by A. R. Braun
With a burst of energy, Taylor managed to turn his head. The kitchen was visible through the archway.
Someone had opened the oven door.
Trembling, he turned back to the window, realizing he’d seen two small children before. He recognized their faces now—Nia’s and Nathan’s. Now a third face laughed at him with her smooth hands on their shoulders: Jezebel’s.
Taylor cursed the witch as he drifted out of consciousness, knowing he and his wife would never wake.
Death Star
Will stood working in the mailroom of Vain Publishing when the earthquake knocked him off his feet. The foundation shook, throwing him to the floor, and the skies dropped a downpour. The rainstorm gave way to an earthquake that rocked him off his feet and onto his chest.
“Everyone in the basement, now!” Craig Bartlett, the mailroom supervisor, cried from behind them.
Will didn’t understand the panic he heard in the man’s voice until he pushed himself from the floor and peered out the window.
People were burning. The ones unlucky enough to be outside ran in circles, bumping into one another or convulsing on the ground as if they were having a seizure. Their heads blazed. The arms of the people wearing short sleeves bubbled. Rain fell heavily now, but the more rain that fell, the more they became inflamed.
You’d think the rain would put out the fire.
A destitute man ran to the glass wall and crashed into it, his slimy skin oozing from his face. His hands scraped down the glass, leaving snail-trails of crimson flesh that made a sound like an old squeegee used by a window washer. There were only two holes where his nose used to be. His hair burned: a satanic halo. An eyeball came free and plopped to the ground. The skin on his arms that stuck out of his tattered, ripped coat boiled.
Craig stood over Will and grabbed an arm. “Get down in the basement, I said!”
“What’s going on?”
Craig shook his head. “Natural disaster.” Craig hefted up his radio, a modern one that hooked up to an iPod. No cord hung from it, so it must have been running on batteries. The emergency signal beeped its death march while the recorded voice warned everyone to take cover. “They haven’t said what kind yet. We’re going to keep this on downstairs and find out, if we can maintain the connection. Come on!”
Craig dragged him toward the door that led to the stairs.
This is a nightmare.
As soon as they made it inside the basement and shut the door, a massive tremor knocked them onto their faces. This one didn’t feel like another earthquake—it felt as if the whole building collapsed. Loud crashes repeated. The air-conditioner quit chugging through the vents and died, whining in a high pitch as it quit, and the lights went out.
“Goddamn it,” Will whispered as he lit his cigarette.
The women screamed.
Will’s fear spiraled out of control; insects of panic endeavored to drive him over the edge. What could he do? What could any of them do?
Sweat shellacked him. Will held the lighter towards someone sitting on the floor and against the wall. Wanting to get away from Craig, Will crawled over and sat next to him. He held the flame the stranger’s way and saw his skin was also slicked with sweat.
A beam of light appeared, traveling over the room. Will realized someone had a flashlight—probably Craig, taking charge as he’d always done in the mail room.
Will looked over the wisp of a man next to him, dressed in an immaculately-tailored suit. His short, greasy hair gave way to round glasses. The man looked like he’d just stepped out of a movie about time travel. His hands gripped the sides of his head, and his eyes were wide.
Craig fiddled with the dial on the radio, bringing in only static. Twenty people sat keening and pulling their hair out.
The ancient-looking man caught Will staring at him. He took his hands off his head and furrowed his brow. “It’s the end of the world, you know.”
The room hushed as if the strange guy were E. F. Hutton.
Will ran a hand over his face. He sniffled and took a deep breath. “Why . . . do you say that?”
“One of the stars in the Milky Way Galaxy exploded. A gamma ray burst has hit Earth. That’s the explanation for the acid rain and the fire.” His voice was high-pitched, and it fit his character.
Craig shined the light their way. “A gamma ray burst? What the hell is that and who the hell are you?”
“Bryce Hodgson,” he answered. “I’m a scientist Vain Publishing called in. I was supposed to meet with an author on the eleventh floor to help him do research for his novel. I’d just walked in the door on the ground floor when . . . bam!”
