The Last Days: Six Post-Apocalyptic Thrillers

by Michael R. Hicks

  “I mean, we’ve all got to work.”

  “Where do you think all this food is going?”

  “We had salads for lunch.”

  Ness laughed. He tossed the last of his dinner and wandered the fringe of the farm, calling softly for Volt. She didn’t come. At work, he stuck to his own pace, chugging his water and returning often to the tarp-roofed tables for more, or heading to the lodge to pee. Most of the men went right there in the field. He could feel their eyes on him. He didn’t care. He was doing enough.

  On Thursday, Ness hurried through his dinner and went back to his room to read. They had a swamp cooler in the room and it hummed loudly, fighting to bring the air down to a tolerable temperature. He’d just sat down in bed when Nick knocked on the door.

  “Hey, Larsen’s here,” he said. “He wants to see you.”

  Ness’ heart jolted. Outside, Larsen stood in the hot yellow light of evening, arms folded. He watched Ness with his hooded eyes. “Walk.”

  Ness walked, dust clods crunching under his shoes. “What?”

  “What.” Larsen made a noise that might have been a single chuckle. “Your weight is going unpulled.”

  “I do plenty.”

  “People have complained.”

  “Sounds like they have too much free time.”

  Larsen made his almost-chuckling noise again. “Do you know how hard it is to keep people motivated when there’s no money? When they see someone else not working, do you know how fast their motivation decays?”

  Ness rolled his eyes. “None of us would have to work so hard if you weren’t shipping everything we make to Spokane.”

  “For necessary goods for the good of us all.”

  “Tailored suits. Really fucking necessary.”

  “Tailored suits?” Larsen stopped and stared Ness down, his face as flat and hard as the basalt slabs by the river. “I don’t know what you’ve heard. I do know what I’ve heard. Work. Or provide worth by becoming an example instead.”

  Ness was too frustrated to argue. “Fine.”

  “Good.”

  Larsen left, taking his vague threats with him. How scary. Was the man lying about the tailor? Or was he too stupid to know where the food was going? Ness wasn’t going to be bullied. Larsen didn’t own him. The man wasn’t President Larsen of the Most Worthless Pile of Dust in the Remnants of the Former United States. Ness wasn’t a slave. He just looked bad because the others didn’t care how hard they had to work so long as they had a roof and some air conditioning and three meals of starch and salt.

  The weather-beaten old man never came back to check beds after his nasal morning wake-up call, so Ness stayed in bed the next morning, stretching under his too-warm sheet. He finally got up in time to get to the fields for the noontime meal call, bending over his hoe like he’d been there all along. No one said anything, so he did the same thing the next day, too.

  The third day, Larsen grabbed his wrists and yanked him from bed while he was still in his underwear. His hip hit the floor. He cried out.

  “I warned you,” Larsen said.

  “Let go of me!”

  “There are rules.”

  “Really? I don’t remember reading anything before you dropped me off over here.”

  “We haven’t had to write them down. Most people have sense to know for themselves.”

  “Let me put my clothes on,” Ness said. Larsen let go of his wrists. He hit the ground again, sharp tears springing to his eyes. He turned away and pawed through his dresser. “Where are we going, anyway?”

  Larsen was silent a moment. “To whip you.”

  Ness rolled his eyes and followed Larsen outside. What a joke. A little scare before Larsen frogmarched him to the field to look over his shoulder at every stroke of the hoe.

  But the other workers weren’t in the fields. They were crowded around the picnic tables. A post rose from the dust a few paces from the shade of the tarps. Ropes dangled from its top. Nick was in the crowd, too. His eyes were round with sorrow.

  “What’s going on?” Ness said.

  “Take off your shirt,” Larsen said flatly.

  A hot wind scattered dust into Ness’ face. He obeyed, mechanically peeling his shirt from his sweating ribs. The men in the crowd stood as still as the post. Something stirred in their eyes: the hard hunger to see the wicked get what they deserved.

