Tails of the Apocalypse (14 page)

They were alone on a tree-studded slope, and Santiago turned and regarded the man. He still held the photo in his mouth, but he could go no further. His energy, fueled by a desperate need to save the shopkeeper, was spent at last. He was sure the man hated him now, would turn him out into the streets. But Santiago could not muster any feelings of anxiety regarding this. He was too exhausted and closer to death, perhaps, than he’d ever been, the strain of the journey too much for his aging heart. He would not be able to make the return trip. He set the picture down on the ground and drew back, his head bent low, preparing for the man’s anger.

The man came forward slowly and collected the picture. Three white strands of his hair had escaped from his wispy comb-over and fell into his eyes. “Why? Why, Santiago?” he pleaded simply, as if the cat could answer. Then he placed the picture in his pocket with his notebook and turned to look down the slope at how far they’d come.

A kaboom shook the earth, and the top of Mt. Vesuvius exploded, throwing a mushroom cloud of smoke and debris into the air to rain down on Pompei and the neighboring communities. Cinders fell around them like burning, black snow, and the heavens turned hazy as buildings went up in flames. The smoke plume above the volcano ascended into the sky where it spread and blotted out the sun.

The man sank to his knees and stared at the flames, the destruction, the utter decimation. Red sprays of lava leapt into the air and showered the already burning villages. Santiago choked on the thick air, his heart beating in dull throbs.

The man started to weep openly. “Oh Santiago, Pompei, Naples, Torre del Greco, Scafati … they are all gone. Did you know this was going to happen? How? Did you bring me here to save me? You brave cat. So brave, Santiago. But I am dying. I have only a few more weeks, maybe months to live. I was content to die. To join my Sofia. And now, I must watch the destruction of my home, of everything I have ever known. Oh, my Santiago, there is no poetry, no dance of words, that could express the agony of this moment.”

The sky grew increasingly dark, and the thin lines of rain marked the sky. Except it wasn’t rain. It was falling ash; burning, incendiary ash. It started to fall all around them, graying the air, searing their skin; burning away Santiago’s fur and the man’s clothes.

They had not run far enough away.

Within seconds, the ash became thick and unyielding, and although Santiago through his pain and failing eye thought he could see the edge of the ash storm farther up in the mountains, there was no way two old men, exhausted and dying, could outrun the blanket of ash that covered all.

“There’s one all the way up here,” Zoey called to Devon. She waved to him from behind a patch of dry brush that covered the desolate hillside. “This one is really well preserved.”

Devon jogged up the hill carrying all of their scanning equipment. As he studied the figure, he said, “Hmm. A man and his cat. Nice find, Zo. I’ll have the guys come and get it. This one must have been on the edge of that rainstorm that came up just after Vesuvius exploded. The details are nice and crisp.” He tapped the stone lightly with his small mallet. “Sounds hollow. We might be able to get some good information from this one and cast it.”

Devon moved on, as he always did, in a hurry to find the next specimen, in a hurry to collect their data and get home and away from this blackened no man’s land of beetles and scrub, back to their home in the green north.

Zoey paused and glanced back at the man. She’d become an archeologist because she’d wanted to know how their ancestors lived before the United Colonies of the North became one of the last remaining outposts of civilization. She was curious as to how human populations had operated when the earth still supported over seven billion people, with countries on all continents. She could hardly imagine—seven billion people. Surely that was an exaggeration.

She’d read all the accounts by the elders, all the stories of the 753 people who’d survived because they were in Arctic outposts or on research vessels in the north. But the historical record had so many gaps, so many varying stories, and there were so many deniers. Even now Rainy Armestan was gathering people around him to build his case that the elders had lied about the relative equality of the races and women, about the seven billion people. Because, after all, if the predominantly white colonies had been placed on earth by the divine God of the North only a few hundred years ago, if the seven billion people had never existed, if the races had never been equal, then that would justify the extermination of the wastrel clans to the south. Call into question one element of the elder accounts, and they all became suspect.

But now that the atmospheric ash layer had dissipated and the ice had receded, colony archeologists were beginning to find hard evidence to back up the claims of the elders. The ruins around Vesuvius were particularly special. In most parts of the world, the supervolcanoes had incinerated everyone and everything in the surrounding area; and the subsequent famine and ice age had eradicated much evidence of human civilization.

But Vesuvius’s ash fall had preserved many people and buildings in stone, allowing their dress and customs to be studied. And here in a pocket to the east of Vesuvius, a heavy rain right after the ash fall had cooled the stone sufficiently that the artifacts were encased and mummified, rather than petrified, which allowed for even greater opportunities to collect DNA, and actual objects from the epoch of the explosion. The researchers yesterday had even discovered a small cache of intact books—a gold mine of cultural information—in a house at the bottom of this hill.

Zoey looked back at the ash-formed statue of the man, his arms cradling the small feline with a stubby tail, and his head bent over the cat as if to protect him; as if he might be talking to the cat as they both sat, waiting for death to take them together.

She fluttered away a tear on her eyelash that discovering and recovering bones had never caused her before. At least they knew one thing for sure now: their ancestors had loved animals.

