So it has come to this, planetary war between Earth and her sister. Before the rest of the family could even be reached. End raining down to terra in explosive, fiery whips like divine recompense; cities blown to rubble, countries of wilderness shot through like the wind. London (and its suburbs) is the first to fall. Within a half an hour of the declaration of war! only 32% remains, accompanied by a meager 19% of the population. Newer York, Munich, Seoul, D.C., Tokyo….et cetera. They all receive the same treatment. Towers crack and topple, streets and their travelers are heaved up in the air, bombs far faster than the human eye and their own sound turn citizens to casualties. Presumably, the same occurs on the few cities across Mars.
Why? The same as ever. Small men talked big and couldn’t back it up. Someone, somewhere didn’t get somebody else their money so somebody else made good on their threats. Further, the leader of each planet was madly and twistedly in love with the other. Maybe even all just bad luck.
Man had two desires. Two build for the stars, to reach for the infinite expanse of God and embrace it with all the world at their side. And to let it all go to ash.
High atop one of the last standing buildings with more than two stories in Houston stands a lone man in his underwear holding a smoldering cigarette. He sniffs, offers a quick prayer to nothing, and tips over the edge. On the way down, a martian missile flies straight through him. His mist rains down on another, running and huffing past fire and explosion and overturned heaps of cars and businesses. Another bomb flies right over his newly wet shoulder and collides with a lamp post. The ant screams and rolls into an open door.
Broken glass, splintered wood, a few bodies strung across the front counter of what looks to have been a grocery store. The same inside as outside.
Justin scrambles to his feet as fast as he can, never mind the glass, and makes for the back of the store like a rat diving for the sea. He clatters over the wreckage of bread isles and skitters to a halt on his ass next to a blown out glass refrigerator full of slowly warming pools of milk and yogurt. It seems to be where the rocket that tore apart Justin’s new hovel collided. Much of the electronic display glass has been partially melted and a hole has been blown straight through the concrete wall. Past the sparks and singed black concrete and red hot, demonic rebar one can (as Justin did while attempting to steady himself on the way down) almost catch a fleeting glimpse of the dirty alley abutting the grocery where a few vagrants lie face down in a dumpster with a shredded lid.
Justin takes several lung heaving breaths and rises to his feet with all the grace of a Victorian automaton. As he does so, an explosion goes off nearly right in the store’s doorway; the sound of the missile in flight follows long after. Justin has no chance to hear it, though, as he is once again shaken to the floor and this time, knocked deaf. It is then, ears ringing with God’s warning bells, that Justin’s stumbling, dust filled eyes landed on The Bottle.
Somehow there stands on the top rack of a shelf barely standing by Justin’s left foot a full, beautiful 4.5 litres of unshattered and unspilled vodka. Sparkling and shining in the grey, apocalyptic golden hour light filtered in through the remnants of storefront windows. The fancy, Ñ60 kind, too: Serenitatis. No hangover, assuming sunlight in the morning.
“Oh, oh thank GOD!” the shaken Justin cries, clasping his bloodied hands together in hurried false prayer before carefully and precisely plucking the bottle from its seat.
He scrabbles at the treasure’s lid like a toddler. His palms and fingers are too wet to generate much friction. He whines and pinches but has to resort to biting the top and turning the bottle. The seal breaks easily, Justin tilts his head back, spits out the cap and says hello once more to his old tasteless, odorless, colorless and almost painless friend Lunar Vodka. He drinks for what feels like minutes
The bottle comes down so that gravity can keep the contents out of Justin’s mouth as he gasps for air and chokes on the sheet of fire evaporating down the back of his throat. Electric seconds tick by behind a smashed watch face, and Justin flies back to the bottle mouth. He stops dead as the liquid touches his lips again, and stares with equally morose eyes down the aisle at a figure. A human figure shumbling slowly into frame. Justin lowers the bottle gently.
“…….Hello?” he calls out meekly.
“Sol, another person! I-I didn’t know if anyone else was left!” the figure laughs on the border of hysteria.
