by Stephen R. Smith | Mar 19, 2014 | Story |
Author : Steve Smith, Staff Writer
I’ve got my finger on the trigger.
It took the better part of an hour to make the climb from where you forced my fighter into the dirt to this rocky outcrop overlooking your crash site, but I’ve got the high ground now and you don’t stand a chance.
Through the sight on my long gun I watch as you frantically dart towards your burning ship, only to be forced back by the flames again and again. I don’t quite see the point, you can’t put the flames out, and even if you could it’s never going to fly again. Niether will you once I get tired of watching your futile antics.
From here your ship doesn’t look nearly as fierce as our mission briefing described. It was hard to make out as we flashed past each other in the silent duel of space, or even in the frenetic dogfight once we’d punctured each others hulls and been forced to take refuge in the lower atmosphere. You fought like a champion, I’ll give you that.
Funny, now that it’s sitting still, your fighter looks more like a crop duster with guns welded on than a military vessel. You’re braver than I thought.
You’ve recovered something from the burning craft now, a small package? Food maybe? Weapons or a survival kit? It’s hard to see from here through the smoke and heat haze of your ship’s final throws, but whatever you’ve found you’ve finally abandoned your ship, staggering with your burden away towards the low rocky ridge closer to my perch.
It might protect you from the ship’s blast, should it come, but it won’t save you from me, you’re actually giving me a clearer shot.
That is a crop duster. What the hell? I can see the builder’s marking on the tail fins now, you would have had to buy that black market, or from us directly.
That doesn’t make any sense, why would a merciless killing force like you’ve been built up as, be flying refitted farm equipment?
Behind me my ship explodes, the concussion pounding in my ears even through what remains of my helmet. Thank god this atmosphere is breathable, but I guess that’s what we’re fighting for, isn’t it? You want it, we want it.
As you tear your helmet off I realize you’re not nearly as ugly as I expected. Not entirely unlike us, and… jesus! You’re a woman! I’m no sexist, but my finger comes up off the trigger nonetheless. You’re tearing into the package you recovered, I can’t wait to see…
When the tiny hands reach up, and the wailing of a child carries broken on the wind, the barrel of my gun lowers to the ground.
This is no crack military fighting force. Woman flying farm equipment with their children on board? We have some of the best intelligence personel in known space, they didn’t miss this. They didn’t misread this. They misled us.
I look high up through the cloudless sky and catch the occasional flash of light as the sun catches a wing, or the streak of a weapon’s discharge and wonder who’s going to win, and when they do how long it’s going to take for them to come down here and find me. Or you. Us.
The word sticks in my throat, and I know that as much as I don’t know what you’re going to do when I get there, I really don’t have any other choice.
As I start to climb down from on high to where you’re huddled, rocking your child in your arms, I’ve still got my finger on the trigger, and I really don’t know who to trust.
by featured writer | Mar 18, 2014 | Story |
Author : Jay Knioum, Featured Writer
I’m getting grease on my sandwich when she walks in. The whole hangar pretends to be busy while throwing glances at her.
She looks around, finds me, smiles. She’s walking my way, but her eyes are all for her baby. I’ve been pulling extra shifts getting her baby ready to fly.
There’s a monkey on her shoulder. It leaps off, and scrambles into the cockpit.
She tosses her goggles on top of my workbench, brushes a braid away from her shoulder. “How’s she look?”
Perfect, I want to say, but that wasn’t the question. “I patched your oil leak, unstuck your throttle problem. Had to replace your altimeter, but I told you that.”
“Yeah, you told me that.” Her eyes are brown. Could’ve sworn they were blue. They’re blue in my dreams.
Those brown eyes are turning the ship over and over. My eyes? Well, I guess they’re doing ungentlemanly things, but they snap back to attention when she speaks.
“Am I loaded?” she says.
I shake my head, grinning. “Yeah. The clockguns are all bolted in and topped off, but the extra weight’s gonna drag ass.”
She smiles, and not like a lady would. “I might have to shoot somebody this time.”
I don’t ask. I don’t, usually. She wouldn’t answer anyway.
She presses against me. She smells like sweat and diesel, but it’s like flowers to me. When she pulls away, her goggles are gone from the workbench. In their place is a stack of League bearer notes, every one a little singed. Blood on the top of the stack. Still good. More than the usual amount.
“Thanks.” She grins, walks away and climbs aboard her baby. The monkey sticks its tongue out at me as the ship roars to life, rotors spin up and pinions unfold.
The Aphrodite takes to the wind again, and I’m just standing here holding my wrench.
by submission | Mar 17, 2014 | Story |
Author : cchatfield
The small group marched forward in loose formation, swaggering with the confidence that their training would kick in when needed. The sandy landscape offered no threats, no hiding places, no life.
Their destination: a lone tower, hidden in a secluded valley lined with flat, open rocks.
“Looks like it was built to last,” commented the leader.
The tower stood a hundred feet high, pale sunlight illuminating its simple apex. The rusty surface silently boasted of the hundreds of years it had stood untouched and promised tenfold more.
“It’s just up there?” asked the navigator, rubbing his hands.
The leader nodded, “Should be a stairwell. And don’t get excited, we don’t know what the security’s like.”
They soon located a door leading to a winding stair that filled the entirety of the tower’s innards. It opened to a dark room and the group of mercenaries froze, alert for booby traps. They knew from experience that the ancient treasure hoarders had perfected the technique of turning empty spaces into dangerous surprises.
They entered slowly, adjusting to the darkness.
“We got it,” whispered one of the mercenaries, eyes wide at the sight of the altar sitting on the opposite end of the room. An archaic padlock hung limply from an unassuming chest seated in the place of honor. Guns held tightly, all attention focused on their quarry.
