The Neighborhood - Anthology
“The
Neighborhood”
Setting Backstory: A
worldwide earthquake struck the entire Earth. It caused numerous volcanic
eruptions and multiple lava storms. Almost half of the Earth’s forests were
burned up. Your character’s neighborhood was completely destroyed except for one, two, or three houses (you decide how many).
Setting: Post
Lava Storm
3 Highlights: first
sign of wildlife; lava rocks; a ‘bully’ is on the loose
Theme: My Brother’s Keeper
Submissions:
Post the first 500 words to your "Neighborhood" story in the group at Linked In called,
Short Stories 2K Anthology.
Post the first 500 words to your "Neighborhood" story in the group at Linked In called,
Short Stories 2K Anthology.
The Unwelcome Guest
ReplyDeleteBy
Gail Harkins
From space, the Pacific Rim appeared as a jeweled necklace. From the first eruption in New Zealand, the volcanic glow spread northward through Indonesia, to Japan and, most recently, the Kamchatka Peninsula. In the Americas, eruptions began at Chile’s southern tip and progressed through the Andes, into Mexico and up the Sierra Nevadas.
When California’s Long Valley Caldera exploded, my university went on hiatus and Dad sent me to live on the peninsula with Uncle Todd and Aunt Ellen, where I would be safe. In their ranch house, watching the spectacle on TV, we were transfixed by the terrible beauty that would soon destroy our world. When the earth trembled and our screen went black, we knew it was our turn to endure.
The first blast shot ash 20 kilometers into the sky as lava swept over towns near Mount Rainier, as surrounding forests blazed, then smoldered. Telecommunications were severed. We could only watch the skies and wait. Later, when the lava flows began, they followed their ancient paths to the sea, scorching the ‘asbestos forest’ and obliterating the single highway that linked the peninsula to the mainland. The once-mighty river that coursed westward atop ancient flows vaporized and vanished, buried by this new, steaming onslaught.
Eventually there was little left to burn. In time, the lichen and fireweed took hold in the depleted forests. Deer and elk ventured down from the mountains, followed by the cougars that fed on them, and, finally, the people.
--
“Hello!” A grungy figure called out as he emerged from the still-forested ridgeline that was now the entrance to our property. Uncle Todd, surrounded by dogs, shouldered his shotgun and strode to the edge of the clearing.
“Got some water?” the stranger asked.
“Lake’s that way, a quarter mile.” He pointed east.
“Lake!?”
“Lava dammed the river. The whole valley’s underwater now.”
“Then my house is gone.” The stranger paused. “I’m Lem Bastardi. I lived along the river.”
Uncle Todd took in his torn pack with the frayed sunburst embroidered on the flap, his matted beard and greasy hair. “I thought you were back East.”
Lem ignored him and turned to the porch where I stood in jeans and a T-shirt. “Gonna invite me in? I had a long hike getting here. Your wife—“ he nodded to me “—might want some news from the outside world.”
“She’s not my wife.”
“Well then.” He smiled for the first time. It didn’t extend to his eyes.
Uncle Todd let Lem sit on the porch, and signaled me to bring a cool drink. Instead, gray-haired Aunt Ellen carried out a pitcher and two glasses. Butterscotch, my calico cat, stayed on the porch and entwined himself around Uncle’s legs before hopping into his lap.
“Ellen, take this bundle of fluff inside, will you?”
She picked up the cat and returned to the kitchen, where I waited.
“Do you know him?” I asked.
She nodded grimly. “He’s trouble, by the name of Lemuel Bastardi!”
My brows furrowed.
“A former neighbor,” she explained. “He went to prison for rape. I hoped they’d keep him.”
“Rape?!”
Aunt Ellen nodded grimly. “A young girl from town. A family friend, I heard. Sad business. I didn’t think he’d have the gall to come back here.”
“Then why’s Uncle Todd even talking to him?”
She shook her head. “Heaven only knows.”
The Mudpot
ReplyDeleteBy Randy Dutton
‘Blurp!’ Hot mud splattered the long-abandoned, half-sunk Prius, its right front wheel barely touching the crumbling asphalt driveway.