“Yeah. I don’t know how many are left in the city…or on the planet, really.”
Justin shrugs and squints his eyes at the new shopper. A large and wide-grinning man comes into focus. He too is dirty and bruised. But unlike Justin, he carries a plasma edged knife along his waist and a large duffel bag full of many smaller, rustling items. He seems more prepared, more excited than Justin, too.
Justin notices the knife, stiffens a little and goes silent. The man notices and lets both hands splay and fly upwards, even at the cost of dropping his bag.
“Woah, sorry! I’m not gonna kill you. That’s what all the-”
The storefront across the street explodes.
“-All that is for,” the man finishes. “This is just a-a-a tool you know? I’ve only used it to jimmy open doors and a wire fence so far. My name’s Reck, what’s yours?”
“Matt.”
“Nice to meet you, Matt.”
Reck lowers his arms.
“Where did you..?” Justin trails off, finishing with a swirling gesture as he picks his bottle up again.
“Come from? From Tr-Some tower downtown.” Reck cuts himself off. “I was already on the first floor, trying to evacuate when the first shots were fired on Earth.”
“You got all that from work?” Justin gargles through a mouthful and nods his head at the man’s gear.
“Well, no, I went home for this.”
“So you came from home?”
“If you wanna be picky. Hey, let me get a swig of that.”
Justin swallows his take and wipes his mouth like a barbarian. He caps the bottle and hands it off with a limp wrist. Reck’s hands are cold. Justin looks down at his hands and the filthy, cracked plastic floor behind them. He squeezes them a few times and watches the dried blood crumble away.
“Lunar Vodka…” Reck remarks in awe. “Damn lucky you got this… ‘n didn’t get stuck with that.” He kicks at the remnants of a shattered Absynthetic bottle. Then he throws his head back and swirls the bottle above his mouth, grinning wide once again.
A half a litre at least whirls down and out the neck and then down Reck’s gullet. Far away, something large crashes and fills the rocky street outside with rushing dust. Reck doesn’t flinch and polishes off a few ‘sips’ more. Justin squints at him up and down. Finally, Reck puts the bottle down, caps it, and reels his head back as his body processes his intake. The smaller set of hands snatches the steadily emptying container back, banging it once against the ground in error.
Reck lets out a tremendous triumphant whoop and punches the crumbling structure of the shelf next to him. It cracks and caves in, dropping a few already cracked bottles to the rubble below to shatter. Justin gulps down a few more red cheek fulls.
“Were you gu-gunna stand ar-around here all day, or go back to walking around in-in-in the rain?” Justin hiccups.
“I might stay here.”
Reck begins to sit down but stumbles over the mess of ceiling, floor and former store patron underneath him.
“I mean, you can’t possibly drink that all yourself can you?”
Justin glares sideways at Reck, again, holding the bottle’s barely chipped bottom to the sky. Then he closes his eyes. Reck opens his mouth to speak, but only a croaking, rattling groan can be heard. Reck closes his mouth, both parties turn to look at the noise, and the body pincushioned by a shattered window in the front of the store croaks again, then shifts almost as if attempting to rise. Justin’s grip slips and the bottle, with much life left to live, snaps in two.
Reck clambers to his feet and rushes to the still shifting person half buried in debris. He wipes his mouth, drops to his knees and gets straight to digging like a rabbit. Gently but rapidly he pulls off fist sized hunks of cement and clods of reddened, thickened dirt. Justin watches silently; standing wide legged and swaying over his fallen comrade. The pincushion groans again and Reck begins to free their arms and eventually legs from the remaining pile. Justin kicks at and then crushes the bottle.
“You’re alright, I’m getting you out of here,” Reck assures with an iron will. He seems to inspire himself with his own words, working even harder. His assurance receiver can only cough in response.
