Year's Best Aotearoa New Zealand Science Fiction and Fantasy, Volume 3 by Marie Hodgkinson

Author:Marie Hodgkinson
Language: deu
Format: epub
Publisher: Paper Road Press
Published: 2021-10-18T04:41:41+00:00

You and Me at the End of the World

Dave Agnew

Nobody really noticed the day the world began to end. The sun rose as usual, though its warmth seemed to not quite reach the world’s surface. No gods came for the faithful, no slumbering dragons rose from beneath the oceans to consume the unlucky.

I got out of bed, made a coffee, went to work. You did the same, and kissed me on the cheek as I left. You hadn’t shaved. Somewhere deep behind the scenes, something started to wind down towards zero.

The first sign anyone took notice of came a few days later, when Matariki didn’t rise one evening. We’d gone up the hill so we could watch the seven stars come over the horizon, bundled up against the cold midwinter. We laughed and leaned into each other, and pretended to worry that somehow we’d gone to the wrong hemisphere, while fighting down our growing unease.

We drank our travel mugs full of cocoa and drove home. On the radio, an astronomer was intrigued, confused, but not worried. A crazy called in to claim it was a sign God had left without telling anyone. Another blamed gay marriage. We laughed at that, and joked we’d take the moon next.

The next week, ash started falling like snow. People could ignore the other signs, write them off as coincidences, or hoaxes, or viral marketing. But when a blanket of ash began to inexplicably fall from the sky all across the world, people quickly accepted something was wrong. You said it was from an underwater supervolcano, shoving its way out of the depths to remind humanity that this planet didn’t belong to us, no matter what we might think. I thought it was a meteor, disintegrating in low orbit.

We both hoped it would stop soon.

But the ash kept falling, suffocating cities and choking rivers. Weeks passed. People didn’t know what to do. I stopped going to work. I couldn’t see the point in it anymore. But you kept working, until you were the only person left at the clinic – patient or doctor. You stopped going a few days after that. It’s what I’ve always admired about you. You hold on until the last minute, and then keep holding on just a bit longer.

Some people gathered in churches to pray for deliverance. Others opened their wrists in the bath. You and I stayed at home, watching our emergency supplies dwindle. We’d stocked up in case of an earthquake. You told me the bigger disaster would be when we ran out of gingernuts.

People started seeing angels doing battle on high. Flaming swords, wheels within wheels, asymmetrical wings covered with dozens of eyes. We heard that one crashed into the Waitematā, boiling the harbour away and setting fire to half of Auckland. By then, lines of communication had started breaking down. Television stations ceased broadcasting, the internet just stopped working one day. We had radio, sometimes. So there was rumour and hearsay, stories heard by a friend of a friend and broadcast over unsecured AM channels.

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