The Doomsday Show Read online

  Contents

  Cover

  Also by Mark Alpert

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Epilogue

  Author’s Note

  Also by Mark Alpert

  Final Theory series

  FINAL THEORY

  THE OMEGA THEORY

  Six series

  THE SIX

  THE SIEGE

  THE SILENCE

  Novels

  EXTINCTION

  THE FURIES

  THE ORION PLAN

  THE COMING STORM

  SAINT JOAN OF NEW YORK

  THE DOOMSDAY SHOW

  Mark Alpert

  This ebook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author’s and publisher’s rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

  First world edition published in Great Britain and the USA in 2022

  by Severn House, an imprint of Canongate Books Ltd,

  14 High Street, Edinburgh EH1 1TE.

  Trade paperback edition first published in Great Britain and the USA in 2023

  by Severn House, an imprint of Canongate Books Ltd.

  This eBook edition first published in 2022 by Severn House,

  an imprint of Canongate Books Ltd.

  severnhouse.com

  Copyright © Mark Alpert, 2022

  All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. The right of Mark Alpert to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988.

  British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

  A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library.

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4483-0926-9 (cased)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4483-0966-5 (trade paper)

  ISBN-13: 978-1-4483-0959-7 (e-book)

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Except where actual historical events and characters are being described for the storyline of this novel, all situations in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is purely coincidental.

  This eBook produced by

  Palimpsest Book Production Limited,

  Falkirk, Stirlingshire, Scotland

  For Lisa

  ONE

  The enemy was handsome. Which was unfortunate, Max thought. He preferred ugly enemies, vicious and scowling, their faces as twisted as their hearts. It made things simpler, from a theatrical point of view.

  But this guy, this Hollister Tarkington, just look at him. Dressed in a beautiful gray suit, he stepped out of his limo and flashed a perfectly white smile at the seething crowd in front of his corporate headquarters in midtown Manhattan. Thousands of protesters – they were mostly young people, Max observed, college age and a bit older – had come to New York for Climate Emergency Week, and they had every reason to hate Tarkington, who was the CEO of Stygian Energy, America’s biggest coal-mining company. And yet the protesters lowered their volume once they saw their enemy in the flesh, as if his good looks were enough to make them reconsider. Their shouts faded as Tarkington strode past the security guards standing shoulder to shoulder on the sidewalk, holding back the hordes that packed West 57th Street. He actually waved at the crowd, grinning like an Oscar winner, stunning everyone into silence with his colossal self-regard. Then he marched toward the glass doors of the Stygian Energy building, followed by a pair of corporate underlings and a TV reporter with a video camera on his shoulder.

  Max Mirsky, lurking behind the security guards, wasn’t impressed. Keep grinning, asshole. It’s show time. He was already in his costume: a long blue cloak, an old-fashioned bicorne hat, and a bushy white mustache glued to his upper lip. He was supposed to look like a character from a Dickens novel, a ruddy Englishman from the grim nineteenth century, but his slapdash cosplay hadn’t been completely successful. In truth, he looked more like Cap’n Crunch.

  Max pressed a button on the remote control in his palm, and music suddenly blared from the powerful loudspeakers that Janet had set up half an hour ago beside the building’s entrance. The brassy notes of a Broadway orchestra boomed over the street, so deafeningly loud that several of the security guards turned around, cringing and glaring. A gap opened between two of the startled guards, just as Max had hoped.

  He dove through it, his blue cloak flapping and flouncing behind him.

  He charged into the narrow lane of cleared sidewalk, right in front of Hollister Tarkington. Standing tall and straight and stern, Max put an exaggerated frown on his face and pointed accusingly at the CEO. At the same moment, the first lyrics of Max’s song blasted out of the loudspeakers and over the crowd:

  Hack him! Sack him!

  Tax him! Ax him!

  Close his coal mines,

  Make him pay for his crimes!

  Max sang along with the recording, belting out the lyrics he’d written, although the music booming from the speakers was much louder than his voice. It was a parody of a song from the musical Oliver!, the opening number that kicks off in the orphans’ workhouse after Oliver Twist holds up his empty bowl and pitifully whispers, ‘Please, sir, I want some more.’ Max was playing the role of Mr Bumble, the stern boss of the workhouse, but instead of castigating a hungry Oliver Twist he now poured his lyrical scorn over the greedy Hollister Tarkington, who stood there on the sidewalk, thoroughly confused.

  Prune him! Moon him!

  Smack his dirty punim!

  Bonk him, bait him,

  This planet really hates him!

