9 Brief Scenes From The End Of The World

A short chronicle of the last day on earth, as millions of ordinary citizens are transformed into savage lunatics, their re-programmed minds relentlessly driving them to spread mayhem and death.

Nine Brief Scenes From The End Of The World

 

I.

 

Early in the morning, a deliriously excited group of research scientists from the SETI Institute gathered to listen to and analyze - incredible - an alien radio wave signal that they had been receiving every ten minutes since three AM. Over sixty years had lapsed since the original radio signals had been beamed into space by hopeful, forward-thinking men, and now they were finally getting a reply. It was a top secret meeting. The group played the transmission several times at the beginning of the meeting, first in awe, then with rising disquiet. It was an indescribable, harsh, nasty ten-second blast of noise, and it induced a strange, splintering headache in all of them.

Ten minutes later, a trusted research assistant who was present at the meeting suddenly doubled forward and sprayed vomit across the board table. His nose began to bleed profusely and he stumbled around the room, bellowing profanities. The scientist whom he assisted, a small Japanese woman, rushed over to quiet the man, and was smashed with lethal force in the face by a metal stool. The raving man was subdued, but he continued to thrash and snap his teeth, and was finally chemically sedated.

All the others that had been present for the playback were starting to feel very odd by then, themselves.

 

II.

Morning traffic was as thick and slow as always. Tim hated how the drive to work was always at least twenty minutes longer than the drive home. To add to the aggravation, there was some sort of annoying static interference on the radio, an awful squawking that hid low in the mix. He snapped it off and impatiently crept forward with the rest of the poor dummies caught in this s**t.

Abruptly, a big Chevy Silverado jammed on its breaks in the right lane a few vehicles ahead of him, stopping the lane dead. Horns blared in protest. Bemused, Tim tried to get a good look at the idiot behind the wheel of the truck as he crawled past. As his car drew abreast of the truck, Tim was treated to five surreal seconds of a heavy-set blonde woman, staring straight ahead with a bizarre grin on her face, cutting the fingers off of one hand with a pair of garden shears.

He didn't believe what he just saw. The shears sliding shut with little resistance, the fingers tumbling down, the spray of blood that hit the dashboard and splattered the windshield. One finger had stuck to the blades of the shears and Tim was sure that he saw her shake it free absently, staring straight ahead and grinning insanely the whole time.

I didn't see that, he decided. No freakin' WAY that happened.

His head was starting to hurt.

 

III.

A man stood on the sidewalk across the street from a restaurant called Giorno's and watched the waitress work her section of the patio. The man had caught sight of her ten minutes previously, as he had been walking, dazed and uncomprehending, down the street. She was pale, pretty and possessed a cascade of red hair that shimmered and flowed onto her rounded shoulders and down her broad back. Impassive and unmoving, he watched the waitress as she hurried back and forth from her customers to the fancy glass door that led back into Giorno's. She appeared attentive and jovial, a hint of earthy sexuality in the tilt of her impressive chest and the toss of her hair. A tall girl, big a*s and tits and hips. Full, red lips. The man stood and watched and hungered.

The man wore a tailored suit from Ralph Lauren, his hair shaved impeccably close to his scalp. His eyes were covered by mirrored sunglasses of the sort that one might see being worn by celebrities in photographs taken on the red carpet of an awards show, glasses that would cost your average working man a month and a halfs' worth of wages. He did not care about their monetary worth, nor that of the designer suit he wore, or the patent leather shoes that clad his feet. Just a few short hours ago, the man had been very close to obsessed with his appearance, and material things. Now, he couldn't recall why something like that would matter. There was a hum in the back of his head, a harsh and alien insectile buzz. His brain felt like it was vibrating, itching, thrumming. The jagged pitch eliminated all sane thoughts from his mind. It was obvious to him now that only important thing in his present existence was to attack this girl and kill her.

