New Fiction
I’ve posted the intro to this before, but don’t browse away if you’ve already read it - I finally finished the thing and theres a lot more now. I polished that intro for over a year and it seemed almost to good to use, but I had a midterm project due and couldn’t come up with a different idea. This is sort of a final rough draft - it’s been revised and it’s pretty strong, but still needs refining. In particular, the final paragraph lacks impact, but as the writer it’s tough to judge. Anyway, please leave constructive criticism!!!
Landscaped palms filed alongside the road, wedged into the thin strip of habitable dirt between the pavement and the sand. The sky was covered with sheets of beige cloud, wrinkled in the delicate geography of a crumpled blanket, and as Adam walked the clouds meandered west, blown by the same light wind that carried troops of gulls home from their night encampments a few hours earlier. The sun had just crested the eastern hills and Adam was only a mile from where he had slept, but already he wanted to stop. A vague sense of neglected duty had been hanging like mist over the past few days, and that morning it finally condensed - he wanted to write down what was happening, what had happened, so he wouldn’t forget. The night had passed quietly, so he decided it was safe to spend a few hours making notes. A drain pipe was protruding from the gently sloped embankment a few yards ahead - hot tin covered in the penetrating, sticky dust characteristic of exposed California hillsides. He brushed off the fine brown powder and sat down.
As Adam opened his notebook, he considered simply leaving it, along with the rest of his property, and returning for it later. His guitar was especially cumbersome, pulling him to the left and banging awkwardly against his hip as he walked. It had been with him for years and had absorbed some part of him, as things that are well loved often do, but it would be better to loose only a part..
He felt these choices were becoming increasingly important - his foresight was clear in the silence of the cost and he could see his actions reverberate through time as the future compressed into the present. That silence, however, at first a welcome relief from the unnerving noises of the city, was growing sharp. It had become a tangible negative, a felt presence instead of a mere lack of sound, and it colored all his experience. He glanced up and the atmosphere offered no resistance: it looked as if he could pluck a tree from one of the nearby mountains. The air moved and the hairs on his arm stirred individually.
Adam sat quietly and considered his position. He had been traveling for two days, searching for food, and had found nothing… His plan had been to head south along the coast, in the hope that whatever was growing or grazing would still be edible. The coast of Southern California veers east, though, as it drops from Los Angeles towards San Diego; Adam knew this and he was troubled. He thought about the shadow that slid in from the east, the shadow still covering most of the city, and his right eye started twitching violently. But the raw energy of the sun and the clear air were wearing on him and there seemed to be no alternative.
Sometimes Adam called the black thing over the city a shadow, and sometimes he called it a cloud, but it wasn’t either, really. It was more like a hole: like some ill-behaved child had teased up a corner of the sky then ripped out a great, rough-edged swatch of the heavens. As a graduate student Adam had spent whole nights sitting on the roof of Kirchhoff hall, looking at skies pinned up like black velvet, the city flecked with light in imitation of the stars. Now there was nothing, even during the day - just a black spot where Los Angeles had been. It shrank when the sun was out (he thought he could see thin, inky strands evaporating, trailing off into the air), and at night it roughly doubled in size, twining around buildings and billowing out over the pale, empty streets. No one was sure what it was, and there weren’t many people left to ask.
It had been several months since the shadow came. The fighting had been heavy then, cluster bombs popping high over the valley, throwing out tendrils of smoke that expanded like the spines of giant umbrellas until the air was full of thin, gray webbing. Enemy carriers were strung along the horizon, waiting for the last of the resistance to collapse, and children would count the ships like a rosary, talking in low voices about the troop movements, about the rumors of a final defense and a terrible weapon being assembled in the center of LA.
Something odd happened, just when the bombing was at it’s peak. On February 6th a radio broadcast went out from Westwood, requesting that any remaining civilians leave California immediately as the military would be abandoning defense of the coast. On the 8th troops began to withdraw, sifting in loose formations back into the center of the city, only to re-form and fortify near USC. Adam’s brother James was head of the college’s anthropology department, and he had called to discuss what seemed like a suicidal maneuver. On the morning of the 15th the troops were gone and there was a black patch where Los Angeles had been.
Adam had woken up inside of it, just near the edge, and managed to get out. He couldn’t remember much – stumbling through emptiness, terror weighing down and screams in the distance, along with a great rustling, rushing sound that drew the strength out of him like cold metal. When he came too it was the middle of the day and he was lying on the street, face down in his own vomit. He looked back and saw flat, black space, then kept running until he got to the coast, to Santa Monica and his little glass-walled vacation house.
Since then he had been scavenging; living off the remains of last year’s cocktail parties, then breaking into the abandoned homes of his neighbors, rummaging through expensive oak pantries and stainless steel refrigerators that were too often empty, like beautifully wrapped presents with nothing inside. He would sit and read during the day, or play his guitar. Sometimes he would stay up late and watch the black thing spreading, stretching, folding like dough over the roofs of townhomes and apartments but never quite reaching the ocean. There were others on the beach: refugees, too poor or too stupid to evacuate, but he was afraid of them; they were competition for what little food was left. Soon, there would be nothing left. People began to starve; they were forced inland and they didn’t come back. Adam hoped they had found a better place; he knew he would have to follow soon.
Finally, Adam’s food ran out, and he could find no more – the beach had been stripped clean. He packed up his clothes, his guitar, his journal, and started traveling south. He had hoped to work his way down the coast, but that seemed foolish now. There was nothing – the stores and houses were all empty, as clean as if they had just been built, and he was growing weak. Adam felt his insides tighten. He wanted to live, but more than that he didn’t want to starve. He was sick of stringing out his days. It was still early, and it was time to go. He stood up and shook the dirt from the creases in his pants. His face was firm, and the lines around his eyes stretched as he squinted in the sun. He pushed his notebook and guitar into the open end of the drain-pipe and sealed it with rocks, then he walked to the nearest cross-street, heading east.
