When the World Ends Read online

  When the World Ends

  J.L. Forrest

  When the World Ends. Copyright © 2019 by J.L. Forrest. All rights reserved. No part of this novella may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, address the Robot Cowgirl Press, Denver, Colorado: [email protected].

  When the World Ends was written, with permission, in artistic response to the song “When the World Ends” by King Makis and AwakeFM. Neither J.L. Forrest nor Robot Cowgirl Ltd. claim any rights to “When the World Ends”, nor do they release any rights with regard to When the World Ends, except insofar as all parties, including NiceFM, have agreed to cross-promotion.

  Revised edition. Digital. Published by the Robot Cowgirl Press: http://robotcowgirl.com.

  All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Design by Forstå.

  Cover by Victor Laszlo.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data has been applied for.

  Praise for When the World Ends

  “J.L. Forrest produces surprises ensconced in some the tightest, sharpest writing in science fiction and fantasy.”

  Travis Heermann, author of Heart of the Ronin

  “When the World Ends is part fever dream and part pseudo-prescient science fiction, where the Earth herself fights back against her most abusive foe, humankind. And yet the light of hope and the human spirit still shines through.”

  Michael F. Haspil, author of Graveyard Shift

  “Brilliantly imagined and expertly told.”

  Lou J. Berger, author of

  Professor Challenger: The Serpent of the Loch

  Further Reading (and Listening)

  Songs at the End of the World

  I. When the World Ends

  II. Gods of the New Moons

  III. Queens of the Horned Lord [Coming 2019]

  IV. Memories of the Damned [Coming 2019]

  V. When the World Begins [Coming 2019]

  Short Fiction

  Minuscule Truths (Short Fictions II)

  Delicate Ministrations (Short Fictions I)

  The Eternal Requiem

  I. Requies Dawn

  II. Requies Day [Late 2019]

  III. Requies Dusk [To Be Announced]

  IV. Requies Night [To Be Announced]

  For Your Consideration

  Join the Newsletter for new releases and special announcements.

  Listen to “When the World Ends”, the Track which inspired this novella.

  Learn more about King Makis and AwakeFM, the musicians at NiceFM.

  Thanks to—

  NiceFM

  King Makis

  AwakeFM

  James

  Johine

  Mike

  and as always

  Shana

  When the World Ends

  I. The Old Man We Killed

  II. Hinton

  III. McBride

  IV. Conversations

  V. Pulse, Parts I & II

  VI. Visions, Part I

  VII. Pulse, Part III

  VIII. Prince George

  IX. Blight

  X. The Horned Lords

  XI. Visions, Part II

  XII. Prison Bars

  XIII. Going South

  XIV. Priestess

  XV. Fire in the Sky

  XVI. Burnt Offerings

  XVII. Infection

  XVIII. Preacher

  XIX. Corkscrew

  XX. Visions, Part III

  XXI. Processing

  XXII. Bombing

  XXIII. The Blood Remains

  XXIV. Broken Promises

  XXV. Visions, Part IV

  XXVI. We Die on Earth

  XXVII. Breakfast with God

  XXVIII. Tooth & Talon

  XXIX. Autopilot

  XXX. Two if by Sea

  Further Reading (and Listening)

  Afterword

  About the Author

  I. The Old Man We Killed

  Day 131—

  I’ve been thinking about the old man we killed in Edmonton.

  Also about how barbaric it’s become, this new Dark Ages. The end is nigh, as they say, but before then all that’ll be left is superstition and human sacrifices.

  The ruins of Edmonton felt unreal, like a studio set for a World War immersive. Half the city burnt to foundations, some still smoking. Gangs had carved off territory, annihilating any semblance of government. But there weren’t enough people left alive to have emptied Edmonton’s pharmacies, and the pharmacies were worth a risk.

  Antibiotics, painkillers, first-aid kits, plenty of tampons, cotton swabs.

  The old man was hungry. Would’ve given the crazy asshole a share of venison, but he came at me, no warning. Surprised the shit out of us.

  Raymond shot him, took the piss right out of him.

  I sat with the grizzled moron, held his hand while he bled out. He told me about his wife, Martha, dead from Blight. He loved that woman, wouldn’t talk about much except her hair and her wedding dress, how they’d had forty years together.

  That was something. Do any of us have forty years anymore?

  Looters had robbed his house. After that, another group adopted him, but they died. He was scared, figured Raymond and I were killers, thought maybe he could take us before we noticed him.

  Guess he was right about us being killers.

  Ray’s bullet ripped through his liver. Such a bad end.

  I used our morphine on him, but before he went under I forgot to ask his name. Wish I could say this guy was our first kill, but Ray and I have dropped a few between Winnipeg and here. Wish I could say it was exhausting, that I was sad, that I cared.

  Most of us left, that’s one thing we’ve got in common—numbness.