“Lower the pipe!” Harry Corrade yelled across the steam-billowing pond. He slowly released his end of the scavenged pipe into the reddish gray ooze.
“Okay, my end’s down!” Mary called back through the sulfurous vapor. “Can’t wait to get that hot bath!”
Harry stepped over the car’s restraining cable and walked around the burbling mudpot. “Well, at least something good’s come from this bottomless mess.” He held his breath and quickly crossed a makeshift walkway to the navigation buoy floating in the center. He turned a handle. A turbine he had installed inside started spinning. He ran back and exhaled. “Whew!” A light bulb glowed. “Okay, now we have electricity. Pump’s on and your hot water’s flowing!”
“Yippee!” She draped her arms around his neck and gave him a long smooch. “You’re so clever to turn this smelly pit into an asset.”
“And now we’ll be able to grow food year-round in our heated greenhouse.”
She nodded at the mineral-encrusted car. “Why don’t you just cut the cable and let that rusted car sink? Consider it an offering to Vulcan,” she jested. “You already pulled the batteries before the driveway collapsed.”
“Placating volcano gods is low on my priorities. I’ll find a use for it someday.”
She took his hand and led him toward the house, but her attention was on the ocean waves. “Did ‘ya ever think when we built a couple decades ago that we’d have oceanfront property?”
“From 10 miles inland and 200 feet up? Nope. And I never thought I’d have to rebuild the house after megaquakes flattened it. Who’d a thought an asteroid hitting the Pacific Rim fault line in Chile would cause our Olympic Peninsula to sink and the ocean to rise?”
She pouted. “For awhile, I thought we were doomed.”
He grinned. “Glad we were on the front lawn when the first shock struck.”
“Like nine days on a roller coaster...up, down, sideways, and plunge.... I've always hated those things.”
“I’m not sure which was worse...losing our home...or the forests burning.”
Passing Harry’s workshop, their attention turned to the direction of two gunshots echoing along the shoreline. “Having a tyrant nearby!” she responded sourly. “Definitely worse.”
“Don’t worry about Hector, those were a few miles away.”
Her brow lifted. “Think he found some game?”
“I dunno. I saw some deer tracks yesterday, first ones since the firestorm. But he’d shoot anything just to prevent someone else getting it.”
She smiled up at him. “At least you knew how to survive and thrive.” She wrapped her arm around his, and leaned into him as they walked past stacked piles of volcanic ejecta – rocks that, a year earlier, had pelted all land within 200 miles of each of the 452 reawakened Pacific Rim volcanoes. “Think I’ll hire you out to other survivor pockets. I could be rich!”
‘A Brother’s Love’ by Harry Alexiou (first 500 words only)
ReplyDelete“Are mum and dad dead Petey?” Luke asked quietly, staring down at his shoes.
“Hey...I told you already, don’t talk like that...they’re gonna be here soon. It’s just that the roads are all messed up...”
“But they both missed my birthday Petey, and they never missed it before.”Luke wiped away the tears with his sleeve and sniffled loudly.
Pete put his arm around his brother.
“Listen to me Luke, when this is all over, mum and dad will buy you the best present ever, the one you always wanted.”
Luke wiped his eyes some more.
“You mean the remote control Apache helicopter?”
Pete couldn’t remember if that was it but it wasn’t hard to play along.
“Yeah, that’s the one!”
“You Promise Petey?”
“Yeah promise.” Pete hugged his brother and held back the tears. He had to stay strong for his brother, the only person alive for whom he cared.
Pete looked out across the street and to the other two remaining houses. There was no sign of life. He could see down to the low lying areas of the town where houses, shops, schools, churches and a hospital used to be. Everything except for the three houses in their street had either been devastated by the destructive earthquake or consumed by the tsunami which had reached inland and battered the untidy debris. He knew they would soon have to venture outside.
