Dead End Stories From the End of the World

by P. S. Power

  The whole world was now. Even sitting here in the dim light. That no one had made the obvious dungeon joke yet was probably just because too many of them were afraid it was simply the truth, for the time being. The sound level was slowly going up though, as more people started to chat with those around them. No one yelled, but it was going to get loud if they weren't careful. Some of the littlest kids probably couldn't help it either, which meant they'd have to stay below ground until they could learn. Because that was the way of things here.

  A murmur went up about then, which got Mary to whisper what people were saying. She had the best hearing out of all of them.

  "Dinner time. We should go up?"

  They all flowed out of the cavern under the house, or really more next to it, as a group. There were tables, but not enough for all of them. That wasn't new though, so she just went and got her food from an older looking woman who smiled at her, and dished up a small serving of everything.

  Barb took hers, but looked a bit put out.

  "They aren't giving us much, are they?"

  Cam looked at the plate, thinking much the same, but knowing that it had to do with rationing, and while it wasn't a lot, it was more than they got to eat at the other place a lot of the time.

  "It's fair though. Everyone has the same. Look around. Even the people up there at the high table. Exactly even. Besides, they're sharing what they got for themselves, to survive the winter. We have to replace it and more, if we can." There might be some places she could check for food, if she could get faster and learn to carry more. Maybe take people with her?

  It...yeah. Normally it took about five to seven years for a person to become an adult. She couldn't wait that long. For these people to live, they might need her to do things that she just couldn't yet. To save the Dehist.

  For that, she couldn't take the lazy path that most did. She'd need to practice. Hard and as often as she could manage. Otherwise, she'd fail.

  The food was a little bland, but they all sat on the floor, near a group of kids. When they finished the meal, she started to stand. They were all done, and moved as a group. Colleen had gone over to her normal set of pals, even if she was sleeping with them. That would probably get her out of washing dishes, but that was the job of the children, so she headed that way, the others following, when a pregnant girl took her arm. Gently.

  "Hello!" She whispered. "I'm Heather. I need to talk to all of you, if you have a minute?"

  The woman smelled a bit, for this place. They had buildings out front, near the windmills, just to bathe in, but she didn't seem to use them regularly. Or at least hadn't. It could be something else though. Some people just didn't smell as good as others.

  "Um, sure. I'm Cam. This is Barb, Kim and Mary. We were just going to go and see if they needed help with washing dishes? Vickie said we should try to help."

  That got a big nod, and a friendly smile.

  "That's right. You all helped, a lot. Cameron... You need to be careful. Sammi tried to kill you with a knife, in the kitchen. You need to run into the stove to survive it. That will burn your arm, but if you did anything else, including trying to avoid her, you ended up dead." She held her stomach, which was stretching her shirt out a lot in front.

  Barb stepped in, clearly thinking that the woman was insane, but there was something about how she'd said it that got Cam to stop. That was how prophets often spoke. The good ones at any rate. As if they'd seen what had happened. Lived it in some fashion.

  Rather than call her on the idea, she nodded.

  "All right. When Sammi tries to kill me, I need to run into the stove. Who is that, by the way? Just in case it comes up?"

  Rather than describe her, the brown haired woman, really her hair had two colors black, and a light brown or blonde, just turned and pointed. At the Bawdri girl. The whole thing seemed a lot more possible suddenly.

  "Her. I think that's tomorrow, so you should be ready. Remember, don't try to hide from her. She'll just kill you some other time."

  "Okay. Anything else?"

  "Yes, you need to make sure that none of you sleep with Jake. He kills people all the time and will kill you too. You don't have to have sex with him though. There are lots of guys still, if you want them. Doing anything with him would be bad though. Even he isn't allowed to just grab women up." She went on for a bit, basically repeating herself. After a while everyone else in their group looked scared. Then Heather nodded to her.

  "We're going to be... Well, not friends, but in a few years we'll be about as close to that as we can be, and not slip into it. I'm going to like you. You think I'm crazy though. Right, but still nuts. That happened all the time."

  Barb scowled a bit, and let the pregnant girl, Heather, go and talk to another group of new women.

  "Don't worry, she's just trying to scare you. Like a prank, or intimidation. We should be careful there."

  That made sense to her. Even if this Heather was correct.

  "Dishes first. One second here. I need to talk to a man about a gun."

  She thought she had the right one. He was middling tall, and had a good beard that was trimmed, even though it went down his neck.

  "Hello. I'm Cam. I need to learn how to use a gun. So that I can protect the Dehist?" She didn't explain out loud, but her mind filled things in anyway. About how she was supposed to steal Jake away to safety, but couldn't. As much as that failure shamed her. It really would be easier being given a weapon rather than taking it. Not much, but one way or the other that would be happening. "Vickie said she'd teach me to use it?"

  The man smiled at her and then patted her shoulder. She didn't wince. If she had to sleep with this man to get at a weapon, then she would. The training would be important too, or she really wouldn't have bothered asking first. That was just obvious, wasn't it?