  In the abstract I suppose I care, but the crying is impossible.

  Truth is I don’t think we’ll make it four years, never mind forty. I don’t mean me and Raymond. I mean Homo sapiens.

  It’s been one thing after another—the Pulses, wars, Blight, all the dog-eat-dog bullshit. I keep wondering what’s next, what form the killing blow will take. At this rate, a planet-destroying asteroid wouldn’t surprise me.

  Might be a relief to see it hit.

  Ray and I are nearing Hinton, following railroad tracks, having learned our lesson about highways back in Indian Head. I miss Phil and Terry, miss the way they smiled even after everything fell apart. I figure their killers are still ripping up and down the Trans-Canada Highway, and I fantasize about finding those gang-banging assholes, chaining them behind their El Camino, and dragging them until their bones fall apart.

  Only fantasy—we’ll never go east again.

  Hinton.

  By the maps, the town wasn’t that large before Blight, maybe ten thousand people. We’ll chance it. Stock up on whatever we can find, then keep west until we reach Prince George.

  II. Hinton

  Day 132—

  Two old farmers in Hinton. They sat playing cards and drinking beer. Cold cans.

  Enough battery power to last a few months, they said, and they were rigging solar panels taken off houses. As far as they knew, no one else was left anywhere in Town.

  Only a few hundred survived Blight, they said, and those trickled off east, most to Toronto.

  We passed no one heading east, we told them. East is dead.

  “We heard the government was pulling things together in Toronto,” said the farmers.

  Ray asked if they heard that on a radio.

  No. Nothing on a radio, only what a few passersby were saying. Meaning Toront
o was dark.

  Could be a post-apocalyptic utopia in the making. Probably it’s hell.

  Not more than a quarter million Torontonians survived Blight. Half those have died since. Last news was of cholera outbreaks, for fuck’s sake. Whatever you do, don’t go to Toronto.

  The farmers shuffled the cards. We drank beer together and played a few hands.

  On our way out of town, Raymond and I passed mass graves. In the fields north of the tracks, two bulldozers sat idle beside the mounds, grass crowding the treads. Ash darkened the clay.

  In Winnipeg they burned the bodies, torched them as fast as they could. Probably wise, stopped a lot of disease.

  Not Blight, though.

  It killed everyone it touched.

  Jimmy

  Connie

  Aaron

  Tim

  Sidhu

  Bethany

  Ed

  Cee

  Mom

  Dad

  The Pulses sure messed up the world, but Blight put the human race down. A hammer between the eyes. A knife to the intestines.

  Sometimes, I think anyone who died of Blight got the better deal. But I’m still alive, I still want to live, and if I haven’t given up by now, I’m not going to.

  By tomorrow, we’ll be in the mountains.

  III. McBride

  Day 148—

  The tracks led us through Jasper, then for two and half days the rails followed the Fraser River and Robson Valley. This afternoon we reached McBride.

  If anyone here survived Blight, they’re long gone, which could mean either walked away or dead from something else.

  In the fields, I estimate two hundred marked graves. We guess as many corpses in town. There is a convenience to apocalypses, I suppose, the way people find religion again, the way they pack themselves into churches to die. Half the dead are in the local church, the stink faded, and we steered wide of it.

  Now I sit on the porch of a white farmhouse on a cool evening. The summer’s getting late. I’ve been counting days but I can’t tell you the date or day of week. It’s August, I’m sure.

  Hints of wood smoke on the air.

  Across the world, fires have gotten worse for decades. Higher temperatures. Longer summers. Less rain in some places, more in others, where the grasses grow taller and burn easier. Today, there might be a hundred wildfires across Canada. Fewer humans to start them, but no one to put them out. Forests surround this ghost town, hug the rail lines through these mountains, many trees still living but way too many dead and dry.

  God, I hope I don’t die in a fire.

  Raymond managed to light the house’s gas stove. Warm beans, canned spinach, spaghetti and meatballs—canned food for dinner. We’ve walked most of the way from Winnipeg, and this was one of the best meals I’ve ever eaten.

  He wants to go upstairs and fuck, like a regular couple, in a bed.

  That sounds pretty grand.

  Wait. Shit. There are lights moving at the edge of town—

  ◊

  ◊

  ◊

  ◊

  It was a party going east. We warned them about Toronto, but they’re heading across Banff, want to make it across Alberta. They warned us not to go north of Prince George, said we were all but dead if we did.

  Something about the “Horned Lords.” Whatever the hell.

  Monsters in the Yukon. Cannibals, they said. Crazy, they said.

  That’s a real problem, seeing as our destination is Fairbanks.

  Ray has brought back gallons of water. He’s boiling potfuls, carrying them upstairs to the bathtub. Not like we have to conserve the propane. When the water cools enough, we can take a bath.

  A bath!

  Good man.

  He is absolutely getting laid tonight.

