Tails of the Apocalypse by David Bruns & Nick Cole & E. E. Giorgi & David Adams & Deirdre Gould & Michael Bunker & Jennifer Ellis & Stefan Bolz & Harlow C. Fallon & Hank Garner & Todd Barselow & Chris Pourteau

Author:David Bruns & Nick Cole & E. E. Giorgi & David Adams & Deirdre Gould & Michael Bunker & Jennifer Ellis & Stefan Bolz & Harlow C. Fallon & Hank Garner & Todd Barselow & Chris Pourteau [Bruns, David & Cole, Nick & Giorgi, E. E. & Adams, David & Gould, Deirdre & Bunker, Michael & Ellis, Jennifer & Bolz, Stefan & Fallon, Harlow C. & Garner, Hank & Barselow, Todd & Pourteau, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Amazon: B016E5JIRU
Publisher: Hip Phoenix Publishing
Published: 2015-11-19T16:00:00+00:00

He did not sleep that night. Late, when the moon was fat and low in the sky, he awoke and stood looking down into the valley once more.

Could he return and tell them he’d done his best? Searched everywhere to find the past? Could he?

He remembered her, Maggie. They’d called her Saint Maggie. But he had known her as just Maggie. He remembered the heavy smell of too-sweet flowers on her when she’d first scooped him up as the Doomsday horn rang out over the city and everyone fled. As fighter jets streaked across the sky and cars smashed into one another.

He remembered her running and saying, “I’m doing my best.”

Like it was a chant.

Like it was an explanation.

Like it was a prayer.

In the morning the man donned his armor and checked the last three shells. He loaded two and kept one in his jacket pocket.

“I gotta,” he told Dog. “I gotta do my best. I gotta go down there … and see.”

Dog had just returned from chasing something in the groves of the sweet-smelling giants that had collapsed across the old places.

“If we don’t find the past then they, back home, they ain’t got no future, buddy.” He hoisted his old ruck on his back once more. The old ruck that contained the transmitter he could use if ever he found the past. The times he’d shouldered its burden were uncountable. How many more times would he do it again?

And he could not help but think that today might be his last. Just as he’d thought every day.

They crossed crumbling terraces and followed overgrown streets down into the bowl of the old places. At noon, near an old intersection where large buildings had all burned down, he heard the bark in the silence. It came from an overgrown hill they were passing beneath. The man’s hand went to the worn stock of his shotgun as Dog tensed. The bark had been so harsh and sharp and sudden, it was as though it had come from nearby. And even now in the silence, its echo seemed to resonate down the long lanes of destruction.

A moment later it was answered. Not far off. A few streets over maybe.

And then another.

And another.

“C’mon, let’s move, buddy,” said the man, breaking into a trot.

The slope of the land was now leading downhill into a large section of smashed and broken houses. Their splintered roofs and jagged beams thrust upward like shadows against the dying afternoon. Behind them, a ragged chorus of harsh barking sharply broke the still air.

The man urged Dog on, his own breath coming in heaving puffs as his old boots knocked against the crumbling pavement of the sidewalk they ran along.

“In there,” he shouted, pointing toward the catastrophic wreckage that seemed the worst they’d seen in this place. As though all the houses had been crushed instead of burned or blown away. Dog followed a rabbit trail into the mess, and the man, just before getting to his knees to crawl in, turned and saw them coming.