2013: The Aftermath

by Shane McKenzie

  [Sighs] I wish my damn dog would’ve died. When we left home for the station, Chief Rawlins said we couldn’t bring him, so I left him out on the streets. Saw a car hit him right away, sent him slamming against a brick wall, blood and brains everywhere. Somehow I don’t think that losing brains stops you from thinking, though. I think ol’ Chuck knew what had happened, and that still, wherever he is, in some alley, down some storm drain, broken, battered, bloodless, brainless, he knows fear.

  Ah, Jesus, they’re firing again. Why won’t they just leave me alone for a little while?

  [Sound of helicopter whistling, voices yelling, something exploding in the distance. Tape ends. Nothing else from transmission recovered from crash site salvageable due to partial melting of the tape.

  The whereabouts of Mr. Wallace are still unknown.]

  ***

  [Below is the final recorded documentation concerning Case 126. With this last chronicle, the Blue Man Compendium is officially closed to new entries. Written long-hand in a small dollar notebook in black ink by one Mr. John Warren, the date attached is October 31, 2013. Formally entered into the Compendium for study as of now, Nov. 18, 2013.]

  5 p.m. I’m scared, but really that’s just foolishness. I don’t have time for being afraid, I just have to write and see if I can hold out from the gathering darkness of the world. It seems so long ago that the petty crimes of isolated murder and violence were major concerns for me. What with the whole world gone to hell, I find it hard to recall the worries of a time long gone. A time of freedom and expression. Of birth and death.

  Margie had the baby last week. It didn’t come out as a human being. Instead, it emerged as a peach-colored sack full of clear liquid which burst the moment it reached the open air. Lidless blue eyes floated out on the gush that was released. And nothing more.

  That was our baby. Our Ralphie. And Ralphie was a water balloon of skin. No face, bones, lips, hair. Just the liquid, the burst membrane, and the eyes. My guess is that the Man In Blue doesn’t want any more of us around, so no more babies.

  Margie saw what happened, stood up, walked over the foot-thick steel wall of the shelter, and bashed her head against it. She killed herself but didn’t die, of course. Then the Blue Man appeared to me above Margie, who was struggling to get up again. Her neck looked twisted.

  He was dressed in a blue cloak with a tall hat of a darker blue; its color seemed so deep I felt I might fall into it and be engulfed. His face was wizened, old, with eyes so dark they looked as though they more properly belonged on an owl. His mouth was a thin line, and his breath smelled of pine forests and rank caves. His nose was large and pointed. He looked like something out of a fairy tale.

  I looked again to my wife, who was sitting up now, blood clotting and drying in her fine blond hair. She smiled at me, but in an unfamiliar way. Then The Man In Blue spoke, and I listened, and now I don’t know what to do. I suppose I’ll do as he wants, but I’m not sure. Perhaps...perhaps if I become one of them, one of the fallen, I won’t have to worry anymore, because the mind I will acquire will not be my own, and I will not know who I once was. But that’s not what he wants.

  His voice was as painful to the ear as liquid fire is to raw skin. I screamed when he first spoke, but he raised a hand, and my voice gave out, and a great pain welled up in my throat. The pain is still there, and yesterday my tonsils fell out.

  “You will remain,” he said. “You and some of the others I like... Maybe several thousand of you, maybe less. Certainly no more. You’ll keep your identities, your memories, your thoughts, although I won’t allow you to remain alive. Here is what you will do, if you value the comfort I am allowing you to retain.

  “Number One: You will stay in this shelter, and you will eat your canned goods, which will never run out, I can guarantee. You will live with your dead wife, who will remain passive and peaceful. She will rot and you will love her, and if that love falters for one second, just one, I will know, and you will die...and live, and eat the flesh of your eternal companions, and when that flesh runs out you will eat no more. You will become one of my own.

  “If you love your wife continually you can live here forever. You will avoid the fate of the rest of the world. It’s your decision.”

  “I don’t like the choices,” I whispered. The sound came from my stomach, not from the vocal chords, which he had taken away from me.

  “And if you ever leave the shelter you have cunningly built yourself, you will become one of the mindless violent as well,” he continued.

  “Why do you do this to me?” I demanded. “Why are you doing this to humanity?”

  “What do you mean?” he retorted, and the pitch of his voice all but ruptured my ear drums, so awful it was. “You don’t like my gift?”

  “A gift of pain and never-ending suffrage?” I whispered, and it pained me to do so.

  “What you deserve,” he said, and gave my neck a twist that neatly broke it. A quick snap and that was all. Then he disappeared.

