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Match B
Jun 18, 2010 4:54:43 GMT -5
Post by James on Jun 18, 2010 4:54:43 GMT -5
The Beginning [/center] From here, beneath the layers of soil and concrete, Andrew could just barely hear the sirens. Almost imperceptible vibrations were the only reminder of the explosions which had driven him under ground.
His fingertips lingered on the damp concrete wall and he closed his eyes; taking deep, rhythmic breaths trying to calm his nerves and come to terms with his life-saving sentence. It would be fifteen years, at minimum, before the heavy metallic door that had saved him from the chaos above was likely to be opened again. Fifteen years until Andrew would likely breathe fresh air again. |
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Match B
Jun 18, 2010 5:02:20 GMT -5
Post by James on Jun 18, 2010 5:02:20 GMT -5
Entry One [/center] From here, beneath the layers of soil and concrete, Andrew could just barely hear the sirens. Almost imperceptible vibrations were the only reminder of the explosions which had driven him under ground.
His fingertips lingered on the damp concrete wall and he closed his eyes; taking deep, rhythmic breaths trying to calm his nerves and come to terms with his life-saving sentence. It would be fifteen years, at minimum, before the heavy metallic door that had saved him from the chaos above was likely to be opened again. Fifteen years until Andrew would likely breathe fresh air again.
‘Or at least air that hasn’t been filtered, purified, recycled and re-breathed by a few thousand people, a few thousand times or so- ‘
“Drew! Get your ass in gear, man!” Melvin “Mel” Davis shot at him over his shoulder, the man’s deep bass voice resounding even through the thick, clear plastic faceplate. “Got no time for your weepy little girl shit – you can bawl your pussy ass off on the other side of the doors, when I’m all nice and safe.”
Andrew Harrigan laughed, the sound muffled behind the respirator’s mask. “Drew” to his friends and family - because from the time he was five-years old, anyone else who called him “Andy” would have earned an old-fashioned schoolyard stomping. And though Drew knew Mel couldn’t see his face for a damn, he did put on his game face, getting his proverbial backside on the move. Shouldering his M4 carbine, he hustled down the hewn shaft after the man’s retreating back, spitting out the only “witty” come back he could think of at the time.
“Fuck you, Mel.”
“Connie’d have your ass if she heard your potty mouth, Drew.”
Mel grinned big as he shouldered his own rifle, and began to trot ahead. The sirens’ braying din grew louder the further they went, the flashing red and blue-white warning lights affixed into the stone wall starting to give Drew a headache after a few dozen yards.
Finally, a steady warm, pale glow – the very real light at the end of this tunnel couldn’t come soon enough. The hewn stone floor beneath the two men leveled out as they approached a set of metal double doors, a good foot thick and still open, withdrawn into the stone vaults on either side.
“About goddamned time,” snarled a smaller figure, the feminine voice muffled behind a matching respirator and mask. Ice blue eyes narrowed with a bit of pique from behind the clear industrial plastic, one gloved fist punching an intercom fixture next to the doors’ massive frame. “Command, this is South Entrance. Harrigan and Davis are all clear – Repeat, Harrigan and Davis are clear, and everyone’s accounted for. Doors will be closed on your command”
“Copy South,” came a brusque voice over the speaker, “Initiate final shut down.”
“Aw c’mon, Bevins,” Mel said, that same eternal grin on his face as he watched her flip open a panel inlaid in the stone walls, “don’t be all angry – takes a while to lay down enough explosives to take out half a mountain - and a hell of a lot of skill, you know. Hmm… I could show you some time, if you like - some mad pipe laying ski- “
Bevins’ laughter – and whatever else Mel might have had to say – was suddenly drowned out by the near deafening sound of metal grating mightily against stone, as the doors ground to a close. Overhead, pipe spigots opened, releasing a pale blue mist over the soldiers as they held their arms out to the sides, turning in slow circles to ensure the decontaminant coated the entirety of their biochem suits. After the requisite three minutes dousing, another, smaller door on the far end of the stone chamber slid open, revealing a bare, metal-walled corridor.
All three began to strip their outer gear, tossing most of it into the incineration bins as they passed, and laying their rifles along the corridor walls for further decontamination at the first chance, later on. The rumbling from the explosions overhead had finally stopped – and none of them needed to be told, the next hour of their lives would determine whether there would even be a “later on.”