  18

  The orange. The lab. The needle. The shower. Tristan endured her routine with the detachment of a man falsely condemned. Two days after Cindy’s death, another patient replaced her on the other table, a middle-aged woman who wept each time the aliens touched her. Once, the masked alien left and the woman said hello. Tristan didn’t respond. The woman didn’t speak again.

  Back in her box, Tristan punched the air and kicked the walls. Her practice was automatic, an act without joy or release. Her body was her canary. One day, she would throw a punch and stir the phlegm collecting unseen in her lungs. She would cough, then. See blood. When that day came, she would know it was over at last.

  She never felt the tickle that would signal the start of her release. Some weeks later, the alien who served as her nurse unsealed her box, lifted her from the orange—she had stopped struggling against them long ago—sedated her, and wheeled her the wrong way down the hall.

  The wheels squeaked. Lights flashed overhead. Four sets of doors swished open and shut. At the fifth, the nurse-alien paused, tentacles dancing in front of a green panel set beside the door. It opened with a low rumble. They passed into a damp and airy chamber. Water dripped from all sides. The ceiling was too dim and high to see. The creature rolled her up a ramp. An enclosure swallowed her up. Tentacles slithered under her arms, tightened around her hips. The alien laid her on a spongy floor and strapped her down.

  The thing departed, wheels of the cart soughing over the yielding floor, then banging down the ramp. It was only after its wheels faded that Tristan could hear the breathing of the others strapped in beside her.

  The creatures carted a new body into the chamber twice a minute. Something whirred; the chamber dimmed as the outer doors closed. Several people shrieked.

  “Shut up,” Tristan commanded. “Your screams won’t help.”

  To her surprise, they went quiet. Were they afraid of her? In the darkness, she smiled. Engines vibrated through the spongy floor. For a moment, she allowed herself to believe they were about to be cremated, their ashes left to wash away in the tides, feeding the coral and the starfish and the bottomfeeding crabs. Then the whole thing lurched forward, straps digging into her shoulders, and she closed her eyes and tried to sleep.

  Pressure bulged against her ears. Air hissed from vents. It smelled metallic, scrubbed. Over long minutes, the pressure eased. Without warning, the vessel popped upwards, peaked, leaving Tristan momentarily weightless, and slammed back down. People moaned, screamed. Above the clamor, waves smacked hollowly against the sides of the craft.

  The engines whined higher. The vessel lifted smoothly from the surface. Tristan’s ears popped. She slept.

  She was jolted awake hours later. The engines spun down. Dull clanks penetrated the walls. Servos spun within the walls. The doors parted, splashing daylight into their faces. Spindly legs clumped inside, the aliens silhouetted by the relentless sunlight. One by one, the passengers were taken from the craft. Most screamed. Tristan squeezed her eyes shut; she had a headache.

  The straps were yanked from her shoulders. A tentacle groped her belly and circled her chest. The being carried her across a hot and dusty tarmac to a round orange building. It stripped her diaper, removed an agile faucet from the wall, and hosed her down. The water had a chemical tang. She stared into the alien’s plate-sized eyes. It didn’t look back.

  After she was dried, the alien loaded her into a wheeled, hemispherical truck. There were no straps or seats. Two dozen other naked humans were packed in around her. The others were her age and up, male and female. None were Alden. A woman’s skin pressed against he
rs. The close space smelled of disinfectant and what she thought was fear. The truck started off, bouncing over rough ground. A blond man gazed openly at her swaying breasts. Tristan stood, keeping her knees bent to absorb the jounce of the truck, and snapped a straight punch into his nose. He flailed, blood spurting over his mouth. Tristan sat back down. The others looked away.

  “Did anyone recognize the field outside?” she said. The blond man pinched his blood-sopped nose and glared at the wall.

  “What does it matter?” a bald man said across the truck. He looked half-melted from weight loss, skin hanging in long flaps from his sides.

  “We’re in a truck,” Tristan said. “Wherever they’re taking us, it isn’t far from where we landed.”

  “It was a desert,” a red-haired woman rasped.

  “Good. What else?”

  The bald man considered his lap. “I saw mountains.”

  “Does that rule out Texas?” Tristan said. “Is this the Southwest?”

