Before, During, and After: How the Flare Ended the World

By J. Thorn, Zach Bohannon, C.R. Vine and 16 more

The end is coming.

When the Flare scorches the earth and drops the grid, humanity is forced to survive in a post-apocalyptic world.

A group of superb writers gathered in Cleveland, Ohio at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame & Museum to collaborate on a stunning end-of-the-world anthology for the "Rock Apocalypse" writer's retreat hosted by J. Thorn and Zach Bohannon. These talented writers wrote a collection of short stories in a co-created world that will satisfy even the most hardcore post-apocalyptic readers.

Before, During, and After is the new post-apocalyptic anthology published by Molten Universe Media. All proceeds will be donated to Prayers From Maria, Children's Cancer Foundation in Cleveland, Ohio.

Stories by: J. Thorn & Zach Bohannon, C.R. Vine, L.A. Beckett, Sam Korda, R.J. Spears, Chrishaun Keller-Hanna, Tory Element, Lori Drake, JP Rindfleisch IX, Christy Moceri, James R. Essien, Sheila McQuaid, Mark Leslie, Kevin Partner, Philip Carroll, Christopher R. Wills, Dean M. Watts, Jason Hanley

• Language: English
• Publisher: J. Thorn
• Release date: Jan 17, 2020
• ISBN: 9781393916369

Book preview

Before, During, and After: How the Flare Ended the World

Before, During, and After: How the Flare Ended the World

A Post-Apocalyptic Short Story Anthology

Molten Universe Media

Copyright © 2019 Molten Universe Media

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Cover by Roy Migabon

Edited by Eve Paludan, J. Thorn, and Zach Bohannon

Contents

Introduction

Three Things I’ll Never Do Before I Die

About C.R. Vine

One Night in Wraithwood

About L.A. Beckett

The Demon of the Lake

About Sam Korda

The Sunroom

About R.J. Spears

Erie

About Chrishaun Keller-Hanna

Tam’s World

About Tory Element

A Sister’s Burden

About Lori Drake

Desolate Ocean

About JP Rindfleisch IX

Hunting

About Christy Moceri

The Timeless Way of Building

About James R. Essien

The Collapse

About Sheila McQuaid

Piss and Vinegar

About Mark Leslie

This Godless Endeavor

About the Authors

The Last Criminal

About Kevin Partner

Highway 49

About Philip Carroll

Home

About Christopher R. Wills

Huckleberry’s Last Stand

About Dean M. Watts

We The Lost

About Jason Hanley

More to Read Plus a Free Gift

Introduction

In May of 2019, the apocalypse came to the shores of Lake Erie, where a determined group of writers met inside the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum to decide how the world would end. These talented writers spent several days at Rock Apoc, building an exciting and expansive universe in which to set a collection of short stories inspired by the best post-apocalyptic and dystopian fiction.

Infused with the energy of the city that rock built, Cleveland, Ohio, we spent several days with a group of amazing authors. We talked about how the world could end from the comfort of a private VIP meeting room inside the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum. But it wasn’t all work. We drank and played video games at 16-Bit Bar and toured the incredible collection of artifacts at the Rock Hall. And even more importantly, we bonded as a group with a shared mission.

For months after that festive weekend, the writers worked on their stories—from the most basic pitch and premise right through to a final draft. Each author brought his or her own unique brand of storytelling to the table, which has resulted in a fantastic collection of rich, diverse stories.

Without becoming a spoiler, some of our stories involve the emergence of disease created by the apocalyptic event, namely cancer. Because of that, the Rock Apoc authors have decided to donate all proceeds to Prayers from Maria, a children’s cancer foundation based in Cleveland, Ohio. We thank you for your contribution to this worthwhile cause.

And now, enjoy these tales of the apocalypse, inspired by the heavy and dark music enshrined in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and Museum. When the Flare ended the world, find out what happened Before, During, and After.

---

J. Thorn & Zach Bohannon

November 2019

Three Things I’ll Never Do Before I Die

BY C.R. Vine

Voice Memo: Friday, June 21

"I’m dead.

Well, not dead, but dying.

One minute, I was in the Draconis Assembly Station, orbiting the Earth, living in a cross-section of shiny cylinders, floating around metal corridors draped with wire, looking out at the docked nuclear-fusion rocket we built.

The next, I was sucked into the cold vacuum of space.