  "Don't worry, I'm gay. As for a gun... Well, learn to use them first. If Vickie signs off on you having one, for work purposes, then that's fine." His face stiffened, and he shook his head. "Hopefully you won't need it for kitchen duty."

  She hoped so too. Actually, she just probably had to suck that one up. Their crazy prophet wouldn't have told her to run into a stove, presumably a hot one, if it wasn't needed. The easy thing would be for this man to ask Sammi not to try and kill her, but that wouldn't work. She'd need to do what she was told, most likely. Going against that sort of person was almost always a bad idea. Prophets weren't unknown to her people after all. Even she would probably grow into a bit of that kind of power eventually. At least her mother had mentioned something like that a few times. It was generally best not to play with that kind of thing though. It could easily lead to ruin.

  "Can you tell Vickie that you said that? I shouldn't wait too long. It's a sacred duty." One that, as far as she knew, only one girl in all the world was willing, or able, to undertake.

  "I'll go do that now. Cameron, isn't it?"

  "Right, Cameron the Sh'elle'erid. Teleporter." She waited for the mind stealer to call her names or toss her out for plotting to steal something, but it occurred to her that she really wasn't. Stealing from these people would be insane. They were sharing all they had already. Even though it was clearly a hardship for them, and put them in danger of starving later.

  That made them friends. Real ones. People to help, as strange as they all were.

  Her people, if she could live.

  Maybe even ones that would help her save the Dehist?

  That remained to be seen, but if she could get anyone to aid her, she would. That wasn't the way of her people, but this new place and time wasn't the world of her folk either. The easy times of living off of the fattened cattle of the world that pulled the plows, and did all the real work for them, was over. Now it was time for...

  Something different.

  Not even bothering to nod to herself, Cam went to find the others and get to bed. She'd need to be up early the next day.

  Tricks of the Trade- Burt (Humperdinck Linster the First)

&nbs
p; The savagery of the situation wasn't lost on the old seeming man. Not even to the tiniest degree. The nano driven corpses were relentless in their main objective. Eating the flesh of humanity. Except, as should be apparent, they didn't eat nearly as much as all that.

  Again, it was part of the monstrous program to destroy the greatest threat the world had ever seen. Before he and his working team came along, naturally. This was worse than he'd imagined could have happened however. It was part of the reason that he'd insisted on going to Westwood along with Tessa. His daughter.

  Her part in this was one that hadn't seemed that hard or important to begin with. Not on screen. The calculations showed that there was a small, almost negligible, chance that Mickey Robson, the One Projected, could recover from the damage that she'd forced into his life in time to save the human population. Taking her part in things seriously, being a highly efficient and dedicated worker, Tess had decided to go and live as close to the man as possible. Even with the world being destroyed around them the whole time.

  Burt's reasons were a little less driven by the desire to see things succeed. It was his part in this to suffer as much as these other people. That was all. It wasn't a logical decision, being based on feelings, instead.

  Rubbing at his beard, he looked out at the back yard, searching for any sign of attack yet to come. There was no hint of movement at the wood line. No familiar sense of terror, or scent of corruption. That being the case he slowly stepped down off of the large wooden porch. That meant gathering up his shorts, since they were trying to fall down his too narrow hips.

  He could have fed them all, by building a simple device that would allow for the breakdown of bio-materials, and their recombination into useful materials. The tools needed were actually all out in his work shed. That would have given him away, however.

  As it stood, it didn't seem like it would end up being needed. Jake, the One Projected going by a different name, had already taken care of that part himself.

  By hunting animals, and making certain they got crops in. It was primitive, but also a miracle. One that Burt hadn't counted on. Every set of numbers the work team had put forward said that, being a human, Mickey Robson would fall within days of the world's social structures collapsing. That his innate characteristics would make him fragile in the face of a horror that couldn't be stopped. The idea was that someone as good as he was really couldn't take the pressure.

  At the very least he should have gone mad.

  "Instead he just made this place, and did whatever was needed. Even if it hurt him to do." The words were muttered out loud, but as crowded as The House was now, no one hung around out on the porch. It was possible that one of the others inside could have heard him however. That there had been other kinds of individuals around wasn't exactly news to him or Tess, of course.

  They'd been tracking each person there closely, the entire time. Since the second week when they met up with Jake and Nathaniel. Just before Carl came. Each new person had been infected with a nano cloud that reported everything they did, as well as about fifty different biological readings. That meant he and Tess didn't just know what everyone was feeling, but also, within rough parameters, what they were thinking, and how they would respond to some future events. At least potential ones.

  The whole thing made him want to cry, however.

  That hadn't been a thing he'd considered when he'd given the go ahead to his people. That killing billions of people would affect him this way. Then, it wasn't really, was it? A single mind could only hold about one hundred and fifty to two hundred different social relationships at any given time. Half of his were taken up with the people around him. That meant their strife, troubles and difficulties weighed on his mind in a fashion that a person with greater physical space away from them wouldn't have noticed. A war in a foreign land was a problem. One in your back yard, a tragedy.