  IV. Conversations

  Conversation—

  Trying to remember conversations. I don’t want all our words lost. Someone should record what people said, what we thought, why we argued what we argued.

  RAY: Cannibals don’t sound so good.

  ME: You mean, like, for dinner?

  RAY: Gross.

  ME: See what I did there?

  RAY: You know what I meant.

  ME: Yeah. Cannibals sound fucking terrifying.

  RAY: So maybe we don’t go up Highway 16?

  ME: Ya think? Cannibals, Ray.

  RAY: What if we go west, to the coast?

  ME: And do what?

  RAY: There must be heaps of abandoned boats.

  ME: What’ll we do with a boat?

  RAY: Take it up the coast?

  ME: To where?

  RAY: Anchorage.

  ME: Anchorage is drowned.

  RAY: Yeah, but there was news of reconstruction there. Anchorage was coming back.

  ME: That was before Blight.

  RAY: Worth a try. Even if Anchorage is dead, there’d be routes to Fairbanks from there.

  ME: Only one problem with that plan.

  RAY: Which is?

  ME: Neither of us knows how to sail.

  RAY: What if it’s a motorboat?

  ME: That’s open water. On the ocean. And what about fuel?

  RAY: We stay close to land?

  ME: Rocks?

  RAY: I begin to see your point.

  ME: Still, drowning in seawater or being dashed on rocks sound better than cannibals.

  RAY: What if a storm took us way out to sea and we got lost?

  ME: Then I suppose we’d starve to death.

  RAY: I’d sacrifice myself so you could eat.

  ME: Gross.

  RAY: See what I did there? I suppose you’d still die of thirst.

  ME: Ya think?

  Then the sonic boom ripped across the sky.

  A low-altitude StratoJumper. They hit Mach 9, and “low altitude” means fifty thousand feet on their way up to one twenty, enough to hang with a hook, transfer passengers or goods to orbit, then glide to the ground.

  This has always been true:

  The ultra-rich patronize us, tell us the problems of the poor are exactly like their problems, only less so, that money doesn’t make anyone happier. Money makes the problems bigger, they explain. Money is only for the strong and capable, they argue. Great wealth is a sign of character and moral backbone, they claim. At the same time their commercials sell us the jet-setter lifestyle, guilt us for not having it. At the same time they tell us to live within our means. Climb the ladder. Improve our station. Work hard enough or smart enough, and you too can be a bazillionaire.

  Before Blight, were ten billion of us too lazy or stupid to measure up? Do dollars make morals?

  I glimpsed the StratoJumper, half a sky ahead of its engines’ growl. No one on that ship is worried about starving tonight. Or about breaking a leg and dying in the sticks. Or about highway bandits, rapists, or murderers.

  If the rumours of cannibals in the north are true, well, I wish they’d follow their Rousseau: “When the people shall have nothing more to eat,” he said, “they will eat the rich.”

  I might try a bite or two myself.

  V. Pulse, Parts I & II

  Pulses One and Two—

  Supposedly there’s still ice on Greenland, but most is already gone, went in earnest. At their most rapid, Long Island-sized chunks were dropping into the ocean every hour, week after week, month after month. In a geological sense, million-year-old ice vanished like underwear on a virgin’s wedding night. By then, Arctic permafrost had turned into swamp. Canada, Russia, Sweden, Norway, and Finland belched their stores of methane.

  “You started this fight,” said the Earth. “Now, you little morons, I’m gonna finish it.”

  Within a few months, coastal waterlines rose six meters. The first cities drowned. Italy wasn’t a quarter done with its sea walls—too much corruption to complete the job—and arrivederci Venice. Manhattan got its feet wet. People fled Miami. I remember none of this—I was a toddler.

  While I was in kindergarten, A
ntarctica’s entire ring of sea ice calved, floated away, and melted, but that didn’t impact sea levels. If you don’t believe me, and you’re still lucky enough to have refrigeration, watch the ice cubes melt into your next glass of water.

  But that ring was holding back a few epochs’ worth of landlocked ice. “It’ll take a thousand years to melt,” said the optimists.

  In unison the ice melted top and bottom. Beneath the glaciers, water provided lubrication, and Antarctican bedrock isn’t flat. The first true slide happened over the course of three years. I was thirteen when more Long Islands drop, drop, dropped into the South Pacific. To image what this does, fill your water glass to the top, then drop the ice cubes in.

  Pulse Two.

  During my first year of high school, coastlines jumped seventeen meters.

  Halifax and Montréal treaded water. Boston, New York, Philadelphia, D.C., and all the Eastern Seaboard cities became the New Venices. Vancouver, Seattle, and Portland took a splash. Huge disasters in India. Croplands lost in China. Water wars in Africa and the Middle East. Southeast Asia suffered from below and above—inundation along with perennial, unending rainfalls. In the United States, California dried up while Cascadia traded drizzles for downpours.