Magenta Monster

This story is from a #storystarters by Selorian

DOOMSDAY

The dust settled on the Google Wars of 2012 on December 21st & the internet juggernaut’s victory led to the Mayan doomsday – well sort off anyway.

China, incensed at Google, decided to put all their resources into DOS attacks taking out the economic hub of the western world right around christmas and killing the January sales. They also sliced, bombed and generally messed up any peer to peer cables they could get their hands on – which was, oh, all of them. They then blasted all satellites out of the sky, bar their own.

The world was in turmoil – no internet, no shopping, no TV. Mass global communication was down – economics ground to a halt, banking had stupidly relied on systems that were nuked by the DOS attacks. Mobile phones ceased to ring. Financial apocalypse.

But Amy didn’t care about most of it. The panicked doomsday riots had been scary but she had hidden in a storm drain and slowly worked her way through the tinned food she had stored near by. After the riots had calmed down and the police had bashed a few heads she had sneaked back out with her rucksack and filled up on food and clothing from the trashed shops. She went back five times that night and repeated the process every night until the shop keepers got their acts together and boarded up the windows and doors. She was very careful – living on the street for the past five years had taught her to vary where she came from and where she went too. She had caches of food and clothing all over the place. If you always went to the same place people noticed – the wrong type of people noticed.

Amy was maybe 17; she wasn’t sure and she looked older now, the elements and cold nights had aged her, she was thin but robust, nicely rounded by the layers and layers of illsorted clothes. And out of most of the population of the UK she had guessed the truth and was waiting for the invasion – she had seen the tactic played out a few times – once unfortunately on herself. The boys would follow you to your nest and rough you up a bit, rape you none too gently and leave – telling Ricardo, or Gary or Al where you were. He’d wait until you emerged from your stinking hole, all friendly and smiles, offering you resources such as pain killers, food and a warm bed to sleep in.

And then you found yourself hooking for him, fucking men three times your age to line his pockets; but you where warm and fed until – and this was the inevitable bit – he got stabbed or shot or ODed or even arrested for something or other. Then you were back on the streets having lost your edge.

This is what would happen now to the western world, Amy surmised, and then China would be heros and the populations and resources of the western world would be laid at their feet. For Amy wasn’t stupid and she had seen the news reports before things got bad – it was unknown international pirates who had cut the P2P networks and pirates who had sunk the transport ships that bought cheap food into England. And that was something that worried Amy – England had built on its farm land, had forgotten how to farm; her mother, before the paranoia got too bad, had explained the island’s history to her. She knew there would be mass starvation soon.

Amy frowned and looked at her bitten fingers, with infections pussing next to at least three nails. There was that old World War Two bunker she had found in the woods just outside town – she got the jitters and moved her stashes there – a few a night, being clever about it. She had more than she thought, but not enough. She took a shopping trolly and broke into a ware house and stole medicines, then in another part of town she stole bottled water, then camping supplies and more food.

She did this for what seemed an age and the ice melted and the nights grew shorter. She went to different towns, always fearing that they would catch her, but cameras were dead all relying on the infastructure that wasn’t there anymore; and security guards were recruited into the police. Then one night, with daffodils pushing out of their green pods, the sky flashed white. Amy was pushing a trolly of books from a library – she didn’t know why she had taken them but it seemed the right thing to do. She was behind a building when it happened.

But she still wet herself. Blinded momentarily by the blast, she ran, and ran to her bunker, emptied the trolly of books down the hatch and scambled in behind them. She closed the hatch just as the rain begain to pour.

Panting, she flicked her torch on and hooked a car battery up to some LED lighting she’d nicked. She changed and washed and then sorted the books. She picked up a rather old battered book she’d found on the libarian’s desk – it obviously belonged to them personally – she almost hadn’t taken it.

It was called “Life After Doomssay”. She had a feeling she’d made the right decision.

Posted: Wednesday, January 20th, 2010 @ 10:31 pm
Categories: Uncategorized.
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