Specimen 4938; Mt. Vesuvius
: Extremely well-preserved specimen of older man with cat. Exposure to brief rain subsequent to ash fall hardened shell without fully destroying clothing and other items on body. Man was carrying a small book entitled
Le Poesie di Santiago
by Alberto Rossi, and a picture of a woman with “Sofia 1979” written on the back. No other information was found. Man and cat have been removed to Vesuvius Warehouse 1 and are to be taken to the Colonies for further study. TBD if the ash-fall outer mold is strong enough to cast a life-sized statue.

I love animals, especially companion animals. I sometimes get into trouble for greeting my friends’ pets more enthusiastically than I greet my friends. I’ve owned hamsters, guinea pigs, rats, goldfish (who hasn’t?), cats, dogs, assorted bugs, and a very large snail (a.k.a. Snailie—well, he was actually my son’s, but we all felt his loss keenly). Right now, I have two crazy and beloved cats—one almost 19 years old and the other almost 19 weeks old. I’m also a known dog borrower and cat sitter in my neighborhood, and I spend a lot of time outside dodging the bears, who seem to like to hang around in our yard and on the trails in our community. So when Chris Pourteau asked me to participate in this anthology, I could not have been more thrilled.

Santiago came to me as a fully formed character. Even though I have a geriatric cat who continues to defy our vet’s expectations and is a major hit in the old folks’ home when she visits, Santiago is his own man. My pets, and the pets I look after, continually surprise me with their intelligence, heart, and problem-solving abilities. It was fun to explore how a crafty street cat might navigate and contemplate his life, and writing about the deep bond that can exist between humans and animals was both a joy and a privilege. I know that when the apocalypse hits, I want a few four-legged friends watching my back.

I live in the mountains of British Columbia where I ski, run, write, and keep cats. Add in two teenage boys and their friends, and mayhem often reigns in my household. I also work as an environmental researcher and strategic planning consultant when the cats agree to get off my desk.

I write science fiction, romance, and dystopian fiction for children and adults, including
Apocalypse Weird: Reversal
in Wonderment Media’s Apocalypse Weird world and
A Pair of Docks
, which was a bestseller in children’s time-travel fiction. I’ve also contributed to several anthologies, most notably
Synchronic: 13 Tales of Time Travel
, which hit #16 in the Kindle Store.

You can subscribe to my blog for the latest book news and industry insights at
www.jenniferellis.ca
. I tweet about writing, cats, and teenagers at @jenniferlellis.

I’m Demon
. I’m a good boy. I know I am because Emily told me so.

“Get in the car, Demon,” Emily says, frantically pulling my lead, trying to drag me into the open car door. Emily is my human and today is not a very good day. Evacuation sirens wail all around me. “The Prophets Wept, hurry!”

I don’t want to. I whine and pull back, pushing away from the door.

Even though I’m a good boy, I don’t want to get in the car today.

Sometimes the car is good; it takes me to the park, or to the vacant block near the water purification plant, where I can run and play and jump. Sometimes it takes me to the vet. Then the car is bad. I can normally guess which one it is. If we’re going to the park, Emily is relaxed and happy; if we’re going to the vet, she’s unhappy and stressed.

I don’t know what to think of the car today.

Emily is terrified.

I can smell it on her. The other humans, her parents, are scared too; the stink of their fear is everywhere. Emily’s father is in the steering seat. Her mother is in the other. She has the boom-maker from their cupboard. I can smell something strange in the boom-maker. Sulphur and chemicals and metal.

All the humans in this block are scared. And that makes me scared. There’s so much noise; thunder in the distance and flashes of lightning.

I run to Emily every time there’s thunder, and she’s never scared; she soothes me and tells me I’m a good boy. This is different.

This time the thunder scares her too.

“Emily,” says Emily-mother, her voice stressed. “We have to go. The roads are going to be blocked if we don’t move.”

Emily starts to cry. This upsets me more. I pull away from the car. She pulls back.

“Come on, Demon! Get in, get in!”

No! I don’t want to get in. Normally I’m a lot stronger than Emily, but fear gives her power. She drags me roughly into the back seat. My neck hurts. Emily-mother slams the door behind me so I can’t escape.

The car starts to move. I jump up, looking out the window. Our house, red bricks and green grass, disappears behind us. We’re heading away from the park and toward the vet. I start to bark. No vet. Not while there’s thunder.

So many cars, all driving in the same direction. Some are going on the wrong side of the road. With a thump, our car drives up on the middle part, and over to the wrong side, too. Cars swerve, and their whining engines hurt my ears. They are driving so fast. Heedless. Away from the house; away from everything.

Running.

The sky lights up in flashes; huge clouds billow, black and bruised, on the horizon. They rise in strange ways, like no cloud I’ve ever seen before; a giant ball of cloud slowly rising, and there’s fire underneath it. Then another flash, and another. They hurt my eyes.

“Shit!” says Emily-father, his voice hollow. “They’re using nukes. The evacuation hasn’t even begun.”

I don’t think we’re going to the vet.

The car swerves to one side. A huge car is coming down the road—it is like a very big box, and it has a big boom-maker on top of it. Our car gets out of the way. Another car doesn’t; the big metal-box drives over it, crushing it like a can. The people inside die. Did they have a good boy too? I didn’t see.

Another metal-box is right behind that one. And then another. It is a long train of metal-boxes with strange wheels. They have boom-makers on top.

“We have to get going,” says Emily-mother. “Can we get around?”

“The tank just drove over those people,” says Emily-father. “I don’t want to get too close. Hang on; if I swing on the outside…”