Off to the side was a standing oval, four feet tall. It resembled a woven basket, braided with dusty metal strands rather than plant fiber. The navigator motioned towards it with his gun. “Looks like a cocoon doesn’t i-”
A razor blade grew from his throat. The rest of the team was in motion before he hit the floor. They ducked and rolled to avoid the flying whips of metal hissing around the room. A few strands of razor thin wire bisected the leader. Thicker vines of ropy cord snarled the second and third-in-command. In a moment the group had deteriorated into a pile of corpses on the floor, the echoes of their sparse gunfire bouncing into oblivion.
Fully unwrapped, a small robotic figure tread softly around them. Green orbs acted as eyes on a childish body. Hundreds of wires fanned from her head in a constantly writhing, prodding cloud. They worked quickly, dissecting the team and slipping the remains through a thin grate to land with dull clacks on a pile of bleached bones.
After inspecting the chest for signs of damage, the mechanical girl stood over the leader’s cooling form. The corner of a picture peeked from his pocket. While the wires busily stripped bodies on the other side of the room, she snatched it and folded it into plated metal hands.
Their job done, the girl regained her position in the corner. She unfolded the picture, her emerald eyes feasting on the image while the wires reassembled, sheathing her form.
The tower, built to last, crouched in silence.
by submission | Mar 16, 2014 | Story |
Author : Jay Haytch
One exception
She stood at the threshold and looked out at a burnt world.
It wasn’t really a proper threshold. There was no welcome mat, for starters. Just a trod-over pile of rubble where one last stray missile had hit the city wall and left a person-sized crack. On one side, the city. On the other side… well…
No one had sealed the breach, even after all these years. Why bother? There was no enemy anymore. Nothing left out there, they said.
Behind her she heard the morning fanfare trumpet through the city’s loudspeakers. Time to get up and start the day, for everyone. No exceptions.
She looked ahead through the crack again. Blasted, fractured, cold, harsh desert. Barren rocks and brutal landforms. Grey. Lifeless. There were no windows in the city wall; this little crack was all the view its inhabitants could get of the rest of the world. It was all the view they needed.
Others had gone out before, of course. But no one knew what happened to them. They never returned. She knew as soon as she set one foot over the threshold, it was all or nothing. No one was allowed back in. No exceptions.
She hadn’t seen the orderly yet, but it didn’t matter. She knew it would be there. There was an unwritten rule that anyone could stand where she was and contemplate the outside for as long as they needed to, and the orderlies wouldn’t interfere. Until that person turned around.
Wait, there it was, in the doorway of a nearby building, watching. It had gifts for her if she would only head back to the city. A comfy leather jacket that would pin her arms tightly to her chest and a big bottle of serum that would make her happy and content again. For the rest of her life.
Some people took the orderlies up on their offer. They went back to being productive citizens and smiled a lot. Every day in fact. No exceptions.
Only the insane would think of doing what she was thinking of doing. The sane, they stayed put. The city, after all, provided a person’s every need.
She stepped forward, through the gate of civilization into who knew what. Though the grey was ahead of her, to her left and right – obscured by the wall until she’d passed the point of no return – there was green.
by submission | Mar 15, 2014 | Story |
Author : Glenn S. Austin
“Well do you think it did any good at all?” The President asked the others sitting around the large oval conference table in the command bunker.
The President asked the question to the entire room, but his tired eyes looked directly at his Press Secretary.
“It’s too early to tell Mr. President.” The Press Secretary was a tall, thin middle-aged man who looked like he would be more comfortable in a cubicle at a large accounting firm than sitting here advising the leader of what was left of the free world. “Most of the education we provided was for long term survival, over a period of months and years. We knew our training program was really only directed at the small portion of the population that would survive the initial catastrophe.”
“Yes, yes, I know, but we’re three months in now, do we have any indication as to what percentage took the training to heart?”
“Sir, the problem is that the ones who really learned from all of our educational programming, will not be jumping up and down waving a “Help Us” banner.”
The President raised his eyebrows; everyone knew that meant he wanted the speaker to elaborate.
The Secretary explained. “One of the re-occurring themes in all of the training was that staying hidden and off the grid was the best strategy for continued survival. No matter what the threat, it is always best to stay concealed from both the initial threat that brought down society, as well as hiding from other survivors who will just consume your resources, while reducing chances of long term survival.”
“Going to be tough to take the next Census.” Quipped the Chief of Staff, to quite a few chuckles around the table.
The President looked at his Chief of Staff and pressed for a better answer to his original question. “Well what real data do we have that any of our training programs had an effect?”
The Chief of Staff looked down the table at the Commerce Secretary.
Commerce took a second to look at the contents of a folder in front of her on the table. “Sir, our numbers indicate that the retail sales of bows, crossbows, and firearms increased, as the number of training programs increased. We feel that this correlation indicated the message was taken to heart by at least the folks who watched the training videos.”
“Do we have any idea how many watched the training videos?” The President asked, looking further down the table at the network executives.
The collection of suits looked around at each other and silently selected a representative. A large man cleared his throat as he stood up to respond. He looked directly at the president, “Sir, the collective ratings for our Zombie Apocalypse programming indicate over fifteen million repeat viewers. In fact our Zombie programs as a whole were the highest rated programs at one point.
The exec waited for a response and then continued when all he got was a nod. “Our Alien Invasion programs also faired very well with over ten million viewers, and another ten million watched the nuclear, loss of electric grid, and EMP blast, apocalypse shows.” The exec concluded, “We only had 7 years to provide the programs but we reached over 25 percent of the U.S. population with the combination of survival training education we provided.”
The President grinned slightly and addressed the table at large. “So the future of the USA and civilization now depends on couch potatoes who watched apocalyptic Zombie and Science fiction disaster shows. Let’s all hope they learned something!”