After a few more minutes, the girl caught sight of the man, her eyes lingering a few moments too long as she scrawled an order given by a young couple having a late supper. Her expression seemed unsettled, as though she could feel a vibration of the black desires that roiled, like a sewer whirlpool, behind those sunglasses. The man felt that he couldn't wait much longer. It was getting hard to think. His teeth ached, his head buzzed. His hands longed to rend and tear the girl to shreds.

 

IV.

Shyla was ten. She lived across the city from where the man was presently eyeing his prey and thinking his murky, primordial thoughts. Shyla's family was as poor as the man was wealthy. She lived with her mom and younger brother in a townhouse complex that had been erected many years before, to house young families just starting their journey through life together, and seniors who didn't want to have to take care of a lawn anymore. Now it was government subsidized housing for low-income families, crumbling and shoddy.

Shyla sat on the cracked steps to her front door and played with something in her lap. The parking lot and common area before her swarmed with the complex's residents, mostly black and latino youth and young adults, but the crowd was peppered with some decidedly drunk-looking older folks, too. They all milled in large, loose groups; arguing, laughing, drinking cheap beer and passing ill-concealed joints in the hot, fading sunshine. Spontaneous dancing sometimes broke out as people were suddenly compelled to jive, grind and gyrate to the sounds pumping from a car stereo. No one took notice of quiet, chubby little Shyla. She hummed a popular song tunelessly and toyed with the pathetic, horrible thing that was balanced on her already-expanding lap. Shyla was introverted, and well on her way to being the whale-like woman that her mother was. As a rule, she was universally ignored by the other kids in the complex (excepting the odd occasion when jokes were told about how fat her three hundred-plus pound mother was, or about how black she was), so it was not unusual that it took so long for anyone to notice her or the small, dripping object that she held. Shyla's face was an expressionless mask as she studied the awful thing, eyes unblinking. She turned and manipulated it in her hands. Her hands and arms were smeared to the elbow in maroon, but it was not very visible against her dark skin. The black T-shirt and dark blue jeans that she wore were stiff with drying blood. Flies were beginning to find her.

Rakim, a teenager who lived in the unit two doors down with his sprawling extended family, ambled past where Shyla sat on the steps. He had extremely red, glassy eyes, and a mean smile on his acne-pocked face.

"Yo, Shyla, where your moms at, gettin' baptized at Marine Land? She better get back before tha sun go down, they lose that big black b***h in the dark." Rakim snorted laughter at this witticism, then noticed the flies buzzing around the girl, and the smell. "Man, you a stanky lil b***h, flies an' stink lines like yo moms." He hissed air between his teeth in disgust, and his nostrils flared disapprovingly at the sour, meaty odor wafting from the girl in the thick summer air.

There was no response. The girl stared vacantly down at something on her lap. Her face was ... strange, blank, emotionless.

"You f****n high or some s**t? You too young, girl, yo moms 'ud slap yo a*s up if you was gettin' high an s**t," he intoned seriously, completely unaware of the irony in his statement.

Still no response. Rakim took four big steps forward and stopped dead. He had finally gotten a good look at what Shyla held in her hands, and his drugged mind struggled to process what he saw.

"Ahhh shiiiiiit. Tha f**k?" he choked. "That a ... doll? Tha f**k is dat s**t?"

"It's my baby sister," she muttered. Her voice was thick and slow. Shyla looked up from the bloody, torn fetus in her lap and fixed her enormously dilated pupils on Rakim. The teenager froze and involuntarily squirted a thin stream of urine down the left leg of his sagged jeans. The girl's round face was a mask of insanity. One cheek twitched spastically. Up close, he could see the blood smeared up Shyla's arms, around her mouth and chin and neck. The smell was sickening. Her eyes rolled wildly, then focused on his terrified face again.

"She isn't ready yet, but I got her. Got her outta my momma so I could ... play with her ..." The little girl trailed off, and seemed to consider the fetus in puzzlement for a moment.

Rakim tried to speak but could only manage to feebly breathe out "... whaaa ...". This couldn't be happening. This was a f*****g horror movie, right out of nowhere, in real life, right now.