Will huffed. “I’d say nice to meet you, but these aren’t the greatest conditions.”
Bryce sighed. “Tell me about it.”
“I’m Will.”
“Will!” Vanessa crawled over and sat by him.
He’d been asking the black-haired, long-legged beauty for a date when the disaster hit, his hands doing his job on autopilot. The first rumbling of the earth had saved him from rejection. Now, here she sat beside him. Maybe there was hope, if they survived.
“Vanessa,” Will said. “Glad you made it.”
Bryce’s eyes shifted from him to her, as if he knew Will wanted her body. “That’s the least of your worries now.”
Will’s stomach sank. Shocked, he realized he didn’t have to work too hard reading the crappy submissions of lust and violence for Vain anymore. The two-bit novels they published weren’t worth downloading to his eReader.
Craig said, “So tell us about this ‘gamma ray burst,’ Mr. Know-It-All.”
“Shut up, Craig,” Will yelled. “He’s just trying to help.”
Bryce said, “It’s all right.” He turned Craig’s way. “I’d hoped it wouldn’t happen in our lifetime. In the Milky Way Galaxy, there are two stars rotating every eight months in a pinwheel. One of the stars, WR 104, was discovered in the nineties. It’s the most decrepit, the one that could explode at any time. When that happens—actually, it’s happened—gamma ray bursts rush to earth with no warning. It’s the most dangerous phenomenon in the galaxy. They emit more disastrous energy in anywhere from a millisecond to a minute than the sun could in its entire lifetime, which is what it’s doing right now.”
“You don’t know that,” Craig answered. “Maybe China dropped a bomb on New York.”
“As if that’s any better,” Will said.
Bryce shook his head. “I looked out the revolving door when it hit. People caught fire more when the storm let loose, acid rain coming down from the smog the gammas are releasing.”
Craig, the eternal idiot, laughed.
“I saw that,” Will said. “They were already burning, but the rain torched them till they were Cajun.”
Bryce nodded. “That’s because the gammas depleted twenty-five percent of the ozone layer. We’d only depleted it about three or four percent.”
“Holy Jesus.” Will looked over and saw Craig beating on the radio.
“You’ll need holy Jesus now,” Bryce added.
“So what are we going to do?” Vanessa asked.
Bryce was nonplussed, apparently.
Will wanted to comfort her, but what could he say? Like an employee in a children’s hospital, he realized he had to say something. “Vanessa, don’t panic. I’m sure the rescue workers—”
Bryce laughed sardonically.
“They’ll come get us out of here?” she asked.
The industrial light shined on them as if they were in the middle of Act 2 of a romantic play.
Will nodded.
Vanessa put her head on his shoulder. She sobbed. “Will, I’m scared.”
“Me too, sweetheart. Me too.” Will met Bryce’s gray eyes. “What is going to happen to us?”
Bryce sobbed. “We’re all . . . going . . . to die.”
Will opened his cell phone. No signal.
“I’ve already tried that,” Bryce said. “I can’t get through to my
mother.”
His mother. Will chuckled.
The others had apparently heard enough. They’d moved to the other side of the basement, sitting behind Craig, who was sprawled out in the center of the floor as he fiddled with the radio between his knees. Two veins stuck out of his bald, sweaty forehead as he threw it against the wall, where it shattered.
Will glanced over at Bryce, who fidgeted with his tie as he stared at the floor.
Women bawled or sobbed softly. The businessmen across the room held their heads as Bryce had done earlier. According to my new buddy here, they might as well stick their noggins between their knees and kiss their asses goodbye.
Will noticed the earthquakes had ended. He turned to Bryce, who had ripped his tie off. It lay in a heap on the floor as he wrenched his fingers together.
Will said, “The tremors stopped; maybe it’s over.”
Bryce sniffled and glanced at him with wet eyes while steepling his fingers. “Wishful thinking; the gamma ray burst is over, but the damage is done.”
Will’s mind swam. God, what now? As if I haven’t heard enough. “What damage?”
