2013: The Aftermath

by Shane McKenzie

Mike licked the blood from his lips and smiled. “No, Chris. We are the last.”

  About the author:

  Timothy Miller has worked at a farm, a meatpacking plant, a pickle factory, a casino, and a rowdy nightclub as a bouncer. Currently employed as a repair technician for a large telephone company, he writes in his spare time and has several short stories published in print and the web. His biggest fans, his family, spend many frigid Wisconsin nights in their home, listening to his stories and encouraging him, despite the nightmares.

  Revelations

  by Tomas Furby

  I am alone.

  I’ve been alone for a very long time.

  The empty, open road stretches into the dead distance, mocking me with stillborn hope. The sky is broken, shattered and dark: no sunrise or set, just a dark grey wilderness. Nothing living moves in this landscape of ash and decay. The world is fallen.

  Where is God in this? God is dead.

  My clothes bind and chafe about me as I walk, sodden and clammy from the heavy mists. This icy grayness has descended in the last hour to cover the road, obscuring the horizon. I’m glad. The horizon scares me. Occasionally the wind will shift, and I’ll catch a glimpse of the hills ahead. Flickering flames, too crimson to be real, lighting the mist an ethereal bloody stain. They roam across those sharp ridges: devils, dancing the dances that devils dance. I walk across their territory now, through the cold and the death and the ash. I don’t know why. I look to the roadside, where the concrete cracks and bleeds. Corpses lie amongst the grey grass and corpulent trees, some who fell on the road, some who simply sat to watch the end. There is no one left. They are all fallen. Dead. What now? Perhaps I shall continue walking until I, too, fall. Perhaps I shall sit and watch the end. What else is there now but this empty open road? God is dead.

  The one thing I know for certain is that I dare not look back. I dare not turn back. The road behind me is paved with bloodstains and shattered bones. There is less than nothing for me there. Whatever hell lies ahead I would rather face than the road that I have walked. Memories are cruel demons. I shake my head and continue, step after step after step, the concrete crunching beneath my cracked boots.

  Then, like the stretching shadow of reality, I hear a scream of scorched trees muffled to a whisper by distance. It races towards me, movement visible in the swirling mists, volume building and growing and rising as it approaches. A heavy fist of fear strikes my heart, ice against rock. Louder and louder: whispering, shouting, roaring. Nothing natural. I drop to the ground, crouching small against the concrete to minimize the impact. Then I pray, though God is dead.

  It hits me like a lion’s breath: putrid, dangerous, and sickeningly warm on this frozen road. It catches the loose wrap of my tattered coat and throws me to the ground, rolling me a few yards before I can react. As though caught in the aftermath of an explosion, I can hear nothing but a desperate ringing, and the roar of the storm is rough on my skin. I cling to the cracked, broken road, fingernails bending and snapping. Around me the mist is torn from the world, scraps and tatters of grey and white whipping past me. I close my eyes against the dizzy swirl of this sudden storm. The road beneath me is firm and still.

  In the midst of that inhuman howl, the sky cracks open and the heavens fall. The downpour is so brutal it stings my skin through five layers of clothing. How much more of this can I take? What more can this world of graves throw at me? What sins did we commit to deserve this afterlife of punishments? I gasp and cough and wretch as frost’s fingers claw at my dirty, bearded face. It’s so cold. The frozen ground echoes with the snapping retort of ice. Safety may lie on the ground, but then so may death. Already the aching earth is sapping what meager warmth is left of my body, a small revenge for what has been done to it. I must move now or die.

  I begin to shiver, I begin to move. Giants have sooner shouldered mountains than I summon the strength to stand. Every muscle strains against the elements, pushed beyond all limits of comfort or endurance. I curl one leg beneath me. It cramps, but I push on, roaring my desperation at the storm. It roars back: louder, stronger, darker. I drag the other leg up to sit beside the first. Silent, cowed, I kneel with my head against the ground for what seems forever, the sky drowning me in bitter tears.

  Then I stand.

  My coat crackles and sticks where the frost has tried to claim me. I rip at it as I rise, tearing a white wound in the ground. The storm tugs at my clothes, kicks at my legs, shoves at my shoulders. I do not fall. I savor this victory but a silver second, and then I move. Step after step, leaning into the air made solid. One step after another is all I can think. Each step taking me further down that open, empty road. I don’t know why I carry on, when life is so distant from what I now live. Maybe it’s hope that I’ll find something other than the scorched earth and roadside tombs. Maybe it’s just stubborn rebellion against the finality of death; for when God died so heaven fell. Maybe it’s just some sick curiosity to see the worst before I go.

  God is dead, but perhaps I shall stand upon his grave.

  The light is grey and getting darker. I shrug deeper into my overcoat, searching for the warmth that has fled me like a cooling corpse. The wind dies off a little and I move faster, trying to work life back into my body. Everything is so slow now. No cars to make the distance shorter. No buses, no trains, no planes. Just iron carcasses, rusting with their human counterparts in the dirt.