  He sighed. “We were underwater, weren’t we? We could be anywhere. We don’t even know if this is Earth.”

  Tristan frowned. “I saw an old Coke can crushed in the weeds. Either their marketing was successful beyond their wildest dreams, or we’re still on our own planet.”

  No one had better answers. She supposed it didn’t matter. They were off to a new lab. A new virus. Once the aliens finally found the strain to wipe out these survivors in the truck, they would unleash it across the world. The Earth would be theirs alone.

  A few minutes later, the truck stopped. The engine snapped off. The doors clicked open. An alien loomed in the dust, pointing a blunt gun into the truck. It gestured them outside. Tristan’s bare feet sank into the dust. Blue cones rose from the plain. Three of the things herded the humans into a high pen fenced by wires. The aliens closed the pen and entered a tower beside the enclosure. A moment later, the wires buzzed.

  Sunlight pounded Tristan’s pale skin. Except for a few moments during their transfer, she hadn’t felt its heat in weeks. She stood naked beneath it. Something seemed to unlock inside her, something so basic she was horrified to realize it had been missing: hope.

  The others milled around the pen, turning their backs to hide the worst of their nudity. Most were middle-aged. Gaunt, too, their skin hanging slackly. The aliens had met their nutritional needs well enough—none of Tristan’s teeth were loose from scurvy, and while her hair had started to tangle, it still seemed strong enough—but after spending weeks or months confined in boxes smaller than some closets, her fellow prisoners were in dire need of a little exercise.

  Not good. When it came time to escape, they’d be more of a liability than an asset.

  She gazed around the enclosure. The wires were clearly electrified. Too tightly-spaced to squeeze through. Not unless Tristan took a few lessons from Trinity, anyway. Guard tower. Would night help, or did they have infrared? Aliens skittered around the city of cones. Tanks groaned through the unpaved streets. Strange they’d set up camp in the desert, considering they appeared to be so at home in the ocean. Was there something specific they wanted from this place? Or was it a test of their survival skills on this new world, the equivalent of a human base camp established in Antarctica?

  The sun deflated toward the western peaks. Tristan found a rock to sit on and made the mistake of lowering herself with her hand. Dust coated her fingers, gritty and distressing. She wiped it as best she could on her leg, which was prickly, unshaven, but the dirt clung to her hand.

  She frowned and gouged her heel into the dirt. As if absently, she gazed at the tall blue cones, pivoting her heel in the dust, digging through layer after layer. Four inches down, she still hadn’t hit a foundation. She doubled its depth to eight inches down into the crumbly dust and loose reddish rocks. Had they sunk the support posts straight into the dirt? Had they bothered to embed more wires beneath the ground? Did they understand humans could dig? She’d spent weeks with them, yet knew virtually nothing about them. How much did they know about humans? Other than the fact they apparently hated mankind’s soft, stinking guts?

  She’d find out tonight. Dig until she hit something or they found her out and made her stop. Maybe the creatures were counting on the desert and the prisoners’ shoeless nudity to keep them in check.

  “Hey assholes!” A young woman cupped her hands to her mouth, face tipped toward the high tower. The ends of her hair were faded blue. “Why don’t you just let us out over here? Haven’t we done enough for you? I promise not to sue for malpractice.”

  A few of the others exchanged worried glances. The bald man stood and relocated ten feet away. The tower remained silent.

  “Can we at least have some pants?” the girl said. She grabbed her right cheek and jiggled. “This is gonna burn pretty bad tomorrow. Or do you like it extra crispy?”

  “Heavens,” a bony old man murmured. “Are they planning to eat us?”

  “Just be quiet,” the red-haired woman told the shouting girl. “You really want them coming down here?”

  The woman with the blue-tipped hair laughed. “You prefer to get baked to death when the sun comes up?” She jerked her chin at the old man. “Hey, I know. We can use that guy’s balls for shade.”

  The old man blushed. The red-haired woman shook her head. “They didn’t drag us all the way out here just to let us die.”

  Tristan watched in silence. How close an eye were their captors keeping on them? The young woman crouched down, raked together a handful of rocks, and began slinging them at one of the poles suspending the fence wires.

