The Doomsday Chronicles (The Future Chronicles) Read online

  The Doomsday Chronicles

  WINDRIFT BOOKS

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  THE DOOMSDAY CHRONICLES

  No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system without the proper written permission of the appropriate copyright holder listed below, unless such copying is expressly permitted by federal and international copyright law. Permission must be obtained from the individual copyright owners as identified herein.

  The stories in this book are fiction. Any resemblance to any person, place, or apocalyptic event—whether induced by biological, nuclear, geological, extraterrestrial, or any other similar agent—is purely coincidental.

  ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

  The Doomsday Chronicles copyright © 2016 Samuel Peralta and Windrift Books.

  “The Way the World Ends” copyright © 2012 by Samuel Peralta. First published in Tango Desolado (Windrift). Used by permission of the author.

  “A Mother So Beautiful” by Ann Christy, copyright © 2016 Ann Christy. Used by permission of the author.

  “The Voices That We Keep” by Aaron Hubble, copyright © 2016 Aaron Hubble. Used by permission of the author.

  “Dragonflies” by Seanan McGuire, copyright © 2016 Seanan McGuire. Used by permission of the author.

  “Lockdown” by Saul Tanpepper, copyright © 2016 Saul Tanpepper. Used by permission of the author.

  “At Depth’s Door” by James Knapp, copyright © 2016 James Knapp. Used by permission of the author.

  “The Slip” by E.R. Arroyo, copyright © 2016 E.R. Arroyo. Used by permission of the author.

  “GOAT” by Matthew Alan Thyer, copyright © 2016 Matthew Alan Thyer. Used by permission of the author.

  “Remembering Hannah” by K. J. Colt, copyright © 2016 K. J. Colt. Used by permission of the author.

  “Red Rain” by Monica Enderle Pierce, copyright © 2016 Monica Enderle Pierce. Used by permission of the author.

  “The Peralta Protocol” by Daniel Arthur Smith, copyright © 2016 Daniel Arthur Smith. Used by permission of the author.

  “The Journal” by Terry R. Hill, copyright © 2016 Terry R. Hill. Used by permission of the author.

  “Power Outage” by Holly Heisey, copyright © 2016 Holly Heisey. Used by permission of the author.

  “The Last Siege of Olympus” by Therin Knite, copyright © 2016 Therin Knite. Used by permission of the author.

  “Mia + Vegan Cannibals” by S. Elliot Brandis, copyright © 2016 S. Elliot Brandis. Used by permission of the author.

  “Staying Behind” by Ken Liu, copyright © 2011 Ken Liu. First published in Clarkesworld. Used by permission of the author.

  All other text copyright © 2016 by Samuel Peralta.

  Edited by Crystal Watanabe (www.pikkoshouse.com)

  Cover art and design by Adam Hall (www.aroundthepages.com)

  Print formatting by Therin Knite (www.knitedaydesign.com)

  The Doomsday Chronicles is part of The Future Chronicles series produced by Samuel Peralta (www.samuelperalta.com).

  978-1-988268-00-2

  THE DOOMSDAY CHRONICLES

  STORY SYNOPSES

  A Mother So Beautiful (Ann Christy)

  Camille just wants a good relationship with her mother. That’s all. Breaking through that cool exterior isn’t easy when all her mother wants is to work on the cure for human violence. As their tangled relationship twists and turns, the end of the world turns out to be the only logical outcome.

  The Voices That We Keep (Aaron Hubble)

  Felix Dastin has spent the last fifteen years chasing what’s left of humanity across the stars. Tortured by voices from his past, Dastin pursues the man whose machine made the Earth uninhabitable and killed his wife. Revenge will take him to the last place he thought he’d ever go.

  Dragonflies (Seanan McGuire)

  The dragonfly hung in the thick, humid air like a jeweled miracle, wings beating so fast that they became a blur. Its body was an oil-slick of shifting colors, greens and blues and purples, blending together in patterns that would have seemed garish if they hadn’t been natural. It had a cocker spaniel clutched in four of its six legs…

  Lockdown (Saul Tanpepper)

  When her elementary school goes into lockdown, a third grade teacher shifts into survival mode. But she'll soon discover that the children under her charge pose as much risk as any threat waiting outside her door.

  At Depth’s Door (James Knapp)

  Henry Cotter has never seen the light of day. He's seen illumination from fading bulbs and candle-flame, but he has never seen the sky. In fact, Henry doesn't know a thing like the sky even exists. He and everyone he knows are forced to toil under miles of rock by their strange, inhuman caretakers and have been for as long as anyone can remember. All of his life Henry has struggled with the singular goal of keeping what remains of his family alive and together, but as the last remnants begin to fray, he hears whispers that there might be something more for all of them, if they only knew where to look.