  If Stygian Energy’s security guards had been on the ball they would’ve pounced on Max, but his absurd performance discombobulated them. Although he was blocking Tarkington’s path, he clearly wasn’t a threat. No, he was harmless, just an amateur actor who also happened to be an activist. Max was a widower in his fifties who’d suffered a midlife crisis and started an unlikely new career – in street theater, of all things – which he had to admit wasn’t going so well, judging by the latest evidence. This awkward attempt at musical parody and political messaging was baffling everyone at the climate-change protest, including Tarkington’s security detail. The guards vacillated, turning their heads this way and that, taking a moment to confer with one another. They were trying to figure out how to handle this nutcase.

  And Max was grateful for the moment of vacillation. It gave his co-stars their chance to join the show.

  The first to step forward was Janet Page, Max’s on-and-off girlfriend, who’d helped him start the Doomsday Theater Company two years ago. Now she leapt through another gap in the line of guards and took her place by his side, flushed and eager. She was playing the role of Mrs Bumble, in a severe black frock and a drab white mobcap, which Max had found for her in a vintage-fashion shop downtown. Janet had a nice voice, and she lustily contributed to the musical excoriation of Hollister Tarkington, singing Max’s parody lyrics as she pointed at the befuddled CEO. A moment later, three more Doomsday Company members – Larry, Adele, and Eileen – jumped into the performance, all of them barefoot and dressed in rags, a chorus of workhouse orphans. The TV reporter aimed his camera at them, recording their wild dance across the sidewalk.

  Hollister, Hollister!

  Never before has a man burned up SO MUCH COAL!

  Hollister, Hollister!

  He’s scalding the world from pole to pole!

  Last but not least, Nathan Carver – Max’s best friend and, in his opinion, the most underappreciated comic actor in New York – slipped past the guards and strutted over to Tarkington. Nathan was about the same height as the CEO and wore a similarly stylish suit, but Nathan’s jacket was festooned with dollar bills that had been scotch-taped to the sleeves and lapels and collar. Although Nathan wasn’t nearly as handsome as Tarkington, his face was wonderfully elastic, so it was a simple matter for him to imitate the CEO’s bewildered expression. While Max and Janet and the rest of the Doomsday troupe sang the parody song, Nathan stood right next to Tarkington and hilariously mirrored the man’s movements.

  There’s a hot, smoky future where the gr
eenhouse gases swell,

  That’s the place where Hollister’s taking us, his private Climate Hell.

  The crowd was warming to the show, Max noticed. No longer baffled, the protesters had realized that this performance was a protest too, a political statement with Broadway flair and Dickensian references. So they laughed and cheered and pushed forward, trying to get a better look, and the security guards automatically pushed them back. The rent-a-cops were too preoccupied with crowd control to make any attempt to stop the show, and they couldn’t get rough with the actors anyway because the TV cameraman was filming the scene. Max felt a giddy rush of delight, and he gleefully shouted his song’s next verse.

  Hollister, Hollister!

  He’s screwing our planet ’cause he likes his money more!

  Hollister, Hollister!

  Let’s give him a push and kick his fat tush!

  Now Tarkington frowned. Clearly, he’d had enough. The CEO reached inside his jacket and clamped his hand over his stomach, as if the performance had given him a bad case of indigestion. Then he stepped to the side and tried to move around Max and Janet, his eyes fixed on the glass doors of his headquarters. But Nathan stepped right alongside him, mimicking him mercilessly. Contorting his face into an agonized grimace, Nathan clutched his belly and pretended to writhe in pain, while the dollar bills fluttered all over his jacket.

  ‘Oh heavens! Oh dear me!’ Nathan shouted at the top of his lungs, so the crowd could hear him over the music. ‘I’m feeling the heat! I need to pass some greenhouse gas!’

  The protesters roared. The TV reporter trained his camera on Nathan and Tarkington, trying to get both of them in the same shot, which would’ve made a very funny clip for the evening news. But Tarkington shoved the cameraman aside and lunged toward the building’s entrance. He and his underlings wrenched open the glass doors and dashed for the safety of the Stygian Energy reception desk, swiftly followed by the retreating security guards. Meanwhile, Nathan pretended to faint on the sidewalk, and Janet and Larry blew raspberries at the fleeing guards’ backsides.

  Max watched the CEO’s escape, amazed that a man with so much money and power could be undone by a measly bit of satire. He used his remote control to turn off the music, and the loudspeakers stopped blaring the parody of Oliver! Then Max faced the crowd and flashed his own grin, which was a lot more sincere than Tarkington’s.

  ‘Did you see those assholes run?’ he whooped. ‘Did you see how scared they were?’

  The protesters cheered. Encouraged, Max took off his old-fashioned hat and swept it in a big circle, a gesture meant to include everyone in earshot. ‘They’re scared of us! And you know what? They should be scared! We’re gonna shut down Stygian Energy! And all the other corporations that are destroying our planet!’

  The crowd roared again. Max threw his hat in the air and deftly caught it. For a moment he felt pretty damn good about himself.

