No, I don’t ever write about happy things =P You should know better by now!
Short Story / And They All Came Tumbling
And they all came tumbling down...
Drip drop. Plip plop. The rain outside seemed to be playing, but it didn't serve to improve his mood any. “At least it's raining!” he could hear his grandparents saying. They had survived the Fall. “Maybe we'll have clean water this month.” The words of his parents, teenagers during the Fall. Him? He was a Child of the Fall. He knew the truth of it, or at least he thought he did, but what new generation didn't think they had all the answers? His answer? They were going to die.
He dropped his chin to his palm and sighed. His breath fogged up the acid-etched glass. Not that he could see outside anyway. He could only smell the dampness. It was a strange smell: that cloying scent of long-dry dirt clamoring in hunger for moisture, plants raging at the delay of their sustenance. Life and death warring over the olfactory system.
“Get away from that window!”
He turned. His mother stood in the doorway, one hand on her hip, her face angry. Getting close to a window these days had the same stigma as pressing your face to a microwave door had in the past. Your brain was going to roast. Except now, it was far more likely to come true. He wasn't sure why people even had windows anymore.
“Good God, how many times do I have to tell you?”
“Doesn't matter.”
“Doesn't matter? Doesn't matter my ass! Get back here!”
He got to his feet and trudged – trudging was all he was capable of – towards his mother, who was already stomping her way off to the half-rotted bunker door. Theirs had bee built under their house, back when Grand Papa had been very rich. That sort of thing didn't matter anymore. When your brain didn't work, not a lot of things mattered anymore.
So, he trudged. He supposed he should have been happy that he could trudge. Most people his age were confined to iron lungs or wheelchairs if they were lucky. Children of the Fall. He had no idea why people like his mother kept reproducing. There was no point. The Earth had bucked like an angry bronco and the Human Race had failed to hang on. That was that.
With some help he climbed down into the bunker where it was dry and musty and smelled of recycled air and old bodies. The bunker hatch closed and he was, for a moment, left in claustrophobic darkness before a mighty whirr noise filled the tunnels and dim blue lights kicked on along the floor. They didn't have enough electricity left for the lights in the ceiling, too.
Alas, it was the wont of a species to hang on, and cling the Human Race did. Mother Earth didn't want to be clung to, so She had made the Madness. At least, the Fall had been blamed on a world-wide loss of senses, that the current brain-plague wasn't a result of nuclear war, but had existed before it and was the direct cause of the conflict. The Human Race did what it did best, even as it was being swept away by an almighty wind: it pointed fingers.
He, himself, was a product of this finger pointing. In the years past, cosmopolitan men and women, concerned more with their careers than their prospective families, only had one child, if they had any at all. “Not enough to replace the couple!” the governments had shouted. “Not enough to make us grow!” the government had mourned. Perhaps they had all been counting on the third world countries and their religions to keep the production of little pink squirmy things at a maximum. They were out of space, but life was Sacred. They were out of food, but Providence would lead them through the dark years.
When the first bombs dropped and the cosmopolitan centers of big banks, big business, suburbia, and one-point-four children per family were wiped out, people didn't seem to mind. Of course, there were the typical raging newscasters, saying the attacks were a sign of weakness in the Government. There were more that said it was the anger of God for allowing X event to happen in X country; that we had sinned. There was the prerequisite rallying of the people for the first few months after the catastrophe. Suddenly everyone was brothers and sisters and in love with one another and were painting themselves and each other with the assorted shades of peace. That only lasted a couple of months, though.
Then the fissure happened. If everyone had remained friendly maybe, just maybe, they would have pulled out of the nuclear winter and the extinction of a good portion of the natural food chain. Maybe if everyone had just decided to stick it out and sing “kumbaya” for a couple of years, all would have been well. That wasn't to happen. Someone, a politician probably, opened his or her big fat mouth and uttered the fateful words “Someone else is to blame for this!”
And the sheeples nodded.
And the sheeples looked at the other sheeples.
And then all hell broke loose.
Suddenly, no one was no one's friend. People looking out for the welfare of others? Scam artists and lowlifes looking for easy prey. You were only worthy of God or your country or your government if you didn't give a flying rat's ass about your neighbor. It became very apparent very quickly that not giving a flying rat's ass came pretty easily to people.
