Flashing #22 - Disaster Thriller

I had to rush today's story. I don't think it came out all that bad but if you want a better version of it go and read Cormac McCarthy's The Road. Disaster Thrillers always bothered me. Someone who shouldn't have survived's heroic journey out of the fire and into the arms of someone who shouldn't be sitting around and waiting for him. So I gutted one part of that formula. I also focused on the theme of chasing down a dream only to realize everything you need is back home in order to tie it to the original memoir.

As to why I had to rush today's story - I'm doing some research for a new comic project. It's a Shaolin political thriller with a strong sci-fi component and my artist is hot to get it started.

Ride a tsunami over to the main page if you want more Flashing stories.

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Gary sat in the lounge car of the American Orient Express, about 700-miles from Yellowstone, reviewing the pictures he took at Bryce Canyon National Park. This was a trip he had wanted to take for years but at 6-grand per person he couldn’t afford to take Annie and the kids. No-one was really happy about the decision that was finally made but this year’s family vacation turned into a weeklong get-away for Gary. He promised he’ll make it up to them next year.

He was in a lounge chair by the mini-Grand as Brooks played for the crowd of champagne-drinking vintage travelers. Brooks was a fantastic piano player, probably too good to be taking gigs on the American Orient Express. He’s always starts his sets by asking the crowd if they have any requests. “I can play anything,” he’d say with his chest puffed out. Gary tried to challenge Brooks and asked him to play a largely unknown song from a criminally underappreciated artist. To his surprise, Brooks just smiled and broke right into Harry Gibson’s “Who Put the Benzedrine in Mrs. Murphy's Ovaltine”

And that’s when the Yellowstone caldera erupted.

The windows on the wall opposite Gary blew inward with tremendous force. Pudgy Mr. Martin was thankfully standing between Gary and millions of pieces of fine glass. As the train flipped off the tracks there were only a couple of shards lodged in Gary’s arms and stomach. The shards accompanied Mr. Martin’s shredded flesh and organs.

The lounge car twisted and cracked as it rolled down the hill. Although an incident like this would normally be accompanied by a lot of screaming the car was remarkably quiet, probably because most of its inhabitants were dead. The few that were spared from the initial explosion where passed out from wounds or fright. Gary was the only one lucky enough to be kept alive as the car tumbled along, throwing bodies everywhere.

Gary finally started screaming, but with his eardrums blown out everything still seemed quiet.

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He woke just in time to see the approaching clouds of ash. They blacked out the sun and coated the ground like fine snow. The air was hot and poisonous and getting thinner. Gary got up off the ground and hobbled over to the nearest corpse. He removed the shirt and looked around for any liquid that wasn’t already contaminated with ash or gasoline or blood. Having no luck, he urinated on the shirt, folded it into a makeshift mask, and held it up to his face. He had to get out of the area fast. He had to go east.

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The winds have been blowing steadily west and Gary has been luckily moving away from the worst of it. California, by now, was likely destroyed. Earthquakes and mudslides and brushfires and ash – inches of thick ash covering everything. He’s seen some of the destruction in the plains as he traveled east, whether by car or bike (or foot, when no other transportation presented itself to him). The skies here were still black. The vegetation was dead or dying. The cows and pigs were rotting – flesh peeled back and every inch filled with ash.

But as the weeks passed and Gary continued to trudge east the air got relatively clearer. A gray haze fills the sky now and there are still occasional signs of life. A stray dog eating a human carcass. A blinded child crying on the sidewalk. A pack of confused and panicked Midwesterners looking for a fight or food or a touch of both. If it wasn’t for the fact that so many people were dead one would call the whole scene chaotic. However, because of the drastically decreased population it’s more like sporadic pockets of shear insanity.

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Gary had to ditch the car somewhere in West Virginia. Cars are becoming easy targets for the gangs that roam the roads. The people inside them tend to be soft and unable to walk the thousands of miles from the west to the perceived safety of the east. These people provide nourishment and amusement to the desperate. Gary’s just happy that the car was able to get him over the Appalachian Mountains; his bike will probably be able to get him to New York City within several weeks.

He has no idea what he’ll find there, but he’s heard rumors.

Most of New York City’s food supply comes from the Great Plains and the Great Plains aren’t supplying any food right now. It’s not difficult to imagine what would happen to a city of 17-million people if you instantly cut-off their food supply. Gary hopes that Annie was smart enough to stock up on canned foods the moment the news hit. He hopes she’s sitting in the basement now, with the kids, waiting for all of this to blow over. He hopes they’re all well fed and playing board games.

He understands the odds are very much against him.

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The house is empty and thoroughly ransacked. The fridge is bare. The cupboards have been turned inside out. Shattered pictures on the ground, smashed appliances and doodads dusted in a thin coat of ash. The house looks like it was destroyed and deserted early on.

Gary slinks to the floor, buries his head in his lap, and convinces himself that his family is in Disney World, having a wonderful vacation, unaffected by the end of the world.

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