I don’t even know if you’ll get this. But if you do, you’ll probably wonder why I sent you this message. It seems strange, when I think about it. We have no relationship now, never had a relationship, only recited daily news facts or theories of warp drive in a back-and-forth way that approximated conversation. You wanted me to take an interest in space, in the stars, so here I am, suspended in the middle of them.

I lived an astronaut’s life.

I’ll die an astronaut’s death.

You taught me that friends and relationships weren’t worth talking about. Maybe that’s why I have so few. And why I’m gifting this to you. And why you and Mom divorced.

Right now, I’m trying hard not to wish Mom had moved to Maine while you’d stayed in Denver. I won’t have my last thought consumed by death. And it’s not my intention to get the last word in a decades-old fight.

I wanted to say I’m sorry. That we never found a better solution. That I can’t find one now.

I want you to know, I cared. About you. About everyone.

When they carve this event into the history books, maybe these logs will help get it right. Maybe the books will say, Avery Haul died so others could live.

Or maybe they’ll say I killed millions of people.

It doesn’t matter. Both ways are right.

From life comes death.

From death comes life.

Live well, Dad.

Live long and…

Log Entry: Thursday, June 20

I made the list two years ago, the day I left for DAS. Three Things I’ll Never Do Before I Die. I opened my unused passport, hidden paper no one would ever see, the varnish smell of UV toner strong as the spine cracked. Smooth liquid ink flowed onto the first of seventeen blank pages, the letters squiggly as I wrote over textured lines that formed the Liberty Bell.

1) Find love.

When you see the other side of forty, you figure if the real thing hasn’t happened yet, it won’t happen at all. I was too old, too cold, too career-driven for that nonsense.

---

Charlie and I arrived on the DAS first. Claimed our phone booth-sized rooms, each with a sleeping bag strapped to the wall. Stuck an American flag sticker on the late arrival’s door and laughed and laughed.

At first, the absence of gravity was disorienting. Up was down. Down was up. My salt-and-pepper ponytail stuck straight up, or maybe straight down, as I floated around the cramped station, clutching wall-mounted handlebars for balance.

But when Gav arrived, he marched in with perfect posture, as if gravity continued to exist in his immediate vicinity, because the Earth refused to let him go, wouldn’t give someone so beautiful up to space. Our eyes met, his were self-assured. He stuck out a muscle-corded hand more hardened than the face it belonged to; he was a man still young enough to believe life went on forever and could be bent to his will.

Gav’s hands felt like a knot of rope but moved delicately enough to draw a finely detailed hammer and sickle on both my door and Charlie’s ceiling with a red Sharpie.

He never called me Commander. Only used the bare minimum of my name. Avery. Sometimes Aves. Or just Ave. Stripping my name down, peeling off letters.

I convinced myself it was about language. That he wanted to use as little English as possible. That it wasn’t intimacy.

When you’re crammed into a tin can that circles the Earth every two hours and you lose track of day and night, and time goes on in one continuous stretch for two years, it’s hard not to get close to the two other people you work with.

It’s hard not to notice the scent of fresh soap beneath the sugary, welding-fumes smell of space.

The Draconis was a collection of large and small spheres clustered around a cylindrical core with two metal cones at each end. The construction of the Draconis—the nuclear fusion-powered, unmanned, interstellar spacecraft that would probe Alpha Centauri—was mainly robotic, giving us, the human overseers, time to waste. Time to joke and get comfortable. Silent stretches where I did nothing but dream up witty repartee and how Gav might react to my dialogue. I felt like a teenager.

Two years brought us to that moment. Starting the test run of the internal confinement nuclear-fusion system.

Right then, in the Draconis’s combustion chamber, a small amount of deuterium and helium-3 was being bombarded by electron beams, causing it to combust; it was the tiniest fraction of an explosion, compared to detonating a whole pellet, which would blow up like a small thermonuclear bomb. The chain reaction, one thermonuclear pellet exploding at a time, would provide enough fuel to get the craft to Alpha Centauri.

A powerful magnetic field confined the nuclear explosions and would also channel the resulting high-speed plasma out the rear of the spacecraft to provide thrust. The following day, when the tests ended, we planned to detonate 250 pellets a second, giving the nuclear-pulse rocket a blistering cruising speed that would be reached during an acceleration phase lasting two years.

But that night, we celebrated.