  The Slip (E.R. Arroyo)

  Enemies have arrived but no one can see them. Like wind, they sweep over the planet with no visible trace besides seemingly self-inflicted human carnage. When the government warns of an impending attack, Dean has one goal—find his sister and save her from the invasion. The problem is, her mind has already been invaded.

  GOAT (Matthew Alan Thyer)

  The desert southwest is a dry place. Water, fossil water, left untouched for an age is all that remains for desiccated towns situated on the dusty clay banks of once-great rivers. Delving deep, Scout McKinley gambles everything in a desperate struggle for water.

  Remembering Hannah (K. J. Colt)

  An airborne virus, which aggressively mimics Alzheimer’s disease, has infected millions in Europe, and is spreading in North America. Bill, a recently-widowed project manager, is in a gated community under military quarantine. When the quarantine fails and soldiers herd his neighbors onto trucks, Bill panics. Then someone breaks into his basement, and Bill must make a decision that will seal their fate, and perhaps the fate of the world.

  Red Rain (Monica Enderle Pierce)

  With mysterious orbs hovering over every continent and apocalyptic prophesies coming true worldwide, Dr. Tasha Garcia holds her philandering ex-husband’s fate in her own hands. She can forgive him. Or she can abandon him to an army of angels — the Wrath-of-God kind — and, unwittingly, condemn herself too.

  The Peralta Protocol (Daniel Arthur Smith)

  We once thought there were too many of us on the planet; the truth is there were never enough. One couple can save the human race, if their child can be born, if the Peralta Protocol succeeds.

  The Journal (Terry R. Hill)

  Sometimes, there are things more tragic than to feel firsthand the end of humanity – the tragedy, for example, of having to explain it to a child.

  Power Outage (Holly Heisey)

  When trauma gave Lieve the ability to fly and manipulate energy fields, she joined the Wardens in protecting her world. But now the Destroyer of Worlds has come, and to stop him she must confront the very nature of her powers.

  The Last Siege of Olympus (Therin Knit
e)

  A man finds himself trapped in a strange and lonely purgatory, longing for a way to escape. But when the world around him starts to change in sinister ways, he uncovers a startling truth…and a vital mission he has yet to complete.

  Mia + Vegan Cannibals (S. Elliot Brandis)

  Mia finds herself at a vegan convention, about to be eaten alive by its attendees. How? Well, it’s a long story. But when she was coerced into infiltrating vegan subculture, Mia just might have bitten off more than she could chew.

  Staying Behind (Ken Liu)

  After the Singularity, most people chose to die. The dead pity us and call us the left behind, as if we were unfortunate souls who couldn’t get to a life raft in time. They cannot fathom the idea that we might choose to stay behind. And so, year after year, relentlessly, the dead try to steal our children.

  CONTENTS

  Foreword

  A Mother So Beautiful (Ann Christy)

  The Voices That We Keep (Aaron Hubble)

  Dragonflies (Seanan McGuire)

  Lockdown (Saul Tanpepper)

  At Depth’s Door (James Knapp)

  The Slip (E.R. Arroyo)

  GOAT (Matthew Alan Thyer)

  Remembering Hannah (K. J. Colt)

  Red Rain (Monica Enderle Pierce)

  The Peralta Protocol (Daniel Arthur Smith)

  The Journal (Terry R. Hill)

  Power Outage (Holly Heisey)

  The Last Siege of Olympus (Therin Knite)

  Mia + Vegan Cannibals (S. Elliot Brandis)

  Staying Behind (Ken Liu)

  A Note to Readers

  Foreword

  The Way the World Ends

  by Samuel Peralta

  The world will come to an end tonight.

  Not with comets slanting through the rafters,

  Or tidal waves surging across the coast,

  Or the braze of volcanoes, unsubmerged.

  Not with the earth’s decimated orbit

  Spiralling it into a strangled sun,

  Not with the rush of spurious armies

  Turning fallow the scope of mankind’s dreams.

  But with the last of your kiss, fading

  From the sepulchre of these lips: it ends.

  And the night sky may as well be shattered,

  And the sun never rise again, or set,

  And the stars may as well burn to cinders,

  For all the worth they are, when you are gone.

  __________

  Samuel Peralta is a physicist and storyteller. As well as writing his own work, he is the creator and driving force behind the speculative fiction anthology series The Future Chronicles.

  www.amazon.com/author/samuelperalta

  A Mother So Beautiful

  by Ann Christy

  ONE – DAY ONE

  I’M THINKING ABOUT MY MOTHER. She is beautiful and she is strong. And everyone in the world hates her. Except me, that is.

  She isn’t the standard sort of beautiful, but rather a strange and almost unearthly sort that comes from what she isn’t as much as what she is. It’s as if she doesn’t belong on this plane, not with us regular people. She has this little smile, her lips turned up so slightly that it takes a second look to be sure it’s there. I know. I’ve seen enough people take that second look, then try to meet her eyes to return it. It never, ever slips from her face.

