by submission | Feb 3, 2016 | Story |
Author : Jared Lynch
The water quit flowing from the taps shortly after the sirens stopped. I hadn’t paid my rent in three months, but I didn’t expect to receive an eviction notice. None came. There hadn’t been a train for four months.
Karen and I were always in before curfew. At night we hid away in our attic apartment, looked at the empty faces of the houses. Sometimes we read by candlelight. Sometimes there was light in other windows.
Gunfire eventually replaced the vacant ambience of the trains. Sporadic became more frequent. Pistol shots, then automatic. It reminded me of the fourth, lighting sparklers down by the river, gunpowder accumulating in a cloud beneath the fireworks.
The pepper plant and onion were growing well in the planter hung outside my kitchen window. Then one day heavy boots thudded up the stairs, a gloved fist on my door, an AR-15 pointed in my face. “Food can only be grown by government approved producers. This is your only warning.”
The next day we drove to my sister’s and stood in their yard with her husband. The peppers, lettuce, onions, carrots, kale, cucumbers, zucchini, garlic, rhubarb, corn, and radishes were all gone, picked clean from the stem. There were boot prints in the pumpkin patch. Mark said, “We’re leaving soon, going to your dad’s. Come with us.”
I said, “We’re still waiting to hear from her parents.”
That night there was an explosion in the distance. We saw fire on the horizon. Gunfire moved across the river. When she pulled back the curtains, and saw what our world had become she crawled back into my arms. I said, “Calm your fearful pulse my lover.”
She said, “The skyline is beautiful…everything is washed in a thin orange haze.”
I said, “You’re beautiful. Kiss me.”
We fell into each other. Automatic outside. Short bursts. Another explosion, closer. There were no lights in the windows.
The next morning we drove to my sister’s. The trunk was filled. Our packs were in the backseat. Gallons of water stacked on the floor. We parked off the alley in the back, walked through the trampled pumpkin patch. Empty house. A note on the kitchen table: Had to leave. Made copy of map for you. Meet us.
We drove through empty neighborhoods. We approached a checkpoint on the road leading out of town. Five bodies haphazard on the shoulders of the road, four soldiers and a man dressed in combat boots, cargo pants, and empty holster, laying facedown in a halo of blood.
We followed the map out through the country. The smoke was sporadic. That day the solitude felt barren. We hadn’t left the city since the spring’s green. She asked, “What are we going to find out here?”
I said, “Another house. Maybe the future.”
There was smoke in the rearview mirror.
by submission | Feb 2, 2016 | Story |
Author : Elle B Sullivan
The taxi pulled up outside of the school, right into the center of the large circle dive. This driveway had been the barrier between me and the rest of the world throughout my entire childhood – and I was terrified to leave it. My caretaker walked me to the door of the car and put a rigid arm around me, “goodbye 726H,” she said sternly.
I smiled, but couldn’t feel my hands as I made my way into the back of the taxi, sitting next to another boy about my age. On his name-tag, “678L” was written and the date listed below his name was tomorrow’s date. The windows suddenly turned black and the barrier between the front seats and the back raised, isolating us from the outside world.
“Do you know where you’re going?” The boy asked, looking towards me and studying my name-tag, and then my body.
“I believe I will be going to a famous genetic scientist of some sort – he was recently in an explosion.” I smiled a rehearsed smile.
“That’s wonderful.” He responded back, “I believe I am also going to a scientist.”
“Oh how wonderful.” I replied, and then felt warmth in my heart from sharing a similar fate with someone I had just met.
“Will you miss your home?” I asked 678L.
“I wouldn’t know anything different,” he responded. “What about you?”
“I’m the same. I have nothing to hold on to back there.” I replied, and then noticed his hands were shaking slightly. “Would you like me to hold your hand?” I asked him, and his face transformed into a smile as he nodded slightly.
“You are the first person I’ve met who isn’t a caretaker.” He said with a smile, “perhaps even my first friend.”
“You are my first friend as well,” I smiled back. “Even my caretaker wasn’t very friendly.”
“Me as well.” He replied.
The car began to slow, and we turned onto a different road. Then the car came to a stop, and the windows began to lighten, as the barrier between the front and back seats of the car lowered.
“Yes this is 678L for tomorrow’s three o’clock transplant and 726H for tomorrow’s at eight o’clock.” Our driver told the intake person who greeted him at his window.
“Great, we’ll take them both now.” The woman said, dressed in a blue linen outfit.