Santa Monica was dead. It’s inhabitants had cast it off, and what was left was a shell: an empty carapace molded in the shape of the city, dry and brittle, covered in dust. The faces of buildings had begun to crack under the relentless pressure of the sun and looked ready to crumble away. Adam checked each window he passed, searching for food but finding empty boxes and scattered debris - evidence of panic and chaos that seemed out of place in the heat and the silence. He had been walking for some time when he looked into a coffee shop, then jumped back in shock. Barely recognizable in it’s ruined state, the cafe had been one of his favorite places: he had spent hours there in intimate conversation with his brother James, unloading his pent up thoughts and easing the stress of academic life.
James had stayed at USC, and was probably dead. Adam frequently revisited those conversations, turning them over like gold or amber, feeling the lines and contours - warm, organic, precious. He wished for the firmly rooted strength of his brother and hated himself for leaving James behind. Their last discussion in particular troubled him; it seemed to resonate with the war and the rumors and the great black cloud:
James had made an important archaeological discovery the year before the war. The writtings of the Conquistadors were conflicting, clouded by their lust for gold, but there were threads of truth in their accounts of the Aztecs. James caught a thread and it lead him to ruins: to a great stone city and a large, vaulted tomb, in pristine condition. Adam and James had met Saturday night at the coffee house, as was their habit, to discuss the find, and James brought photos of the tomb.
XXX“Look at this”, James had exclaimed, pointing excitedly to a convoluted network of lines and a series of inscriptions in the clearest of the photographs.
XXX“What about it?” Adam replied, seeing nothing especially out of the ordinary. The script was incomprehensible to him, so he focused instead on a series of pictures running across the bottom of the photo. Little robbed men were bowing in front of a larger figure, a man with a multitude of wings and the head of a praying mantis. “What are those people doing?”
XXX“That’s Huitzilpopochtli. They’re sacrificing someone to him. Thats not important though – look at these lines.”
XXX“What about them?”
XXX“Well, you tell me. I can’t make head nor tail of them. Patterson seems to think they’re important though.”
XXX“Patterson from applied mathematics?”
XXX“Yea. He cornered me in my office a couple weeks after the dig and asked me about them. I told him I couldn’t figure out what the hell they were.” James paused and drummed his fingers nervously.
XXX“So then what?”, Adam prodded, his interest piqued.
XXX“Well.. he asked me if I knew anything about vacuum field theory. He said the lines were a geometric solution to the Bose-Einstein field equations, and something about dimensional gating; then he left in a hurry.”
XXX“That is strange.”
XXX“Well, now today I get a government notice that the dig site is being seized under eminent domain. No explanation, nothing. It doesn’t sit well with me.”
James had been angry about the loss of his dig, and had filed complaints, but he never got a response. He was still waiting when the shadow came. James, the shadow, and the mystery of the inscription ran together in Adam’s mind as he walked further into the city, absently checking windows and doors. The sun was sinking, and he decided it was best to stop at a couple more buildings then head back to the coast. The low, windowless warehouse on the next corner looked promising – perhaps food storage? It’s yellow trim was badly faded; the graveled, tar-paper roof had grown tired of holding itself flat and had curled up at the edges. If it had been abandoned before the war that meant it might be empty, but it also meant no one was there to clear it out during the evacuation. Adam checked the door and found it locked, then ran his finger tentatively over the jamb. The paint was bubbling and peeling, and it flaked away at his touch. The wood looked soft; he picked at it with his nail and it splintered. Probably dry-rot. He rapped the center of the door with his knuckles, listened to the sound, and considered, then, suddenly decisive, he squared himself against the door and struck it with his shoulder.
The door broke easily, opening onto a short set of concrete steps. Adam tried to stop himself, but he had put too much force into the blow. The stairs flashed past, the ground flew up, and his head struck the floor.
When the world slid back into focus, it was glowing red. The floor was dark, and there was a glowing red rectangle hanging in the air. Adam stared at the rectangle, and slowly his mind began to clear. He felt the back of his head; it was covered in blood. He had fallen.. where? Down stairs, through a door. The red rectangle was the door. The door was open and it was red outside – the sun was setting! He dragged himself up the steps in time to see the sun drop below the horizon. Something was flowing down the street. It was black, just black and empty, and it was very fast. Thoughts of night in the shadow, of neighbors who left and never came back, rushed into his mind like electric curent, shocking him forward, and he started to run, but it was too late. The rolling black mass caught him and everything was gone; he was gone. He tried to move but he couldn’t feel his body or the ground, couldn’t tell if he was even breathing, couldn’t hear his feet hit the cement.
He heard something else, though, something very soft. A rustling, and a kind of tapping or scratching. It was quiet at first, but there was nothing else, and he was shrinking away, vanishing in the darkness – he was shrinking, and the sound was growing.. It ballooned up inside him, pushing itself into the corners of his mind, spreading, expanding in all directions. Soft rustling and scratching on every side; awful, inhuman scratching, like rats scrabbling over stone, or like dying insects dragging their legs along the pavement - like cicadas wriggling from their holes and rasping dryly across the road, only to crunch and crack underfoot. It filled Adam’s body, settling in his joints, scraping along his bones… Something clicked just below his ear, next to his neck, and he tried to scream, but no sound came. In a flash of insight he knew the source of the terrible noise – it was mandibles, and wings, hundreds of wings..