“It depends on the amount of cosmic rays the exploding star set off. No one knows for sure how much damage it will . . . has caused, but from the predictions, the grass burned up, the agriculture melted and the food chain collapsed in the boiling oceans. If anyone survived that was outside, even if only for a second, they’ve got radiation damage. This side of the world is done for.”
“Then we need to get to the other side.”
Bryce pointed at the door. “You saw those crispy critters. That’s what’ll happen to us if we leave.”
Craig shined the light on the door and fiddled with the knob. He pulled the door open and held the flashlight on what stood on the other side.
Rubble. Nothing but bits of bricks with a beam sticking out through cement; he pushed at it, but the weight didn’t budge.
“Come on,” Craig’s trembling voice pleaded.
Will put his lighter away; he shook his fingers and sucked on them.
Craig shined the flashlight on Will, and he put his hands up to block the blinding beam.
“Can I get some help over here?” Craig asked.
Will stuck his hand out and found Bryce’s bony shoulder. “Let’s go.”
They walked over to help Craig push. Only a few chunks of cement gave, but the rest wouldn’t move an inch. They were buried alive. The building had fallen all around them.
Will sighed, walked back over and sat down. Vanessa put her head on his shoulder again. He rested his chin on the top of her head. Her hair was soft but beginning to dampen. What’s a date with her worth now?
Craig rushed over and fell to his knees, blinding them with the light. “No search party’s ever going to come! You saw those fuckers fry outside!”
“Will you be quiet?” Will yelled.
The disembodied voice continued to panic from behind the flashlight: “Oh shit. Oh Jesus. We’re going to die down here!”
“Die?” Vanessa asked in a shaky voice.
“Shut the fuck up right now!” Will cried. “You’re scaring her, can’t you see that? Quit panicking or I’ll punch you in the face!”
The light swung over the rest of the room as he moved away. Heaving bodies, shaking, crying, SCREAMING.
Funny that Will was supposed to comfort Vanessa, because his own fear spun out of control as if it had legs, closer to the edge, closer to the breaking point. . . .
It had gotten hotter: a lot hotter. Vanessa’s hair was now soaked.
Their sweltering hell in the dark.
Will struggled to breathe. His clothes stuck to him from the sweat. He might as well have been in a sauna. He flicked his lighter and looked over at Bryce, who said the Lord’s Prayer with his hands folded together.
I worked for Vain Publishing, putting out trash for the past eleven years. They gave me the gold watch, the tenure and I helped evil authors influence kids to kill other children. Some of the garbage my company put out was made into movies, just to make sure anyone who doesn’t read can be warped too. Yes, psychos, for just nine ninety-nine, you too can shoot up the other kids at your school, burn an effeminate boy to death and gang rape a church girl. This can all be yours!
“W-Will?” Vanessa breathed. “I’m burning up. W-we really are going to die, aren’t we?”
“Shush. No. We’ll be—” Seriously? Another lie? You just rattle them off like machine gun shells. Next the two of you will win an all-expense paid trip to Aruba! You too can become crispy critters while a pan-flute band plays the Macarena!
The yelling and screaming from the other poor souls in the basement had stopped, replaced by moaning and groaning.
“We’ll be what?” she croaked.
Bryce finished praying. He’d concluded by saying he was sorry for all the sins he’d committed.
“Ouch.” Will let his lighter die, and then he couldn’t see anyone. The batteries had run out on Craig’s almighty flashlight. Guess he didn’t invest in Everstrong batteries. Takes a whoopin but keeps on poopin. Wait. How can I make jokes during a catastrophe? What kind of sick individual am I?
“I stripped down to my underwear,” Bryce almost whispered. “You and Vanessa might want to do the same.”
“I didn’t know you cared.” Will sighed when no one laughed. “Fat lot of good that’ll do us.”
“Well, I hate to be the doom-bringer, but you and . . .” Bryce coughed and wheezed. “. . . Vanessa . . . should . . . repent.”