Pizza crusts. Pizza sauce. Pepperoni. Chunks of smoked gouda.

Alcohol’s forbidden in space, so we toasted with grapefruit juice sucked out of plastic bags.

Gav put on the made-for-TV Russian movie, The Irony of Fate, or Enjoy Your Bath! for the thirtieth time. I still didn’t really grasp the film, but my Russian had gotten good enough that I understood a lot of the words. The plot is that everyone gets really drunk, and a man finds himself on a plane to another city where he ends up in the apartment of a stranger and they fall in love. There’s a lot of singing.

Charlie couldn’t stop fidgeting. He picked at a fingernail bed with his thumb. About forty minutes later, he blew out an exasperated breath and went to bed.

Gav and I were alone.

Gav watched the movie in silence, and I watched him. The hum of electricity, the circulating air, the Russian dialogue, all the sounds of the station, were ambient, except one. Gav’s breathing. His inhales and exhales echoed in my ears until I couldn’t concentrate on anything else.

And then, there was the light. Or lack of light. The Pacific Ocean was in darkness as we passed, the surrounding land lit up as if North America was its own constellation.

Inside the station, rows of miniature bulbs provided low illumination for sleep-mode. The light from the screen rolled different colors and textures over Gav’s skin: gold and red and white as the actress playing Nadya sang a poem by Akhmadulina. Gav’s face was unreadable as she crooned about finding strength in loneliness and how the weight of friends’ deaths made Russians stand tall in the face of broken ties, fragile happiness, and cruel fate.

Vzayat’ sibya v ruki, he whispered.

Take yourself into your hands. My pulse fluttered. Most people would feel melancholy while they contemplated the lyrics. Gav felt emboldened. He smiled a little, clicked his tongue like he knew a great secret. He turned and looked at me.

We looked at each other, breathing.

As the movie cut to an outdoor scene, the screen lights muted to a dark-blue glow. I could see each angled edge and deep shadow of his face. And in contrast to the subdued light and noise, the smell of fresh soap heightened.

He looked at me with crinkled eyes.

And in the darkness, I saw every molecule of him.

Those perfectly straight eyebrows.

The way his fine hair stuck up at the crown.

Pain tingled in my chest and I realized I held my breath.

We’re a good team, he said, one cheek raising higher than the other. His voice was strong, his meaning stronger.

The moment was there, a tangible vortex of opportunity where I could take the plunge or let it slip away. I was the commander. There were protocols. We’d be back on Earth in a few weeks. There were women his age there. It wouldn’t last. It wasn’t real. The feeling was a fake product of circumstance. So many thoughts flashed through my mind.

I started breathing again. Anise flavor from the pepperoni lingered in my mouth.

And then, my lips were on his. Our tongues together.

My hands clutched his back, and his strong hold on my hips pulled me closer.

Like we floated outside the station, desperate to breathe each other in.

It was so much life in the dead of space.

It was something I never thought I’d cross off my list.

Log Entry: Friday, June 21

I woke with a cry in a dark room that flashed red while warning sirens blared. Something held me, a heavy bar across my chest. I pushed as hard as I could, gulping breaths, scrambling to get it off. The bar felt soft and warm in my hands. Fully awake then, the logical part of my mind kicked in, and I remembered Gav crammed into my sleeping bag with me.

Hey, he said, holding me tighter. Don’t panic. Everything’s fine. Probably something with the tests. It will just mean launch delay. He leaned down, trailing kisses across my collarbone before he whispered, We’d better find our pants.

The room strobed red while we got dressed, as did the hallway we glided through. I bumped into the wall, scraping my wrist on the head of a screw as we came to the main computers.

We were moving.

Which meant it wasn’t the Draconis spacecraft tests going awry. It was Houston.

Thrusting to avoid debris, Gav said.

Maybe.

Gav nodded, reading my mind. They don’t move us this quickly for debris.

Or set off alarms.

There was a message to call.

I put on my headset on as Charlie joined us, still rubbing his eyes.

This is Commander Haul. Calling as ordered.

DAS, this is Mission Control. Harold, the thin, stretched-out flight director appeared on the screen. We’ve picked up an enormous halo coronal mass ejection shooting toward you fast. The magnetic particles are the strongest we’ve ever seen.

I pressed my lips together, then said, That’s impossible.

We were in the trough of the eleven-year cycle. We’d planned the build schedule to avoid this exact scenario.