Shyla picked something up that lay beside her on the top step ... a paring knife. She jabbed it into the fetus' torso, right up to the handle. Rakim felt his mouth drop open, and a high-pitched scream tore itself out of his throat. He turned to run, and felt the blade slam home between his shoulder blades.

 

 

V.

June was worried and frightened of how her husband was behaving tonight. He had come home from work looking pale and distant. Not acknowledging her at all, Harry had walked right by her and into the living room, where he'd sat on the love seat and stared at nothing. It was beyond strange. She let a few minutes go by and when she had finally asked him what was wrong, he ran over and seized her painfully by the upper arms, screaming "AHHHHH F*****G FIRE ANTS! IN MY F*****G HEAD!" right into her face at full volume, his eyes bulging. She had flinched back from this sudden and entirely unexpected outburst, cringing as far away as his iron grasp on her would allow. He immediately let go, his mask of hatred now eerily blank, and had said, "I'm sorry honey, but this weasel in the hen house won't f*****g stop killing my brain chickens, you know?", and walked away. She had leaned against the kitchen counter, stunned and trembling, and listened as her usually gentle and placid Harry plodded up the stairs and into the bedroom. She had heard the bedroom door lock.

This happened three hours ago, and it was getting dark out now. The street lights were on and supper was cold on the table. Somewhere in the distance there echoed the pervasive and howling sirens from police and various emergency response vehicles. The sound kept rebounding and swelling, instead of fading away. What was going on out there? June sat in the gloom of the stairwell, back to the wall, looking up the stairs into the darkness above. Up there, Harry was making strange sounds, muffled by the bedroom door but audible. Crying? Keening like an injured animal? Her neck and arms prickled with goose bumps. Should she check on him? Call ... somebody? The sounds were freaking her out very badly. They did not sound sane. Was Harry having some sort of nervous breakdown? He could be dangerous ...

She summoned her courage and called out, "Harry? Honey, you're scaring me. Please talk to me?"

The keening sounds stopped dead. Silence for a long second, then a BANG against the bedroom door that made her jump and shriek. Another BANG and she heard the bedroom door fly open and slam into the wall. June immediately leapt from carpeted floor and ran for the front door, scooping her purse and keys up off the coffee table as she ran past it. There was a rapid pound of heavy feet as Harry charged out of the bedroom and thundered down the stairs. He was roaring like a monster out of a horror movie. She wrenched open the door and ran like hell down the steps and to her car, jumped in, rammed the key into the ignition. She was dimly aware that she had no shoes on, but that was unimportant right now. As the engine kicked over and caught, Harry exploded through the open front door of their modest home and ran down the steps at her. He was naked save his dress socks, his penis erect, his face contorted horribly. The unreality of her naked husband attacking her in their driveway threatened to freeze her, and she barely locked the doors in time.

Harry slammed into her door and wrenched futilely at the handle. He peered in at her through the driver's side window, and to June his eyes looked like dead fish eyes, all black and glassy.

"GET AWAY!!! I DON'T WANT TO RUN YOU OVER HARRY STOP IT!!" Why was this happening? How? Harry slammed his fist into the window hard enough to crack it, and June put the car into reverse, squealing the tires as she tore backwards out of the driveway. She ran over and snapped Harry's leg in the process. June belatedly looked to the left in time to see a pick-up truck bearing down on her, accelerating. For a split second she could see the driver's face behind the windshield, and it was a visage of madness identical to that of her husband's. She stomped down on the gas pedal in an effort to accelerate back and away, but it was too late, and the truck's impact was terrible.

 

VI.

At the Coventry Estates Nursing Home, all but two members of the staff on shift had also succumbed to the insanity that was spreading across the world like wildfire. The two sane staff members had tried barricading themselves in a supply closet once they realized what was happening to their co-workers (and many of the residents), but the ones who had turned were very energetic door-kickers, and within minutes they had demolished the barricade and dragged the two screaming people out by their hair. With unspoken lunatic agreement, the insane held down the two terrified souls and bit them over and over and over, until their shrieks had faded to gargles and then silence. In the background there was considerable havoc, as the more ambulatory of the insane old folks attacked and feebly murdered other residents. Finished with their unfortunate colleagues, the staff joined the psychotic elderly in their hunt for the remaining survivors that cowered in bathrooms and closets.

