Apocalyptic Shorts (8 page)

Seconds later, I raise my face from the sand, the wave is gone and the pod is back together and it looks dead. I notice something up in the sky right above us, I look up and see a big object with faint lights on its belly hovering quietly above us, it’s a ship. The sight of the strange looking ship gives me goose bumps and a lasting chill. It is like nothing I’ve seen before; it is striking, and definitely alien.

“Dad,” I call quietly. He’s already seeing it too. The pod clanks back on and shoots up at the ship and in a blink of an eye, the ship is gone.

I look toward the black-eyeds, they are all on the ground, not moving. I get up on my feet and move toward them slowly. Paul calls me, but I don’t answer. I don’t know why I’m moving toward them, but I have a feeling that whatever that ship just did, it’s not evil.

As I get closer, I see a movement among them, and then more movements. I stop, my eyes wide open, chest pumping, thinking whether I should still be here or I should be running back to Paul. What's left of the fog clears out and I hear the voice of a little girl. “Mommy,” she says.

I move a little closer, my gun ready to go off if it needs to. A man moves toward me, and just as I am expecting, hoping, his eyes are normal, and the black veins are gone, only a trail of it left on his face. He is looking around, exhausted and confused. I look back at Paul, he’s already behind me.

The people I once referred to as black-eyed, people who were ready to tear me apart minutes ago are now normal again, or at least, they look normal. They walk around, moving away from one another, probably wondering how they got here.

Paul’s phone rings. “What’s going on out there?” Faye asks from the phone.

“I think––it’s over Faye, it is over.” He hangs up. He puts his hands on my shoulders, looking into my eyes. “I’m proud of you son.” He hugs me. His body presses my wound enough that it hurts, but I don’t mind. I hug him back.

Together, we walk into the once insane crowd.

I don’t know what really happened here, I don’t think anyone does. But my best guess is aliens tried to destroy us, aliens saved us.

Now that I’m no longer being chased by a bunch of crazy people with black eyes, now that the adrenaline has faded, I have time to think about my loss, my mom. I am suddenly filled with intense grief and emptiness. Paul puts his hand over my shoulder and pulls me closer, just what I needed. I look over the horizon, the orange sun is setting, and for the first time in several hours, something feels good to me again. A flash of green light appears briefly over the horizon, and then it’s gone.

The End.

In the last thirty years, prophecies of doomsday have become rampant, people claiming to be prophets, scientists, time-travelers from the future, all giving prophecies about the end of our world. But of all these prophecies, only one turned out to be exact and accurate, and that was the one prophecy that was ignored.

Twelve years ago, Dr. Phil Lucas, a weather scientist at the University of New York published his findings on the activities of our planet’s core, claiming that the core of earth has become increasingly unstable, and that in twelve years or less, there may no longer be a place for us here. He wrote of how the planet will explode from inside out, how everything on the surface will be swallowed into molten lava, he warned, he really warned, but no one took him seriously. At a time, some renowned scientists discovered something very similar to Dr. Phil’s theory, and for that time, some references were made to his findings, but it was eventually concluded that the entire theory, even theirs was based on a wrong equation.

Twelve years later, it turned out that equation wasn’t wrong after all. But by the time this was discovered, it was already too late. A week prior the 14th of March, 2014, volcanos all over the world began to erupt without warning. Well, there were warnings, but it all happened so fast, and there wasn’t enough time to do anything about it. After the eruptions which lasted two days, several thousand lives were lost and the planet engulfed in cloud of ash.

It was thought that the nightmare had come to an end, but as it turned out, they were wrong. On the 14th of March, year 2014, an earthquake of great magnitude like never seen before began, entire countries swallowed into the ground. It lasted an hour, and that one hour, was humanity’s darkest hour. Hours after the earthquake had stopped, over 800 million casualties were recorded worldwide, over 100 million injured and over 400 million are unaccounted for.

A few days after the planet-killer earthquake, people had hoped that it was over, but they know better now, they know that whatever it is they’ve seen, it’s only just the beginning. It became clear that the foretold apocalypse is upon us, and there is no better way to spend the little time left than with beloved ones.

MY NAME IS BENJAMIN STEWART, A COLLEGE STUDENT HERE IN NEW YORK,
or at least I was, until two months ago, when the apocalypse began, and then we learnt it’s not going to stop, and that there’s no escaping it. If we’d seen the signs long before it started, I’m sure the world governments would have figured something out, like evacuating the planet on gigantic spaceships. But the signs were there, we just weren’t smart enough to see it.

Yesterday, I read in the news about one Dr. Phil in L.A who predicted this doom some years back, but no one believed him. We were caught unprepared, and there was no time to prepare for the great escape, not even sure if our science can achieve such feat just yet.

It started with all the planet's volcanos erupting at the same time, then the earthquake, the sky filled with ash, several millions perished, but I survived, and it’s not because I was smart, it’s that I was lucky.

I’ve waited two months for the ash to clear out, and thanks to favorable weather, I can go¬–
home
now. Home–actually, for me, is wherever I find myself. I was the only child of my family, and my parents died of failed hearts three weeks apart, seven years ago. All I’ve got is my uncle, who I despise so much because of all the bad things he’s done to me. And honestly, I’d rather die alone in my hostel apartment than with him.

To my surprise, he called three days ago, he was sober. He said he was sick, and he’s got less than two years, but that don’t matter anymore, we’ve all got less than two years, and he wants to spend the little time he’s got left making up for the things he’s done. I never thought I could be sorry for him.

Point is, I’m heading back to Glendale, L.A, my hometown, to spend the end with my uncle. I may hate him, but he’s the closest thing I have to a family now.