It’s happening. We’re moving you as far from the center as we can.

I nodded my head, ready for directions. They would have a plan. NASA always had a plan. Instructions?

Gav’s hand rested on my shoulder, a steady weight. Charlie rubbed the hem of his shirt between his fingers.

You have… fifty-five minutes until impact. We’re shutting down as many redundant systems as possible. Put on your suits in case of total power loss. EVAs to be safe. The side furthest from Draconis will be most protected. Weather the storm there.

After a long pause, I said, Roger that, Houston.

The alarms shut off, but a high-pitched ringing still echoed in my ears.

We’ll get it hard down here, Harold said. It could black us out for days, so we’ll be out of contact. But your systems will be fine. Power up once it passes. It shouldn’t last more than an hour or two. Harold looked down, not making eye contact.

With a firm tone, I said, We survived that baseball-sized meteor. We’ll beat this, too.

Wh—what about the fusion engine? Charlie said.

The tests you’re running are small. It won’t be an issue. No more time for discussion. Get your suits on. Harold repeatedly flicked his hands, shooing us away.

We’re on it. DAS out.

I closed the computer and headed for the lockers, Gav and Charlie following behind. The ship went to emergency lights as Houston shut down nonessential systems. I looked at the clock. Fifty-two minutes until impact.

We suited up. Putting on a spacesuit takes about forty-five minutes. You put on special undergarments that run tubes of cold water over your body to keep your temperature regulated. Next, the communication cap, not that I expected that to work during a magnetic storm, but you never know. Then pads to keep you from bruising; the suit weighs about 280 pounds. After that, you pull on the lower-torso assembly, which are essentially pants with shoes built in. Then hold those pants up as you float over to the upper-torso assembly, which is mounted to the wall of the space station. Squat. Stand up. Snap the bottom to the top. Next, put your helmet on. Button that up. Last, your gloves. Gav buttoned up Charlie. I buttoned up Gav. Then I put one glove on. The last one was a bitch to get snapped together with no one able to feel with their hands, but we got it done. Gav’s strong with bullish determination.

I checked the clock again. Six minutes until impact.

All right, I said through my com cap. Let’s get as far away from the Draconis side as possible.

I moved into the hall, Gav following behind me.

After a few steps, I stopped. Charlie hadn’t moved.

Charlie. I smacked my gloves together. Snap out of it. Far side. Now.

I think, Charlie said. I think I should stay closer to the Draconis.

What? No. You heard Harold. It’s not a problem. They ran the numbers. We go to the far side.

Just in case—

—not happening.

I started up again and this time, Charlie followed.

We hunkered down in the gym, surrounded by a rainbow of tensor bands tied to the wall as we sat on the treadmill built into the floor.

Gav and I stared at each other. He held me with those coffee-colored eyes.

After a few minutes, we lost all power as the storm hit. We sat in darkness and silence. I could hear my breathing inside the hollow of the helmet, but no one else’s. The coms had conked out.

We held steady in orbit as we always did. Everything would be fine.

We waited in the dark, the pure oxygen making me feel light-headed, the EVA suit keeping my temperature comfortable. I didn’t feel worried as the time passed. I tried to count it off. Thirty minutes or so went by. Then maybe closer to sixty. The storm would run its course soon, and the emergency lights would signal that we could turn the systems back on.

Then, I felt a lurch, a sinking feeling in my stomach like falling a floor or two in an elevator.

We’d dropped.

Charlie motioned to the other side of the station, and I got his meaning. Something must be wrong with the Draconis.

At first, I shook my head inside my helmet. He wouldn’t be protected over there. But the storm would be over soon. And we needed to find out what was going on.

Finally, I nodded. Charlie pressed his gloves together in thanks. He kicked off the floor and went bouncing out of the room. Gav and I bounded after him.

We flew through corridor after corridor until we reached the rec room. Its window looked out at the Draconis. Charlie was already there, on the other side of the plastic storage bags of books and games, helmet pressed against the thick glass. I pushed off the floor toward him.

When I reached the window, the emergency lights flickered on and my com crackled.

Charlie was saying, Shit, shit, shit, as I took in what had happened.

A hole. About five feet long by ten feet wide. Metal torn outward like someone had peeled the spacecraft’s hull apart.

Shit, shit, shit, Charlie continued as Gav stuck his head between us muttering, Eto piz ‘dets.

