For September I’ll be pulling from several related short stories I wrote this summer, all dealing with the apocalypse.
Here’s what we have so far:
- “Special” – a pair of twins with special abilities living in caves due to airstrikes
- “The Graveyard” – a plague kills off most of a western mining town
- “E.L.E.” – two polar opposite campers must work together to survive a meteor strike
This week the story is “After the Flood.” It’s a bit more political than the other stories – a naive, pampered girl tries to survive when the economy crashes and anarchy becomes the ruling system.
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Looking back, what happened was a lot like when a dam bursts. There are little warning signs at first, like maybe there’s more water flowing out than normal, or tiny little cracks that the engineers only notice if they’re watching closely, but of course they’re not watching closely; they’re in the control room with their feet up, looking at porn on the internet. And then there’s a boom, water is everywhere, and in the aftermath half the towns downstream are littered with trees, chunks of houses, and dead bodies.
Our situation was similar. If you read the papers, you’d see little signs: “Multinational Bank lays off 5000 workers;” “Factory closing devastates BFE town;” “Police arrest hundreds of protesters after pipeline spills into waterway.” Or, more likely, you’d read the papers and not see any signs because they weren’t getting reported.
I certainly didn’t notice any impending doom, at least when I was in the moment. I didn’t think to hire myself a mercenary to guard my house, or cash out all my stock options and buy a thousand batteries and cans of chicken noodle soup, or build a bunker in the backyard or buy a remote cabin in Montana.
But my grandpa did.
* * * * * * *
Based on a comment from last week’s post, I think I’m going to compile all these stories, plus a couple more, into an ebook. Look for more details in the next few weeks.
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Great snippet! I love how you built it up. :D
I love this type of story!!! Lucky for her she has a prepper grandfather, I’d say.
Reading stories of this ilk have always made me think I should be more prepared … but then I realize that there are so many more likely scenarios, and in any case the details of the apocalypse would probably be so different that preparations would be useless. So basically it’s hopeless.
I get the feeling she’s going to be grateful for her grandpa–but that things are still going to be really difficult!
What a cool idea for a collection of stories all featuring different apocalyptic outcomes! I really loved the final line in this excerpt. Grandpas are good about being prepared. Something about wisdom with age. ;)