Apocalyptic Shorts

by Victor Darksaber

  “What is it?” she asks. “What’s out there?”

  “I don’t know, it’s very strange,” I reply.

  The plane suddenly goes sideways and then upside down. Those who didn’t wear their seatbelts begin to fall about as the plane spins with the flow of energy around it. People are screaming, crying, getting tossed about, and trying to hang on to something.

  The plane stops spinning. I look out the window and it is bright white, and some shades of light brown, I can tell this is cloud, and whatever that spinning thing was, it’s gone. But the plane is upside down, and we’re losing altitude fast. I realize the plane had lost power when I woke from my sleep. I take a really deep breath, I’m sure the pilots are doing their best to restore power right now.

  Knowing that I’m falling out of the sky and that there’s nothing I can do about it, I press my back tightly against the chair, bracing myself the best possible way, getting ready for the impact.

  “We’re gonna die,” the girl yells, crying.

  I nod. “Yes we will.”

  She grabs my hand really tight, looking straight into my eyes. I can see it, she’s afraid of dying, but she can’t do anything about it, no one but the pilots can. I close my eyes as the plane goes down, shutting out the noises and everything else, but the girl’s grip, and I wait for the impact.

  I hear a very brief explosion from all around, and then, everything goes black.

  I open my eyes, I’m still strapped on to the chair, and the seatbelt is all that’s holding me. I try to move my head, but it feels so heavy and painful. I look down, there is a sharp object directly below me and it’ll kill me if I fall off from the chair. I realize I’m staring at the bare ground, sand, and the sharp object is a stone. The plane is torn apart, and I survived. I hear a groan and look, it’s the girl, and she survived too. I check my body, and aside from the heavy headache, I think I’m fine.

  “Hey,” I grunt.

  “Hey,” she says.

  I wait a moment till the headache subsides. I unbuckle the seatbelt and grab on to the chair before I could fall. I grunt. I find the ground with my left foot, not looking down. I let go of the chair, help the girl out of her chair and carry her to the ground.

  “Are you alright?”

  She nods, checking herself, and then she nods again. “I’m okay.”

  “We’re lucky,” I say.

  “Indeed, we are,” she says. There are five dead bodies on the ground beside us. She sees the bodies and starts to panic.

  “Look away,” I say. She takes my hand and stays very close to me.

  We find our way out of the rubble and the corpses. I look around for the other part of the plane, but it’s out of sight. I hear a cough, a man emerges from the other side of the plane. He’s about my height and he looks fifty. He puts a cracked pair of glasses on and his right hand is clung to the left side of his torso.

  “Are you alright sir?” I ask.

  “I’m alright,” he grunts. He moves out of the hot rubble and stands beside me, examining the parts of the plane.

  “This is weird,” he says.

  “What?” I ask.

  “The plane was fried before we hit the ground.”

  “Yeah, that’s weird.” I look up and around, it’s pretty hot around here, and soon, I’ll be dying to get some water.

  “Do you think others survived?” the girl asks.

  “We can’t know for sure. We have to find the other part of the plane, and then we’ll know,” says the man. “By the way, I’m Adam, Adam Wilson,”

  “I’m Ben.”

  “Paige.”

  Together, we use the crater to calculate the direction from which we fell, and then proceed in that direction. It’s not long before we find another part of the plane, the middle, with a wing. There is no survivor around, and we don’t see any footstep, which means no one in this part of the plane survived the crash. We searched the scattered bags and find two bottles of water. We decide we’re not drinking until we’re really thirsty. I carry the bottles of water in a small bag and we proceed to find another part of the plane.

  Not very long after, we find the last part of the plane, the head part, and there are nine people sitting near it. “More survivors,” Paige says.

  Two of them are injured, and the rest only have minor bruises like me. We search the wreckage, but they already picked out the useful things. Among the survivors is one of the pilots.

  Adam walks to the pilot. “Hey, what happened?”

  The pilot looks confused and uncertain. “I don’t know. It all happened suddenly.”

  “What happened suddenly?”