  “Knock knock!” she yelled. She pitched another stone, ringing the pole. She had a good arm. Might have played softball earlier in life. “I would like to register a complaint about the quality of your service!”

  She bent for more rocks. This time, she hurled one at the tower, striking it square. She cocked her arm for another throw. A blue beam connected the tower to the woman. She gasped. Possibly it was the sound of her lungs exploding. Blood burst from her chest. Charred meat-smell filled the pen. She collapsed into the dust.

  Tristan jolted back, rocking in the dirt. The others screamed, rushing close to the live wires shutting them in, calling for help, wailing, praying. Tristan kept both eyes on the tower. The sun sank. The people returned to their seats in the dirt, keeping a clear circle around the body. Some time later, two aliens strode to the pen. The buzzing of the wires went dead. They opened the door. The prisoners pressed to the far end of the pen as the things dragged the body from the pen. The sweet stink of burned meat persisted through the sunset.

  The bald man called a meeting, apologetically suggesting they confine their waste to one corner of the pen. Several people looked relieved. One by one, they went to the corner. The smell of urine and feces overcame the dead woman’s scorched guts.

  Light melted from the land. Tristan drew her knees to her chest and waited for the aliens to fall asleep, which she wasn’t sure they did. She waited for the humans, too. Alone, she might be able to make it. No way two dozen of them could flee without being noticed.

  Stars twinkled, as bright as they’d been above the lake back in Redding. Alden must be alive. He had the same genes she did. If they’d found a strain he were vulnerable to, they’d have sickened her with it, too. The air grew cold. She shivered. One by one, the others laid down, balling up in the dust. The last of them had just gone to bed when she heard the scrapes outside the pen.

  She peered into the darkness. Stone ground against stone, stopping instantly. Something rustled, paused, resumed. Too large to be a desert rat. Too regular. Too furtive.

  “Who’s out there?” she said.

  “Shut up,” a man whispered from so close she jolted back. “Put your hands above your head.”

  Tristan raised her arms and honed in on the voice. The man popped his head up from behind a ridge of dirt. He grinned, eyes dropping to her chest.

  She smiled in angry disbelief. Imprisoned in the desert, miles from anywhere,
amidst a city of dozen or hundreds of aliens, and he was staring at her tits? She quashed her anger. The man was outside the pen. She could use that.

  “I’m kidding,” he said. “My name’s Walt. I’m—”

  “What are you doing out there?”

  “No time for questions. This fence—”

  She shook her head. “I asked first. What are you doing here?”

  Walt scowled like a bearded Elmer Fudd. “Getting you out of there.” He gestured at the pen. “Is that electric? How does it work?”

  “How should I know?” Tristan said. “For all I know it’s sorcery.”

  His scowl inverted to a bright smile. Her anger softened. It had been a long time since she’d seen a happy face. Walt flicked his eyes at the high blue cone overlooking the grounds.

  “How many of them are in the tower?”

  She shrugged. “Three? Nine million? I haven’t been making them sign in and out.”

  Quick mental arithmetic crunched across his face. “Listen. I’m an idiot, so I’m going to go inside that building and try to disable the fence. I need you to wake up the others and tell them to get ready to move. If any of them makes a peep, I’m running away without looking back.”

  A pang of frustration pierced her stomach. Of course he’d want to free the others. Worthless do-gooder. They’d only slow the two of them down. She squinted, sizing Walt up. What if she could convince him she was special? That the others weren’t worth the risk? She stood, planting her legs shoulder-width apart, and leaned forward, making no effort to cover herself.

  “Who are you?”

  Walt put a finger to his lips. “Take care of business. I’ll take care of mine.”

  He disappeared beneath the crest of dirt. She swore. He rustled through the dirt, advancing on the tower. Two silhouettes sat up from the dust, watching her. No doubt they’d heard every word.

  “Who was that?” the red-headed woman hissed.

  “Our knight in shining armor,” Tristan said. “Help me wake the others. If somebody makes a sound, snap their neck.”