Category: Short Stories

Shorter-form fiction

Short Story: The Exiled One

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

Anita Cooper had worked seven days a week for months, either tamping away at a calculator or drumming along a keyboard. They’d been longer days than most people’s; ten-to-twelve hours at least. The money was right though, if nothing else. She’d deduced over that time that telecommuting wasn’t all it was cracked up to be, costing as it did, a marriage and any hope for companionship.

Still she worked; day in, day out. Her lunch hour was the only break she took outside once-an-hour coffee refills. Those breaks were only physical anyhow. Mentally, she remained in the chair, staring at profits, losses, expenditures. A few times she tore herself from work to web-surf or pan-fry her brain with Net-TV, but it was as mentally stimulating as watching grass grow.

Her one-time friends had watched her descent with pity. In the beginning, they were sympathetic, believing the issue was an over-demanding employer that required more effort for telecommuting. In truth, Anita’s employers barely knew her name. As time passed, it was evident they cared only for output being on-par with her desk-bound colleagues. Her excess of their output only made them notice when it dropped.

Ellen Fritz was the last of Anita’s friends to stick around. She’d carried the title of “friend” since grade-school; through thick and thin, high and low. They’d managed to remain friends in spite of the years and their trials. Ellen was proud of that, in a way, being of a humble self-noble type often and easily mistaken for self-absorbed. Unfortunately, Ellen’s would-be nobility also lent itself to prying, even if rightfully.

The conversation that eventually ended that friendship, or wounded it enough to make it seem so, was had over wine. It was a rare nights when Anita contacted someone outside of work. She invited Ellen and a few other friends for wine and dinner. Only Ellen arrived. It definitely wasn’t a good sign to any onlookers. Anita didn’t notice, too caught-up in cooking.

The pair ate and joked over a bottle of Pinot Grigio and an expertly crafted Chicken Piccata. Ever an an excellent cook, Anita’s home overflowed with scents of freshly peeled garlic, minced lemon, and rich, spiced wine. Atop them, scentless candles added their warmth, dripped wax into their columnar holders. Anita and Ellen relaxed in their seats, full and warm.

The conversation turned from pleasant small-talk. In words alone at first, over another glass of wine. Then, with whole sentences, the talk became deeper, heavier. Ellen pulled at the shoulders of her silk blouse, resetting it over her breasts and leaning onto her elbows. She slid her interlocked fingers beneath her chin, and rested it atop them. Anita had seen it a million times, most recently, when told of the divorce. It was the physical manifestation of a mental preparedness; the posturing of one about to plunge into tumultuous waters.

“Nita,” Ellen said finally, her voice heavy as her head. “I’m worried about you.”

Anita played it off with a chuckle, “I am on cloud-nine! What could you worry about?”

Her brow furrowed. “Honey, you’re withdrawing. I just want to know; why? Is it ‘cause of Darryl, or something else.”

Anita’s wine-infused breaths stiffened. Her face went blank– the same type of posturing, but stubborn. “I’m fine, El. No-one else is worried about me.”

“No-one else is here, honey. How would you know?”

Anita’s face showed the brick-wall of reality that hit her. That was all Anita recalled outside the knowledge of catty, baited quips and Ellen’s eventual departure– and her shaking head. Anita fumed, downing a bottle of wine alone, and leaving the rest to history.

Life took a turn that day, and every day after, she found herself alone, and uncertain of why. Apart from find herself forced to trek out for groceries, she’d entirely avoided leaving the house. Whether clear or not, she’d become agoraphobic. Everyone else knew it. The isolation afflicted her, even if she refused to admit to it or the cause.

Anita had always been fit, adhering to a workout regiment that kept her slimmer than most. Now in her mid-30s, the weight she’d put on was merely the most egregious sign of her self-exile. Apart from the aforementioned grocery trips, her life was entirely downsized, planned to avoid people entirely. Her days now consisted of waking, coffee, working with coffee, and showering before bed, at which point she’d sleep, only to rise and repeat.

Her worsening state had seemed only mildly different, allowing for terrible habits to take root. Some days she smoked cigarettes, or popped magic mushrooms from the private myco-troughs she’d once used to grow truffles, shitake, or portobello mushrooms for cooking.