I won’t translate that one.

The blackened edges left one conclusion. An explosion. Right at the location of the nuclear-fusion engines.

I froze, watching bits of debris drift away from the craft. If those hit us, there would be a serious problem. If we didn’t already have a serious problem.

We need to get to the computers, I said, my heart beating in my throat.

We raced to the computer lab where we flipped systems back on, not all of them working, pulling up diagnostics from the tests we were running on the Draconis.

I looked at the most critical information first. The magnetic containment field was down, and I couldn’t turn the system back on. Which meant something over there had fried in the storm. Which meant we had unprotected thermonuclear bombs.

A dropped containment field, while disturbing, wasn’t a crisis as long as the nukes were still dormant. The number-one thing I did was check on the computer that they were dormant. I struggled to maneuver the thick gloves of my suit, sweat coating my palms despite the sweat-wicking undergarments. The suits weren’t meant to be worn inside the station this long. And my racing pulse wasn’t helping keep my temperature down.

Confirmed. The nuclear pellets were still inactive. There was no detonation in progress. I heaved out a sigh, my breath fogging the inside of my helmet for an instant.

Here. Gav pointed to his screen.

There was an anomaly with the plasma containment, but I couldn’t tell, right away, what had happened.

Without power, Gav said, the containment field dropped and the rocket switched to the backup system. The test material overheated and blew during the switch. But the test chamber is separated from the pellets. They weren’t affected.

That’s what dropped us out of orbit, I said.

Shit, shit, shit, Charlie said.

Charlie’s breathing was so loud in my com, I could barely think. We’re still dropping, he said. Moving at a steady pace.

Then I was the one cursing. What systems do we have?

Computers, Gav said, life support, emergency lights, not much else.

Thrusters?

Negative.

Charlie’s voice shook. Should we evacuate to the lifeboats?

Negative, Gav said. They’re fried.

What do we do, Commander?

Can you calculate our flight trajectory?

I… um… yes. Hold on. Charlie typed with two fingers. We’re… He went quiet.

Charlie, I barked. We’re what?

We’ll be in the atmosphere in seventeen minutes.

Do you have a precise path? I had to keep Charlie thinking pragmatically. Step by step.

Yeah, I think so, yeah. We’ll come down on the Pacific coast, on the shoreline west of San Jose.

I started up cursing again. I couldn’t help it. Options? I asked, mostly to give me time to think through a plan. That’s what a commander did. Also, three heads were better than one, and I needed their thoughts focused.

When we hit atmosphere with the Draconis torn open, it could initiate thermonuclear detonation, Charlie said.

I said options, not problems.

Once we started atmospheric entry, we’d be out of options. And out of control; a burning hot ball.

If we hit the coast and those thermonukes go off…

He didn’t have to say it. If detonation started, those nukes would kill a lot of people wherever they hit. But if they crashed into the coast, there’d be intense shock waves. Violent winds. Vaporized water contaminated with nuclear material that would inject right into the stratosphere, lingering for months or years, severely altering global climates, wiping out life on North America.

That’s a problem, not an option, I snapped.

We sat staring at each other. When you find out you’re about to die and take the continent with you, what do you say? What do you do?

Scenarios ran through my head from the simple to the outlandish.

We need to alter trajectory, Gav said.

We have no thrusters, Charlie said.

We can open an airlock. Gav’s voice was so quiet.

He left out the part that opening an airlock without depressurizing it would suck us into the vacuum of space.

Yeah, I said. Push the Draconis out into the middle of the Pacific where the water is deep, and it can’t do any damage.

Maybe if we wait, the thrusters will come on. Charlie’s voice had gone high and nasal. Maybe we can boost ourselves back up. We might be okay.

How long until entry? I said.

Fourteen minutes, Gav said.

I want to go home to my family, Charlie said. Holly. And Jeremiah. He’ll be four next month.

Charlie, run the projected trajectory if we open the Draconis-side airlock.

Charlie jumped up from the console. I’m getting out of here!

Gav grabbed his wrist.

Let go! I’m going to the lifeboat. Charlie shoved him and they went spinning into the middle of the room.

Gav. I pointed to the clock.

Gav nodded and released Charlie.

The lifeboats were inoperative. He had nowhere to go, and we were out of time.

Charlie skittered away, his short breaths and gulping swallows flooding the com.

