The Fab Four: The Apocalypse

'Come on, this isn't anything new. It's always been like this throughout history. And it always will be, in one way or another. Stop bringing up these negative topics! I'm here to relax, for goodness' sake!'

The slightly red-faced man put down his glass and raised his right hand to get the waitress's attention. For him, the subject was closed. The man he was talking to shook his head vehemently and said in a whiny voice: 'The world is heading for war. You'll see, it won't be long now.'

His words were somewhat slurred and muddled. The red-faced man rolled his eyes and sighed dramatically as he accepted his fresh drink from the waitress. He then looked morosely at his drinking companion, who was staring gloomily into the glass he was clutching with both hands. 'We're living in 2010, you know', he said. 'No one is stupid enough to press the red button and start anything else. Ultimately, it's just showing off. The politicians have everything under control. They're not going to blow themselves up. They enjoy life too much for that.'

The man with the red face finished the sentence with a loud laugh, then looked around for approval. His gaze met that of a man sitting with three others in an alcove not far from their table. The eye contact made him feel slightly uneasy. It was as if the stranger was leaning forward in tense attention, as if he were following the conversation with interest. But he did so in an inappropriately calm manner.

Defiantly, the man raised his glass in the direction of the four figures and took a deep sip. As he did so, he surreptitiously eyed the strange guests. Wearing long black coats and heavy boots, they seemed eerie to him. All of them had untidy hair hanging down to their shoulders. They looked like rockers who refused to accept that their time had passed – if only they hadn't been sitting there so quietly, observing.

'And what about HIV? Do they have that under control too?' His table companion abruptly interrupted the man's musings. 'Come on, what about it?' the slurred voice nagged. Before he could turn to his companion, he caught sight of a faint smile on the pale face of the long-haired man in the corner of his eye. Trying to shake off his unease, he rescued his beer glass, which had started to sway dangerously when his companion shook his arm.

'You don't have an answer to that, do you? It's a plague, I tell you. Worse than the plague in the Middle Ages. And what about hunger? Who's got that under control?' The red-faced man stared into the reproachful, contorted face of the whiner, as he called him. At least tonight. The guy was practically wallowing in disaster. He didn't usually ruin the mood so badly.

After taking a sip from his glass, he took a deep breath and explained his view of things. 'Sooner or later', he said, 'a vaccine will be found.' In fact, he thought there probably already was one, but it was being withheld so that it could be released onto the market at the optimal time. He criticised the pharmaceutical companies for making a fortune from people's illnesses. As he became more engrossed in his topic, the feeling of being watched intensified.

He felt that the four men in the alcove were conspiring against him, which he did not like at all. As he looked around for the waitress to order another round, his friend, who was now more lucid, spoke up. 'If black people in Africa don't die of HIV, they die of hunger. Half of humanity is starving. Have you ever really realised that? Can't we at least defeat hunger? How long do you think it will be before there's nothing left to eat here either?'

He continued babbling, repeating himself over and over again. But the man was no longer listening. He wondered why the landlord tolerated the four scruffy guys in long leather coats. People like that weren't the usual clientele of this cosy, rustic pub. The men were so pale that you'd think they were on drugs. They were behaving calmly, but he now had the feeling that the eerie foursome were burning holes in his back with their eyes.

He could feel the heat rising, and the chatter about the end of the world was slowly making him angry. 'Calm down, man!' he suddenly growled. 'You'd think you were trying to bring about the Day of Judgement with all that talk! You don't have to exaggerate everything to the point of the end of the world. It's still a few millennia away.'

The other man continued to rant, unperturbed, about nuclear strikes and volcanic eruptions, when something stirred in the alcove opposite. The four men stood up and seemed to be leaving. He didn't want to look. He just wanted them to finally leave the pub. However, as they passed his table, they paused briefly. To his horror, he felt a heavy hand on his shoulder for a split second. Shortly afterwards, he felt a draught coming in through the open door.

With his eyes wide open, he stared at his acquaintance, who continued talking as if he hadn't noticed anything. Then he jumped up from his chair, ran to the door and went outside. In the pre-dawn fog, he saw the four men walking towards the heavy motorcycles parked on the street. The last figure looked back, nodded at him and smiled, then made a strange gesture in the air.

The frightened man's eyes burned. It was as if he could see in the dark. Suddenly, the cloaks fluttered like long shadows, and the motorcycles transformed into horses, rearing up and neighing so loudly that he sank to his knees, pressing his hands over his ears. He realised that these would be the last sounds humanity would hear before the end.

* The Fab Four are the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse (personifications of Conquest, War, Famine, and Death), mentioned in the sixth chapter of the Book of Revelation. They are harbingers of the approaching apocalypse.

© 'The Fab Four: The Apocalypse. A story from the near future': A short story by Pressenet (translated by Izabel Comati), 09/2025. Image credit: Apocalyptic Horsemen, CC0 (Public Domain Licence).