I believe I felt afraid. But I knew my fate. I knew that my entire life had been leading up to… I just didn’t know I would feel so alone.
“Promise me something?” I asked 678L quietly.
“Anything.” He said while nervously waiting to be taken from the car.
“We will be friends forever?” I said, feeling silly – but needing something to hold on to.
“Always,” he said.
Both our doors were opened, and we were taken out of the car, and asked to lie down onto large rolling carts. Once settled, we were both fitted with masks placed over our faces. Suddenly my head felt light, and I –
– – – –
“Professor Johnson?” A nurse dressed in blue scrubs asked as the patient began waking from his anesthesia.
He tried to speak, the sound unintelligible, groggily struggling to open his eyes.
“I just wanted to let you know the heart and lung transplant surgeries were both a success, and you’ve been recovering wonderfully. The two children donors were very healthy, and we believe your body is having no issues with the new organs.”
“Good,” he struggled to say through his oxygen mask before closing his eyes to rest again as his body healed.
by submission | Feb 1, 2016 | Story |
Author : Bryan Pastor
An officer sprinted down the hall, past superiors and subordinates alike. Nearing the end of the hall, he slid to a stop, upsetting two chairs outside the deputy legate’s office. He quickly set them back in place, then checked himself in the reflection of a picture’s glass. Confident that he was in order, he marched around the corner toward the Marshal’s office.
A pair of guards flanked the high officer’s door. A young female officer sat behind a desk, upon noticing the officer’s appearance, she fixed him with a dower glare.
“The marshal is not to be disturbed.” The female officer growled, even as he was only halfway down the hall.
“I have an urgent message for Marshall Kana.” He replied, snapping her a salute.
“You can give it to me.”
“It’s for his ears only ma’am.” He replied. “It’s is about…” he paused and cleared his throat.
“Alpha.”
“Send him in.” a voice barked from the office.
The interior of the Marshal’s office was decorated in deep red and gold. A wooden desk sat opposite the door, a rare item this far from the home world.
“This better be important.” Said the Marshal, a half-finished plate of food sat among maps and troop deployments.
The officer steadied himself then made the ten steps to the front of the Marshall’s desk.
“Who are you?”
“Second Corporal Lew, intelligence corp.”
“Spit it out, Lew.”
“We have him, sir.” Lew beamed.
The marshal’s hand reflexively shot to the patch over his left eye.
“Where?”
“On an inbound transport that will be docking in less than ten minutes. I have an interrogation room ready for his arrival.”
“Good.” The Marshal chuckled. “I have been waiting a long time for this.”
Four heavily armed guards led a shackled and hooded man down a dimly lit corridor. They marched on for what seemed like an eternity until they came to a plain, unmarked door.
“You sure this is the place?” a guard asked.
“This is where we were directed.” His superior replied. He knocked on the door.
A camera dropped from the ceiling, scanned the small group then retreated. There was a clank and a hiss, the door and surrounding wall faded. In its place were a dozen more guards.
Second Corporal Lew stepped forward.
“We will take him from here.” He dismissed the men.
“There is someone who is eager to see you again, Duren’La” Lew grabbed the prisoner by the arm, pulling him toward a table. The Marshal sat behind it.
“Duren’La, my old friend.” The Marshal laughed, “I haven’t seen you since…”
“You lost your eye?” A voice offered from beneath the hood. Lew motioned to have the hood removed.
The man squinted as his eye’s grew accustom to the light.
“I am going to make the last days of your life as miserable as possible.” Kana rose, anger emanating from every fiber of his being.
“Six long months I languished on that desolate rock waiting to be found. Then another six months spent in a field hospital. It’s a pity I don’t have an asteroid to plop you down on.” Kana jabbed a finger at his prisoner’s chest, it sank in nearly up to his knuckle.
Kana stared, a look of incredulity crossed his face. Duren’La looked at him and smiled, before collapsing into innumerable nanobots.
“You brought me to the center of your citadel, right?” Duren’La’s voice seemed to come from everywhere.
Men screamed as the swarm engulfed them in a maelstrom of destruction, none louder than Marshall Kana.
by submission | Jan 31, 2016 | Story |
Author : Chris McCormick
There was no dramatic music swelling, no handsome actor reciting prose. Instead there was my friend the dev, lying on her back in the grass convulsing as the electricity ran through her, arms and legs unfolded from the lotus position she had assumed only moments before. The police drone floated over her, lights flashing blue and red, blades whipping.
