SCI-FI

GENERAL FICTION

SHORT STORIES

POETRY

HORROR

HOME

The bay is calm and silent as I sit here watching the sun go down. Hues of pink and orange meld into the blue as the fire ball retires and the moon ascends. I've been doing this for the past three years, no one else but us come here but us three, they all huddle together in the massed variants of the city believing that their saviour will come, that life will return to what it was before the leaders went insane and lead the world astray.

I was in the city when the first of the bombs fell, smoke, glass and bodies plummeted from the sky and a fine ash covered the ground, sirens whirred and the screaming of the souls caught up in the aftermath filled the air with an eeriness that I still can't describe. It made my skin crawl and terror filled my heart, the pounding of it in my chest was suffocating. I had one clear thought, only one my own safety disappeared, all I knew was that I had to find her. I'd only come into the city for a lunch date as I didn't much care for the smell or crowds of it's hum and now all I could think about wasn't finding safety or escape but finding Carol. I ran through the streets as chunks of buildings fell all around me up Elizabeth Street searching through the decay that was setting in, looking through the smoke for ... something... a sign.. .a familiar voice... I was spinning round searching...then I saw her sitting there with dirt in her eyes and a cut on her arm. We looked at each other both covered in cement dust and dirt form the fallout from the rubble, we mimicked walking ghosts all the horror movies had come alive. The clear blue autumn sky was disappearing under the shroud of decay. Glaring lights from sirens and choppers cut through haze, people ran towards the sound but I stayed till even though she tugged on my arm, I knew we had to leave that more was to come, that if we stayed we'd would most likely end up like those poor souls in the buildings that took the brunt of the attack.

I grabbed her hand and we left the park on foot and I headed for the one place I new we could find a way out up into Redfern, a quick glance and into the store I went stepping over a body. I looked up at the wall and grabbed a set of keys, I looked for what I thought was the most appropriate a dirt bike...I pushed it out the back filled the tank and turned the key the bike started and we headed out of the city. I'd never stole anything before in my life and I knew this was just the first of many times I would. The bike I was sure would get us out while anything else could leave us trapped in the waste. We rode all night there was nothing else to do, our building was gone and so was all we owned, we had to accept the fact that for now we were all we had and we clung onto that as the winter night bit into our skin through the leathers we took from the store. A sense of guilt kicked in that here we were and there were others clinging to life, other buried alive and those lost...while people searched for them.

As we rode out of the city a mass of people poured out of building all staggering and clinging to what they could find but none were truly moving, they looked like swaying flags of people frozen rigid to the pavement. I just kept the bike heading out. We had to get off the main roads so the back streets through the city and alleyways, footpaths even become our roads. The bike weaved through the maze before us in a snake like fluid motion until eventually I had not option but to lead the bike back to highways, onto the M5, it was so quiet, eerily so. We were now past Campbelltown and heading down Bulli Pass, I was tired and cold the adreneline was wearing out.

Up ahead I saw a building I turned the bike into the driveway and cut off the engine. We needed to rest and get food into our bellies if possible and this looked like it might provide both. It was an old fashioned service station they'd come back into trend, people had grown tired of the separatist attitude of business and the wise started being accommodating. As we walked up to the door there was sign blowing in the wind: "GONE TO THE CITY." We opened the door and walked in, fired up the stove and started to prepare food and coffee, she turned the TV on and we sat in silent morbid fascination as the news flicked across the screen. Most of it had been hit form Hornsby through to Parramatta, I shook my head in disbelief and relief that I choose to head south and not north. A demanding whistle from the kettle shook my sensibilities but try as I might I couldn't take my eyes away from the images. I walked backwards to the stove and made coffee for us and stirred to pot of food and headed back to watch the story being broadcast. Food came and went but the footage remained and it grew worse and worse. A sense of imminent dread filled the room and breathed through us, I started to cry all the fear, anger and fatigue poured out. We huddled close, shivering every now and then, then the power went out and we were alone in the dark with our demons. I didn't know what else to do but close my eyes, sleep encountered me but it was not restful as the days events stirred through my and didn't cease until I awoke next day.

