Season of Rot

at night. He remembered Roy as well. The black Southerner had been as tough as they came, but with two badly broken legs and the meager amount of worm-infested food they’d found on the yacht, Scott had no choice but to kill him. So he shot Roy in the stomach with his own shotgun and dumped him overboard before he could reanimate as one of the dead.

Only a week had passed since their flight from the Queen, but it felt like months. He lay stretched out atop the cabin of the yacht and stared up at the stars. The engines were shot and he was thirsty. Sweat glistened on his bare chest in spite of the cool night air. He knew he was sick, whether from the rotting food he had been eating or just the fact that his body had finally suffered all it could take. If he could make it to land and get some medicine, proper food and a little rest, he might be his old self, but those things seemed like pipe dreams in the face of what the world had become.

He felt his eyes close, then forced them open to glance at the shotgun propped up on the deck near him. Scott started to consider all his options again as a gentle rain began to fall and the heavens wept.

THE WAVE

1

Jeremy lay shirtless, sprawled out on the wood of his deck and looking up at the Carolina night sky. The breeze, a gentle cool circulating through the warm air, carried the smell of his freshly mowed lawn, and the portable stereo beside him belted out the chorus to Rush’s “Working Man.”

He glanced at the bright green display of his watch. Almost two o’clock in the morning. The witching hour was long gone, but he felt pumped up and wide awake. He leaned over and hit the skip button on the stereo. “Fly by Night” replaced “Working Man,” and he smiled.

His heart pounded in his chest. He couldn’t explain it, but for some reason he felt on edge, eager. He lay back down and listened to the music.

Astronomy was not normally one of his interests, but tonight the sky seemed different, the stars hotter and pulsing bright. It wasn’t something he could explain, just a feeling he couldn’t shake.

He reached into the darkness beside the stereo and lifted a mug of sweet tea to his lips, arching his back a bit as he sipped.

In that moment, the world changed. A piercing light danced like lightning across the summer sky, and everything seemed to go white.

Jeremy dropped his tea, cursing as the cool liquid splashed over his naked chest. The light grew brighter and he had to shield his eyes. At the same time, the alarm of his wristwatch went off and the stereo erupted into sparks. Geddy Lee’s voice shrieked upwards, almost deafening, the music growing louder and louder until it finally went silent. Beneath the deck, his car came to life. Its horn honked randomly as its headlights lit up and blew out, the shards clinking onto the gravel driveway like rain.

Jeremy screamed, and the light was gone. Spots lingered before his eyes, swirling purples and greens. His temples throbbed.

Fumbling blindly, he grasped the railing of the deck and pulled himself up. His vision cleared, but around him everything was black. The stars seemed to have vanished from the sky, and the lights in the neighborhood had blinked out, the houses on the distant hills invisible in the darkness. Even the normal specks of headlights moving along I-40 below the mountains were missing.

He stumbled across the deck to the sliding glass door of his bedroom and went inside, flipping on the light switch. Nothing happened. He flipped the switch twice more. No light.

Bumping his way from the bedroom to the kitchen, he managed to reach the island in front of the sink. He yanked open the top drawer and grabbed his plastic emergency flashlight. It didn’t work. He bashed the light atop the island and shook it, but it didn’t come on, so he tossed it.

He felt his way along the island to where the phone hung on the wall. As he guessed, it was dead. His cell was too.

An irrepressible fear began to grow within him. Sweat beaded on his sticky skin, mixing with the droplets of spilt tea. He stumbled back to the bedroom’s large walk-in closet and found the shelves. As he pulled down his hunting rifle, his knees gave way and he dropped to the carpet. “Jesus Almighty,” he whispered, “what the hell is going on?”

He shoved a bullet into the rifle’s breech and jerked the chamber closed. Pulling his knees to his chest, he sank back against the closet wall to wait for dawn, his knuckles white as he held the rifle.

2

Pittsburgh

“What the fuck is going on?” Howard asked as he pushed his way into the crowded control room of the reactor plant. It seemed as if the plant’s entire staff had gathered in the small space. There were no alarm klaxons, no red glow of emergency lights. Only a small fire burning in the metal trash can beside Gibbons’ console. The flickering light seemed alien and out of place in the heart of the plant.

A wave of pleads, questions, and fear slammed into Howard as he entered.

“Shut up!” he ordered. “Shut the fuck up!”

The cacophony in the room dampened but did not end.

“Gibbons,” Howard barked, pointing at the pimply-faced engineer. “What the hell is going on? Twenty words or less. Now!”

The young man’s eyes went wide with terror in the pale light. “Everything has gone down, sir. Backups, outside lines… everything. The core will breach, sir. Without the cooling units functioning, it’s just a matter of time.”

Howard’s mind raced. Backups? Everything? That was supposed to be impossible. This was his damn plant. Things like that didn’t—couldn’t—happen here.

“How long?” Howard asked.

“There’s no way to know, sir. Ten seconds, an hour. Your guess is as good as mine.”

Howard opened his mouth to yell at Gibbons, but a heat wave blasted him. His flesh melted and burned away as the reactor ruptured.

The meltdown was visible for miles around as the night lit up like an exploding star, and a mushroom cloud blossomed toward the heavens.

3

New York

The freeway had become a war zone. Amy lay against her steering wheel, wondering how she had survived.

Even at this late hour, the freeway was crammed with traffic. When the light had appeared, a light more blinding than the sun itself, everyone’s engine had died and stalled. Cars slammed into trucks, into each other.