  But then he glanced over his shoulder at the corporate headquarters, where Hollister Tarkington and his associates were probably rocketing to the top floor in a high-speed elevator. They were on their way to their next meeting, planning their next fossil-fuel venture, their next crime against the Earth. Max’s parody had definitely annoyed them, but it hadn’t changed anything. Carbon emissions were still rising and the planet was still warming. Max thought of his daughter Sonya, a climate activist herself, organizing her classmates at New York University and leading her own protests, but despite all their efforts the world was still hurtling toward apocalypse. In fifty years, the whole East Coast would be under water.

  The protesters on 57th Street must’ve sensed the futility too, because soon they turned their backs on Max and drifted away. There were other demonstrations planned for that afternoon, dozens of rallies and sit-ins across the city, organized by the various nonprofits that had joined forces for Climate Emergency Week. The Natural Resources Defense Council was leading a march to the United Nations, and the Sierra Club was parading outside the offices of ExxonMobil. There were also spontaneous protests erupting everywhere, mostly incited by activists in guerilla attire, their faces hidden behind masks and bandannas. They would publicize their skirmishes online, urging their followers to converge on Wall Street or Times Square or some other iconic capitalist site, and within minutes the chosen location would be jammed with black-clad demonstrators, all of them blocking traffic and raising hell.

  Max watched the young people turn away from the Stygian Energy building. They took out their phones and swiped the screens, figuring out where to go next, choosing from the long menu of disruptions. And believe it or not, seeing this gave Max some hope. Maybe, just maybe, the next protest would be a game-changer. Maybe it would open a few eyes and sway a few hearts. It was probably ludicrous to entertain such hopes, Max thought, given the long history of indifference and inaction. Still, he felt a little better now. A little less impotent.

  The TV reporter had tried to follow Tarkington into the headquarters, but the security guards had kicked him out, and now he was wandering outside the entrance, looking for someone to interview. Nathan Carver rose from the sidewalk and demanded some camera time, continuing to imitate an outraged Hollister Tarkington as the reporter asked him questions. Although Nathan had a day job at a small advertising firm, he was a natural-born comedian, a leading man at the West Side Community Theater and a regular at open-mic night at Stand Up NY. He loved attention of any kind, and sometimes his need for constant laughter annoyed the hell out of Max, but it also made him perfect for the Doomsday troupe. Their mission was to grab attention by any means necessary.

  Max observed the interview from a distance, leaning against the façade of the headquarters and chuckling now and then at Nathan’s inanities. Janet picked up the loudspeakers and loaded them into her foldable shopping cart, getting ready to haul the things to the Doomsday Company’s next gig. Larry and Adele and Eileen sat on the sidewalk nearby, slapping the dirt from the soles of their feet and then slipping on their socks and sneakers. They were all wonderful actors, Max thought, and they put their hearts into their work even though he paid them nothing for performing. He’d assembled a first-rate group of volunteers, idealists who still believed that theater could change the world. So he told himself to stop the self-pity. They were fighting the good fight. What more could you want?

  Max smiled at the thought. He peeled off his fake mustache and slipped it into the pocket of his cloak, keeping it safe for future performances. Then, while he was still feeling optimistic, a masked woman approached him.

  ‘Hello?’ Her voice was low, almost a whisper. ‘Are you Max Mirsky?’

  She stepped close to him, too close, less than a foot away. The woman was almost as tall as Max, so her mask loomed right in front of him, one of those creepy Guy Fawkes masks with a black goatee on a smiling white face. She wore a tight-fitting black T-shirt that showed off her lean figure, and Max assumed at first that she was a skinny young protester, a college-age activist. But then he noticed her long gray hair, braided into an intricate ponytail that dangled down to her butt.

  Curious, Max tried to peer through the mask’s eyeholes. ‘Can I help you?’

  ‘Are you Max Mirsky from the Journal of Climatology?’

  This was a surprise. Max was indeed an occasional contributor to Climatology, and he’d once been the journal’s managing editor, in charge of a staff of four science reporters and two fact-checkers. But he’d stepped down from the top job at the journal when he started the Doomsday Company. Very few people outside his circle of friends knew about his weird career switch from journalism to acting, so he wondered how this masked woman had found him. ‘Uh, yeah, that’s me. And who are—’

  ‘We sent you an email several months ago? Asking a question about the worst climate crimes?’

  ‘I’m sorry, I don’t—’

  ‘And you sent us a reply. A list of the five people who were doing the most damage to the environment, in your opinion.’

  After a moment, Max remembered. Someone claiming to be a college student had asked him for a free copy of an article titled ‘The Worst Climate Criminals,’ which he’d written for Climatology last winter. Usually you had to subscribe to the journal to get access to the full story, but Max had been willing to send a free copy to this student because she said she was taking a course on the subject.