The news anchor nods to someone off-screen, presses her ear for a moment and says, “We’re going to show this again, but once more, we must caution our viewers that the footage is very graphic in nature. Children and those sensitive to such sights should not continue viewing.”
The news anchor is replaced by a shaky video showing a crowd of women. At first I don’t see what’s important, then the video shifts and I see my mother. The crowd is shoving her out in front of them, pushing her with each step. Gone is the serene smile, but her eyes are forward, focused on the distance as always. Her expression is calm, like the crowd isn’t there. She’s covered in blood and bruises, the place where her left ear should be nothing more than a blackened hole above a river of blood.
I put my hand out toward the screen, then snatch it back again so that no one will notice. Suddenly, the crowd on the screen becomes almost a single organism, the voices one as they rise in some fever pitch of anger. They surge around her, sucking her into their many-armed maw. All I see is a last flash of orange jumpsuit and one slender, bare foot before that is gone as well.
Within seconds, I see parts of her flying up and out of the crowd of women. The camera tries to follow the flights of these pieces, but shifts to the next too quickly to focus on any one bit of her. A clump of her red-brown hair flies toward the camera, and it finally focuses where the clump lands on the street, the pale strip of scalp clearly visible.
And then it is over. She’s gone. Truly and forever gone.
I back out of the crowd and reach for my phone, swiping past the pictures in my gallery to land on the last ones I took of her. It was perhaps two weeks before all this started and I had sensed that she was coming close to allowing me in. My persistence was about to pay off. There was something different about her and I could feel change in the air.
While I snapped the pictures of her going into the front door of the pharmaceutical research lab where she worked, she paused, her back to the lot where I was parked with my camera. The pause was long enough for me to get good pictures of her shoes and her skirt, the neat chignon she had put her hair into that day.
Then she turned from the door and I saw her scanning the lot. I fumbled for the camera, not wanting to miss this opportunity, and jumped from the car. I’d waved at her and called out, “Mom! I’m right here!”
I held up the phone, my fingers tapping the camera as fast as I could. Her eyes didn’t land directly on me, but it felt like that at the time. My pictures show her gaze shifted to the left, somewhere on the car next to me, but her serene little smile had widened, her lips stretching far enough that the dimple in her left cheek showed for a flash of time.
I look at those pictures now, while the screams sound out from the TV as they show the footage yet again. I wonder what that smile meant. At the time, I had thought it meant we were close to a breakthrough, that I would be the daughter I knew she wanted me to be and she would be the mother I wanted her to be.
Now, I’m not sure. There’s something cold in that smile I hadn’t seen before. There’s a knowing look in her faraway eyes.
I hold the phone to my chest and look at the room filled with near-hysterical women. I still have this. I still have her.
After another hour of waiting—they turned off the TV to calm down the room—a harried-looking woman calls my name. She waves a file at me and I follow her back to a cubicle that smells of sweat and cleaning products gone sour.
“Sorry about the wait,” she says and opens my file while she taps at the keyboard with one stubby finger.
“It’s fine. It’s been a strange few months,” I say, my tone conversational.
She gives me a sharp glance at that, then shakes her head. A new screen pops up and she reads, then says, “So, it says your home was destroyed by fire during the emergency and you’ve lost both parents.” She points to my file and says, “I only have a father listed here. Your mother?”
I shift in my seat at that, but say, “Ah, no mother. My grandmother is my other parent and she died too.”
The woman shakes her head again and starts typing. “So many in your shoes. As if it’s not bad enough that we’ve lost all the men, we’ve got all this destruction too.”
I don’t say anything to that.
She hits enter and leans back, a new screen popping up almost immediately. “Okay, you’re set. It’s the freshman dorms, but you’ll be able to apply for a grad student room in time. That all right with you?”
I nod and smile, automatically reaching for that little smile my mother used to have, then shifting to the one that always made my grandmother happy instead. That seems a better choice. And practicing my mother’s smiles won’t do me any good anymore. My mother won’t be here to see them.
ELEVEN – DAY ONE HUNDRED AND EIGHTY
It’s the first day of classes, but it’s not going very well. Everything and everyone is late, the class sizes absurdly large, and the room I’m in incredibly crowded. It’s been six months since we lost the men of our world, and it’s time to start moving on.
Including going to school. We need scientists now more than ever. Who knew there were so few women in these fields? I’ve heard there’s a research group that can turn skin cells from a woman into a viable sort of proto-sperm, but that’s just one solution. We’ll need a lot more solutions to keep going in a world without men. Even boy babies born now don’t survive.
A girl breezes into the room and shoves my bag toward me so that she can take the seat next to me. It’s the only seat left and I had hoped to keep it clear by putting my bag there. She flips back her long, blonde hair and smiles at me. She has amazing teeth.
She shoves out her hand and says, “Amanda. You?”
I look at her hand for a second too long and she almost retracts it by the time I reach out and take it. “Camille,” I say.
“Ooo...that’s a pretty name. I’m thinking about changing mine,” she says with a twist of her mouth that makes her look cute.