  Every step steals a breath. I am tired, so tired.

  Up ahead I see a shadow, framed against a flickering flame. I ignore it, another devil besetting the lonely road. Harsh smoke whips past me bringing the taste of remembered days. I ignore it, another devil besetting the lonely road. It stings my eyes, bringing tears that blur the warm light into a sunset of beautiful, burning color. I ignore it, another devil besetting the lonely road. There are no more sunsets.

  I don’t realize I’m no longer alone until I stand at the very edge of the light. The shadow is not just a shadow, it’s a girl, as faded and grey and dirty as I must be. She turns and sees me and stares, disbelieving, scared. I try to smile, though I thought I’d forgotten how.

  “Hello?”

  She’s wary.

  “Hello.”

  I step a little closer, feeling the warmth of blue tinged gold upon my hands. It feels good. The storm has subsided, returned to whatever foul haven it sprang from. This little fire is a death sentence reprieve, and welcome. I glance over at the girl. She looks familiar: my age, short, wearing a tattered suit jacket and tie beneath a bright yellow anorak. I almost laugh. How can something be familiar when everything is smeared with ash?

  “Do I know you?”

  “No.”

  “You look familiar.”

  “I’m not.”

  Silence darkly descends with dusk. The circle of the fire’s light grows small.

  “What happened? Do you know?”

  “No one knows.”

  “You’re the first person I’ve seen in a long time.”

  “Yes.”

  “Apart from the others.”

  “Yes.”

  Silence. The horizon is hidden, but we’ve both seen them, dancing their dance of death in the dark distance.

  “How long have you been on the road?”

  She turns from the fire and looks at me. I see the flickering flame, tinged with dark soot, a reflection in her eye. She doesn’t answer. She doesn’t need to. I nod.

  We stand alone with just the darkness and the light. Above, a rotting wound of sickly, corpse-black clouds hides the stars, but I know they’re still there. That comforts me for some reason, that there’s still something, somewhere, that hasn’t died. Something that’s still the same despite all that has happened. The world has shrunk to just the small circle of firelight. Nothing else exists. For a second, just a second, I can almost fool myself that we’re alive again. It feels good.

  “God is dead”, I say. I don’t know why I say it, it just feels right.

  “He’s been d
ead a long time.”

  The girl smiles. It’s a strange smile.

  “Perhaps.”

  “Perhaps?”

  She just smiles and shakes her head. I smile back. We stand there smiling.

  “Where are you going?”

  I point up the road.

  “There’s nothing there.”

  “You came that way?”

  “Yes.”

  “Oh.”

  So few words. So few, to rob me of my heart. I drop to my knees before the flickering flames. All hope lost? I shake my head at my own stupidity. Hope was lost a long time ago. I look up at the girl.

  “You came the other way,” she says.

  “I did.”

  “And?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Oh.”

  She sits. She smiles still, but it’s a sad smile now; weary and worn. The fire plays deep shadows across her face. I wonder how I mistook her for my own age. She is far older than I. We sit together on opposite sides of the fire, staring at each other between the dancing flames of this dead world.

  “Perhaps we should leave the road?” She says this tentatively, uncertainly, almost unsure it’s possible.

  “We?”

  “Yes.”

  I look at her. She looks back.

  “Yes. We should leave the road.”

  She nods, and smiles.

  I find myself smiling back, though God knows why; or would, were he not dead.

  The fire flickers, threatening to die and leave us in darkness. But it does not.

  About the author:

  Tomas Furby is a freelance writer, proofreader, and third year undergraduate of the English with Creative Writing course at the University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK. His major influences are Neil Gaiman and Douglas Adams. His short stories have been published by Static Movement, Pill Hill Press, Short-Story.ME, and Aurora Wolf Literary Journal.

  Genesis Three

  by Scott Wermuth

  The dim light of noon filtered down to the streets of the city, barely providing enough vision to see the outline of Pikes Peak in the distance through the haze. Marc Daniels readjusted his bandana and goggles to keep the dust out of his eyes and nose. He looked up at the clock tower that dominated the campus of what had been the University of Colorado in Colorado Springs. Ever since the riots in 2013, two years ago, the school had ceased to function as an institution of learning. Its central location and the convenient space and housing had turned it into a kind of trade center for the town, and stalls inside the old library were now some of the most sought after commodities in the city.

  Marc stood by the main entrance of the Science and Engineering Building, out of the wind. Even with shelter from the elements, the cold of mid-May was enough to make him pull his overcoat tighter around him. He remembered advocates of Green Peace standing around campus and up at the international airport in Denver before the Impact. He never stopped to talk with them, but the bitter, ironic part of him thought that this probably wasn’t the climate change they were expecting. Cold comfort to Marc, but every little bit helped in the post-Impact world.