“Come on Luke help me check the windows for leaks,” Pete said as he tried to lift the spirits of his despondent, brother. The massive quake had set off volcanoes which had lain dormant for hundreds of years. The hillside upon which their house stood was close to a technically extinct volcano but it had suddenly burst into life, akin to a fire-breathing dragon woken from its slumber. The ensuing lava flow moved unrelenting down the hillside three weeks ago, continuing through the town, setting fires and melting debris all the way. The stink of noxious sulphur filled the air and some had seeped into the house before Pete had decided to duct tape all the window and door edges.
The brothers finished checking the windows and descended into the spacious basement.
“Dad knew something would happen one day,” said Pete as he poured bottled water into the powdered milk for their breakfast, “Everybody thought he was being overcautious, even crazy, but he was right.”
“Is that why he did all this...and kept all this tinned stuff down here?”
“That’s right Luke; he was...he’s a smart guy, our dad, and he’ll be looking after mum thinking how to get to us.” Pete hoped his slip up hadn’t registered as he looked across to his brother, now fiddling with the ‘etch-a sketch.’
Pete checked the stock-list hanging on the provisions rack and frowned. Their supplies were being depleted quicker than expected. The stored power from the ash covered PV panels would soon be gone and the small amount of sunlight fighting through the ash cloud wasn’t enough to power anything more than a couple of light bulbs.
The Incomparable Angie Williams. (first 500 words)
ReplyDeleteAngie Williams, Mayor of Kinonville, stood on the highest hill north of town overlooking what was left of her city. Her long brown hair, usually meticulously prepared, was carelessly tied back with a simple hair tie. The perfectly tailored business suits she was usually seen in were replaced with jeans and Tee shirts. Her scraped up hands and arms were tightly wrapped around her tiny frame as she wept openly for those she couldn’t save.
A river of lava was eating up her life as it flowed through her town. Everyone knew they lived at the base of a sleeping volcano but it showed no sign of waking up until the massive earthquake four days ago. The radio reported the earthquake measured 8.0 and what was not destroyed in the quake was finished off when the mountain ripped open.
Kinonville was home to 10,000 people but they only found 500 survivors. Roughly a thousand managed to escape between the quake and the volcano coming to life. No one knew if those who fled were safe somewhere or dead from the aftershocks.
Angie was among those who went from house to house searching for survivors until it became too dangerous to stay in the city. She personally saved over 100 men, women, and children but still considered herself a failure because she couldn’t do more.
Two days and a night passed before her body finally refused to take another step. David Evans, the Fire Chief, threatened to get one of the doctors to sedate her if she did not lay down and get some sleep. She had no strength left to argue with him and collapsed on a cot.Yesterday morning she woke up refreshed and has only slept five hours since.
The survivors behind her were trying to make homes out of tents and makeshift shelters. Ten volunteers made one more trip to town yesterday to salvage what supplies they could before Kinonville disappeared.
This morning she took a survey of the supplies. It was determined there was enough food and medicine for about two weeks, meaning a decision would have to be made soon. Do they stay and hope for a rescue or take the survivors and try to find the rest of humanity.
The reports on the radio were bleak before the signal went dead the morning after the quake. Apparently the entire earth’s crust suddenly decided to realign itself. Billions of people were dead, communication around the world ceased, and those few who survived the devastation were on their own.
One man salvaged his Ham radio and late last night he reached the US Army, or what was left of it. He was told it might be weeks before any help reached them.
“Angie” A cautious voice addressed her.
She cringed at the sound of her ex-husband’s voice. He was suppose to be 50 miles away with the woman he left her for. He was the last thing she could deal with right now.
The King of Koitiata
ReplyDeleteThe Earth had been shaking for three long years, as the Brunhes Chron of stable magnetic polarity ends. After a period of 750,000 years, during which time compass needles pointing to almost exactly the same magnetic north, alignment is reversed. The disruptive change has happened far quicker and more violently than most seismologists had predicted. What started as a steady build-up of volcanic activity in 2025 became a three year period of massive worldwide geological activity. The start may or may not have been triggered by excessively violent solar flare activity. Scientists never decided for sure whether violent magnetic flux in the Sun had triggered the changes deep in the Earth’s mantle. They argued for months as civilisation started to fall apart. Now it will probably be hundreds of years before wise men again build the skills to even begin to understand such things.