The corridor came to a T, with the “woman” latrine symbol and an arrow pointing one way, and the “man” sign toward the other. Mel slipped an arm easily around the woman’s waist, pulling her with a laugh toward the “wrong” side. “Drew won’t tell, Bevins,” Mel said easily, “Promise, he’ll close his eyes and everything - be a good married guy - if you want to do your part, conserve some water and- “
“Psh,” Bevins snorted with a laugh, extricating herself easily from Mel’s embrace, a half-hearted slap at his wide shoulder, “Not if you were the last man on Earth, Davis.”
“Oh, you know that’s cold, little lady - a seriously cold thing to say, right about now. What’s a guy gotta do, to get just a little human warmth? Huh?”
The woman shot a wicked grin and a glance toward Mel - and then Drew, a small shrug and a lift of her eyebrows relaying her own ambivalence on the subject, if only it weren’t for the extra company.
“In your dreams, Davis.” She began walking down the female-assigned corridor, a lingering look over her shoulder and a wink for Mel.
“You know we’re gonna be sleeping a long time, Blevins! I’m all in your dreams, beautiful! You can’t deny it!” Mel shouted as Drew began to shove him back down the men’s corridor, toward the showers.
**********
Several long minutes later, both men stood on the other side of the showers, skin tender from the harsh chemical soaps and hot water, but clean.
“Yeah man, I’ll see you topside.” Drew clapped Mel on the shoulder with a nod, turning toward the metal stairs that led down to the eastern section of the cargo bays. The rubber soles of his boots clanged hollowly against the steps as he strode down, one hand running through the regulation-short shock of still-wet red hair on his head, making it all stand up on end and every which way - just the way that always made Loopy laugh.
Drew sighed softly, green eyes darkening as he hit the bottom of the stairs. The bay opened before him, row-upon-row of softly lit, man-sized clear tubes stretching out in perfect lines as far as his eyes could see. A few technicians, dressed in variously-colored medical scrubs, moved here and there among the rows annotating their notes efficiently with clicking pens on clipboards, monitoring this and checking that, and so on and on – a whole bunch of technical stuff that was way above his pay grade.
He made his way down the third row from last, a trail that – even in the short time he’d been making this small pilgrimage – was as familiar as his own breath. Sixty-two. Sixty-three. Sixty-four and… hello, sweetheart.
The impersonal stenciled letters along the tube’s metal base spelled “Guadalupe Elizabeth Harrigan.” But a colorful drawing scotch-taped to the outer side of the clear tube announced, with bold green and pink markers in scrawling block letters the undeniable presence of the one and only “Loopy Harrigan.”
Butterflies and dogs (well, maybe they were horses – it was hard to tell with a child’s art at that age, and he hadn’t the heart to ask) covered every inch of that scrap of paper, lovingly attached to the outside of her “great big super-long sleepy-time bed.”
’She looks so tiny, was all Drew could think as he looked down at his daughter, those laughing brown eyes closed behind long black lashes, dark brown curls framing her lightly freckled face. He laid one hand against the surprisingly warm surface of his daughter’s “bed,” smiling softly. ‘Thank God, she’s the spitting image of her mother.’
And thank God, thank you God, again and again and again. Drew had to admit, when he’d first gotten the assignment, his orders to this out of the way hole in a mountain, stuck in the forsaken middle of nowhere? Oh, he had wondered who the hell he’d managed to piss off, either divinely or infernally. But if they hadn’t… if they hadn’t… ?
"It" started small, of course, only a couple years ago. And truth be told - no one could ever say for sure when it had started, or how, or really even where. But eventually “The Change” had crept up over the coasts of Chile from the Pacific. "The Change." Sure, the press-assigned name was innocuous, rather dull to say the least - but the initial swath of destruction was horrific. Fish and sea mammals died off in numbers that left the South American coasts a wasteland of rotting carcasses. And every so often, a thick, poisonous yellow mist would blow inland, choking every living thing unfortunate enough to cross its path.
The eco-zealots worked themselves into a frenzy of course, screaming their half-assed theories from every makeshift pulpit they could find, about secret giant corporate chemical dumps, or biological weapons, or the “natural consequences of anthropogenic global warming,” and so on, ad nauseum.
That is, until the first of the New Kind made their way to shore.