Despite its recreational effects, Psilocybin was the only way she’d found to cope with the inevitable cluster headaches that now descended each night before bed. Somewhere in her, she knew, staring at computer screens sixteen-or more hours a day were to blame. Her life of work and nothing more had taken its toll; was taking its toll. Most times, she slept off the high…

Tonight was different.

Anita sat at her table, once more imbibing an expertly crafted meal. For one. She’d taken her daily dose of mushrooms before starting to cook, popping the caps and munching away as if a vegetable appetizer. Midway through cooking, the high set in. The five or so knitting-needles jammed through various parts of her skull and gray matter withdrew. She doubled down on the meds for sanity’s sake, finished cooking.

The second dose began to hit while the first peaked. Colorful swirls flowed from the lit candles like incense smoke-trails. They formed geometric shapes that zigged or zagged about the table, appearing and disappearing in and out of space-time randomly. The wine in Anita’s glass bubbled and frothed like a science experiment gone awry, but tasted better somehow. She drank it down and poured more, watching it form a waterfall along more of the floating, geometric shapes.

Her biggest shock was yet to come.

Anita began a conversation with herself, playing two sides of a dialogue between her and the Chicken Penne on her plate. Though it remained inanimate, the food thanked her for being so carefully prepared and wonderful tasting. She gobbled it down, the two quipping about its taste, until a polite “goodbye” preceded her taking the last bite. She threw down her frothing wine, and broke into a giggle-fit the likes of which few have seen. Through tearful blinks and table-slapping hysteria, she settled back in her chair, more relaxed and at-peace than in years. She swallowed her amusement, laid her head back, and closed her eyes.

She righted herself and nearly fled, screaming. Instead, reality’s icy-grip rooted her via now-rubber limbs.

Before her sat a much younger, slimmer version of herself. To say she wasn’t a looker would’ve been an insult, and a flat-out lie. The former-gymnast body was long, lanky, muscled in all the right places and tantalizing in all others. The one-time flicker of aroused satisfaction at viewing herself in the mirror returned. It coursed through her loins with the recollection of long-lost, acrobatic sex.

A shameful sniffle shattered the cooling silence. Her head fell, taking in her body; age-related change was one thing. This was another. She’d never expected to go through life being the bombshell-gymnast, but hard work had paid off then. She’d hoped it would continue to, but then, she wasn’t putting in hard work now. Not that kind. All her years suddenly felt squandered.

“It’s okay, you know?” Her younger self said. Anita’s eyes bulged with uncertainty, blinked away fatigue. They met their youthful counterpart’s. “Nobody’s perfect. Least of all us. We had it hard growing up. Not as hard as some, but not easy. Dad left. Mom withdrew. But we promised ourselves we’d never do that.”

Anita grit her teeth. Heart stung by her apparition’s words. Her mother had withdrawn. She’d become as much a recluse as Anita was now. It was the reason she’d been driven to take such good care of herself; she never wanted to turn out that way, sad, alone, stagnating. Her distant argument with Ellen came back, as foggy as ever, but depositing shame in her gut.

Her younger self laid her hands on the table, in a sort of heart-shape arrangement. Anita had always done the same thing when being forced to confront another’s guilt or shame. It was a sign that everything to be said was harsh truth, but that pain was alright given its context.

“You know why I’m here, what brought me– not just the ‘shrooms,” she said sympathetically. “We never knew how to deal with life. We were never taught that. Mom didn’t deal. Dad didn’t. How were we supposed to?” A tear slipped from Anita’s downcast eyes. “No one blames you. But you have to do something. You’re only a victim so long before you’re the cause. You’re about to pass that point. Things with Darryl were bad. Work was important. You’ve sorted those things out now, but you need to keep moving forward. We never really knew what was supposed to come next, I know. We still don’t. Kids, maybe, but Darryl wasn’t right for that anyhow. We need something though.”

Anita nodded slightly. Sorrow etched her folded mouth with sadness.

Her apparition aged with pained shadows, “You know what you need to do.”

Anita found herself standing from the table, her apparition beside her. It escorted her toward the bed room, laid her down, and helped her to settle for sleep.