 

VII.

Two young teenage siblings, a brother and sister, hid the attic of their family's home amidst boxes of old clothes and discarded appliances. They were watching a newscast online, on the sister's Iphone, their faces drawn with terror. Downstairs, their parents were smashing the place apart and howling and screaming. The sounds of destruction they wrought echoed the chaos outside. The world they had always known had turned into hell in a matter of hours.

On a CNN newscast, an official-looking man spoke of an epidemic, of martial law, and a situation rapidly getting out of control. A reporter asked if the madness was caused by a genetically engineered virus. The official-looking man replied that no one knew yet. Avoid contact with anyone and everyone, he said, and lock yourself indoors. Turn out the lights and hide. Wait for rescue.

There was a resounding crash on the second floor, and cackling laughter. The girl silenced the Iphone and they huddled together, staring at the trap door in the center of the attic room. They had slipped away to the attic a couple of hours ago, when their parents had been out shopping, after seeing the first news reports online and observing the psychotic behaviour of their neighbours through the windows. The kids had called Mom and Dad's cell phones repeatedly, but there had been no answer. Half an hour ago the kids observed their parents arrive home from their shopping trip through a small slit in an attic window curtain. The family minivan now had a large dent in the front end, and a scrap of bloody cloth fluttered on a sharp point along the edge of the dent. It rolled too fast up the driveway and smashed into the garage door. Mom and Dad had lurched out of the still-running van and ran like cavorting demons into the house, to begin their murderous search for their offspring. In the meantime, the siblings preyed fervently that their parents wouldn't find them, and quietly watched any news report they could find online.

"Kids, come out here. Come out, pig s**t f*****g f***s." This was from their mother, somewhere below them. Her voice was a cracked, evil hiss. The kids looked at each other with wide wet eyes and shivered.

"Listen to your mother, kids, I want to f**k your skulls, get out here, get out here getoutHERENOW!" Their father's bellow shook the house. Both teens sobbed quietly. On the silenced Iphone, the official-looking man was now grappling with someone in a highly-decorated military outfit, who had previously been standing in the background in a small line of other official-looking men. There was a sense of pandemonium in the shakiness of the camera's image, the people running through the frame in frightened blurs. The official looking man was being overpowered, bitten repeatedly on the face and neck by the military man. His face was twisted into a scream. One of his eyes appeared to be missing. They fell into the microphone-laden podium and tumbled out of sight. Someone knocked the camera over, or it was dropped, and all that could be seen now was running feet.

"Oh holy f**k," the brother whispered.

A sharp knock made the trap door jump, and the kids shrieked in unison. The brother had screwed it shut with a drill and three-inch wood screws, and the screws held.

"Ohhhhh, you're up there. Pig f***s, Opiggieeeeeessss." Mom crooned on the other side of the door. The daughter curled up into a ball on the dusty plank floor, and started to rock.

Another heavy thud against the trap door. Another. They came in rapid succession now, WHAM-WHAM-WHAM-WHAM, and the old wood groaned and cracked. The brother grabbed the baseball bat he'd brought up with them and advanced, slowly, toward the splintering door, bat poised to strike.

 

 

VIII.

A big-screen television in a sports bar informed the empty room that the madness had spread world-wide, and that there was no known cause or cure as of yet. Stay tuned for upcoming developments, stay indoors, keep the lights off and do nothing to attract the attention of the wandering maniacs, whose numbers were growing rapidly.

 

IX.

Missile silos in China spat nuclear death. The resulting mushroom clouds and associated devastation could have been seen in all its awful detail from the space station, had there been anyone left alive on board.

 

 

Author's Note

Note: this story was generously included in the Season 2, Episode 2 /r/nosleep Podcast, which is an excellent source of auditory terror.
*Note #2: I expanded this into a full-length novel. You can get it at Amazon.com or Amazon.uk, and all other Amazon domains. Available on Kindle, too!