“Why? It’s beautiful. Very elegant,” I say, noticing how pale her eyebrows are, almost the same color as her hair. I try on a smile like the one she just gave me. It doesn’t feel right. I’ll need practice.
“Ah-MAN-da. It has “man” in the middle. Very awkward nowadays,” she says.
I only nod at her, bowled over a bit by her teeth and wide smile. Her hands are as elegant as her name, but not in a manicured sort of way. She has color underneath the edges of her fingernails, like paint or colored chalk, then I notice the same little brush strokes of color on the thighs of her jeans.
“Do you paint?” I ask, pointing with my eyes toward her hands.
She examines the streaks of rainbow colors under her nails and laughs, but it doesn’t sound like a very happy laugh to me. She says, “Yeah. It’s part of my therapy, you know? Getting out grief with creativity or whatever.”
I can see it now, the sadness underneath her wide smile. I flip my hair back too, though it isn’t long enough yet to give the same effect as hers. Like the smile, it doesn’t yet feel natural to me. It will though, given time. I widen my legs a bit so that I can brace my foot on the crossbar of the seat ahead of me, just like she’s doing.
We smile at each other as the professor comes in, sees us all, and lets out a tired breath. She slams her books onto the surface of the podium just a little harder than she needs to and starts erasing the whiteboards at the front of the room.
“Got a pen?” I ask Amanda, slipping my own pen into my pocket.
She hands me one that’s been chewed on the end till it’s a ragged mess, and says, “Sorry, that’s gross, I know.”
“Not at all. I do the same thing,” I lie.
The class starts and I listen carefully. I feel better now, more sure about what I should do. I’ve felt somewhat less than myself lately and I haven’t been able to find a new friend to take the place of my mother.
Amanda and I are going to be great friends—best friends, I can tell. I know I’ll find the key to he
r heart if I just try. And I will. I’ll try and try.
A Word from Ann Christy
I love doomsday fiction. I’ve read loads of it, watched the movies, sat glued each week to the TV for each episode of my favorite doom-ish shows. One of the things that always nagged at the back of my mind was how we got there. Unless it’s an asteroid or something, there’s usually a human element to our doom. It reflects the widely held belief that humans are the greatest threat to human existence.
I’ve often wondered what private events unfold in a person’s life that allows them to make that choice to do mass harm. In “A Mother So Beautiful”, I decided to roll all that back to the beginning, to examine the small things that might lead a person to say, “This is a viable option. This is a logical choice.” It’s a dark series of events, but tragically, the root causes for what happened in my story are all too common in our world. We don’t hear about it much, but it’s there.
I sure hope you enjoyed the story and want to read more of my work! You can find me on social media and see what I’m up to at http://www.annchristy.com. If you’d like to try more of my stories (for free!) then you can sign up for my VIP List here: http://eepurl.com/buDy4r
Ann Christy is a recently retired Navy commander and secret science fiction author. She lives by the sea under the benevolent rule of her canine overlords and assorted unruly family members. She’s the author of the Between Life and Death and Silo 49 series, as well as assorted dark and light fiction. You can find her most often still running about in her pajamas as she imagines new worlds to write about.
The Voices That We Keep
by Aaron Hubble
DASTIN STEPPED OFF THE SHUTTLE RAMP and onto the surface of another poor excuse for a planet.
“I don’t understand why they keep trying,” Dastin said.
Because they’re still alive. And they’re still alive because you’ve failed over and over again.
“You know I hate you,” he whispered to the voice of his long-dead father.
Yet I’m still here, in your head. Face it, boy, you need me.
In life, Dastin had little use for his father. He’d beaten and belittled him when he was young, and then later tried to ride the coattails of Dastin’s political success. In death, the man’s voice had taken up residence in Dastin’s head, making him feel like that ten-year-old kid again.
With a scowl, Dastin coughed and covered his mouth. The air was thick with the acrid smoke of burning buildings and scorched vegetation. The plasma cannons of his orbiting ship had done an effective job of reducing the village that sat on the edge of a massive swamp to little more than ash.
Village? That collection of hovels? Please.
“So true,” Dastin murmured, answering the voice.
Around the edge of the village he saw small patches of green. Little gardens, perhaps. Dastin raised an eyebrow. Somehow the refugees had coaxed something living out of the soil on this rock.
He heard the clank of his droids marching up the muddy path toward him. The red light from their optical sensors pierced through the haze. They stopped in front of him and dropped a woman at his feet. Mud splattered Dastin’s boots.
The woman moaned, cradling her raw and blistered arm. Plasma burns. Dastin sneered as she struggled to push herself out of the muck and into a sitting position. Her clothing was worn and faded. Patches covered the knees and elbows, the cuffs badly frayed. Mud-encrusted hair hung limp over her gaunt face.
This is what you’ve been chasing for fifteen years?
“Yes. And now I have them.” He smiled and wiped a fleck of mud from his pants leg.
About time.
Dastin studied the woman. Was this refugee what humanity had been reduced to? Trying to scratch out an existence on some dirt-ball light-years from their true home, wearing clothes that should have been turned into rags years ago. All because the man they called their leader had made Earth uninhabitable with his Environmental Restoration Matrix. His E.R.Ma.