“When you wake up, you’ll do it. Because you know you need to. You won’t want to. But you will. You have to. We don’t deserve this, let alone from ourselves.” The apparition began to fade, “Good luck, sweetheart. I’m always here.”

It reached out, touched her forehead with a pair of fingers. As if time jumped, Anita suddenly awoke to daylight streaming in from the windows. She found herself more refreshed than she’d expected. The coma-like sleep had rejuvenated her, left the night as fresh as if it were yet to cease. She stood before the bathroom mirror to rinse her face; age-lines and hard years had strained it, but something youthful beneath had been found anew.

Anita swallowed hard, screwed up her face. She dressed in cool, casual clothes, and walked to her door. Steel tethers pulled taught in her chest.

Good luck, sweetheart. I’m always here.

She breathed, and walked out the door.

Short Story: A New Enemy

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

Admiral Su Kovac was the hardest screw in the Earth Federation Fleet. With upwards of a thousand battles under her belt over the length of a forty year career, she was finest, most experienced officer Earth-Federation had ever seen. In all her years of command, she’d learned to emulate her ancestors by taking the unplanned as it came, or otherwise striking hard with superior force. The mix made her the EFF’s foremost Tactician.

She was deferred to whenever in reach, but no-one dared disturb her otherwise. Once, twenty or so years into her career, then Fleet Admiral Harding had pulled her off maneuvers for an utterly trivial task. She arrived promptly, learned of the task, and before realizing his mistake, was lambasted and humiliated him before his men and half the other Admirals. All of them seemed to recognize Kovac’s authority over his– to say nothing of the defeat of the already-crumbling “old guard.”

Shortly after, High-Command made her Fleet Admiral, consigning Harding to the annals of forgotten history. Kovac celebrated by completing maneuvers then tearing down the command structure to rebuild it. Despite making few friends among the senior officers, the reassignments tightened the Fleet enough to “plant the flotilla up a flea’s ass.”

Kovac was fond of the saying, but too often it came across as ego to those outside her command. The others took it as the ultimate compliment– especially given the inverse; “loose as an old man-whore’s ass.” A saying she was equally, if not more, fond of. Those under her disliked its implications, its terribly vivid imagery, but no-one questioned her judgment.

To say the EFF had never seen a greater Admiral would require the admission of how few there’d been. Kovac was one in a short line thus far, and though the bar was never set before her, it had damn sure been set by her.

One shining example was the battle over Dent Seven, a planet on the edge of Gliese 876. What had once been known by its host star and the appended letter “D,” was colloquially known as Dent. She knew the Eklobian Mauraders had hidden themselves through-out the system, minimizing their heat and power output to effectively mask their fleet. By doing so, they blockaded Dent, on the grounds of embargo, believing themselves to be deserving of a larger portion of the tariffs collected by them on behalf of the Federation, contractors that they were.

Kovac launched only a single, filled shuttle-carrier in response. She helmed it, taking only a skeleton crew of volunteers from her best and brightest. After a week of lying in wait in deep space, using long-range scanners to surveil, map, and observe the system, she and her crew had wired all of the shuttles for remote piloting. Then, placing herself in orbit of Gliese 876’s eponymous star to mask her emissions, she launched the shuttles one-by-one. Each one drew out Marauders moving in attack formation.

At each appearance, a single volley of the carriers cannons fired, eradicating the shuttle and the marauders. It wasn’t long before the Marauders learned of the tactic, and their losses, and withdrew.

In short, all future Admirals would be judged by Su Kovac, and with good reason; she was the best of the best, and it was doubtful anyone living could exceed her prowess.

That all came to a head the day Orion Expedition encountered trouble near Bellatrix. The O-E ships were approximately two-thirds of the way through a research and survey expedition when contact was lost. Admiral Kovac immediately launched a contingent of cruisers and scouts, herself at its head. The F-drives engaged, planting them a few, solar hours out from O-E’s last known position. The contingent’s bulk kept formation to the O-E transponder location. The scouts went ahead, scanners active, and guns at-the-ready.