The body is, no surprise, in terrible shape. What comes out from beneath is barely recognizable from past the hips. Reck pulls the thing into his lap and reaches for his knife to cut free the torn jacket it wears. But its loop is empty. Both a cursory prodigy of the ground and a further look prove its vanishing. Reck shifts to look in other directions and Justin quietly lunges from the periphery to slit the pincushion’s throat. It doesn’t make a sound.
“Fuck!”
Reck jumps backwards. He raises his hands as in surrender again.
“Maebee bop my bottle,” Justin slurs. He shrugs nonchalantly, coolly. The knife dangels lazily, gaily in Justin’s loose grip.
“Matt!”
“What?”
Justin tightens his grip ever so slightly.
“What?” He reiterates. “Bastardsss..zlready dead.”
Reck stares, barely squinting, Justin sways like a sturdy weed, the ground shakes and the building fills with a hundred dusty rivers flowing from the ceiling to the floor. A few streets away a set of rusted, dented speakers squeaks out a tinny rendition of Earth; The People’s Planet. The notes are squashed and the vocal performance nearly indistinguishable. Quickly, a large explosion rocks another part of the city, and, even if unrelated, the triumphant tune cuts out. Justin’s watch’s battery dies.
“You’re drunk,” Reck bites.
He swallows air.
“You didn’t have the right.”
“You really think you were gonna save him?” Justin snorts. He rolls his eyes and head in a dramatic, ridiculous, sardonic gesture.
“No, r-no really.., look at it.”
He gestures down at the it with the blade.
Even without the slit throat it is in bad shape. No doctor or machine alive or inert could replace a lower half and life in tandem. No amount of steroids could stabilize one nearly pinned to the ground from head to what is left.
“Give me my knife back. Either way I didn’t say you could take and kill people with my knife.”
“Trade you for anything you-you’ve got to drink.”
Reck lifts his trusty blue canteen and gives it a shake.
“Water. With a splash of thc. Barely. I’m not trying to get myself killed like a stumbling idiot.”
Reck throws the canteen but Justin makes no attempt to catch it. He picks the canteen up from the puddle of it that it landed in and treats it just the same as his previous drink; as if there is a prize waiting for him and him alone at the bottom.
“The knife?” Reck steps forward. Four meters between them now. Reck hesitates to advance again.
Justin raises one finger and chokes out an attempt at the word wait. When the canteen is finished he throws it back to Reck. He lets fly every drunks carbonated war cry as well.
“The knife.”
“Just come take it,” Justin sighs. He leans against the wall and holds the knife, blade out, towards Reck.
Reck does not hesitate. He approaches quickly, stops barely ten centimeters from his tool, and pries the grip from Justin’s hand. Then he pushes the man aside and heads for the scrawny corpse of a doorway. But Justin drops a loose hand on his shoulder.
“I thought you were staying for a drink.”
“How about you get your FUCKING MURDERING HANDS OFF MY GOD DAMN BODY!” Reck yells, whipping around. His eyes bulge and his neck pops with veins.
Justin spits.
“Make me.”
“You’re. Drunk. Back off.” Reck wipes his face with the back of his hand and uses the other to remove Justin’s slight hold. Justin’s free hand darts down to the knife now at home again in Reck’s belt.
“NO!”
Reck punches Justin to the floor where they collapse together in a struggling heap. The two writhe around trading scratches and bites and bashes with every part of the body they can manage. Caged wolves snap and grunt until they again jolt up.
“Matt!” Reck cries as his knife is wrenched free. He swings for the jaw but pulls back when his plasma edged blade is dragged in a ragged line across his arm.
Reck has one, great advantage and he knows how to use it. He is large. Twice the size of Matt, at least. Easily two and a half. He drops all this, the mass the weight and the inertia, all at once on his opponent. Matt falls away like a cardboard man. His body hits the floor with a dull thump followed by a piercing scream. Reck steps away. Matt has fallen directly on and through some very sharp rebar. His eyelids twitch and his hands scrabble pointlessly at the protruding metal.
“Reck..nnk. Help me up. Cuhk…” he chokes.
Reck leans down and slits his throat in one fluid motion.
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