The End - Visions of Apocalypse

It was dangerous. The pathogens and whatnot. You could end up having a serious allergic reaction and die. But if you didn’t eat, you just died. Here was the world ending, and he was debating cuisine with his soul. Lena was practically dead. He would be doing her a favor really. Put her out of her misery. Make his and her life easier. She would die serving a higher cause.

* * *

Day eight. Screw the pilots in the Andes. This was the apocalypse. This was the whole world ending. He was entitled to some free grub. The wind seemed to agree, cackling madly, then it resumed its boring hot whoosh. The gray snow swirled around him, cloaking everything. He was a man in a flurry infinity, watching his own choices cascade around him.

Steve rose on a pair of wobbly feet and almost collapsed. Boy, was he weak. Was it really eight days or more? Or less? Was he such an office space wuss that he was giving in to hunger after just a few days of suffering? It made no difference. He reached down and picked a sizable chunk of granite in his pocked arm. He tottered over to Lena. She didn’t raise her head. She just coughed, one last time.

Later, engorged on blood and muscle, he felt sick and ashamed, but he knew he would live. He would not let this stupid wind get the best of him. He wanted to live. Reading The Count of Monte Cristo as a child, he had always wondered how someone could survive fourteen years in a cell. And why. Mostly, why. But now he knew. He knew the brutal power of life, and it went beyond any simple human scruple. He had no bloody idea what this gray world would bring tomorrow. He wasn’t sure he wouldn’t die like Lena. He didn’t know if he wasn’t breeding radiation disease or becoming a zombie. It didn’t matter. What mattered was that he was not going to give up. He would live.

Steve leaned against the wall of his bunker and let the world fly past, gray and hot and ashen. For now, he had everything he needed. Water and food and hope. He could sleep now, without that eerie cough to haunt his dreams. And when he woke, it would be another day, another struggle, but that was a distant worry. For now, he lived, and he had everything the world could offer him.

Steve slept soundly, his dreams no longer howling like the wind.

MICHAEL AARON Julia’s Garden

Michael is a lapsed Taoist of mixed parentage and fixed abode. He can be seen riding bicycles with occasional passengers. His work has appeared in many places over the years, often on purpose. Like the square root of three, he is positive and irrational.

Julia’s Garden was inspired by recent research into the human biome: Our personal collection of microbes, two kilos of bugs that science has only just come to realise is as vital to our wellbeing as a functioning liver or pancreas. Since the birth of germ theory, they’ve been seen as parasites and invaders. Only now are we beginning to unravel the complex symbiosis between us and our gut flora, and we disturb it at our peril.

3. JULIA’S GARDEN

by Michael Aaron

It’s warm, the beginning of summer, and I’m sitting on a bench in a children’s playground. Swings move in a gentle breeze, their chains creaking. I take a handful of petri dishes from my bag, and line them up beside me.

The labels are in my handwriting: Bacillus anthracis (true to form, the Anthrax spores are a brilliant white), Yersinia pestis (Bubonic Plague, not black but orange), and Mycobacterium tuberculosis (a suitably phlegmy green).

I note the time, wish them luck and open them to the air.

My stomach clenches. Infection, already! I rub my belly, feeling an almost maternal rush. But no, it’s a reminder of my skipped breakfast. Couldn’t face another bowl of extruded nutrient mush this morning. I crave something with taste.

I look behind me, more out of habit than need. The paranoia of the early days is ingrained. Police and other Government forces are long dead or disbanded, and the Skin-Gangs that replaced them have vanished away to nothing in recent weeks. It seems there is a limit to the persistence of organized barbarism.

Satisfied in my privacy, I dip a finger in the Anthrax dish and scoop out a taste. The layer of spores breaks with a delicate crunch, like a pie crust.