Dead space greeted them. Dead space. Minor debris. A black-box transponder was the only whole-part of any of the twelve research vessels and four escort cruisers remaing. Kovac kept her guard up. The tension rose aboard each ship, felt by all from officers to ensigns, vets to greenies; something was wrong. Everyone knew it.

As if shouting into the frightening darkness around oneself, Kovac ordered a single, burst transmission to ping for any cloaked or masked vessels hiding from their aggressors.

The ping emitted silently, but every crew-member felt its electrical discharge strike their chests like a thunderbolt. In all of the years the EFF had existed, nothing ever so completely annihilated a contingent of its ships, nor with such stealth. Not a single trace of its presence was left. Even after the interminable wait, silence remained the ping’s only reply.

Kovac ordered scouting parties, sending a battleship, a pair of cruisers, and a handful of corvettes together to stand guard. Others were sent along patrols around any plausible perimeter an escape pod might be in. She kept her Dreadnought, Shepard, and the Carrier, Heinlein, at the center of the contingent’s remnants, surrounded it with EFF Destroyers, Battleships, and Cruisers, then split the remaining Corvettes into two groups. Opposing patrol routes between the rest of the ships would ensure nothing escaped visual inspection.

Shepard’s senors suddenly went out. Alarms screamed through the Dreadnought. The fleet began radioing identical issues. Comms crackled despite short distances. Kovac immediately ordered back her teams. Comms went out altogether a moment later. Screeching static stole the airwaves, most officers’ breaths. Without comms, the fleet had no way to maneuver or relay orders.

Were it not for her subordinates’ respect and her expert instruction, she might have lost complete control. Whatever had caused the issues might have struck, leaving nothing short of total chaos in result. Instead, each man and woman sat at the edge of theirs seats, waiting to enact any orders.

Centered amidShepard’s Bridge, Kovac skimmed the force-field windows and their clear, 360-degree view of open space on all sides. Nothing was amiss, aside from the obvious sensor issues. Space was peaceful, as empty as it had always been.

She squinted at the blackness outside the ships’ collective field of light. Something came at her like a torpedo, rocketed toward the Bridge windows. Shepard’s shields repelled it in a shower of sparking flame.

“Cut all lighting,” Kovac ordered.

Her words echoed between various officers. The lights went out. She fished a blinding hand-lamp from a compartment beside a bulkhead, switched it on. The Bridge lit, a beacon in the night. A series of hand movements signaled in now-ancient Morse-code to a cruiser in range. The code was long out of use, but every person under Kovac’s command had learned it under her orders.

Moments later, the Cruiser’s Bridge went dark. The fleet began to shift. Kovac’s voice was a steady stream of orders. Meanwhile, her hand worked, relaying orders to the cruiser, in turn relayed to other ships in range light signal beacons. Before long the entire fleet reformed. All ships now had views of Shepard’s Bridge.

Fighters were launched, two pilots to a ship; one for flight, one for comms. Orders to sweep in formation were dispatched. Space was suddenly swarmed by the criss-crossing and swirling of a thousand and more fighters.

A Destroyer erupted. The shockwave of blue-plasma rocked the other ship’s shields. A second later, violet plasma manifested from seemingly empty space. Kovac snarled. Firing trajectories were calculated, relayed. Weapons were charged. Before the hidden ship could comprehend it, the fleet’s volley launched. Red-violet. Azure-blue. Electric greens and reds. The small streaks of proton-missiles all aimed for a single point in space. They met the hidden vessel with a mosaic of small explosions that birthed another, larger one.

In the final moments before its reactors went critical, a Dreadnought unlike any she’d ever seen appeared beneath the mosaic shroud. The EFF had not built or envisioned it. Indeed, the design was so alien Kovac doubted a human mind could have concocted it. She had no words to describe it xenoicism. Its various curves, hard angles, and exorbitant plating veined with fire. Then, post-nuclear shock-wave exploded, dissipating eon-blue and red-violet through-out space. Most of the EFF fighters were caught off-guard, lost. A small price, Kovac decided, given the alternative might have been the entire fleet.