On the North Island of New Zealand, one of the previously most active volcanic zones of the Earth, seismic activity had been predictably bad. However, if anything local activity has actually not been as catastrophic as that in many previously stable regions of the Earth. Magnetic reversal seems to have upset all previously logical assumptions. Nevertheless, fully half the population has been lost to just one cataclysmic event, the Taupo explosion of Dec 21st 2025. Devastating as it was, geological records show this to have been a comparatively mild explosion by Taupo’s standards. What had long been the centre of a large lake was now the peak of a new mountain. Geologically close volcanoes, particularly Ruapehu and Taranaki, had been consistently active over all three years. Sunshine hadn’t fully penetrated the skies of North Island for eighteen months, until just a few weeks ago. What information we received before the complete breakdown of communication systems was that the Northern Hemisphere, with its more packed together landmasses, has undergone even worse catastrophic remodelling.
I am trying to write a short summary of Armageddon. I am not sure why I am bothering, except that I’m probably one of very few survivors who can. I sit at an antique bureau in one of the few remaining undamaged houses in the small town of Koitiata, the date is the 2nd August 2029. I am an old man compared to most survivors, yet in the indiscriminate way these things work I have been spared. Having lived, my maturity has helped me gain first influence and then power. There are about five hundred of us here, surviving on this west coast. Our 2024 population of about 120 souls has been swelled by survivors from Wanganui, and regions to the South. From the few that have reached us from south of Levin we know that there are greater numbers of survivors down that way.
Just north of here lava flows from the volcanoes actually reached as far as the sea. This means that the lava rivers travelled some hundred kilometres from Ruapehu before freezing. Survivors from Wanganui suggest that the lava flows came from the east rather than from the direction of Taranaki. We believe that all the forests of Waitotara have gone, along with almost every trace of man’s dominion. We must hope that the worst has past; that the few days of almost normal daylight are harbingers of millions to come. We can’t even hear rumblings from deep in the volcanoes anymore. Quakes are still common, but then they always were. Has the planet calmed for more than a brief respite? I pray so.
When the dust cleared... Letting Go!
ReplyDeleteI still recall the huge crowd of people running everywhere, and trying to keep themselves safe from all that was happening. It was like being inside a very bad nightmare that never seemed to end. All I could sense was the fainting sounds of a sonata playing on the background as much of the chaos was erupting.
The massive earthquake had hit our City of Angels like a bully that was running around town just ready to take anyone or anything that crossed it’s path. The shattering could be heard for miles and miles like a stack of dominoes falling right after another. However, I had to make sure that my thoughts stayed clear.
The only thoughts that came to my mind on that terrible November morning was that my fiance John did not think that I had stood him up for our weekend trip to the Valley. I know it sounds silly to be worried about a date, during a time like this one, but I have heard in many cases, when you are going through something difficult such as this, it is good to keep happy thoughts.
As I thought of John and how he always made things better, I noticed more rupturing across The Los Angeles area, but I tried to keep a clear perspective. Then sadly I detected that that many of the homes in the suburban area of my neighborhood were all destroyed along with many of my neighbors also being injured. This was so hard to deal with, because I had grown up in California. Yes, I was a valley girl! However, my parents had worked hard to provide for my brother Jacob and I. Then, as I got older, I was able to attend UCLA, and move to Los Angeles to pursue a career in acting. This is where I met John who was one of the directors at the Network. I still recall when I went to audition and he called my name for the first time. Very well done, Nadia! , he smiled. I was in complete shock. “ My name is John Gallagher and I will be directing this episode. Then he added, you know I think you would were made to play this role.
After that there was no turning back, I fell madly in love.
The stirs of echoes coming from the streets were so horrifying. There was so much damage everywhere and you could feel all the pain coming from around the streets. Then again, I tried to stay positive by thinking of John. Another memory came to me and this time I recalled our first anniversary of being together. “ Well Ms. Nadia Chumsky do you approve of this night?” he said as we danced the night away. “ Oh, I definitely approve, Mr. Gallagher”, I answered with a smile. In the midst of all the large and massive chaos, I could slightly hear someone like on a very loud intercom,trying to give a message to all of us.