  The fellas at the computer store where I used to work used to think Merlin himself had woken up, that it was Merlin who had come back to exact a revenge. “Looks just like the guy in the old paintings,” they said. But I think it’s more than that. I think we’ve got ourselves something far more powerful than that on our hands. Far more powerful.

  Yeah. That’s right. I think humanity pissed off the landlord.

  No, not God. The Man In Blue isn’t anything like that. He’s rather...Earth’s spirit, perhaps. Call me corny, but that’s what I think.

  Too bad Earth’s an asshole.

  He likes these games. I remember news bulletins, only one or two, that said The Man In Blue wounded some people and they went violent, and that he talked to them. They also said that some people who had claimed to have heard the Man In Blue and been wounded by him hadn’t gone mindless. Why do some survive his killings mentally intact while others simply fall? It may have to do with the general attitude of the person. Maybe he talks differently to some, like he talked to me. Either way, he didn’t change my mind like he does most. But I’m rambling. No one will find this useful if it’s ever found. But I’ve got time on my hands. I’ll be in this vault for years and years and years.

  Unless I decide to go out.

  It’s been two weeks since my wife took on her “new” life as a walking nightmare, and she’s starting to stink. So am I.

  I want to go out.

  Really, I do.

  But my wife’s calling. She wants me to feed her. Pointless, since the food, soup usually, can’t help a body with stagnant blood and pussing skin, but she wants to continue “living” like she had. I’ll humor her for now. I don’t know if I can keep it up.

  God protect me, I love her.

  I do.

  I do.

  [Record ends. No sign of John Warren when the shelter he built was broken into. His wife said he had gone far away, leaving her behind. She couldn’t get out of bed because her leg muscles had decayed past the point of being able to support her.]

  John Warren’s record spoke of several thousand people left intact and still unenlightened as of October 31st. Of those, records show that over seven hundred have been since caught and brought to the light of the new humanity. Two hundred of that group have been sent to round up the other remaining fugitives. Warren’s wife was brought before the Man In Blue and changed into one of us. He gave her the gift he gave us all.

  I will close this compendium now, my job, according to the Man In Blue, completed. Both volumes will stand as records of the cowardly ignorance of the old regime.

  We have been eating well lately. My chains feel good in my hands. Chains that make brother and fugitive bleed alike, but fugitives are fresher.

  I am hungry again.

  About the author:

  Gregory Miller’s stories have appeared in over two dozen national publications. His first collection, Scaring the Crows: 21 Tales for Noon or Midnight, was published in 2009 by StoneGarden.net Publis
hing, and has garnered positive attention from such luminary authors as Piers Anthony, Brad Strickland, and Ray Bradbury, who recently wrote, “Gregory Miller is a fresh new talent with a great future.” He recently edited the Static Movement anthology Something Dark in the Doorway, and is currently co-editing the Sam’s Dot Publishing anthology Potter’s Field 4, as well as another Static Movement anthology, Best Left Buried. His next book, The Uncanny Valley: Vignettes from a Lost Town, will be published in the spring of 2011. A high school English teacher in addition to a writer, Miller lives in Pittsburgh with his wife and two young sons.

  Stepping on the Bones

  by Joleen Kuyper

  She focussed on the hill in front of her. The trees; one to the right of the dune that looked angry, the other at the base of the hill, less deformed. What looked like a little cave at the base of the hill. She told herself that once she made it to the tree at the base of the hill, she would allow herself a little water. She didn’t plan to go near the other tree. Its demeanour of violent desolation came from the fact it was already dead.

  Though she didn’t glance behind her often, she remained aware of her surroundings. A sandstorm was blowing several miles back, but she was confident that the wind would not take it in her direction. If the wind changed, the cave ahead could provide shelter.

  She did not look down, but she was very much aware of what lay there. The skeletons. They were always there, no matter what direction she took. What other features of the landscape changed. They had been people once; one day, she would join them.

  “Not yet,” she said aloud. It was rare for her to utter words aloud. Partly because opening her mouth allowed the howling, sand strewn air into her mouth. Made her feel her thirst more acutely. The other reason was because there was no point. She was alone, and speaking aloud without receiving a reply just reminded her of this fact.

  The hill was getting closer with every step she took. It was a manageable distance now. If the wind changed, she could run and make the cave before the sandstorm hit her. If she had to run, she would step on the bones. Otherwise, she tried to avoid it. They had been people once. She couldn’t do anything for them except try not to walk on what had once been faces, feet, or something in between.