  “We lost power and all communications as soon as the turbulence started. It’s all unclear what happened,” he says, trying to get his mind together. “First, we saw something,” he pauses, looking at our faces.

  “What did you see?” I ask, curiously.

  “Before the turbulence, a massive object flew to the front of the plane. Seconds after, we lost all automated control, and the plane started piloting itself, trying to turn around. The manual control was created to override automated control just in case something goes wrong, so we regained control after switching to manual. The unidentified object disappeared in a blink and we proceeded like we didn’t see anything.”

  “What kind of object was it?” Adam asks, narrowing his eyes.

  “It’s big, round, the captain said it was E.T.” he looks away, trying not to look stupid, but his look betrays him. He knows what he saw, he’s just afraid to admit it. “After the object disappeared, a strange cloud appeared right in front of us, and we were too close to go around it. We flew right into it and just like that, we lost all power and our communication chips got fried, then the turbulence. I saw colors, moving everywhere. The captain said it’s some kind of energy.”

  I move away from everyone, looking around. We’re on a desert, no grass, no trees, and this place appears to be completely unaffected by the recent disasters. The cloud looks dry and void of the few trails of ashes that are still visible in the sky before we left the airport. But the sun, it’s exactly where it should be.

  “This is weird,” I say. Everyone turn their attentions to me. “We’re supposed to be between New York and LA, and I don’t think there’s any desert this arid in this region. I don’t think we’re in America anymore.”

  “He may be right,” the pilot mumbles. “I watched the terrain as we came down, there’s no desert such as this in the region we’re supposed to have landed.”

  “Plus the cloud is ashless, and this place is not affected by the recent disasters.” I add.

  “If we’re not in America, then where are we?” Paige asks.

  I remember having a phone in my pocket, I bring it out, but it’s fried. Everyone checks their pockets, and every device found is fried.

  “EMP,” Adam says. “In the plane, it was on the news, something about some strange energy readings in the sky.”

  “Yeah, think I saw it too.” I say.

  “I think we flew into one,” Adam says, scratching his brow and looking down. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m not certain of anything, but I think we were teleported to this place.”

  “Teleported?” a man says from behind, he’s fat, short and hairy. “Are you crazy? There’s no such thing as teleport.”

  I ignore the man at once and turn to Adam. “It’s the only thing that makes sense right now. If we were teleported to this place, then where could this place be?”

  “Cut the crap!” the man blurts. “You guys are nut jobs.”

  “Hey, you need to shut up,” I glare at the man, he gasps and turns away, nodding his head.

  “We could be in Africa,” Adam says.

  “Africa? That’s a long way from home.”

  “Africa is the most likely place to have deserts with this kind of conditions.”

  I look up, directly at the sun, there’s something we’re missing. The sun is exactly where it should be at this time of th
e year. Viewing from Africa, it should be on a different angle entirely. Adam is looking up too.

  “This is strange,” he says.

  “The sun?” he nods. “I know.”

  “Hey,” Paige calls, “there’s a mountain up ahead, maybe if we could get on top of it, we’ll see how far we need to go to get off this desert.”

  “She’s right,” a voice says from behind. We shift attention towards the voice; it’s a boy about my age, slightly taller and bulky. “Hi, I’m Tyler. I think she’s right.”

  “Sure, she is,” Adam says. “But how do we get on top of that mountain?”

  “I’ll climb,” I say. “I’ve climbed higher mountains.”

  “Why isn’t anyone talking about a rescue party probably on their way to rescue us?” A woman says. She’s about sixty years old, fat, short and dark skinned. How she survived the crash, I can’t explain.

  “I’m not saying no one is coming, but we know how things are now. There are more things to worry about than a group of people stranded on a desert.” Adam says. “So what I’m saying ma’am, is that I don’t think there will be a rescue party, and I believe we all owe it to our families to make it home to them.”

  Me, Adam, Paige and Tyler we move toward the mountain and everyone follows. The mountain is nearly two thousand feet to the summit. Tyler volunteers to climb with me. We begin to climb. At about a thousand feet or more, all we can see is more sand. We continue till we reach the top. We look in every direction, and all that can be seen from up here is still dry desert, extending thousands of miles out, almost like it’s infinite. No trees, just sand hills and rocks.