Upon returning home, there were no medals. She wouldn’t have accepted them anyway. They were trophies, conversation pieces, thin veneers for people without true accomplishments beneath their belts. Preparation was more important than ceremony anyhow. This new enemy was smart. They’d completely eliminated an entire research party without being spotted; caught the fleet– and Kovac– off-guard, and almost wiped them out in the process. As far as the EFF was concerned, they’d declared war.

For Kovac’s part, they’d exposed critical flaws in the Fleet’s stratagem. Their possession of advanced cloaking and EMP tech meant she needed a defense. Rather than be shaken, she locked herself away to think.

This new enemy was good, but Kovac was better. She knew it. It wasn’t arrogance but discipline. Everyone else agreed. To her diligence and training were everything. She withdrew the fleet to Sol for maneuvers to test against her stratagem, then sent out patrols and scouts. She would be damned certain they were prepared for any future confrontation with this new enemy.

Short Story: At Peace on the Water

~ S.M. Nolan ~ 3 Comments

John McDonnell was a fisherman. He rode the seas by day, slept atop them by night, trawled them the times between. John was mostly a one man show; did it all himself despite the workload required of a commercial fisherman of his station. But such was the way of the industry that a man did what he ought to earn his daily bread. For John, like most good, hearty Americans, that daily bread cost him hours ‘n hours of blood and sweat that dribbled periodically down his catfish-smooth back.

While trawling for whatever his nets could haul in, Martha was at home. Two boys and the life of an overworked school teacher meant, like John, she was under-appreciated, under-valued, and stuck in an industry as collapsed as his. Ever the homemaker and loving mother though, despite the collagen beaten thighs aching from hours on her feet. Each night she’d tuck the boys in, recalling stories John had told her. Stories she felt it her duty to impart to them. Told her, that was, on the rare nights he managed to make it home for supper instead of trying to procure it.

John had wanted to be a fisherman all of his life. He’d sit in school, drawing finely detailed sketches of the various species prowling the coasts and waterways of his childhood. He’d fill whole pages with specs of various rigs for boats and special fish. It was a pass-time. An obsession in the truest American tradition. All of those times he should’ve been focused on maths and sciences so he could “grow up and getta’ good job,” he was planning and learning his trade. When first he started to ply it, the middle finger he gave to dejectors gave him a hard-on. Martha would’ve enjoyed that thoroughly.

The first boat was an old one. Barely large enough to piss off. He spent more money repairing it from summer gigs than he’d ever earn with it. Between that and the oft-bags of ‘shrooms and grass aboard it, he was at peace with a lack of profit.

Cue Martha with comely good looks and dimpled cheeks. The bottles of Ole English Rye, John had taken to drinking. One hot night, and nine months later, there wasn’t much more he could do but provide for the twin boys that popped out.

That wasn’t to say John didn’t love his family. On the contrary, he was a family man through-and-through. Just like Pop’d been. And Grandad before him. Difference was, they’d made their livings as leather merchants or carpenters, back when those things were still valued. In that way, John had followed in their footsteps, found the thing he knew and was good at, and refused to do it for free– or anything else for that matter. That work was for land-lubbers though. The types that could sleep without scents of fish on ice or the sea-salt spray.

John just wasn’t quite the way about things most fellows were. He needed the water. Be it Pacific, Atlantic, or any rivers or streams between the two. He rode them all like a true man of his craft. It was all business until the lunch-time beer, then nothing more ’til the day’s the work was done. And when forced to sleep, the photo of Martha and the boys at his bedside got the nightly, longing look. Then the one of Martha naked got the nightly, stroking grunt. The light went out on his bed with a broad beamin’ on his grizzled face.

It was a bad May that John finally met his match. The season was just starting again. He’d only been out a week. The weather’d been fierce, but nothing the forty-footer couldn’t handle with John at the helm. Per usual for spring and summer, he’d hired on a few, part-time hands to help rake in the expected rush. The result was a near twenty-four hour done in twelve-hour two-man shifts. Only a pair of hands were there to tend the wheel or empty the nets at any given time.

The ocean swelled. The sky gave a thunderous roar. Squalls blew past island coasts far to the west and south. The season was geared to start with a bang. In the middle of it, John and his hands were slogging through knee-buckling waves while the forty-footer rode ‘em like a rag doll. By the end of their second full-day, they were all exhausted, their haul only half as intended.