  A noise broke her determined focus on the hill. Something else was there. Something or someone who was not hindered by her sensibilities. This was not the raspy whirl of sand through skeletons or the roar of the storm in the distance. This was the sound of bones cracking. Of pressure being applied to them and making them crack. For a second, she froze.

  It had been a long time since she’d heard such a sound. She remembered what to do. In a fluid movement, she spun around, and at the same time, pulled the thigh bone she had carried for months out of the holder on her belt. It was sturdy enough to be used as a weapon, but when she saw him, she didn’t feel she would need it.

  He looked like a skeleton, but one that still had some flesh on it. She was amazed and abhorred at her first thought on seeing him. After all, he looked like a person. Probably like she did. It had just been too long since she’d seen anyone else.

  He stopped walking when she turned around. No more cracking noises. His eyes met hers as they stared across the gulf of sand and skeletons. She thought he looked desperate. Hungry. All the same, she knew hers probably contained the same hollowness and pain. Loneliness. Fear. Survivor’s guilt. They lived, billions had died. No one knew why. Anyone who could have told them had probably died. So all they could do was keep trying to survive. Keep trying not to become one of the skeletons.

  She kept the club in her right hand with a firm grip. At times like this, when she was in danger, it was a club. Not the leg of a former person. She couldn’t think of it like that, or her own leg might join it on the skeletal pile alongside the rest of her limbs.

  The club made her feel safe, so she slowly raised her left hand, palm facing the man. He was still some distance away, but close enough that she could observe him as he raised his own hand to return her gesture of greeting. He didn’t appear to have any weapons. No clubs or knives. Nothing bulging in his clothing. He was skinny, but she knew some of that lean flesh must be toned muscle. They stood opposite one another, palms raised, for a few seconds more before he broke the silence.

  “Hi,” he called. The sound carried on the wind, seemed to echo off the ground, though she thought she probably imagined that. It was a strange sensation to hear another human’s voice, and the apparent echo allowed her to savour it a moment longer.

  “Hi,” she replied. Her voice too carried on the dry wind, and as it travelled she took the time to observe him further. His hair was unkempt but she knew hers was the same. Water was too precious now to use it for washing. A layer of sand covered his face, but she could still make out his features. It just added to how sunken his eyes appeared.

  “I’ve been following you,” he called.

  “Why?” she asked, and tightened her grip on the club.

  “You seemed like you knew where you were going,” he said.

  “I just keep moving,” she shrugged.

  He nodded and hesitated. She waited for him to speak again.

  “Do you have any water?” he asked.

  She knew he must have seen the bag she carried if he’d been following her. If she lied and said no, he would have to go away, or challenge her. Attack her, maybe. If she admitted she had water, she’d have to share it with him. Her precious water. Still, it could be worth it, she reasoned. The first other person she’d seen in a long time. What was she trying to stay alive for, if not to find others who had also survived?

  She watched him waiting for her to reply. “A little,” she admitted. “What do you have?”

  “Nothing,” he said. He held his palms open, facing her. “No water since yesterday. No food since the day before.”

  She continued to watch him.

  “I won’t harm you,” he said. “I just want water. Please.”

  She kept her eyes on him as she took the water bottle out of the bag that hung over her shoulder. When she had it in her hand, she walked slowly toward him, one careful step at a time. When she was still some distance away, she threw the bottle. He caught it, even though the wind diverted it a little.

  “Don’t drink it all,” she warned him as he opened it. “There might be more, ahead. There might not. Just take a few sips.”

  He nodded and took a small sip, stopped, and took another. After he repeated the action a few more times, half the water that was left was gone, and he took a couple of steps toward her. She continued to grip the club tightly as he handed the bottle back to her. Their eyes met and she held his gaze for a few seconds before he took a few steps back again, out of her space.

  “You said there might be more?” he asked after they’d stared at each other a little longer.

  “The tree, at the base of that hill,” she said and gestured behind her with the club. She didn’t look, but he glanced over her shoulder where she’d indicated, and nodded. “The tree, or maybe in the cave at the base,” she continued.

  He looked at her again, then toward the hill, and nodded.

  “We should go,” she said, but didn’t move.

  After a few more seconds passed, she thought he seemed to comprehend. He moved around her, and she turned, so he was walking in front as they started to make their way toward the hill. She wasn’t willing to turn her back on him.

  She took a sip herself as they walked. Talking had dried her mouth out. She left some in the bottle though, and stuffed the bottle back in her bag.

  When they had crossed about half the distance, he slowed a little. “I’m John,” he said.

  She didn’t reply. He didn’t say anything else, but the sound of him stepping on the bones when she stepped around them filled the air with noise and kept her nerves on edge.