Sci Fi
Life Is Worth More
A nuclear fallout befell the world. In the beginning, before the bombs went off. Our world leaders tried to calm the public down. Saying “Everything will be alright, we shall not succumb to a 3rd World War ''. But the world did succumb to it. We are selfish and greedy beings. Nobody cared about each other. They only did things to help themselves, they had no empathy for others.
By Stephanie Daniel5 years ago in Fiction
Programming
“Warning: ALERT. ALERT. PROXIMITY TO MINEFIELD IS 20 METRES.” The figures moving through the sand-stricken village stop. A man covered in a multi-layered outfit of white and brown, with a helmet that covers his eyes and ears, turns to look at the other figure. He removes the scarf that covers his mouth.
By Alejandro Melgar5 years ago in Fiction
OUR WORLD
DOOMSDAY Essay OUR WORLD He opened his eyes slowly. It was hard to tell day or night anymore. The quiver of grey light forcing itself through the small rain hole above him is all he could count on as an alarm. The cold thick air violated his living space. Five shelves stored his freeze -dried meals, his means of survival. The old farm sink in the corner held two urns of drinking water. The faucet would run cool water for what could be an hour every day, he wasn’t sure but it was enough to freshen up the last 4 days. The toilet thankfully was screened off. Every time he used it he was wondering where it went. It wasn’t that important any way. How he made it and survived, he still couldn’t clearly remember. All he wanted to remember was being at school with his friends, having fun like a normal twelve year old should be doing. His Mom. He could smell her still, every time he woke up, even when he slept. His dreams were sometimes so real and pleasant. They were all he had left of his memories. The trips to grandma’s in the summertime at the coast. The beaches, being out on the water and the salty spray on his face, the taste of the ocean on his lips. The beautiful warm rays of sunlight sweeping his skin. He missed it, he missed her, so much. When he was younger and would complain about being out on the boat for hours. “Its too hot, can we go in now?” The way she would always place her hands on either cheek, look into his eyes and say, “ Lets enjoy what we have today, all the beautiful sunshine, cool air. We’ll go in soon sweetie” The heart shaped locket would swing into his chin when she kissed his cheek. She always wore it.
By Donna Seymour5 years ago in Fiction
Survivors
I didn’t expect the stink. We wade through ankle length muck. Mum makes us keep our shoes on, even though we’ll need to scrub them in the creek later, and they’ll take forever to dry, and it’ll mean going barefoot for a few days while they do. And then they’ll probably reek forever of rot and waste and goo.
By Heather Ewings5 years ago in Fiction
The Aftermath
"Take a chance, take a chance, take a chance on me..." Reeve couldn't help the small smile behind the filtration mask she wore. The mask and the headphones—combined into one amalgam of pure tech and tomfoolery—brought her some sense of relief as she traveled on foot through the scavenging site. Really, it was just the dumping ground for all the materials that were deemed hazardous or useless after clean-up of Site Zero.
By Jillian Spiridon5 years ago in Fiction
Aged
"How did it come to this?" His lip quivered as he held the weapon over the young woman's body. Guilt pierced through him like a gust of winter wind. He studied the new corpse with pain, but he felt that he owed it to her to at least look. He could pay her that much respect, this unfortunate stranger. Blonde, acne-stricken, thin. Just skin and bone, really. Maybe she was hungry, out looking for food at the wrong place and the wrong time. She shouldn't have been out by herself. One thing that stuck out to him, one thing that was a rarity now a days, was her necklace. It was a heart-shaped locket, probably contained a picture of her family or something. He wondered how she had held on to that for so long, people would kill for real silver like that. He wouldn't. He would let her keep the locket close to her heart, perhaps it would do her some good by escorting her to the afterlife. He liked to think that he would be pleasantly escorted to Heaven (which, coincidentally, looked very much like Florida in his mind) when he passed on.
By Samantha Crites5 years ago in Fiction
Calamity
‘Sit rep. I repeat – sit rep.’ The light sliver she held tightly glowed blue and then disappeared. Litten pounded the ground in frustration – her only link to the outside world was gone. She lay in a shallow depression gazing at the roiling dust clouds forming above her. Not good. Winking her left eye to engage her neural enhancement – all she got was a blur. Her own eyes would have to do. Not much to see in a hole – she needed to break cover to see if the DPIWE had returned for her.
By Heather Hankinson 5 years ago in Fiction
The Refuge
The girl wiped away beads of sweat from her soot-smeared forehead. She sighed with relief at the sound of the whistle filling the chamber. “Shift over, back to your bunkers,” a voice spat over the loud speaker. She was relieved to finish her shift shovelling loads of grimy stinking coal, a job she deeply loathed. The girl had never been outside the Refuge; a mining facility turned make-shift bomb shelter, kept functional via an archaic coal-powered system. It was the only place she had ever known, but instead of a home it felt like a prison to confine her until death made its claim. The only person close to her that had seen the world outside was her grandmother. Her family were evacuated from their village in the summer of 1952 when the war turned hot, and bombs were sent everywhere. She arrived at the Refuge when she was only ten-years-old, living most of her 60 years underground with the ‘Last of Humanity’. Or so they were told when the MAD signal came through. The Guardians of the Refuge, the cruel authority in charge, were the outcome of wealthy evacuees gradually corrupting and usurping poorly organised military forces. They turned what was intended to be a safe haven into a draconian nightmare for the underclass majority. Their rules were clear; no education of any kind – education leads to ideas and ideas are dangerous; work is the only priority – if we don’t keep the furnaces burning, we die; and no questioning the authority! "We survive by the will of the Guardians," was ingrained into every facet of their lives, playing repeatedly over the loud speaker together with the sounds of air-raid sirens. All to remind them about the apocalyptic wasteland outside, and to ensure the workers remained afraid enough to respect the order of things. The girl saw how living in the Refuge was especially hard for her grandmother after knowing life on the outside. But her grandmother found purpose in secretly teaching the girl to read by drawing letters in the film of dirt beneath their beds, and telling stories about her childhood studying the flowers in the woods beyond her home. Her grandmother’s dream was to build the world’s largest botanical garden holding a million plant species, a dream that was never meant to be. The girl longed to feel the warmth of the sun her grandmother spoke about and to breathe air that didn’t carry the stale remnants of the furnaces. The Refuge was cold, industrial and devoid of colour other than patches of rust coating the walls and ceilings, making it difficult at times to envision the world full of beauty her grandmother had described. The girl was always careful not to reveal she could read in front of the Guardians as they enforced the rules with extreme malevolence, often beating workers for their own amusement. They would also refer to them as 'shelter rats' to reinforce the status quo. She had witnessed many of them brutalised beyond recognition for even the slightest remark. No one spoke-out though, because they likely feared the consequences of doing so. Even though they outnumbered the guardians, they didn’t have the strength to fight back. Her grandmother died 10-years ago, one of the last evacuees from the 20 thousand that arrived 50 years earlier. Five years before her grandmother’s death, her mother and father both died of exhaustion and malnourishment, a common death among the workers. The girl didn't expect she would live much longer as she looked much older than fifteen, with sickly pale skin pulled tightly over her withered frame, grey rotting teeth, hair falling out in clumps and a constant feeling of fatigue from enduring years of heavy labour. She wanted nothing more than to just die in her sleep, at least then she could rest in peace with her family. But every morning she awoke to a familiar sense of dread. “Oi you, shelter rat, did you not hear the announcement? Shift is over back to your bunker,” one of the guardians snarled at her. She nodded obediently before being forcefully shoved to follow behind the others.
By Renee Brown5 years ago in Fiction
