like she ought to cry.

A moment later, she sat bolt upright. "Elvis?"

There was no sign of the undead man who'd been right behind her.

"Oh, Jesus. Elvis? Where are you? Can you hear me? Make a noise if you can hear me!" The only sound was blood thundering in her ears.

She dug.

Her nails broke and her fingers cracked and split as she flung away handfuls of the pernicious sand.

Nothing. He wasn't there. He couldn't be that much below the surface, could he? A frisson of terror shook Hope to the ends of her hair. She wondered if he'd disappeared the same as everything else had.

Alone. Her skin rippled with goosebumps in spite of the heat. What should she do? What could she do?

Just then, a blue-green hand clutching a microphone burst out of the sand only a few feet from her. Hope shrieked something wordless and flopped across the sand to close her hands around Undead Elvis's wrist. His other hand emerged from the sand to grasp one of hers. She pulled, straining against the greedy sand. Her feet started to dig in and for a moment she thought it had her as her ankles, then calves disappeared beneath the yellow mass.

Even as Hope sank into the sand, Undead Elvis came out, inch by inch. His head uncovered and his first words to her were "Don't y'all worry about a thing, Li'l lady. I got you."

"Yeah," gasped Hope. "But who's got you?" Nevertheless, she tugged and heaved and with a sucking sound, Undead Elvis's hips came free from the sand and she fell backward with him on top of her in a parody of coitus.

Spent, she gasped for air and coughed as dust flew into her lungs. His weight comforted her and she put her arms around him.

"Thanks kindly, Li'l lady." He didn't sound any worse for the wear. His voice was as mellow as ever. "I might've got out eventually, but it could have been a real long wait."

"I was afraid you were gone, like… like everything else. I was afraid I'd be alone here, wherever this is."

"Not if I can help it," he said.

"Why? What are you even doing here? I mean, you're dead, right? You died before I was even born."

"I did. I'm back, Li'l lady. Uh-huh."

"How? And why?" Another thought occurred to her. "Hey, get off me."

"Sorry 'bout that." He rolled off her and sat up in the sand. He blew grains off his microphone, almost going so far as to take off his sunglasses to examine it. "Can't say how it happened. All I know is, one day I knew I needed to be here, in this place, at this time. So I got up and came here."

"You're not making any sense." Hope looked around at the sandy, forlorn surroundings. Nothing but dunes as far as she could see in every direction. "I don't even know what I'm doing here," she said in a voice so soft it seemed the sand might swallow it up as well.

"Nevertheless, here we are, and it's the end of the world," said Undead Elvis.

"Yeah, I think you're right about that. What do we do about it?"

"Ain't sure we can do anything about it. When it's your time, it's your time. Same thing for the world, I figure."

For a few minutes, the only sound was the wisp of shifting sand as Hope's breathing slowed to a normal pace.

"What do we do now?" she asked into the silence. "We didn't disappear with everything else. Are we supposed to go somewhere or do something?"

Undead Elvis shrugged. "If we stay here, you're gonna die of thirst."

"What about you?

"I'm already dead. Ain't got a thing to worry about."

"You were eating when we were playing cards. Drinking, too."

"That's different. I chose to, because I love me a big old mess of french fries with gravy. But I don't need to eat."

"Because you're dead."

"That's right, Li'l lady."

"I'm sitting here in a desert, talking to a dead man after the world ended. Shit, I wonder if I'm already hallucinating."

Undead Elvis patted her arm. "I don't think so."

She sighed. "I keep thinking I should be freaking out, you know? I mean, if this is the end of everything, I should be screaming and crying and stuff. Instead, I'm just kind of… I don't know. Annoyed." She burped a little and made a sour face. "And nauseated. Crap, I hope I'm not getting sick. I don't want to spend my last days in the world barfing."

"Do you want to spend them here?"

"What?"

He made an expansive gesture, encompassing the entire sandy horizon. "Your last days. Do you want to spend them here, Li'l lady? Surrounded by sand with an undead celebrity your only companion?"

Hope stared around at the silica ocean around her. The stark landscape was beautiful in a surreal, sterile kind of way. She'd heard that deserts harbored much life among their sands, but she suspected this one was as empty as it looked. "Not a really, Elvis. If I've got to die, I'd rather it was somewhere prettier than this. Someplace green."

"I know just the place."

"Do you, now?"

"Yep, I sure do. Graceland. Most beautiful place in the whole world." Undead Elvis's face grew wistful.

"Maybe it used to be," said Hope. "But then the world ended."

Undead Elvis paused and raised his head, as if sniffing the air. "No, it's still there."

"How do you know?"

"I just do. Like you know your toes are still there."

Hope looked down at her feet, just in case. "Even so, it must be a thousand miles from here."

He tucked his microphone back into his outfit and extended a hand to her. "Then I guess we better start walkin'."