There was looting and lynchings and cross burnings and flag burnings (hell, people burned everything they could get their hands on, if only to keep warm) and the talking heads on the TV yammered at each other in a language the parrots sitting in their living rooms could only understand phrases of.
No one had any idea what was going on.
Then Atmyra Corp. sprang out of the nether with an answer to everything: the bunkers.
Atmyra Corp., which had probably been some big-wig bank or pharmaceutical giant before the Fall, as it was now being called, had decided to dig big holes in the ground, deeper than the radiation sank, and then put people in them. “It's one-hundred percent safe!” Atmyra Corp. assured the people. “Each is stocked for fifty years for thirty families! Leave the nuclear winter behind and emerge into a beautiful, renewed world! All at the expense of Atmyra Corp.!”
Of course, it took a long time for Atmyra Corp. to convince even the sheeples to crawl into a deep, dark, concrete hole in the ground for fifty years. By the time they did, Atmyra Corp.'s first CEO's son had inherited the giant, and boy, was he a work of art.
Most people, even the ones living under the proverbial rock buried in pond scum, figured that the new CEO bullied the government with a lot of money, a lot of power, and a lot more lobbyists, because it suddenly became mandatory for everyone to live in the bunkers. Everyone. No screenings, no tests, no nothing. Everyone. Right now. Or else.
So, the people went down into the tunnels, taking all their disease and radiation and other general uncleanliness with them. Then the indoctrination started.
Breed, breed, breed, breed, breed! Restore the Human Race! We are not brothers and sisters in the eyes of God, but lovers and the closest kind that have ever existed! We know more about one another than any person has ever known about a person in the history of Man! Use this information to get close – and cozy!
Hundreds of years of genetic research and vague genetic training down the drain in a few panicked decades. The planetary Family Tree swiftly degraded into the planetary Family Low-Lying Scrub, with each bunker its own genetically inept DNA twig.
Then Atmyra Corp. vanished and left all of its poor, confused, incestuous victims in their holes to forget there was a world outside. Nuclear winter became nuclear spring. It rained. It rained all the time and the acid made the world melt and the bunkers damp and uncomfortable. Everyone had trench foot and a back rash. It was the common state of being now, just like having clean hair and braces-afflicted teeth had been before the Fall.
He looked at his hands: crooked, stubby, covered in some strange darkness-borne growth that made his skin red and yellow. He looked up, out of the shallow blue light that curled around his feet, but did nothing for his head, to the dark, dark ceiling.
What if everyone hadn't gone down?
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taiki24 reviewed Version 1 -
Read 17% of the Item
I enjoyed it! There is quite a lot more world-building that is usual for most short stories, but it was absolutely necessary with respect to the subject matter. I especially enjoyed some of the language used, especially in the beginning.
I think one of the major strengths in the beginning of the story is the sense of uncertainty and dread- not knowing what could possibly “fry the child’s brain” is very creepy and makes one want to read further. I would almost save some of the revelation for the very end, like the brain-virus part. To build that over top the already devastating nuclear holocaust would be quite effective.
I feel that the transition between the 11th and 12th paragraph (the 12th beginning with the word “alas”) is a bit abrupt, but that could be softened by moving things around a bit. Other than some minor spelling errors, the grammar was very good.
I like this story! It’s exciting! /thinlyveiledstartrek11quote
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Talross reviewed Version 1 -
Read 100% of the Item
(Theirs had bee built ) Been.
(Alas, it was the wont of a species) Want?
(Suddenly everyone was brothers and sisters) Were? I think? I think there should be a comma after “Suddenly,” too.
(Suddenly, no one was no one’s friend.) No one was anyone’s friend?
And this is so creepy and dark. Do you ever write about happy things? Still, I like it.
Rhonda9080 reviewed Version 1 -
Read 17% of the Item
Ok—so no way I’m going to make you have to read (instead of write) just to open this review.
This is brilliant! This is genius! Reminds me of a System of a Down song… Keep it up, and yer all going to die mutherf**&ers—or worse, ect (but I don’t play vid games). This is the “worse.”
Doesn’t matter what the inspiration—its amazingly good doomsday piece. But done without heavy, florid hand. You never once gave me the sensation of being scolded or preached at,
My only critique--needs a little more profound ending. It is a short story--it is complete, but does need an ending that packs a little nore punch—but short and sweet sumation. You are a genius (I do not say this lightly like you think). It will come to you.
Then it is ready for sale (in my humble opinion)
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