Dastin’s jaw tightened. The machine had killed everything. It had killed his wife.
The droid who’d dropped the woman spoke. “The human female was one of the last in the village. She was hiding in a small building.”
Dastin crouched and looked the woman in the eyes. “Where are the rest of your people?”
The woman coughed. Her eyes closed and her brow wrinkled as she wrapped thin arms around her chest until the coughing stopped. Taking several clipped breaths, she was silent for a moment before looking at him.
“I remember your face,” she whispered, wiping red-tinged spittle from her lips. “From Earth, before E.R.Ma. Felix Dastin, Chancellor of the Earth Alliance for Environmental Restoration. You worked with Dr. Jackson. That was you, wasn’t it?”
His hand shot out and gripped her throat. “Do not associate me with that murderer.” The woman’s eyes widened and she thrashed weakly against his grip. Dastin felt the heat in his face rise at the sound of that man’s name. The mere memory of the empty promises of ecological restoration took him to the edge of his sanity.
Dastin took several measured breaths to calm himself.
“Where are the rest of your pitiful friends?”
The rage in him made his fingers squeeze tighter. The woman’s eyes started to roll back in her head and her grip on his wrist weakened.
Careful, you idiot. She has information useful to us.
Dastin released her throat and dropped her into the mud. She gasped and began crying. Her weeping came between coughing fits. He laced the fingers of his gloved hands together. “Where are the escape ships?”
“Go to hell. All you do is destroy everything we build.” The woman coughed, and then drew in a short, pained breath. “Trees, gardens, anything green is because of our hard work.”
Lies. All she does is lie because that’s what her leader did. He lied to everyone on Earth.
The woman continued. “Dr. Jackson collected us from orbital stations and research outposts when you chased him off. He’s accepted his mistakes and is trying to correct them.”
Are you going to let her talk to you like that?
“No,” Dastin said. “I won’t let her talk to us like that.”
For fifteen years he had chased the refugees, traveled untold light-years, and came close to destroying them more than once. But today, finally today, Bennett Jackson would pay for what he did to the Earth and everyone who called it home. He would pay for what he did to Paula.
Dastin pointed at the woman and let the contempt bleed into his words. “Let me tell you about Bennett—”
His words were cut off by a deep rumble in the distance. Several refugee ships rose above the small pine forest north of the village. Their engines glowed a brilliant white before they tilted upward and shot toward the heavens, escaping the punishment he felt compelled to mete out.
He cursed as he watched them disappear. The woman laughed and then descended into another violent coughing fit.
You failed again.
“Shut up.”
You can’t even do this right.
Dastin pressed the heels of his hands to his temples and began pacing.
“You haven’t helped!” he raged at the voice. The woman quit laughing. “You just mock!”
Failure.
“Don’t speak to me like that! I’ve done everything you’ve asked.”
And still they make you look like a fool.
One of the droids stepped forward. “Sensors indicate an increase in blood pressure and psychological distress. May I be of assistance?”
They think you’re weak.
Dastin whipped his pistol from its holster and fired, turning the droid’s head into molten slag.
“I don’t need your help!” Dastin screamed, sending another bolt of directed energy through the midsection of a second droid. It fell to the ground, arcing electricity crackled from its burning circuitry.
“What I need is to watch Bennet Jackson die!” Another droid fell to his gun.
>
Temper, temper.
Dastin howled unintelligibly into the air as he walked down the line of droids and let his pistol rip them apart until all ten lay in the mud. His chest heaved as he took in the pile of scrap metal. The woman stared at him with wide eyes. Her mouth hung open in a silent scream.
Dastin’s boots splashed through the mud as he advanced toward her. In her, he didn’t see a human being. He saw the sins of Jackson and his machine. The woman scrambled backwards and fell into the mire twice before gaining her feet.
She’s vermin. You know what you do with vermin, right?
“Exterminate them.”
Dastin pointed the pistol at the fleeing woman and pulled the trigger. Red mist erupted from a gaping hole in her back. She pitched forward and landed face-down in a puddle. He loomed over her and watched as she struggled to push herself up. The strength in her arms gave out, and she fell back into the water, moaning. She tried again unsuccessfully and then simply rolled over and stared into his eyes.
I see your terror…
“I see your terror…”
…And you are right to feel that way…
“…And you are right to feel that way…”
…Because I will kill you all.
“Because I will kill you all.”
The woman held up a hand before Dastin’s pistol burned a hole through her chest and she slumped into the muck. He stepped over her body and walked back to his shuttle.
* * *
After a fifteen-minute shuttle ride, Dastin strode onto the bridge of his command ship. Every station was empty. Sensors beeped softly, but the room was void of any other sound.
“AI, why aren’t the bridge crew at their stations? Alert the crew that I need them here now.”
“Hello, Chancellor,” the ship’s AI said. “There is no longer a bridge crew. They expired fifteen years ago. You are the only living entity on the ship.”
The Doomsday Chronicles (The Future Chronicles) Page 4
