Just Resolved

By Nicholas Stillman

At the cusp of extinction, the last people alive learn to burrow deep. Their ties go deep too, as electric blizzards swirl around their shelters and the world. Wesley, a worn-down wrestler and loser at life, must become one of humanity’s last winners and lead. When his group must divide to protect the progeny of mankind, their rule of human sanctity threatens to fragment too.

In their flight through a shattered dystopian city, Wesley’s foragers find a creature of pure evil, ancient and secure in time and technology. The wretch could either save the despondent group or enslave them in their final chance against the weaponized weather. But will they become just as wicked for simply surviving?

Get “Just Resolved” now for mankind's last desperate dig into savagery and morality alike.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Stillman Sci-Fi
• Release date: Jan 24, 2018
• ISBN: 9781386888031

Nicholas Stillman

Nicholas Stillman writes dark but entertaining science fiction. His weekly short stories and collections aim for variety and novelty with fun and thought-provoking twists. They often branch into dystopia, crime, horror, medical fiction, black comedy, romance, adventure, adult, and the completely new. Some of Stillman’s themes include civilizational collapse, addictions of the future, medicine in space, dark psychology, and the terrifying fate of our healthcare. Stillman offers monthly free short stories at StillmanSciFi.com. Get yourself free, easily accessible short stories for life--the perfect way for any science fiction fan to spend time on commutes or at home.

Book preview

The man who led humanity still lay curled on the bed of rubble. The wind became rowdier and flapped his robe too quickly. The old man’s scarf wanted to blow off completely and bury itself in the concrete dust all around him. It whipped his face across his closed eyes, and any reflex to brush it away had died with the body.

Wesley could tell already from the leader’s veiny hands. They stayed pressed under the old man’s face for too long, like a bundle of sticks for a pillow. Wesley rose from his own concrete rest spot and stretched to pop his joints. The aches soon came to fill in whatever pressure just left. He couldn’t pronounce—or on some days, even remember—the leader's foreign name, and now he wouldn’t have to. He smiled down at the body not because of that, but because the dead suffered no carpal tunnel syndrome in either hand, let alone both.

Another human found eternal relief, and probably from age—unlike the billions who died in the storms.

Wesley walked to the heap of skin, bones, and cloth. He slouched the whole eight meters there. He’d end up crouching anyway, and his six-foot-four frame hated wind, dryness, and gravity alike. His robe layers unwrapped somewhat in the hurricane’s big warm-up, but the leader’s rags stretched and rippled more. When Wesley crouched at the body, he felt the various slams of his wrestling days. The ghosts still pommeled him, leaving a sort of echo of shooting pain.

He rolled the leader toward him. Nothing. He patted the bony chest as the sports docs used to do when they tested a concussed man for consciousness. Still nothing. Wesley pried the dead man’s eyelids open to allow the wind and daylight to pour in. When nothing happened, he closed them.

Twenty-four people foraged with the leader, and all of them now rose to huddle over him. The resting spots they had cleared from the city rubble already began to fill with rolling gravel. The wind only blew off some of the urban dust from their robes. Wesley couldn’t discern much of their bodies beneath the clothes anymore. Some wore foolishly too many layers; some wore suicidally too few. In fairness, they did have the group to absorb any