After the Flashback by Wayne Kyle Spitzer

Author:Wayne Kyle Spitzer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: book, books, ebook, ebooks, paperback, dark dinosaur fiction, realistic, dinosaur horror, heavy, serious, sagas, prehistoric, smart, Jurassic, primordial, earth, dinosaur, red, four, lake, dinosaurs, domination, dystopian, survivalism, grim, weird, dinosaur thrillers, sf, sci fi, terror, world, death, danger, novels, dino
Publisher: Hobb's End Books
Published: 2022-09-23T00:00:00+00:00

THE WINE DARK EARTH (2021)

I look at the shadow of the Sarpedon’s conning tower, rippling through the waves like a boxy, black sail, its periscopes and radar like spikes on a war helm. Because it hurts my mind to stare at the illuminated cloud above—the Flashback Borealis, as they call it—which hangs over Seattle like a shroud, for very long, I have again diverted my eyes; this time to the water—the dark, roiling, whitecapped water—which, reflecting the cloud’s ephemeral light, has become the color of wine, the color of blood.

Atop the sail are three shadowy figures: a tall, thin man in a pea coat and captain’s hat (Captain O’Neil), a shorter form with long, windswept hair (Beth), and yet another—bearing what is called in Korea the 2-block haircut—a figure so short that only her head is visible.

A figure, I suppose, which is me. Pang In-Su. Survivor of the Bainbridge boat fire. Teen member of the Delta Dawn excursion force, which will go ashore soon. American-raised Korean deafmute whom, because of her big ears (never let it be said that God doesn’t have a sense of humor), they call “The Mouse.”

The Captain offers me his binoculars, which I take—they are heavier than I expected—and I look through them: at the towering office buildings and mirrored condos, black against the red haze, and the multicolored lights, which flicker, specter like, amidst the stoic, wine-dark clouds. Amazing, I sign. That they can see so close. I focus on an American flag—which is blowing from the mast of a sleek, blue-white tower with an angled roof. It’s almost like you’re there. Right up against the buildings. I look at Beth, incredulously. How?

She moves to sign but pauses, as though realizing she doesn’t know, then exchanges words with the Captain—which I am unable to read.

He says it’s because they contain prisms, she signs—even as the hair whips frenziedly about her face, stabs at her eyes. Little crystals, which serve to bend and refract light.

I hesitate, shaking my head. I don’t know anything about that. About prisms.

I watch as she communicates with the Captain—verbally—but look away as he begins to explain, down through the plexiglass shield in front of us, to where the great, domed snout of the sub is parting Elliott Bay like a torpedo.

At last, she signs, A prism is a faceted block of glass that splits light into its constituent colors. When light enters a prism it is refracted so that all the colors of the spectrum are dispersed—spread out—and you can see them.

I look at the cloud, like a scaled-down interstellar nebula only right here in Earth’s atmosphere, and the many-colored lights, which pulse and flash. And what then? Do they ever recombine? I mean, do they ever become one again?

Beth only smiles, as though seeing something in me I could not possibly see myself, and lolls her head toward the Captain, at which I can read: “She asks if the colors are ever reunited.” And she winks at him.

She translates as he speaks: They can be, yes.

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