Ultimate Showdown
No one saw the meteor coming. It was faster than any meteor yet recorded. It didn’t so much as break the speed of light as it did beat its face in, set it on fire and sleep with its girlfriend. No one saw it coming when it smashed into what once was the Pacific Ocean, and a century later, not a single person survived.
They came from the corners of the globe, dressed to kill in their own odd ways. Mankind forgot ancient myths and made up their own legends. Fathers passed it onto sons and mothers would nurse their daughters on what it was to be what they were. It was a chance to start over for the parents after the meteor crashed down, but no one could have guessed it would end like this.
If you could call America a desert at that point, then it was safe to say you’d lost the idea of what humidity really meant. From the east came the heavy shoulder pads, the pronounced foreheads counting every ridge as a badge of honor despite their origin as radiation-induced bone growths. The tribe gathered shrapnel from wreckages and sharpened the pieces into their own homebrewed mix of jagged death.
These deformed figures all stood tall and bulky and they had no question as to why they were here today. Each one carried a weapon, and each one knew how to use it.
The other tribe came from the west. These shadowy figures began as shadows on the horizon, looking far healthier than the mutated easterners. Their humans faces were still intact and they dressed in nothing but free-flowing cloth that became a robe wrapped snugly around their figures. Each of these men and women also had a weapon of destruction latched neatly onto their belts. Though at first glance these weapons seemed like nothing but bludgeoning tools, there was a distinctly scientific look to them that held more back than it presented. Each of these “weapons” had at least one button on it looking as if they had been crafted from gutted scientific laboratories in the west. Silicon Valley might have been to blame.
Within sight of each other, they stood in a single row facing their opponents for control over the aftermath of the apocalypse. This was no longer America to them. For each it held a different, unpronounceable name with no Latin origin to be found.
With deformed sharp teeth and darkened, rigid skin, the easterners raised their oddly shaped metal weapons in unison and cried out, “Heghlu’meH QaQ jajvam!”
Robed and without emotion, without fear, the westerners slowly removed the small metal cylinders from their belts. The man in the center stared at the angry mob before him and spoke in a soft, elegant tone: “There must be balance.” Behind him, the other members of the tribe pressed the buttons on their devices and thin rods of light burst from the cylinders, ready and waiting to be used.
The words had been said and on this day the ultimate showdown began.
The Past
365tomorrows launched August 1st, 2005 with the lofty goal of providing a new story every day for a year. We’ve been on the wire ever since. Our stories are a mix of those lovingly hand crafted by a talented pool of staff writers, and select stories received by submission.
The archives are deep, feel free to dive in.
Flash Fiction
"Flash fiction is fiction with its teeth bared and its claws extended, lithe and muscular with no extra fat. It pounces in the first paragraph, and if those claws aren’t embedded in the reader by the start of the second, the story began a paragraph too soon. There is no margin for error. Every word must be essential, and if it isn’t essential, it must be eliminated."
Kathy Kachelries
Founding Member
Submissions
We're open to submissions of original Science or Speculative Fiction of 600 words or less. We are only accepting work which you previously haven't sold or given away the rights to. That means your work must not have been published elsewhere, either in print or on the web. When your story is accepted, you're giving us first electronic publication rights and non-exclusive subsequent publication rights. You retain ownership over your story. We are not a paying market.
Voices of Tomorrow
Voices of Tomorrow is the official podcast of 365tomorrows, with audio versions of many of the stories published here.
If you're interested in recording stories for Voices of Tomorrow, or for any other inquiries, please contact ssmith@365tomorrows.com