THE END.
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LITTLE MEN by D. A. D'Amico
Karl Somme waited until his daughter had finished her cheeseburger before tossing the yellow wrapper, the white and red paper bag, plastic ketchup packets, and scraps of bread onto the newly cut grass at his feet. A twinge reminded him that the poison had begun to act.
"Ready for a walk, princess?" The debris trembled, sparking with an eerie ruby light. He looked away, concentrating on his daughter's small oval face.
The little girl nodded. "Are we going to see mommy?"
Karl sighed. It would've been much easier if Lisa were still alive. He couldn't believe she'd killed herself without waiting for them. In his weaker moments, he'd contemplated that escape, but he'd held back every time because of Annie. How could Lisa have done it without them?
"We're going for a walk. Just a short stroll." He pulled an unfiltered cigarette from a dented pack in his suit pocket, his last one, and tossed the empty pack behind him. He took one puff, decided his hands were shaking too much, and dropped both the lighter and smoldering cigarette to the ground. He didn't wait to see if they shimmered or not. He knew they would.
"Will we see mommy?"
"Yes." Was it really a lie? He'd struggled with the religion of his decision for some time now, and could find no comfort in his justification. Suicide was a crime and a sin--the same as murder. He'd already committed one; he had no choice now but to commit the other. "I'm sure she misses you very much."
The fingers of his right hand went to his pocket, to the thin cloth pouch where the ceramic blade had been concealed. Nervously, he caressed the warm silk, feeling the secret rigidity move beneath his touch as if it were alive. He wished he could be sure he was doing the right thing, but how much time did he really have? Things were progressing faster than anyone had anticipated. It might be no more than days before infrastructure collapsed and the real suffering began. He couldn't let that happen, not to his daughter.
"I thought I should explain something to you..." He spoke suddenly, but the words caught in his throat. He felt the need to tell her why, but he wondered if it was merely to make himself feel better. It'd be best to stay away from talk of her mother, or about the future. He didn't want to start crying. "The world is going to be a very different place soon. We'll have to go away."
"Like mommy went away?"
"I think so..." He guided her around a small mound in the path, medical waste by the look of it. The edges had already begun to foam with a bluish luminosity. He glanced up, wondering where it had come from. There wasn't a hospital for miles.
After a moment, he spoke again. "Do you know who the Little Men are, princess?"
Her blue eyes glanced into his, and her tiny pink features squashed together as she concentrated. He had to grab her arm to keep her from falling over a moist clod of moldering fur, possibly a dead dog.
"Watch where you're going, honey." Karl waited to see if his rough handling had hurt her. She was so fragile.
He smiled, but a twinge crept through him like the sour smell of the thing they'd just stepped over. He knew the story of the Little Men was one of the first things they taught in schools these days, but the cartoon images and over simplified explanations wouldn't be enough anymore. Annie deserved to know why things would be forever different, forever beyond them now. She needed to know why her father had no choice.
Pain rushed like acid into his throat. He struggled to keep from retching, slowing their pace a little until the wave passed. The end was close. He resisted the urge to touch the blade once more.
"The Little Men are really small; they clean the world and help us all..." She sang the rhyme in the same Dr. Seuss way he remembered hearing it when it'd first been introduced. She began the second verse, but he stopped her.
"But have they taught you what the Little Men do, where they came from?" He asked. Or how it will end your life?
"We saw a video with a volcano and some worms in the ocean, but I didn't like it. The worms looked too squishy. Ooh--look!"
She tugged at his sleeve, motioning to the garbage men who'd just backed a large green truck onto the lawn at the edge of the park. Stains and clots of greasy-looking substance covered the matted grime that might once have been paint on the wide vehicle. Heaped sacks of shining green, white, and dark brown spilled from the cavernous rear of the machine, making the truck appear to be defecating over the neatly manicured grass and highly groomed Yoshino Cherry trees. As they watched, two rough men in filthy orange overalls pulled wicked looking rakes from the side of the truck and began beating the plastic trash bags where they'd fallen to the grass, strewing lumps of rubbish everywhere. Bits of paper, household items, used diapers and bottles, leftover food--some of it ripe with age--cardboard, smashed electronics, cans and containers of every size, shape, and color, and a glut of other less savory items spilled in an ever-widening circle. Karl snatched up his daughter's hand, and marched in the opposite direction, toward the river.
"Are they helping the Little Men, daddy?"
"In a way," Karl replied.
"Like mommy helped?"
Karl stopped walking. He bent quickly, placing his hands gently on his daughter's shoulders, and tried his best to look her in the eyes without crying. "Your mommy tried the best she could. We're all trying the best we can, but it's too late..."
The little girl's lips trembled, her eyes getting moist. Karl's intense concern had startled her, and it looked as if she would cry.
"It's all right, princess," he cooed, dropping the subject instantly. He hated seeing her like this, and cursed himself for not taking the easy way out, but the poison was agonizing. He couldn't be sure she'd go before him. He felt trapped. He had to do it now, sooner rather than later. Time was running out, and it would get no easier for either of them.
