Original short stories about the end of the world.
They watched the kid dig with manic intensity. The pile of dirt next to him had grown to maybe half his height. Some of the soil would tumble back into the hole with every frantic shovelful. The kid didn’t care.
Chains and ropes creaked on the other side of the great gate. Beyond, Grade could hear the sounds of life and livestock, mingling with the rain.
I step through the door clearly marked FIRE EXIT and the cold December air wraps around me like an icy blanket.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: After nearly a decade of analysis, the Linguistics Department of Gabonium University cracked the enigma that is the Sea Lords Script and presents this report to the Most Exalted One, ruler of the Nobel Empire of the Last Peoples.
“I’ll take five diamond earrings,” the lady from the fourth encampment north said. “Five pairs of diamond earrings?” I asked. “Yes, five pairs, and I want them all fingertip.” “Comin’ right up, ma’am, five pairs of fingertip diamond earrings.
“Hear that si–” …lence, boy? That’s right, the generator’s down.
“Ada, will you sit down?”
“What you have to understand is this: Some wolves are smaller than you.” He paused. “Some are bigger.”
As we wake up, our first glance is towards the giant floor to ceiling window. We anxiously rake the blackness until we spot it, still there, hanging on.
There is a Rand McNally Histomap taped to the front of my closet, a map of human history that spans nearly floor to ceiling.
I’ve been pregnant less than a week when the earthquake hits.
Fire took out the whole damn block down to the foundations, but not our place. Nope. Of course not. I couldn’t be that lucky, could I?
Anders is crying.
Michael grinned widely to see the little girl in the pink puffa jacket, bouncing as she ran towards him, probably more vertical motion than forward movement.
Dawn. Huntington. The high pitch squawk of a large crow interrupts the still air, as it picks at rubbish strewn over the pavements. A few moments later, the bird takes flight, flapping its wings in exaggerated fashion.
Three days after he had disappeared we still believed we would find grandpa. His small apartment in the retirement home became our temporary headquarters. We took shifts, the grandchildren, children, daughters and sons-in-law. Three or four of us each time.
Halvar sheltered under the branches of an old willow tree, hidden from sight by a thick curtain of fronds that trailed the river’s surface.
‘Ah, Doug,’ the Hawaiian said, shaking his head as he unbuttoned the tobacco leather sheath that held the knife at his waist, ‘This is going to sting.’