Will squeezed some perspiration from his own shirt sleeve into his palm and drank it. “Vanessa, if you wring sweat out of your clothes, you can sip it to keep you hydrated.” Then he turned to the darkness where Bryce’s voice had come from. “You don’t understand.” His stomach rumbled as everyone’s had started to do, a cacophony of hungry businesspeople, a sadistic symphony. “I worked for Vain, helping them put out garbage for over ten years, stuff that probably influenced murderers to do people in.”
“I’d shown up at Vain to help an author do the same. How do you think I feel? But it’s thief on the cross time. There’s no way out of this.” More coughing on Bryce’s end.
Maybe he’s right. I’ve lost ten pounds just sitting here. Now I know how the bums of New York—hey, that could be a Vain book, Bums of New York—felt sitting in their alley or box while drinking hooch and pissing in their pants, sweating all over themselves, their future gone, just waiting to die. It can’t get any worse.
Another thought haunted him.
And the hobos went straight to Abraham’s bosom, according to my Sunday School class when I was a kid. Where am I going?
On cue, the squeaking rats made their appearance. Why’d they taken so long to show up? It was probably because they squirmed through those narrow passages where the building fell, grabbing a meal of the people trapped within the rubble. Oh, my God, some of those people probably got eaten alive!
The temperature just kept climbing, and Will gasped. Vanessa and Bryce gagged. Will bent away from her and wretched. Nothing came out but a little liquid, mostly dry heaves.
“Thanks a lot,” Bryce whispered. “You probably just puked on my pants.”
“Sorry, buddy. Uh—getch!—here it comes again!” Will let out a little more liquid, probably on Bryce’s tie.
“Gee, thanks again, pal.”
“I’m sorry, Bryce.”
“Like it matters.”
Will imagined him shrugging.
“Did you two repent yet?” Bryce asked. “Hell’s going to be even hotter than this.”
Something gnawed on Will’s leg. He cried out and reached for it. Good God, that rat’s the size of a cat! He chucked it across the room, where it screeched. He heard a “thump.”
“Who just threw a goddamned rat at me?” Craig squawked.
“He shoots, he scores,” Will mumbled, snickering.
Bryce couldn’t help but chuckle amidst the coughing and wheezing fit. “Fo
rgive me, Lord.”
But this was only the beginning.
The rats attacked Will in full force. Vanessa screamed. He reached down to her body, pulling off as many of the furry fuckers as he could and chucking them Craig’s way. Hey, the new Craig’s List. Will gagged and gagged. Vanessa shrieked again. Will reached down and—
Crunch!
While liquid puke dripped down his chin, he realized that one of the little assholes had bitten him. Bryce made shuddering sounds from his place in the darkness.
Then they were all over Will, biting his legs, his calves, climbing up his chest, biting his nipples, his neck. He batted them off the best he could but, the more he buffeted, the more showed up. The others at the opposite end of the room were quietly shrieking with what voice they could muster.
“Vanessa,” Will uttered in a shaky, quiet voice. “I think we should say we’re sorry to God. It’s time to go.” It was so hot he couldn’t breathe. His skin actually boiled on his arms and legs. A bubbling rat, probably insane from the heat, crawled through Will’s hair. The latter pulled and pulled, but the animal had dug into his ear and held on for dear life, probably the Momma or Daddy rat. It felt like one of those dogs that looked like they chased parked cars, Pekingese, if he remembered right, encompassed the right side of his head. He reached up to check his face to see if the bastard had started clawing at it and—
Oh God, my face is melting off!
“Vanessa,” Will wheezed. “Repent, now!”
Crying, she said the Lord’s Prayer. It was Will’s turn. He opened his mouth to do the same, and that’s when the rat bit into his tongue.
They were all over him now, too many to fight off. They bit into his lips and anywhere there was flesh.
Lord, it can’t end this way! Get off me and let me talk to God, you little bastards. Let me . . . let . . . me . . . oh nooooooo!
Will’s life-force drained out of him and everything went black.
He opened his eyes, wondering why he was alive again. Will noticed he sat in an easy chair in a small house with only one room.
Nothing filled the space but bookshelves.