Lisa was gone. Nothing would bring her back. People all over the world were taking that option, and soon there wouldn't be enough people to keep the tribute flowing. Life itself would become more difficult, and as Annie grasped she'd never be able to hold her mother again, never feel the warmth of her skin or hear the sound of her voice, it would become unlivable.
"I wish mommy was here." She lowered her eyes. He hugged her, holding her tight and hoping he wouldn't smother her in the folds of his jacket as she began to cry.
He breathed deeply, inhaling the clean lavender smell of her hair, wishing he had the luxury of tears. After a while, he produced a thin white napkin from his shirt pocket. He dabbed his daughter's eyes, and tossed the wadded tissue to the ground. Standing, he took her small hand. It was cool and moist, and her fingers trembled at his touch.
"Let's find a place to sit, okay."
She nodded, following slowly as he moved to one of the broad wooden benches spaced throughout the park. This one faced the dirt-brown surface of the river in the direction of the city. From here, they could sit and watch the traffic as it passed on the road across the muddy water, where clouds of sulfurous blue smoke belched from exhausts, and windows rolled down occasionally to spew forth handfuls of trash and muck.
They could also see the dome from here, an oval of grey steel and cinderblock that stuck up through the center of the city like the bleached crown of a human skull, dwarfing the other structures around it. Thick clumps of people gathered around the building's perimeter like debris around a sewer drain. More came every day, walking away from their families and responsibilities, their homes and their children, to sacrifice themselves to the Little Men. That's where Lisa had gone, tossing her life away when he and Annie had needed her most.
"The Little Men," he began, getting back to the subject. "Aren't really men, Annie. They're not people like you or I."
He glanced away from her to stare at the river, watching as what appeared to be a rotting mattress glided downstream surrounded by a halo of lesser debris. It was difficult to determine how technical he could get in his explanation. If he used too many w
ords she'd get bored, but if he over simplified, he doubted he could really clarify what needed to be said.
"The Little Men are actually bacteria. Do you know what bacteria are?"
She shook her head, and at the same time mimicked the word bacteria in her tiny voice. He couldn't tell if she was being playful, or just sullen. She wouldn't look at him.
"Bacteria are so small we can't see them, not by just looking." He gestured at the ground. "There could be millions of them right here and we wouldn't even know it."
Annie snatched her feet up quickly from the thick grass, tucking her shoes under her blue dress. She turned to face him, looking scared. "They can't get me, can they?"
That was an impossible question, because it was already too late. He reached out and lightly caressed her arm. "I won't let them hurt you."
It was a lie, of course. The Little Men were everywhere, and soon there'd be no way of stopping them. The news had said so. The President had offered hope in the form of "arcs" filled with the pure and healthy, but he'd made no mention of the rest of the world. There would be no possible way for Karl to get Annie to comprehend the subtle shades of danger attributed to the Little Men, the horrible ways they could infiltrate a host. He wouldn't even try. He'd promised himself she'd never see it coming, that she'd smile until the end. But if he wanted her happy, then why was he trying so hard to make her see his reasoning? Perhaps it was a last desperate attempt on his part to justify himself, to keep from feeling like a monster. He inhaled deeply, his mind on fire. It wasn't working.
"Where did the Little Men come from, daddy?"
"Do you remember that cartoon they showed you in school, the one with the undersea vents and volcanoes? The Little Men come from there."
"Then how did they get here with us?" she asked.
He sighed. This was the part where it would start to get difficult. "We brought them out of their natural habitat, their home, and changed them so they'd help us clean up some really bad things we did to the planet."
He glanced around. The wide lane that led to the dome had been recently paved, but it had been quickly filled with household waste: paper, cans, disposable plastic bottles, swill, and discarded bones. It looked nearly impassable. As he watched, a priest in full vestments marched to the edge of the sea of trash. Behind him, a flock of perhaps twenty souls followed. The nearest, strong looking but short men in jacketless black suits, raced to the front, kicking, and tossing debris out of the path.
A panicked look momentarily filled the old pastor's dark jaundiced eyes before a young woman pulled him back. The man's long fingers, constantly in motion, flipped pages furiously in a bible he never glanced at, little shreds of paper the color of heavy cream fell like snow from his nervous grasp. He looked as though he'd forgotten where he was, except for those fingers and their constant stream of tiny white flakes.
"We made the Little Men from very specialized bacteria called extremophiles."
She tried to pronounce the word, but he interrupted her. He just wanted to lay it all out before she could get distracted. "We changed them so they could help us, but we changed them too much. Even though they're very tiny, so small that they can't ever possibly think on their own, if enough of them get together they can be really smart."
"Like when a bunch of grownups get together?"
"No, honey, grownups are just the opposite. We seem to grow dumber if enough of us get together. That's how we got in trouble in the first place." He laughed, but there was no humor behind it.
"After a while, enough of the Little Men got together to realize they were alive like us, and then they understood we were alive too."
He wouldn't go into the structure of supercells, or how mankind had originally edited several types of extremophiles into the basic fabric of the Little Men. It'd been done to clean a planet wallowing in pollution from surplus atomic materials, pesticides, poisons, greenhouse gasses, and just plain old solid residential and industrial waste. She wouldn't understand or care that we were responsible for unleashing an even greater threat than the toxins we'd hoped to control. Hell, most adults still didn't even understand. The title "Little Men" hadn't been invented solely for children.