When the drones had first descended, and the silence of the crowd with them leaving only the whirring of their wings, I had known exactly what she would do. I’d whispered to her fiercely “Submit to the search! Let them do it.”
She had turned and looked at me strangely, her eyes full of something like quiet curiosity.
“If you’re not doing anything wrong, why not submit to the search?” I followed up. One too many excuses for the powerful.
Her eyes burned with calm intelligence and her voice was low and steady, just above a whisper. “You’re asking the wrong question.” She paused and I could see her pupils expanding gently. “Are they doing anything wrong?”
Now she lay there on the grass in the afternoon light, convulsions over, a moment on pause.
The drone above her seemed to quiver slightly, the pitch of its engines changing down an anharmonic octave. If a machine can sound sick then that is how this drone began to sound. It gently, comically tilted and began an awkward sideways sliding descent, parting the crowd before plouging into the ground with its angled blades, churning the dirt and lofting clods of grass into the air like a pile of manic robot worms. Then it suddenly stopped, dead.
Other drones began to sputter, wobble, gently dive, lights flashing out of time. One by one they dropped clumsily to the ground, mashing into it and flailing on the ground like bugs after spray.
When they had all fallen and the last flickering light had faded, a cold wind blew across the grass. Nobody wanted to look at anybody else. Complicit in our weakness, except for one lone hero, our collective cowardice now revealed by the silent aftermath.
I crouched down where she lay. Skin white and clammy, I saw a tiny black cube with a single flashing green LED in her left hand. I thought I saw a weak smile tickle at the corner of her mouth and in that moment I knew what she had wrought.
“This is fucked. I’m fucking out of here,” somebody muttered and the crowd began to slink away like jellies sliding off a table, rivers of people moving off between the trees.
That is how the fight began.
by submission | Jan 30, 2016 | Story |
Author : Paul Alex Gray
I must have been last to die.
“Mountains? You’re thinking of mountains.”
As she speaks the fog lifts and sunshine spills down upon a barrier of rocky hills. The ground trembles as the hills grow larger, becoming jagged peaks, white capped like teeth. Sunlight reflects, a blinding silver glare.
I imagine I can taste blood in my mouth. A burning sensation courses through me. I think I’m falling. No, not falling. Spinning, being thrown and torn apart. The memory of smoke lingers.
I am whole. Unbroken. I am naked. No, I am dressed in civilian clothes. Did I wish them back? Did she?
“Who are you?” I ask, my voice loud and tender.
The wind tousles her hair. Something touches within my mind, cold fingers wrapping around something flickering and faint.
She holds out a hand and a butterfly descends to land on her finger. Its wings rise and fall like a breath.
“That’s it.” She says.
A hollowness rings in my mind. I think of an empty room.
“Am I dead?”
She turns and speaks.
“We are at a place where you may live forever.”
The butterfly takes flight. Her face causes my heart to ache. It’s a lie of my own telling. This isn’t her.
“Why do you think that?”
The smile is too big. It grows wider still. Her eyes flash for a moment and her face rights itself, shifting back to something familiar. A little younger but still an echo.
I close my eyes, trying to shake her face from my memory. This corruption. Thoughts tumble and crash. If I could imagine a weapon. Maybe I could kill… her.
“You want to hurt me?”
The mimicry is perfect. I shiver, cast back in time.
The swing set. She had screamed with delight as I pushed her higher. We had made lemonade at home. The next morning I joined my unit and we had flown to the Borderlands.
The Rift span half submerged in the rocky earth. A slow spinning whirlpool of smoke which expunged hot fetid air. It was sending death from that place beyond. Entering might be a one way trip, we knew.
They said to keep quiet as we approached. Not to speak. Try not to even think shouted the Major. Another marine had told me the rumors on the ride in. They hear your thoughts. They get into your head.
The battle had been brief. Barely a battle at all. It was too powerful. There was an explosion. A rupture…
What was I thinking? A thought spills from my mind. Walking outside to the garden. There is a heavy fog. I cannot see through it. I pause on the deck. There is a coldness. Something has been taken.
“Come push me!”
The fog has gone. She sits still in the swing set, smiling at me. I smile back and walk towards her, the grass damp beneath my bare feet.
I hold the metal chains and pull them back. I pull and push, lifting her higher. She shrieks and giggles with delight. It is a beautiful sound.
“Tell me a story, Daddy.”
