Tales From Avator
The End, The Coming, and The Wait
The End, page 2
Bitter regrets fill his head. What did I say to them? How could I have trusted them? All of my manuscripts...gone. They were so convinced my writings were nothing more than the delusional ramblings of a fool. Was I a fool? Or am I one now, a lone survivor on an empty Earth who's shed her skin and headed off to... "To where?" he asks aloud.
It is the sticky sweet smell of rotting flesh that brings his thoughts back to what lies ahead. Another accident, no different from the thousands he has passed. As he moves through the wreckage, arms and legs reach out to him, forever frozen in their last attempts to free themselves. He can see the insects crawling through the warm bloated corpses. The insects thrived on the wasteland. At least half of the corpses he had seen on his journey were already stripped of their flesh.
Des Moines, or what once was Des Moines, was covered in black clouds of insects. Swarms, many over a mile in length, plundered on the banquet. The gorging insects continue to stay clear of him, parting a path as he moves beyond the wreckage. A mile down the road the pain begins.
It begins just above his stomach. Must be hungry. When was the last time I ate? He thinks as he lies down on the road. "I think I remember eating, but what?" He reaches his finger to his mouth, trying to bite his nail. "Ouch!" he cries, pulling a bloodied finger from his mouth. He spits onto the ground and looks in horror. Mixed in a pool of blood are five teeth. "My teeth!" he screams. He frantically searches the inside of his mouth. His probing makes the problem worse. He can feel his teeth crumble under the pressure of his fingers, and the salty iron taste of blood floods his tastebuds. "I have no teeth! Where are my teeth! What's happening to me?" He rolls onto his side screaming as he pulls his legs in. "Lord, what have I done to deserve this? Please make it stop! Please let me die," he cries to himself as the sun sets and the pain explodes.
The moon is high into the night sky when he realizes he is no longer on the ground, but walking down the Interstate again. He can not remember getting up, but then here he is, and in the distance he can see a fire. It must be Kansas City, he thinks as he looks down at his chest. There is no pain now, but in the moonlight his skin color seems all wrong. The skin seems transparent, like plastic wrap stretches over some kitchen experiment buried in the back of a fridge for far too long. The whole Earth moves funny, and the stars are over him, and then there is blackness.