These… things, these creatures, they were like nothing anyone had ever seen before, all emerging from the oceans and infected shores in just a few horrifying months. The insect-like things came first, and then the reptilian kind, and even eventually some that resembled the remotely mammalian. And the mist didn’t kill them. As a matter of fact, they seemed to thrive in the thick poison.
Not, of course, that the mere presence of strange, ravenous new creatures deterred the endless screechings of the enviro-freaks. Mutations, of course! Had to be, right? How else to explain what had happened to what were once happy-go-lucky ocean creatures, obviously deformed into hideous monstrosities by the greed of giant corporate interests and the callous disregard of all those vicious SUV drivers, with their murderous carbon footprints?
The proverbial wind was summarily sucked out of fanatical environmentalists’ sails forever though, at the final, truly terrifying revelation: quadruple stranded DNA.
Alien. Whatever the hell was happening, it was not – and never had been – terrestrial in origin.
Drew sighed once more, letting his breath out slowly as he laid his cheek against Loopy’s “bed,” wrapping one arm over her. “Buenos noches, maricopita,” he whispered lovingly before standing to his full height, turning to look down at his beautiful wife.
“Consuelo M. E. Harrigan” read the block letters. Drew grinned, one deep red eyebrow raised as he looked down at her face, so very peaceful beneath the covering of her own tube. “What? Not going to take the chance to laugh at my crappy Spanish, Connie? I think I could get used to his, hon… ” He laughed, pressing his hand against the unyielding plastic above her heart. He’d have given most anything at that moment, to hear one of her scathing comebacks, her witty sniping - the habit of a lifelong New Yorker.
And God knew, he’d never managed to live that down. They'd probably be married a hundred years, and she’d still bring it up at every family get-together. Christmas. Easter. Barbecues. Baby showers… Drew couldn’t remember whose brilliant idea it was - his or Mel’s - to get those Spanish-language tapes before Connie’s grandparents came up from San Juan, when Loopy was first born. And he was still not sure what exactly the hell he’d said – but he was so relieved, when the screaming and tear-filled laughter finally subsided, that the Rivera family were big believers in “good intentions.”
Good intentions, grace and forgiveness. The silver twinkle of the tiny crucifix at Connie’s throat winked up at him. Oh, his Connie was a firecracker, for sure – but he’d never met a more beautiful, faithful soul in all his life. She’d taken the hot-headed mess he’d been most of his life, smoothed the rough edges gently.
Connie’d been his every reason to pull his head out of his ass and get himself together, join the military, take care of their little family.
And he never doubted - not even for a moment - that his every footstep was prayed for, protected and guided with every pass of her rosary beads. And far more importantly, Connie’s faith never wavered - not even for a moment - when the entire world turned itself inside out.
The aliens had landed – and somehow, no one even noticed. Space and surveillance agencies across the globe, from NASA to the Russian Federal Space Agency, were “baffled” according to their copious press releases – not that it mattered for long. As if someone had flicked a switch, The Change began to spread with a sickening speed, spreading its reaching geometrically, grasping fingers of irrevocable death across the oceans and the continents. Initial efforts to “quarantine” the affected areas of South America in the heat of nuclear fires were doomed from the start. Whatever the hell these things were, they brought their environment with them - atmosphere and strange plant life, single-celled and multi-celled organisms all consuming and recycling and regurgitating the rich primordial soup of Earth’s living biology for its own existence. The thin layer of organic life that had always lived on Earth was simply being eaten. Eaten and shat out for something no longer even… recognizable…
And somehow, some way – here they were, his little family and every last human being their reconnaissance teams could save from the outlying cities, all in “The Mountain.” This base didn’t really even have a proper name. Drew’s initial orders named some installation seventy miles away as his duty station. But here, and here alone, was where grace and fate and hope finally intersected.
The work the scientists and researches and engineers had been doing in The Mountain – cutting edge, highly experimental, pure science for its own sake unfettered by financial or governmental restraints. Suspended animation, faster-than-light travel – science fiction made real, all with the lofty hope of seeing humanity among the stars.
But with The Change, came a new sense of urgency to these brilliant men and women, the first inklings that something was about to be horribly, terribly wrong with the whole damned world. The unthinkable, really - that their ambassadorial flagship, mankind’s greatest technological achievement to date - might just wind up being humanity’s ark.