Were he not chasing something in particular, maybe John wouldn’t’ve kept himself out so long. Maybe he’d’ve been satisfied with the first days’ bounty. Then again, maybe if he’d been that kind of man, he’d’ve never spent all those hours drawing fish or making charts. Never stepped on a boat. Never even dreamed of being John McDonnell, fisherman at sea.

But life’s funny that way, for both the fish and its most patient predator. It’s not quite a matter of maybes. Rather, it’s a matter of the soul. A sort’a passion that can only be appeased and rocked to sleep by the caress of water against the hull.

John and his hands were in a squall to beat the band. They all sensed it. When it finally happened, they almost welcomed it. Like John had said, though more sarcastically than not, he was doomed to end his life at sea. It made sure he was no liar.

The waves pitched and rolled him back. The trawler heaved and hoed. John sensed more than anything that the sea was fierce. Almost seemed as if he’d done something to anger her. Maybe it was his own foolishness. Maybe greed. Maybe poor, dumb luck. Whatever it was, there was no escape.

A final, forceful heave. The sea crashed from two directions. The keel groaned and flexed. Then, a loud crrrack. Fiberglass snapped. The hull tore open. The forty-footer began taking on water. It was over in moments. The trawler headed for the ocean floor, John with it. The last thing he saw before the air left his lungs and the life left his eyes, was the limp curl of a dead fish. It floated up past him in the aerated water, no doubt released from the trawler’s own depths.

As a fisherman’s wife Martha knew the fear and sorrow of missing husbands or partners. Even at the best of times, they lived a life of perpetual torment, terror. Ever on the precipice of tragedy and sorrow. None of them knew if or when their mates might make it home. Usually, they missed their scheduled returns by days anyhow.

Martha and the boys didn’t worry ’til then. It wasn’t long after that they knew she’d joined the ranks of widows whose only solace was that no man could be so cruel as to stay at sea so long.

John was one of those men. Lost to the sea. Lost to history. Nothing was left to find of him or the others. He’d spent his whole life wanting to be a fisherman, living as one, then dying as one. Even in his final moments when he felt the forty-footer shudder and begin to sink, he was at peace knowing that. After all, the water was his home, always had been. Now, it would be forever.

Short Story: Sprawl-Blue

~ S.M. Nolan ~ Leave a comment

The sky was that special kind of blended deep-blue only found against the foreground of metro sprawls. The kind of blue where countless neon lights mix it with old-time incandescents, radiating their offspring for miles. While their multitudes fuck to make the paint, they bounce and rebound off the gloss-coats of high-end, self-driving cars.

And at a distance, it all forms that thing loosely termed “Humanity.” Progress. Civilization.

Most call it “sprawl-blue.” Not just ‘cause that’s what it is, but ‘cause it perfectly encapsulates life in a sprawl. It rolls off the tongue easier than sweat along a belly-dancer’s undulating navel. It even gives a bit of the taste of it. Copper, like blood. Hints of irreverent neons. No-one knowing could deny sprawl-blue’s as much a way of life as Junk or The Net.

Personally, Carly didn’t care for either of the last two. She was just a girl trying to make her way without being fucked for her money. In a sprawl, if you didn’t do it for yourself, you sure were getting fucked. Carly didn’t like getting fucked. She liked fucking. She liked to get her hands dirty. Slake her blood-thirst. Seel the adrenaline rush of gun and fist-fights. Most of all, she loved control. Being in control was better than cumming on X.

It started young: a taste of power from being the smartest street-rat in the pack. All the others looked up to her. Boys. Girls. It didn’t matter. Carly was Alpha-bitch. Queen. Empress and Matriarch. Everyone followed her. Those that didn’t, got far outta’ the way– or, on the wrong end of her pack.

She’d started with drugs. At eleven. Stumbled onto a deal gone bad and found a few kilos of grass, X, and Junk. Got her start with it. Made bank. At fourteen she was running guns like a bike-messenger to parcels. Literally. She and her people were decked out in street-rat clothes, looking as pathetic as possible. Were it not for Carly’s cunning, they’d have been that way. She earned herself street-cred, and eventually, control of territory.