  The sun is setting. We begin to climb down. At about seven hundred feet to the ground, I notice a movement on the rock right above me, but I don’t see anything. I proceed down. I hear hisses, I look up and right above my face is a very strange creature about six feet long and three times my size. It bears great resemblance with a centipede, but the segments of its body is metallic, and it has two glowing red eyes, staring down at me with a pair of thick forewings and a straight sharp pin extending out from the mouth part. Deep chills run down my spine. For a moment, I hold my breath and stay as stiff as possible, staring back at it. Tyler obviously hasn’t climbed a mountain before, so there is a wide gap between us. Suddenly, I hear him scream like a baby, and I can’t help but look towards him. The bug charges at me, knocking me off the rock. I begin to fall freely. As I fall, I look down and see a sharp boulder, and I know I’m going to fall on it unless I do something. I spread out all four limbs, trying to slow down my fall. Getting to the sharp rock, I grab my wrist with the other hand, making a ring with my hands. I grab the point of the rock and quickly pull myself up, so the force doesn’t remove my arms from my shoulder, but the brief pain is still excruciating. I groan very loudly, but the air sends my voice back at me. I pause for a moment to catch my breath and let the pain fade. I look down and I’m a lot closer to ground. I look up and I don’t see Tyler, I proceed down.

  Whatever those things are, they’re not friendly. I soon begin to see the people on ground, waiting for us. Suddenly, Tyler’s scream fills the air, but this time, the scream is escalating very rapidly. Oh my god! Tyler is falling! I keep my eyes up, trying to see if there’s anything I can do for him. I watch as he falls past me, screaming for help, blood all over his face and hand. He hits the ground on his back and bounces to his face.

  I close my eyes tight, holding back tears. I continue to climb down. In forty minutes, I reach the ground. My hands are covered in my blood, and they’re shaking, and so are my legs, and my skin hurts real bad. Paige, Adam and a woman run to me and help me up as I collapse to the sand. Paige pours water on me and gives me some to drink. She and Adam help me sit and relax on a rock.

  “What happened up there?” Adam asks.

  I look up into the sky, the stars are coming out. “I don’t get it,”

  “You don’t get what?” Paige says.

  “The constellation, it’s the same.” Everyone turn their gazes to the sky. “The position of the stars, it says we’re in America. But up there, all I see is dryness extending to infinity all around. If there’s a way away from this desert, I’m afraid we’ll never find it, ¬I’m afraid we won’t survive long enough to find it.”

  “What are you talking about?” the fat man asks.

  “There’s something on the rock, some kind of bug, three times my size, that’s what I’m talking about, and I have a feeling that’s not all there is here, wherever here is.” I look towards Tyler’s corpse; he’s covered in thick dust.

  I remain on the ground for about an hour, Paige beside me, my hands in her hands, she’s taking care of me. I get up and walk away from them, staring continuously into the sky as it gets darker. Teleported. What if we’re no longer on earth, then the constellation wouldn’t be the same. There’s definitely something I’m missing here. I think.

  I turn back to Paige. “Strange energy, strange behavior, teleportation, what else?”

  “What else what?” she says.

  “Multidimensional existence,”

  Adam smirks and joins me and Paige. “Boy, that’s deep, way deep.”

  “Look at it all, the constellation, it’s the same. The only thing that’s different is here, down here, no earthquake, no ash cloud, just sands and sands and rocks.”

  “What’s that?” the fat man says. “Is anyone hearing this or I’m actually going crazy?”

  Adam shakes his head continuously for a few seconds, I can tell he doesn’t agree very much with me on this. “I believe in aliens, I believe in science generally, I even believe the stories of the Anunnakis, but multidimensional existence? I don’t know.”

  I squint at the ground for a minute. I turn to the pilot. “Sir, how far did we travel before the crash?”

  “About a thousand two-forty miles or less, somewhere over Denver.”