Fifteen years. Drew knew he shouldn’t think of it as a “sentence” – especially since he wouldn’t be technically “awake” for fourteen of those. Annual shifts for each of the six thousand, seven hundred and twenty men and women aboard, rotated out so that walking, talking people could watch the hydroponic projects, care for the animals they were able to salvage, keep an eye on the medical progress of the “sleepers” and pilot the ship.
Fifteen years, until they came to the first planet that might - just might - sustain human life.
“Ten minutes to launch. All personnel please proceed to your designated posts.” [/i] Drew started at the voice as it belched over the intercom, breaking his train of thought utterly and completely. He laughed softly, shaking his head quickly as he bent over his wife’s bed. He laid a tender kiss against the warm plastic nearest her full lips, desperately wishing he could look into those deep brown eyes right at this moment, find the encouragement and love he had always found there. “Te amo, mi corazon sola,” he whispered softly before standing once more, trotting to the metal stairs heading up. **********
“Shhh… It’s all right, Mira... Don’t cry now” Mel whispered, holding Bevins tightly, rocking her as she wept into his shoulder. Drew looked out the window below, grimacing softly as he shook his head. One hand was balled into a fist as his forehead pressed against the reinforced “glass” of the ship’s portal. Command had opened the blast doors after they’d left the planet’s gravitational field, a chance for the vast majority of people on board, who’d never been in space, to see space outside of Earth’s atmosphere. But right about now? Drew had to admit – this one time, good intentions were good, but that probably hadn’t been the wisest decision. Beneath them, lay Earth. Drew could recall seeing pictures of the “Big Blue Ball” in his science books, taken by satellites in orbit. It was always a breathtaking sight: deep blue oceans beneath wispy clouds of white, deep greens and sweeping browns marking the recognizable continents. A mixture of awe and pride, knowing that such a beautiful, perfect place was home. It had always been home, would always be home… But now… A sickly coral pink stained most of the ocean beds, and much of the once verdant shores had been stained a deep, burnt orange. The ivory clouds that had once covered the planet had been replaced with an unnaturally swirling wind, trails of sulfurous yellow traveling at an unnatural speed across the face of the world they’d once called home. ‘ It’s not right. God, it’s just not right. Our world… Our whole world is gone… Just… gone… ‘ He could feel the pinprick of tears at the corner of his eyes, his gaze dropping to his feet, so Mel woul’n't see. Not that the giant man would likely say a word – honestly, he looked about ready to burst into tears himself, if he weren’t trying so damn hard to be rock-solid for Bevins. And then, Drew heard it. A soft voice in his head – a whisper so gentle, so sweet and tender, he might have missed it were he not so very still. ’No Andrew. Your whole world, My son, all that will ever matter? Your world lies sleeping beneath your feet.’[/blockquote] |
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Match B
Jun 20, 2010 17:14:01 GMT -5
Post by James on Jun 20, 2010 17:14:01 GMT -5
Entry One's Reviews The story turned out to be a good idea but it seemed like it should've been a novel instead of a short story. A lot of the story didn't need an explanation and shouldn't have been put in. There were plenty of spelling and grammatical errors as well. However, the characterization, conversations and feelings were all done really well. The reader got the perfect image of the characters and what they were feeling as they had to leave their home planet. Overall it was enjoyable but I think more could have happened during this short bit of a larger story. For instance: Wouldn't the aliens have seen them trying to leave? Would they have tried to stop them and if so, how would they escape. *** “And though Drew knew Mel couldn’t see his face for a damn, he did put on his game face, getting his proverbial backside on the move.” In order to make things more..pleasant to read, add a little variation when you see two of the same word in close proximity. Perhaps replace the first “face” with “visage” or “features”. Very heartwarming, even though it took me until the end of the story to know exactly what was going on. Seemed a little light on the info leading up to the apocalypse, but you did try and I am very appreciative of that. Based on what I could piece together, it was a good story. Could have been better, kinda weird how you shifted gears from “fuck this shit rat bitch” stuff to “God loves me so”, but I guess that shows you what people do at the end of the world. No complaints. Very good job. I liked the final words – they really were an extremely good touch. |
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Match B
Jul 8, 2010 20:53:12 GMT -5
Post by Meleta/Isoldaa on Jul 8, 2010 20:53:12 GMT -5
That would be me...  With the crush in time, and the vision I had for this beginning, there were several important [to me] character-building sections I actually had to leave out. Though this one, I think I'm going to rewrite and repost, with the additions [and many further edits] >< |
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