  Except that this thing, all of it, was his responsibility. He, more than any other being on the planet, deserved to suffer for it. Only, it wasn't just him that had to pay for it. They all did. Each of the sub-category groupings, like the Valkyries, the Sh'elle'erid, the Killgrade and the Comtrice. The rest of them too. For decades, they would have to live in fear and seclusion.

  Because the Humans had to die.

  That was the heartbreaking thing. He was one of them. Oh, the Technologists styled themselves as different. Superior to the old way of being, but here they were. Killing everyone else because they failed to do what was desired. It was an animal thing. Except that most creatures killed only for a tangible and readily apparent reason.

  He wasn't one of them. No, he was now, and would be for the rest of his life, a monster.

  Worse than anything that had been seen before. Yes, to try and save the world, but at what price? No one sane would ever thank him for it, or laud his name. In fact, he'd taken pains to make certain that wouldn't happen. Writing himself out of the history books all together. Only the old man of The House, Burt, would be remembered. If that.

  The worst of it though was Jake.

  He thought about that as he walked to the little clapboard and long nail building that held the crude forge the boy had built. For them. Including him and Tess. Or as he knew her, Lois. So that he could create weapons with which to fight the walking death that they'd wrought. It was a horror of a different sort, what they'd done there.

  Replayed in lesser form in a lot of the people with them. Oh, not all of them were saints by any means. Some were thieves that stole food that would have been more useful if shared. Others were sexual deviants that could barely restrain themselves now that the social contract had broken down so severely. A few were murderous, or suicidal.

  Many of them had been very good people though. Flawed, to be certain, but that was part of what humanity was. Taking that part of them away would be to unmake them and create an army of logical robots that walked the world in human flesh.

  They had far too many of those kinds around now.

  His feet made heavy noises on the snow. It was mainly frozen outside, but the crisp air felt nice on his face. Just to check, he brought up his internal visual display and selected the weather program. The old satellites had been left intact and operational when the others of his kind left. With that information, he could do a lot of things.

  From checking the temperature, and likely amount of precipitation for that day, to tracking an individual, anywhere on the planet, as long as they were in the system. Everyone at The House was.

  It was going to be cold for the next six days, with a decent warming trend for a bit after that. There were no major storms hitting anywhere in the world at the moment. Changing the red and blue display, designed to give a visual impression of three dimensional images while overlaying information on a single side of the visual cortex, Burt got a count of how many standard humans still lived.

  "Eight hundred and seventeen million." There were a few more than that, but each second he could see the count plummet downward.

  Of course those numbers weren't real. They were numerical projections. Accurate to within one percent of the current number shown. Still, it worked well enough, didn't it? Each one of those vanishing digits represented another life snuffed out, sooner than it would have been. Often in pain, or hunger. Fear washing over each of them as their life left. Most of them would be infected with the nano cluster that motivated their former bodies. Over time, if they failed to eat enough, the carbon based machine complexes would stop functioning. That could take years however, for some of them.

  At the door of the forge he froze for a second. A cold wind ate at him, drinking what heat his old and gamey flesh could keep anymore. He'd never been a fat man, since the Technologists hadn't allowed themselves to be impacted with the adipose increasing intestinal bacteria that had started its way around the rest of the world. True, part of that was self-discipline, but the average man and woman hadn't had much of a chance that way. They kept eating, not even realizing they were being controlle
d by a trick of nature. A mutation. More strange, they didn't realize that all mammals had been susceptible to it. He would have thought that the rest of the world would have noticed when even wild animals started to show up with more body weight over time, some of it being fat, but very few did.

  There was no actual door covering on the tiny shed like place in front of him. No lights, or windows either. That was so Jake could see the color of the metal he was working on. The mound of hot carbon over the air vent was shockingly bright, considering that the best they'd managed otherwise had been candles so far. That and a few dim light emitting diodes.

  After a moment the pounding finished and the metal, which looked like another saw blade, was put back on to heat again. Then the too skinny boy moved quickly to increase the airflow, using the large bellows that had been built for the purpose.

  After ten strokes of air, which made a nice, very rhythmic hissing sound, the One Projected turned to him, and smiled. It was a radiant thing. The kind of look that made him want to cry each time he saw it.

  "Hey... Did you guys ever get to the new septic system? That's kind of important, isn't it?" The words were polite, and not stressed at all, even though it was clear that he knew it hadn't even been attempted. When there was no emergency, Jake was always very soft spoken and almost shy seeming.

  "Ah... No. That will take a lot of work. Not that it isn't needed. Getting the people to help though..."

  Without waiting Jake started to shut the forge down, and set the now softly glowing metal on a flat section of firebrick.

  Then he left as if they hadn't been having a conversation. There was a slight tug on Burt's arm though, as they walked out and headed for the kitchen, instead of calling out to anyone. As he moved, his face was still.

  "I'm heading out, after this. Back to the other house? I can't take it here anymore."

  That got Burt to nod, as if he understood, and bring up the bio-markers for Mickey Robson. There was a lot of activity inside that simply didn't show from outside.