On the Lake

When I was in Tech School in Texas I wrote a series of flash fiction stories to help pass the time in my last few weeks there, one per day. Along with 'Final Verdict,' 'On the Lake' was one of my favorites from those few. Now, remember, these are FLASH fiction, very short stories I wrote in about five minutes without putting much thought into it, so take it for what it is. Hope you enjoy.

I looked around and saw the sun setting in the distance just behind the tree line. A golden sunset, the color of the autumn leaves as they fell from the trees flanking our neighborhoods streets, reflecting off the surface of the lake.




Yes, a bueatiful sunset, but the glare from the sun blinded my eyes to the danger that lurked just behind its orange hue. Behind the light of the evening sun, in the tree line on the other side of the lake, they lurked and bid their time waiting for the right opportunity to approach. It wouldn't have mattered anyway, I'd try to tell myself later as I held the body of my ten year old sister in my arms. There was no way I could have stopped them even had I known they were coming. But that wasn't true, at least not completely true. Maybe I could have done something differently, fought from a position of strength and not of weakness had my eyes not been tired from days with no sleep and hadn't failed to spot the dark shadows moving silently on the far banks of Crystal Lake.



But non of that mattered anymore. It was over. I'd done my best, I really had, no one left in this dying world would dare tell me any different, but in the end I still failed the one person who'd ever trusted me. Now she was dead, her head cracked open, brain matter covering my already bloodstained shirt.



I couldn't stop it, I couldn't stop it, they were too many…. I couldn't stop it.

I lift my eyes from her crumpled body and gaze across the lake where they'd escaped. I can see their webbed footprints in the muddy earth, see the residue of their flaking skin on the rocks that'd had fallen from their bodies as they'd retreated when I found them. If I squint my eyes and stare long enough over the long treacherous waters of the lake, I can barely make out the greenish light of their campfires as they burned the dead skin that came from their bodies. It looked something like the Northern lights, I remember, recalling the trip my family took last summer to Alaska. It seemed so long ago now, I can hardly remember that time. Before the plague, before the mutations began and the adults started to change.



Before the nuclear holocaust turned the skies grey and the earth black.



It was dark now, time for me to lock the doors and windows and hide in the attic with Cara wrapped in my arms, my hands cupping her ears to keep the sounds of their moaning and scratching from keeping her from the sleep she needed.



I give up. No more running, no more fighting. I give up.



I lay down on the soft due crusted grass and closed his eyes ready for the painless death they would give me.