I slid in front of his computer and ran the trajectory. Opening the airlock would put the Draconis right in the middle of a whole bunch of nothing except an abyss of ocean water, leaving me and my crew to suffocate in the cold emptiness of space instead of burning to death.

Do it, I said.

We need to do it manually. Gav held his hands palms up. That system’s down.

Gav opened the inner door of the airlock, and we moved inside the circular space just tall enough for us to stand up.

The good thing about the power being spotty, he said, is the system doesn’t know the airlock is pressurized.

Gav grabbed the long arm of the lever.

Open it, I said.

Aves, Gav said. I’m glad for last night. Then he cranked the handle.

My stomach crawled up into my throat.

Nothing happened.

I went over to help. We pushed together. I felt the muscles of my lower back wrenching but kept on pressing.

Nothing happened.

Guys! It was Charlie’s voice. His blubbering had turned to gasping that had gone quiet until I’d forgotten I could still hear him on the com.

I’m sorry I freaked out, he said. There’s no excuse. But I’m okay now.

Glad to have you back with us, I said. I didn’t say, Couldn’t get into the lifeboat, huh? That wouldn’t have helped.

I got to thinking, he said, that the heat from the blast probably melted the metal on that side. Likely, we can’t open that airlock.

I looked at the seal around the outer door and saw a slight warping. Roger that, Charlie. Looks like you’re right.

Now what? Gav said.

You could open the airlock on the far side, Charlie said.

What good would that do? I said. It would put us in the middle of the U.S.

Denver, actually,

I was quiet. Then I said, My mother’s in Denver. A pediatric nurse for thirty-three years, she’d wanted me to be a doctor. To save lives.

If Draconis crashed into Denver, hundreds of thousands of people would die instantly.

If it crashed on the coast, hundreds of millions would die within a short time. But it might give my mother time to evacuate.

Are you sure it’s Denver? I said. What’s the margin of error? What if I green-lighted this drastic maneuver and something unforeseen happened? I couldn’t imagine what it would be, but that didn’t mean there wasn’t a worse possibility.

Really, really small chance of error, Charlie said.

Gav grabbed my hands. The Russian flowed so fast I didn’t catch a word. He cried freely, without shame.

My tears flowed quietly, and I wished I could rub them away.

I looked at the clock. Nine minutes until entry.

Let’s go, I said.

We took three minutes to cross the station, Charlie slipping in with us on the way. Two more minutes for Gav to open the inner airlock.

Then he wrenched the outer airlock’s lever.

The handle turned.

Getting sucked into space feels like nothing at all.

One second, you’re inside the DAS. The next, you’re floating in orbit.

The DAS and the Draconis continued to drop straight down as we drifted away.

You have no control when you’re suspended in outer space. There’s no jetpack. You can’t generate momentum to swim through the air or dive down.

You just float. Sure, you can move your legs and arms, but then you’re flailing helplessly, and the EVA suit is cumbersome, so your muscles fatigue quickly. And it wastes air.

Still, I wish I could shoot over to Gav. He’s about ten feet away. Charlie is further. Maybe twenty feet.

I’d hold Gav’s hand, curling my fingers inside the stiff gloves until they numbed from the pain, but I wouldn’t let go.

The oxygen in an EVA suit lasts about six hours. More than enough time to watch as the coronal mass ejection turned the Earth’s upper atmosphere into a kaleidoscope of colors, waves of indigo and mint-green above a North America now dark, all of its starry lights knocked out by the solar storm.

Enough time to watch Draconis enter the atmosphere. I guessed it was about 65 miles above the Earth when it could no longer orbit and began rapid re-entry. Less than a minute passed before pieces started breaking off. Another minute, and it was a ball of fire.

What did the people of Denver think? Did they start to run? They’d barely have time to understand what they saw and take a few steps.

The speed at which everything happened made it difficult even for me to process, and I knew what was going on. It was hard to feel anything but shock.

Watching the explosion from that far above, it looked like a fluffy poached egg spreading over the black mountain west. A perfect orange sphere in the center surrounded by a ring of white cloud, surrounded by other concentric rings of gray, then darkness.

For a few seconds, my whole body went numb, like it wasn’t there. I didn’t have a body. I was an incorporeal awareness floating in the middle of nothing. Watching this beautiful symmetrical event unfold.