  I turn back to Adam. “We’re probably somewhere in Denver right now, but we’re not actually there, because we’re here, a parallel plane.”

  “Or maybe we’re dead, and this is afterlife,” someone says.

  “Afterlife? Afterlife don’t have dead bodies lying around,” the fat man says.

  Adam looks into the sky, he’s observing the constellation. His looks slowly changes. I look up and finally, it all makes sense. High up in the sky is a bright green light, glowing in the dark sky and pulsing and constantly changing shape. That has to be it, I think, how we got here.

  “Oh my god,” Adam says, smiling, “it could be a portal, you could be right.”

  “Come on,” the fat man snorts. “There’s a bright light in the night sky, so that makes it a portal? Portal to where? Mars? My mom’s backyard?”

  Adam steps closer to me. “If that’s really how we got here, how do we get up there?”

  “We can’t,” I say. “The news said there are several of these things opening around. What we need to do is find one on the ground, and then we’ll figure what to do next.”

  I look up and see more of the portals appearing as it get darker, light scattered across the sky. “It’s bright, which means we need darkness to see it.”

  Paige clears her throat. “If we could find a moderately high hill–”

  “That’s a good idea,” Adam interrupts, he’s intrigued by the lights.

  We scan around till we find a hill with a moderate height that can give a view of up to 30 miles out. I climb, everyone follows. On the top of the hill, to my right, very close to the ground are several lights, like the ones in the sky, scattered across my point of view. Together, we move towards the lights.

  By now, we have run out of water, and we’re thirsty. The weather is getting cold, and that helps slow down dehydration, but it’s getting too cold, and my hands are beginning to shiver. Paige takes off her thick jacket and wears it on me. I look at her, she smiles. “Thank you,” I say and smile back.

  “You know we can’t just walk through the portal,” Adam mutters.
<
br />   “I know, we’ll figure something out,” I mutter back.

  After a long walk, we see one of the portals in distance. This one is smaller, and pulsing a lot less aggressively than the one we saw in the sky, it’s about ten feet in diameter. Its light shines several meters out, plus the stars and the moon are bright too.

  “So, you think this is our ride back home?” the fat man says, glaring at me.

  “I don’t know, I don’t know if this thing will take us back to the dimension we came from, or another dimension, but it’s worth trying.”

  “Is it?” the old woman asks. “Let’s say you’re right, and we’re in another dimension, and this dimension is not dying like ours is, why would we want to go back to a dying world? What if sweet Jesus sent us here so we can survive what’s coming? Why would I want to go back?”

  “Because the desert covers several miles out, and I’m sure none of us can survive that stretch without food and water.” I say.

  Everyone begins to voice their opinions and in seconds, it becomes a lousy mass debate. I remove myself from their mid and move close to the portal, standing right in front of it. It feels warm and smells like burning plastic, it’s beating with a low humming sound. I hold out my index finger and slowly drive it towards the portal. Suddenly, I hear something other than the chorusing voices, I look around warily, but I see nothing. What I heard, it sounded like a hiss, like the one I heard on the rock. I look around, my eyes wide open, but still, I don’t see anything. I turn back to the portal and then, I hear a scream. I look towards the others, they are being attacked by many of the bugs. Four people are on the ground, getting eaten by the centipede-like bugs. “Shit!”

  I look around for Paige, she’s being chased by two bugs. Something hits me from behind, I hit the ground, air knocked out of me. I quickly turn on my back and see a bug is coming down on me, I roll away fast, and I get up and run. The bug is so fast that it catches up in no time and throws itself at me again. I hit the ground and roll immediately. The bug lands beside me and spins itself at me like a twisting missile. I punch it, but its body is hard. I pick a stone and hit it to its head. Like a cheese, the head breaks open, and jelly green blood slowly comes out of it. The bug makes a grumpy sound and stops, and I know it is dead. I lift the stone and go after Paige. One of the bugs has caught up on her. I run as fast as I can, I hit the stone at the second bug and then the one on Paige. I push them off her and help her up.