I’ve been on this queue four hours, in this overcrowded airport. Everyone is trying to make it back to their families. The airport’s operation is slightly different now; it must have been adjusted to suit the current traffic situation. While I wait on the queue, tapping my thigh and stomping my feet rhythmically, I hear my name from the speaker. I look up and see my picture and my name on the big screen, I sigh and shoulder my backpack. I hurry and join a group of people moving towards one of the planes, as directed by the men in uniform.

Entering the plane, I move through the aisle to the back, where there are only three empty seats. I pick the spot most convenient, lock my backpack in the overhead bin and crash into the seat under it. It’s a lot of relief for me, considering that I’ve been standing on a queue for over four hours.

Right now in here is the first peaceful moment I’ve had in two months. I remember the life I had before the chaos, my friends, my girlfriend. When the earthquake first hit, I was in class with my girlfriend. I watched my art teacher Mrs. Bells get crushed by a building block right in front of the class. That day, we met with Harry, my best friend, and we were going to escape in his minivan when I saw Amy, also my friend, running towards us, screaming my name. We stopped for her, then she twisted her ankle. I had sprung out of the car to help her when the ground cracked open beneath the car and a pillar collapsed on top of them, crushing them into the ground, my girlfriend, my best friend and some random people we let in, just like that, they were gone and I was lucky.

Lost in abstraction, my eyes are focused on the small screen on the back of the seat in front of me, but I’m not watching whatever the screen is showing. Something on the screen gets my attention, but by the time I’m ready to focus, the headline is gone. I’m not sure what I read, but I think I saw something about some strange energy behavior around the globe. I hear a female voice singing softly beside me, I look and there right next to me is a very pretty girl, about my age, blond, green eyes, smooth skin, and I find it hard to believe I didn’t notice her when I came in.

“Hey,” I say, moving my mouth closer to her ear. She has a headphone on, and probably can’t hear me, or she’s just pretending not to.

As usual, a flight attendant begins to speak through a speaker, but I don’t pay attention.

The plane takes off, and I begin to feel dizzy. It’s my thing, I do it every time I’m in a moving vehicle, it’s my easiest remedy against motion sickness. I take a moment to look around, and then I glance at the girl beside me. I wish she doesn’t have a headphone on, so we can talk, but, it’s obvious she don’t want to be disturbed.

I relax comfortably in the chair and close my eyes.

I hear a very loud explosion, as if a gun was shot right beside my ears. I snap out of my sleep, panting, my face covered in sweat. For a moment, all I can hear is a very loud and intense ringing in my head. I close my eyes and try to calm myself. The small screen for my seat is off. I shake my head, trying to get my brain and ears working. I turn to the girl beside me, her headphone is now around her neck, and she looks really worried, she’s looking at me. I look around, and everyone is worried, some getting out of their seats to see something out the window. I open my mouth and breathe through it, trying to slow down my heartbeat, and then I hear the sound. It’s as if we’re flying through an asteroid storm, but we’re not in space, and of all the times I’ve been on a plane, I’ve never experienced a turbulence as intense as this, loud and deafening. I turn to the girl, she’s scared to bone and she’s almost crying.

I look past her out the window and see something strange and unclear. I get off my seat and move closer to the window, what I see is still strange, but clearer. If this is cloud, then I’ve never seen this kind before. Bands of bright green and bright blue and bright many colors, all spinning forcibly on to one another in every direction, and they’re spinning so fast and spinning around the plane. The window cracks, I jerk back, falling, I grab on to the headrest of a seat. From where I am now, the picture outside the window becomes clearer and familiar. I squint and realize that it looks like something from physics, like some kind of visible energy flow. I fall back into my seat and buckle the seatbelt. The turbulence is getting worse, and the plane is vibrating aggressively. The girl buckles her seatbelt too.

“What is it?” she asks. “What’s out there?”

“I don’t know, it’s very strange,” I reply.

The plane suddenly goes sideways and then upside down. Those who didn’t wear their seatbelts begin to fall about as the plane spins with the flow of energy around it. People are screaming, crying, getting tossed about, and trying to hang on to something.

The plane stops spinning. I look out the window and it is bright white, and some shades of light brown, I can tell this is cloud, and whatever that spinning thing was, it’s gone. But the plane is upside down, and we’re losing altitude fast. I realize the plane had lost power when I woke from my sleep. I take a really deep breath, I’m sure the pilots are doing their best to restore power right now.

Knowing that I’m falling out of the sky and that there’s nothing I can do about it, I press my back tightly against the chair, bracing myself the best possible way, getting ready for the impact.

“We’re gonna die,” the girl yells, crying.

I nod. “Yes we will.”

She grabs my hand really tight, looking straight into my eyes. I can see it, she’s afraid of dying, but she can’t do anything about it, no one but the pilots can. I close my eyes as the plane goes down, shutting out the noises and everything else, but the girl’s grip, and I wait for the impact.

I hear a very brief explosion from all around, and then, everything goes black.

I open my eyes, I’m still strapped on to the chair, and the seatbelt is all that’s holding me. I try to move my head, but it feels so heavy and painful. I look down, there is a sharp object directly below me and it’ll kill me if I fall off from the chair. I realize I’m staring at the bare ground, sand, and the sharp object is a stone. The plane is torn apart, and I survived. I hear a groan and look, it’s the girl, and she survived too. I check my body, and aside from the heavy headache, I think I’m fine.

“Hey,” I grunt.

“Hey,” she says.

I wait a moment till the headache subsides. I unbuckle the seatbelt and grab on to the chair before I could fall. I grunt. I find the ground with my left foot, not looking down. I let go of the chair, help the girl out of her chair and carry her to the ground.