Day bought no better news, the estimate was close to 1 million dead. A million people it was hard to take in, the enormity of it, the horror, the guilt that here I was safe and with my lover. My phone beeped I read the message: I'm ok are you? I wrote back to Jen and told her that we had left the city and headed south. She wrote back saying she was leaving the city were we sitting tight or moving on. I told her we weren't going anywhere to head to Malula Bay that we were holed up there. Ok was all she sent.

I hadn't thought of texting anyone I had no power cord and I didn't want to use up my battery but I subsided in that thought as I realised that stealing would become my way of life to survive I had no money and all the ATM's were malfunctioning so I'd just grab a battery charger when I needed it. I sat down and sent the same simple message that Jen had sent me: I'm ok are you? I sat down and waited and watched the TV. The day came and went and the only text I got was from Jen when she hit Gerringong I gave here the best direction I could and told her to text me again when she reached the main drag and I'd come and get her. 2 hours passed and then I left and returned with her, my lover was still asleep the note I left for her still folded, unread.

Jen and I sat there in total dismay. I looked at her and said " No one else has wrote back." "I know, it was silent my end too. I road out past Stacey's it gone, the whole street it just rubble." "Shit." "I don't, think anybody else will have made it" Jen said. I stood up and looked out the window no words, no tears. I walked back to the table we were sitting at and said the only thing I could think: "Shit what are we gonna do?" "I don't know came to reply." We sat in silence. Then she looked at me and said: "Your place." "I know. That's why we're here there was no point in staying in the drop zone." She nodded. "Is there food here." "Yep just scrounge around." I walked outside to get wood for the fire it was getting dark and soon the chill would hit and I didn't want to have to search in the dark. I walked around crying all my friends except Jen dead, a million souls the world has gone mad.

Over the next few days I fell into a routine check the news, cook the food, get the wood, I was nesting. The news never changed the death toll decreased though to around 700, 000 dead. It's strange to think that I felt a sense of relief about that but it was far less that the itnitial reports. Jen and Carol played cards, stress relief I suppose. We put a sign up saying OUT OF FUEL SORRY. Some stopped and pumped gas anyway but at least most just drove past. We had one visitor in the first two days, God Knockers, I just looked at them and told them to try elsewhere that I didn't believe in God, the kept talking as I closed the door. I got mad with them but I usually did not because of their message but because they have trouble understanding the word no. God Knockers, I started laughing here we were in the middle of the south coast sort of off the main roads and God Knockers still come a calling they're like Avon except Avon respect the word no. I went back to my routine avoiding what I knew was coming, if I keep busy then I don't have to process all these emotions, dangerous ground to tread but I was treading water faster than I had done for years and my head still kept on going under.

No one had claimed responability for these actions which mad it hard to know who to be angry at, at least with a target you can vent efficiently but who ever did this were not putting up their hand and waving their flag in the victims face. Watching the TV many theories expounded but none were provable and the city was going mad turning it's grieve in on itself, riot was taking place lost in the dank insanity that had set in and I knew then that I did the right thing to leave. I walked out of the room and down to the glorious bay and watched the sun set and started to cry and grieve for all my friends that I could only assume were dead or missing. Deep heavy, heaving, horrid pain leached out of my pores so immense that it swallowed me up and the bay became a blurred vision through the salty tears, the sky was red with fires and my rage leapt from me and I picked up the nearest thing a stick and started beating a tree. "What that tree every do to you." Carol had wondered down and we fell into each others arms and released the wailing of a primal instinct, echoing bouncing of the cliff further down the beach, the day disappeared under our heartache but the heart kept beating while thousand of others had ceased. Survivors grief crawled upon my skin in a tight fit like it did for every other person still living.