  When she walks, her elbows stay tucked to her sides. Her walk is graceful, but without any obvious temptation-making sway to her hips. She walks like a lady, her steps never too long and her heels never too high. And no matter what, her chin is never tucked, but always out just enough that she never appears to be looking at the ground. It’s in the particular shade of pink of her lips, in her eyes the color of a winter sky, in her hair with its indecisive shade between red and brown.

  I suppose the clincher is that her perfect politeness, her perfect composure, and her unfailingly perfect beauty connects with no one. Not one person. Those same people that take a second look and return her smile never find themselves entirely wrapped in her gaze. It skids across them, catches some point not quite in the person’s pupils, though never obviously so. It isn’t rudeness, just somehow incomplete.

  I’m not the only one who’s noticed this about her. If it had been just me, someone could claim that I simply idolize the woman who brought me into the world. That would be the logical thing to think. Don’t all girls think their mothers are beautiful?

  There’s a difference though, between me and all those other daughters. As of this morning, my mother has killed somewhere between half a million and a million people. The estimates vary and aren’t reliable, changing from one number to another by the minute. Each progressively more shell-shocked news anchor slips into their chair to take their turn at reporting history. Each gives a new, higher number for us to gasp at.

  No, it isn’t only that I idolize her like any other daughter would. It is simply that she is beautiful and different. And now everyone knows it.

  TWO – DAY FIVE

  They’re parading her now, walking her toward a secure facility. A phalanx of guards surrounds her, and they stare out at the screaming crowd with hard expressions. As always, she is cool and seemingly unaware of either the crowd or her guards. She walks like she’s simply walking into the research lab where she works, her elbow crooked as if the shiny, black purse she usually carries is still hanging just behind her upturned wrist.

  She’s wearing her red suit, which is a mistake, I think. It’s too much like the color of blood, and the crowd is very eager for hers already. It’s a bit too much like she’s rubbing their faces in what she’s done. Still, the camera shows her face clearly. To me, she looks serene, no different than she appears at any other time.

  The news anchor is taking some glee in telling those of us watching that she’s being taken into a controlled facility where the government can do as they like. They talk back and forth about the possibility that in this place, she can somehow be forced to tell them exactly what she’s done.

  And then forced to reveal how it can be undone.

  The death toll is more than five million today. That is the least number of people who have died as of this moment. It’s likely more than that. And there will be many more before this day ends.

  THREE – DAY EIGHT

  They’ve discovered me, which I didn’t think would happen. That I am her daughter is a secret that only she and the anonymous government official that signed the papers after my birth are supposed to know. Plus some lawyers, because there are always lawyers. And my father and grandmother, of course.

  That I know my status is a secret I’ve kept from almost everyone.

  And now they are coming to take me away. There’s a big black vehicle in my grandmother’s driveway and I’m supposed to go with them.

  It’s for my own protection, they say.

  If they think that possession of me will provide leverage, then they do not understand her at all.

  As of today, there are no more counts of the dead, only estimates. It’s somewhere between ten and fifty million, but there is a wide, black gulf of ignorance between those numbers. I don’t think they have any idea at all.

  FOUR – DAY NINE

  I saw my mother earlier today, and she saw me. There was glass between us and a man held a gun to my head while he coughed blood. My mother only smiled her serene smile and said, “Please. Be my guest.”

  She then primly crossed her hands in her handcuffs so that they rested exactly so across her middle. And she waited. It was perhaps the first time she ever looked at me with any pleasure on her face.

  The man didn’t shoot me, and if I hadn’t been strapped to a chair, I would have helped him when he collapsed a moment later. A woman came in, her face hard and without expression. She helped him instead. She slipped the gun from his hand and patted him, soothing him as he blew bubbly blood from his mouth and seized across the concrete floor.

  When he was finally still, the woman
wiped the splatters of bright red from her hands and face, then looked at me. She tugged off the straps that bound my hands to the chair, but there was no graciousness in her and her face held an expression I still don’t understand.

  She stepped away from the chair, allowing me the space to rise. Then we looked at each other, my mother silently smiling through the glass, her eyes focused somewhere off my left shoulder.

  The woman tossed me the keys to the shackles around my waist and said, “He didn’t understand. None of them do. Bringing you here just made it certain that she’ll never tell us anything. It’s too late anyway.”

  I nodded at her—because she’s right about it being too late—and she left the room. A moment later, I heard a shot. Then two more. Then a terrible silence followed by more shots. My mother never flinched at the noises and her eyes never shifted, not so much as a muscle twitching under the smooth skin of her face. The woman in the room with her, standing in the corner as if to ensure my heavily manacled mother didn’t attack, merely looked at the door while tears ran down her face.