The End - Visions of Apocalypse

“I love you, too, Allan, but all things end.” She smiled. “Everything ends. Even the good things.” She blew a kiss to the screen. “I will pray for you in Heaven.”

And the screen went blank, fizzing into blind static.

Sudden brilliance filled the room with harsh shadows and Allan turned away from the window. Far below, and far away, a ball of fading light was expanding and around it the fibres of Mainstay Three were twisting, shredding, uncoiling, flying apart. The gravity anchors were falling. And above him, he knew, the Sail was slowly, and inexorably, starting to billow….

* * *

Three weeks later, and half a light year away, Allan watched the relayed images. Earth was empty now, save for the Zealots, and everyone in the fleeing armada was watching with him. Watching as the light, the raw, savage, relentless wind of light, hit the Sail and was reflected back. Reflected into a single focussed point of heat that moved upon the surface of the Earth as the world turned beneath it.

The Homeworld burned, and a billion people burned with it. And all its history, and all that came before history, too. The dinosaurs burned, and the Neanderthals, and the Cromagnon and Homo erectus. And the Romans burned, and Athens burned, and Minos burned, and Atlantis burned. All the empires that ever were, and all the artists, and all the poets, and the echoes of the songs the Great Whales sang, and the patterns of the clouds, and the places walked by Jesus, and by Buddah, and by Mohammed. All ashes now, and melting, and white hot, vaporising, and blowing away, atomised, and blowing away in the wind. Blowing away into the dead, cold emptiness of space.

And Allan, watching all of this, saw nothing but the morning-lit, golden down on Clara’s shoulder. The tears that ran down his face were only for her.

G. L. LATHAIN Sacrifice

G.L. Lathian was born and raised in the remote South West region of Australia. Without television or modern distractions, he spent his childhood years creating stories - a tradition that lives on until this day. Lathian is a published journalist and avid traveler.

In Sacrifice, the will to live is all that separates the dead from the walking. Retired marine, Tim Jacobs, must go beyond the means of normal men to keep his loved ones alive. The journey south seems endless, but as the Arctic Circle expands, to stop would mean death. Fighting starvation, hypothermia and marauders, Tim’s greatest battle remains within. But in a world without hope, sanity can be a fickle thing.

10. SACRIFICE

G. L. Lathain

The cries of an animal tore at Tim’s sleep-ridden conscious. He stirred, trying to discern dream from reality. Careful not to expose too much skin to the frigid air, he unzipped his sleeping bag and peered out of the cave at the still, white landscape. It was the pale grey of predawn and for once, it wasn’t snowing.

Smouldering fires sat either side of where Tim lay and he thanked their warmth for seeing him through another night. For the first time since the Great Freeze, he didn’t have his wife, Christine beside him, nor their son Jake tucked between their embrace. At times, body warmth was all that had kept the family alive.

The bawling came again and Tim scrambled from his bed, ignoring the biting air. Fear of the cold was easily suppressed by the hunger of a man who knew starvation. The snares worked, they damn well worked, Tim thought as he hurriedly strapped snowshoes to the boots he had kept on through the night.

Tim gathered his backpack that had been a makeshift pillow and shouldered his quiver of arrows. No two were alike, collected over the months of travel, but all would suffice when it came time to kill.

Again, Tim heard the distressed animal and he frantically slung the pack over his shoulders and rushed to the mouth of the cave. With bow in hand and an arrow nocked, he moved eastward, upwind, to where he had set snares the previous night as the snow had eased. Fear, excitement and anticipation roiled inside of him. It was one thing to survive the ice, but in this world, a lack of food was just as deadly. A week had passed since Tim or his family had eaten more than scraps.