It came with blood. Serious cost. Her first turf war left her limping every time it rained. It drew suspicion anytime she was around the “real-world” straights. That term alone always made her laugh enough to forget the limp. The real world was no different from the so-called “shadow world.” Both survived, and thrived, on power, control.

But both worlds had started to take their toll. On Carly. On people in general. Now, at twenty-two, Carly’d seen more than most people three times her age. Double that for straights. She still limped when it rained, was blind in one eye, and had the accompanying slash-scars across her face. Random hunks of meat were missing from her body. Others were fused shut, grotesquely mottled from burns, bullet-wounds, stabbings. Each was a prize of the Sprawl-blue coloring the background of every memory of every night of her life.

She stood center-stage in the middle of a storage warehouse. She was leaned forward, hands on a pallet of bags of cement. Various construction materials and pallets were laid out in seemingly random points about the floors. Elsewhere, were giant rolls of goods. Filled shelves. Everything there waiting to be shipped.

Carly’s people were formed around her, armed to the teeth. They awaited her order to throw themselves into the fray, if or when it came. They’d jump in front of bullets for her. It wasn’t for lack of survival instinct. Carly just had a way about her. A certain charisma. As a child, sheer arrogant confidence had backed it up. Since then, its spine had been reformed by bloodshed, survival. She was the only reason any of her people were alive today.

But Carly knew she wouldn’t live forever. Nor would her people. Or their ways. That’s what tonight was about; survival. Carrying on after the loss, insurance and assurance, that the world could survive no matter what happened to the “shadow people.”

The sprawl had been divided too long. The various gangs at war too long. They’d fought for territory for generations. The battles always ended with less people. Less land. More damage. Carly was no different. The only thing separating her from her enemies were the imaginary lines they’d collectively drawn– for survival’s sake.

Carly knew that. Her people knew that. Most of all, their enemies knew that.

She’d called a meeting, a summit of sorts; all of her gang, all of the other gangs. The collective armies of over a dozen warlords, mafioso, and G’s were en-route to sit down in their massiveness. Carly had managed it with exorbitant gifts. Neutral messengers. Peaceful letters. It was time for a sit down– a parley. Pow-wow. They needed co-existence, she said. If not for themselves, then for all the lost.

It had taken time, and doing, but eventually Carly’d convinced the gang-leaders to meet. It was time to end the wars, to unify the people against their true threats. The elites. Aristocrats. Politicians. Police. In effect, the so-called “Real-world establishment.”

“It is time,” she’d said. “To emerge from the shadows and retake the day.”

The first to reach the meetings were the Asian gangs– Yakuza, Triads, the like. Punctuality was their way. And scoping out the competition, laying in wait in the event of ambush, was the other gangs’ way. With the obvious recognition that no slaughter was about to take place, the Mexican gangs came next. They had to be macho, show they weren’t afraid. Then, the black-only gangs. The white-only gangs. The Italians. The Irish. So many that the warehouse was packed. Standing room only.

Carly’s heart swelled with tension and pride. So many opposing colors together. Even as the last gang-leaders led their people in, she couldn’t believe what she’d achieved. She smiled, lifted her arms wide in a V, and projected her voice.

“Thank you all for coming. You know why we’re here. To ensure the safety of our city. Our people. Our families. There’s only one way to ensure that happens. That is why I’ve brought us all here today.” She lowered her arms as something slid subtly from her sleeve and into her hand. Nobody noticed. Even her own people were oblivious.“We’ve all become a blight,” she said to suddenly confused looks. “We’re a plague. A cancer on this city. I aim to cut that cancer out!”

The obvious trap’s recognition appeared instantaneously across hundreds of faces. A single heart-beat separated it from the explosion. In a blink, the warehouse was in flames. Bits and bodies were thrown about. Blood and chunks strewn everywhere. Carly was blown clear through a metal wall. Her torso was lacerated, organs and bones pulverized by the explosives disguised as cement bags.

Her last breath made her arm go limp. The charred detonator rolled from a hand. Her eyes fixed up on the sky, that never-ending, ubiquitous, sprawl-blue.