And then, all the sensation rushed back in. The heavy pressure in my heart. My short and shallow breaths. The warm paths of tears that ran down my face, leaving more moisture around my neck than my garments could wick away. I watched flashes of melting faces, my thoughts lingering on my mom—her straight, black hair matted with blood, burned skin streaked with dirt.

I know that’s not what happened. I know she was incinerated before she realized what was going on, but I couldn’t tell my brain what to see.

Or maybe she was somewhere else. Maybe she’d taken an impromptu vacation. Maybe I hadn’t killed her.

Oh, God.

I’d killed her.

How did I make that choice? It had seemed logical at the time.

The tears wouldn’t stop.

What other choice could I have made?

I had no answer.

The fluffy egg turned to gray thunderclouds. Rolling out. And rolling out.

It seemed like forever before Gav broke the silence. May the dead forgive us. And the living move on. He sighed. It’s funny. My brain understands the atrocity, but it’s hard to think about anything but this primitive urge telling me I’m hungry.

Yeah, I said. The human experience is a strange one.

You know what I’ll miss? Gav said. Crab salad. And brandy.

I’ll miss seeing my son grow up. Charlie’s voice broke for a second. I wonder if he’ll go south. Maybe Holly will raise him in Mexico, and he’ll speak Spanish.

I’ll miss retiring, I said. Starting a simple life. Like normal people do. Growing a garden. Watching worms turn the soil. But I guess nothing will be normal now.

We can try. Have a little bit of normal right now. Gav’s tone was somber, but deep with warmth. Ave, I promise you love until death separates us.

Gav made me smile. So open about his feelings, and such a sober sense of humor about death.

That’s the most romantic thing anyone’s ever said to me. I also promise you love until death separates us.

We won’t be buried, Charlie said. When the oxygen runs out, we’ll freeze to death.

Our corpses will drift away together through the vast expanse of space for millions of years, Gav said. Maybe we’ll land on a planet in another galaxy. Maybe our organic tissue will start life where there’s never been life before. How is that for a romantic story?

And in that time on Earth, there will be deaths, I said. Millions of them.

But life will continue. Gav paused. Adapt. Maybe become something new.

No one said anything after that.

And that’s when I decided to use the last of my oxygen to record one last entry. Maybe so the people of Earth would know what happened. Or maybe I just wanted my oxygen to run out first. Because asphyxiation didn’t scare me half as much as watching Gav and Charlie suffocate.

"…prosper, Dad. Do more than prosper. Live. Live by exploring all the hidden spaces of life where you find the unexpected.

Cross items off your wish list.

I think I’ve finally crossed off all mine.

1) Find love.

2) Make amends with Dad.

I hope that’s what I’m doing. I don’t know if this will get to you, and if you’ll listen.

Or maybe someone else, something else will listen. And that’s okay, too.

But I hope it’s you who hears this. I want you to know I died okay.

It was my time to face my mortality. That’s all.

From life comes death.

From death comes life.

The third thing on my list? If you find my passport, look inside. See if I can cross that one off, postmortem. See if I left behind more than I used up."

About C.R. Vine

C.R. Vine’s short fiction has appeared in Apex Magazine, Grievous Angel, the Exile Publishing anthologies, and Runes & Ruins magazine. She is also the co-author of the steampunk adventure The Emerald Key (Ticonderoga Publications). She lives in Southwestern Ontario with her husband, son, and cat, Mrs. Norris.

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www.crvine.com

One Night in Wraithwood

by L.A. Beckett

Celeste put the letter and the other item Slater had given her into the suede case, tied the leather bindings, and pushed it into the far corner under the bed. She shook her head. Jovi’s bunk was unmade as usual, his guitar and a pirate hat tossed on the rumpled blankets. She hadn’t imagined the legendary trader of information would be so disorganized.

Celeste! Come out and have a drink with me.

The wind on deck blew back her bangs and lifted goose bumps on her bare neck. She looked up to greet the stars by name as they awakened in the setting sun, then closed her eyes, inhaling the night air, savoring the fresh smell of the forest. She had dreamed of this since she was old enough to comprehend what the life of a Stargazer for the Great Lakes Alliance offered—an opportunity to see what was left of the world.

Jovi let out a belch that would make a bullfrog proud and tossed his empty wine cup over the edge of the boat, into the Mississippi.

Celeste opened her eyes but kept them on the stars. "All