"People got scared of the Little Men. They were so small, and had spread so far, we didn't know what they were doing. This made a lot of people very frightened. So we started to fight them. We started a war."
A silver canister truck had pulled to a halt across the river. A short man in a dark blue coat and jeans jumped from the cab. He turned a wide valve at the back of the truck, and a fat jet of orange liquid spilled out, running down the river's bank and mixing, thick and mucus-like, with the chocolate-colored water. Karl hardly noticed.
"Oh." She kicked a balled-up lump of greasy aluminum foil across the grass. "Miss Landivar says wars are bad. People get hurt and cry."
"Yes, Miss Landivar is right. War is a very bad thing, but many people were very frightened of the Little Men. We thought we had no choice."
She looked up and softly asked, "Did we win?"
Karl sighed. The churning in his stomach had turned sour, and he knew it was almost time. His fingers trembled as he remembered the panic and uncertainty of those days, the fear he and Lisa had felt as they watched the worldwide newscasts. People vanished, lots of people. Then towns and cities had begun to disappear, crumbling into dust in an instant. The Little Men struck everywhere. Some nations tried to fight back, dropping bombs and firing missiles into the air, but there was no clear target. Their enemy was insidious and invisible. In the end, there was nothing humanity could do. Feed the Little Men, keep feeding them, and things wouldn't disintegrate.
He wouldn't feed them his daughter alive. He wouldn't let her suffer. A sharp pain stabbed at his belly. The poison was moving rapidly now. He didn't have much time. It had to be now.
"No, sweetie, we didn't win." His voice caught in his throat. Then he started to cry as he slipped the knife from its hiding spot, bringing it up in a rapid arc that ended in a tiny squeal. He'd hold her until the shining took her, took them both.
THE END.
GENTLE COMES THE THAW by Paul Lubaczewski
Alorg was running. He was running for his very life. He knew what was waiting for him if he stayed with the tribe. The reaping would come, and he would be the only stalk falling. It had been a wet summer, the crops had done poorly with the bugs and mold, the hunting was difficult, some of the more infirm had starved. There was nothing he could have done about it, but that wasn't how the old men of the holly were going to look at it.
“The crops have failed! The gods are angry with us!” they would declare. “The King must speak with the gods personally on our behalf!”
There was only one way to speak to the gods on the tribe's behalf. Those blades of theirs were not just for cutting bushes. He'd caught them about their task, preparing. Maybe a real King would have stayed, but he had never wanted to even BE King. But he'd gotten the hardened pea in his gruel, signifying the gods had chosen him. He had been anointed, he had BECOME King.
He had seen them, baking another pea. A King sees the old men of the holly baking a pea, after a year of bad crops, his choices become limited. Alorg had chosen to run for his life. He didn't even view it as a real choice. Running was risking your life, staying was surrendering it.
He paused now, gasping in the frigid air, his breath coming in enormous blasts of steam. He needed to think about direction now. Running was good, it put distance between you and certain demise, but without a direction in mind, you'd soon enough find yourself back in the clutches of the old men, or one of the dozens of ways to save them wear and tear on the sickles the world could provide.
If he went further down the valley now, they would be sure to follow him. It was the logical choice if one were to flee, to just run downhill. They would stay after him, and follow him. The lore was clear, the King MUST die by the blade, and he was the King. The lore said the tribe would die out altogether, it warned of curses if th
e sacrifice wasn't made. He didn't believe any of it, but the intended victim's point of view is rarely taken under advisement.
But there was another way. A way, maybe they didn't know, for him to flee. Up, a way they would never think to go. He knew of a pass, between the mountains, that came out near the lands of another tribe. He had found it this summer while he was desperately searching for new game. He could go there, he was not their King, they had no reason to kill him. He was still a fine hunter, he could use his skills for their betterment, after all, he had worth.
With newfound hope, he turned for the mountains, and hopefully life.
He climbed higher now, and the wind and snow had begun to pick up as he went. It was getting hard to see, and he was getting worried. He had thought for sure he knew where that pass had been, but he certainly should have found it by now. He was frigid cold, and only getting worse, as he stumbled through the mounting snow. His furs and leggings could only do so much, and the way the wind drove they were losing the battle for warmth in places. The most ridiculous part was, other parts of him, were sweating at the exact same time from carrying the fur's weight.
The snow was no longer pretty at all, that had been left further down the mountain. Now it was wind driven little shards, stabbing him in his exposed nose and cheeks as they whipped by. His eyes were having a hard time seeing anything, as they teared up leaving droplets that froze almost immediately. The wind driven, swirling flakes, made guessing distances now almost impossible.
It was becoming apparent, he was going to need a place to hole up until this passed. Some cave or hollow, where he could use the flint he had with him to start a fire to warm himself. He considered going back, but as he turned to look, his tracks had vanished behind him, and he couldn't figure the way. Even if it wasn't certain death, he'd never find the way back to the tribes camp now! He could wander around lost here or down there, but the results would be the same.
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