Paul Jones - Extinction Point - The End

His eyes fluttered open. He was alive.

Overhead the sky stretched limitlessly, filling his vision, summer-blue and still, undisturbed by either cloud or aircraft. Carefully, with no wish to experience another nauseating bout of agony, he raised his head from the soft earth.

He found himself on the grass verge running alongside the freeway. Thirty feet away he could see the burning wreck of his big-rig, jackknifed diagonally across most of the lanes of the freeway. It lay on its roof, wheels pointing into the sky, looking like a giant dinosaur, dead under a Jurassic sun. Surrounding his decimated truck a fortification of mangled metal jutted out in a chaotic display of torn steel and plastic, tattered flesh and splintered bone. The cab of his truck erupted suddenly in a brilliant ball of flame that sent a pillar of flame, smoke, and debris skyward.

A gentle cooling breeze swept the smoke from the burning vehicles away from Byron’s side of the embankment, exposing the destruction in all its glory.

It was a magnificent sight. An earthly manifestation of the power of God. The evil and unclean, sinners one and all he was sure, struck down in one lightning act of might. It was truly beautiful in its power and terrible in its swiftness.

And he had been spared.

“Beautiful,” he whispered. “Beautiful.” The word slipping from him as though he were seeing his newborn child for the first time.

His pain all but forgotten now, Byron tilted his head leisurely to the left, scanning the full extent of the destruction that had just taken place, absorbing the grandeur of the mass of destroyed vehicles that stretched off into the distance. It was horrifyingly arousing. That heap of twisted burning metal, of smashed, burnt and crushed lives. It made him feel alive. The pain in his leg began to fade, inconsequential when compared to the ecstatic excitement that coursed through his blood. He felt giddy, this time with pleasure. A giggle of wicked pleasure rose to his lips.

“How are you feeling,” said a voice off to his right. He whipped his head in the direction of the sound.

Nearby, a man in his forties, stocky with a mass of disheveled hair, stood staring out at the concrete river of devastation, his arms folded across his chest. When he spoke, he did not turn his head to look at Byron, instead he calmly continued to watch the freeway.

“I have been given a sign—” the stranger continued before Portia could answer him. The stranger turned to face the injured killer, the white clerical collar of a priest clearly visible now around his throat. Regarding the exhausted Byron Portia with cool, piercing, intelligent eyes he raised his right arm and extended a long well-manicured forefinger directly at him. “—and you, you will be my first disciple.”

“Who are you?” Portia asked, his voice a barely audible croak over the crackling of the freeway fire.

“My name,” the stranger said, “is Father Joseph Pike.”

It did not take long for Jim Baston to realize that it was going to take a lot longer than the thirty minutes he had originally estimated to get home. He had managed just over two miles and that had already taken him over twenty minutes.

The city was a battleground.

Car’s littered the road. Some smashed beyond recognition, just smoking heaps or burned out wrecks. The majority just abandoned as though the drivers had suddenly vaporized into thin air, forcing Jim to pull off the road and onto the sidewalk.

Pedestrians were everywhere, walking dazed in the street, screaming at each other over collisions, stepping in front of his car as if he did not exist. Most had a stunned, uncomprehending look and it seemed like all they could manage just to put one foot in front of the other. He saw a couple of cops looking just as confused as the rest. Others seemed to have grasped the situation quickly and more than once he saw the smashed windows of stores, their merchandise scattered across the pavement as looters quickly grasped opportunity from the confusion. The store alarms ringing shrilly in an attempt to alert emergency services that either didn’t care or no longer existed.

He had passed several bodies laying in the street, sprawled in twisted poses, congealed blood pooling around them, flies already buzzing expectantly. Those unlucky enough to have found themselves crossing the street at the time they had found themselves back here, he guessed.

Further on, he passed a European style sidewalk café, the kind where the patrons could sit under the large umbrellas on the sidewalk sipping cappuccinos and lattes. A large tow truck had plowed through the sea of umbrellas cutting a swathe of destruction, sending them and the people sitting in their shade in all directions. The truck had continued on its deadly journey right into the café interior, until, finally, it had come to rest against the interior wall, its rear end jutting obscenely from the café’s front, the tail-hook still swinging gently back and forth. Jim counted nine bodies laying in the heat, scattered like pins in a bowling alley.

Several other vehicles were trying to make their way through the crowds but it was like trying to drive a truck through a middle-eastern bazaar — painfully slow and ultimately futile.

The throng of humanity became worse and he slowed the car to a crawl and eventually to a standstill. If he kept on trying to edge the car through the crowd, he would hit someone for sure and anyway, at the rate he was traveling, he would do better off on foot. It might not be safer but he would make quicker time, and Jim had a nagging feeling that time was definitely of the essence today.

Pulling the car as close to the sidewalk as he could he grabbed the cell phone from the back seat, stuffed it in his trouser pocket and checked his position with the navigation comp one final time. Making a mental note of the roads he would need to take to get to the house he killed the engine and stepped out of the car.

Rising high above the stores and tree line, the plume of smoke snaked ominously into the air, a dark harbinger of doom. Jim felt a growing unease creep insidiously over him, setting his skin tingling and his pulse throbbing as he realized that the smoke and fire emanated from ahead of him, directly in his path. The closer he got to the spiraling plume the less breathable the air became and once again, he pulled out his makeshift bandanna pushing it to his mouth.

Outside a deserted Ralph’s food store on Roscoe Boulevard a soft drinks machine thrummed in the burgeoning heat. In the shade of the stores overhang, he fished through his pockets until he found what he was looking for. Dropped the three coins into the machine and selected a bottle of spring water, listening as the plastic bottle of H 2O rumbled through the machines metal innards before dropping into the dispensing slot at the base of the refrigerated machine. He took a long swig from the icy bottle and felt the water ease the stinging sensation in his throat.

The air was thick and heavy, the sun now just a dim light shrouded in the blackness of the cloud. The temperature was rising and in the near distance, Jim could now clearly see the flames of multiple fires. Houses and trees burned brightly and intensely, the flames dancing like crazy imps at the gates of hell, free to run rampant with no fire service to check their spread.

The crowds began to dissipate as he made his way out of the commercial area and into the residential section of the San Fernando Valley before finally evaporating all together as he drew closer to the smoke plume, driven away by the poisonous air and the treacherous flames. Jim did not miss the panicked eyes and the thousand-yard stares of his fellow humans. He was glad to be alone, happy to be making headway without the hindrance of the unwelcome zombies that the majority of the human race seemed to have become.