  Marc stepped inside the building and walked up to an info kiosk and plugged his phone into the USB port on the side. Ever since the ash started to fly and screwed the airwaves cell phones had gone the way of the dodo. On the upside, radio commercials were nonexistent. Hard lines were the best way to get information these days. Marc stripped his goggles off and hung them on his wrist, but left the bandana on his face. This close to the door there was still plenty of dust to get clogged in his lungs. When he opened a web page, Marc’s phone displayed a news site. The sidebar displayed a list of volcanoes that had reactivated. He cursed quietly under his breath.

  “Just saw the volcano update?” a feminine voice on the other side of the kiosk said.

  “Life’s a bitch, ain’t it?” Marc said.

  “Yes,” the woman answered. “They haven’t slowed down since five months after the meteor.” She sounded a little depressed, with a hint of a foreign accent.

  Marc sighed. “Tell me something I don’t know. I’ve been living in the same world you have.”

  “Obviously you have adjusted to it better than some of us have then,” the woman said hotly.

  Marc winced as he heard her heels clicking as she walked away hurriedly. Unplugging his phone, he ran after her. “Hey, wait!” She kept walking, ignoring him. “Wait!” Marc jumped over the guardrail surrounding the pendulum that was left over from when the building hosted engineers, dodged the pendulum, and hopped the rail again so he could catch her arm.

  “Just back off!” she shouted at him, swinging at him with her satchel.

  Marc caught the satchel with his arm. “I’m sorry,” he said, “I just wanted to say I was sorry.”

  Blues eyes flashed at him over the dark green scarf that covered her face. “Apology not accepted,” she said, her voice tight with emotion. “My family was at home on Impact day.” She pronounced the ‘w’ in was like a ‘v’.

  “I…I wasn’t thinking,” Marc stammered. “I didn’t know you were—”

  “That I was Russian?” the woman said. “That my country was obliterated by a meteor which made the earth start spewing ash and soot into the sky?” She almost became hysterical, but put her hand over her mouth and took several deep breaths before continuing in a more controlled voice. “That my family was lucky they were not incinerated by the firestorm that devoured Europe or drowned in the tidal waves caused by the meteors that landed in the oceans?”

  Marc stood very still, his mouth working to form words and failing. The two of them stood there in silence for a long time. She was the first one to break contact, shaking her head. “I’m sorry,” she said, turning to go. “You didn’t deserve such an outburst.”

  Marc followed her. “No, I deserved it. I’m Marc, by the way.”

  “I’m Yelena,” she said. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I must be going.” She turned and walked away. Marc stood there and watched her go. As she rounded the corner he stuck his hands in the pockets of his overcoat and started to whistle. At least he couldn’t say his day was boring. The tune he whistled was older than his father, and nobody listening would think it was in good taste if they recognized it, Marc thought as he walked back out into the ash and wind.

  ***

  The wind kicked dust into his face as Marc worked his way along Nevada Avenue towards the old down town area. The goggles and bandanna helped to protect his face from scouring particles, and what bits of exposed skin he did have had developed calluses a long time ago. Music from Great Big Sea blared in his ear. The song had the upbeat, pre-Impact sound that was hard to find anymore. Goth metal and punk pop were all the rage these days. No wonder the psych wards were barely-controlled anarchy. So many people listening to that crap day after day were bound to create a situation, with not enough staff to handle the bumper crop of psych patients.

  Marc stepped over the husk of an old Nissan Pathfinder. The vehicle had been stripped of parts within months of the Impact, and was sitting in someone’s front yard ever since. It was hard to find the parts for vehicles. Marc had gotten used to walking around. He turned up the sidewalk to an old three story Victorian house. He leaned against the wall where he knew a security camera could see him and tapped the intercom.

  “Hey everybody,” he said into the intercom. “It’s Marc.”

  “Come on in,” a female voice said.

  Marc stood leaning against the wall for a few seconds, then hit the intercom again. “Hey, Janet, Gracie forgot to buzz me in.”

  “Again? I’m sorry, I’ll get the door.” The door buzzed and Marc walked in, pushing the dust curtain aside as he pulled the door closed behind him. “It’s good to see you, Janet,” he said to the girl in her late twenties who was standing in the kitchen.

  “Hey, Marc,” she called. Janet brushed her hands off on the apron she was wearing and helped Marc with his overcoat. “I wish you’d stop wearing that thing,”
she said, tugging at the machete strapped to his back. “Can’t you just carry a switchblade like everybody else?”

  “Right front pocket,” Marc said, pulling his bandana down around his neck. “And I have a thirty-eight in a shoulder holster on my left side.”

  Janet punched him underneath the left arm, then stopped and looked at him in surprise. “Shit, you weren’t joking,” she said quietly.

  “I haven’t joked since Tommy died,” Marc replied. “I need to talk with Gracie.”

  “Don’t drag her into anything, Marc.”

  “I just need some information.” Marc walked upstairs and knocked on a door with caution tape and danger signs posted on it. “Hey, Gracie!”