Fiction Fridays: Afterglow Chapter 1

Introduction and Chapter 1

I don’t know how many times I’ll post my own work here, but I read a piece recently that a substack about how to write good fiction should probably include fiction by the person who is giving the writing advice.

While I don’t necessarily agree — I’ve had some really good “novel” teachers who have been industry professionals, poets, essayists, and short story writers — I do have some short stories where the publication rights have reverted back to me that I still think are good enough to share with the world.

This story, Afterglow, was the first short story I’d ever had published. I started writing it back in 2017 as a palate cleanser from the epic fantasy novel I’d written as my MFA thesis. I quickly realized that sci-fi is not my “passion” and abandoned the project, only to come back to it two years later when Black Hare Press put out a call for submissions for their first non-microfiction anthology. I took a look at the chapters I’d written. Apparently, I’d sent the very rough draft to one of my MFA classmates soon after I’d written Chapter 1.

He’d left one comment on it: “Melodramaaaa.”

And he was right. So I set about revising it.

One thing no one tells you about MFA programs is that you kind of need a “break” from writing after you complete one. I’d written an entire High Fantasy Novel, revised it twice, and gotten married two weeks before my revisions were due back to my mentors. I didn’t allow myself any time to internalize what I’d learned. Then, two years removed and two failed novels later, I finally felt confident in my own abilities.

Looking back at it, I can tell where I’ve grown as a writer, and for that reason, I’ve hesitated posting it. …But someone bought it from me for an anthology and paid me actual real money for it, so I figure: why not.

So, this is a near-future apocalyptic science fiction story about an alien invasion/disaster scenario. It’s nearly 11,000 words long, so I’ll probably serialize it into four or so sections. I hope you enjoy it!

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Afterglow
By Jacob Baugher

Molly Ramirez sent her daughter to Mars to avoid the apocalypse. Now, she must escape a doomed Earth herself and join her. There’s just one problem: Aliens.

Defenceless under the night

Our world in stupor lies;

Yet, dotted everywhere,

Ironic points of light

Flash out wherever the Just

Exchange their messages:

May I, composed like them

Of Eros and of dust,

Beleaguered by the same

Negation and despair,

Show an affirming flame.

—W.H. Auden, September 1, 1939

CHAPTER ONE

Why is it so cold in space, Mama? Why don’t the stars twinkle? I can’t see Earth anymore. It’s just dark outside. Will you be here soon? Auntie Opal says that I’m going to live with her until you and daddy come on the next ship. I hope you come soon. I can’t wait to see you and Daddy and Midnight. Please come soon. It’s so cold in space. I miss you.

Love, Rachel

—From the Journal of Rachel Ramirez, age 7. 

Ten Minutes to Impact

“Life’s only worth living if you believe in something.” Those were her husband’s last words to her. He’d be dead soon, along with the rest of the planet. 

All Molly Ramirez really believed in was her handgun, her daughter, and the asteroid that was about to slam into Earth’s surface. Oh, and the aliens that were trying to kill her, her squad, Vice President Gard, and also strip the Earth of its water supply. 

You know, a typical Cosmic Tuesday. 

A month before the Avandii invasion, they lassoed a NEO and hurled it at Los Angeles. Or, rather, they lassoed 433 Eros, a 5-mile-long asteroid, shielded it from nuclear strikes, cloaked it, and sped up its trajectory by about a thousand miles an hour. At least, that’s how it’d been explained to Molly. Molly didn’t really care about asteroids, she cared about her daughter. So she and her husband, Will, sent her to Mars.

Now, all that stood between Sergeant Molly Ramirez and her daughter were five hundred meters of smoke-filled tunnel and her own commanding officer. And about 34 million miles. Captain Dalton was a complete fuck and had leveraged his way into landing the last spot off Earth. She’d be damned if he made it off the planet and left her to die. Molly couldn’t be left behind. She wouldn’t allow it. Rachel needed her. 

“Go! Go! Go!” Private Evan Davis shouted, whirled, and levelled his M249 SAW down the hallway at the Avandii horde pursuing them. The alpha screamed like an orangutan and leapt twenty feet through the smoke-filled launch hallway. The alien was over two meters tall, had six legs tipped with razor-sharp claws, and was covered in tufty, matted orange fur. It dragged its thick-knuckled, oversized hands on the ground. Its fangs dripped with venom. Oh, and it could release a cloud of spores from its mouth that reanimated fresh corpses and turned them into mindless drones. Fifty or so lurched along at the Avandii’s back. 

Davis emptied the SAW’s entire belt magazine down the hallway. Gard screamed and clapped his hands to his ears. Purple blood spattered the walls. Molly’s helmet cut the gun’s sonic impact by 66%. She shoved Gard to the floor, drew her Tek-49 “Sabre” pistol from its holster and dialled it up to 11. It hummed in her hand, more of a vibration than a sound, plasma bolts armed and ready. 

She needn’t have bothered. It was over in the 14 seconds it took Davis to empty the belt magazine. Screams echoed. Then nothing.

The Tek continued to hum in her hand; the only sound, save for the ringing in her ears.Alarms strobed in the acrid black smoke that filled the launch hallway. Red halos reflected against the dull metal walls. She kept one hand on Vice President Gard.

“Clear,” Davis said after a moment. He fed another belt into the SAW and slung it over his shoulder.

That’s when the alpha got him. Wounded, it dropped from the ceiling, wrapped four of its six legs around Davis’ neck and squelched its fangs into his skull.

Molly shot them both. A burning blue plasma bolt crackled out of the Tek’s muzzle and engulfed the pair of them. Davis screamed. The alpha turned to her, opened its mouth, and let out a bellow like a howler monkey. It staggered toward her and Davis’ corpse fell limp from its mouth. Sometimes it sucked being Secret Service. 

Molly holstered her Tek, unfastened the M38 incendiary grenade from her belt, armed it, waited for a count of two, and flicked it down the hallway.

Clank, clatter, klaxon, boom. No more monkeys jumping on the secret tunnel to the ultra-secret launchpad to Mars. Warm air rushed down the hallway and tousled the few stray strands of hair that her helmet had missed. The smell of cooking meat hung in the air.

“Come on.” She ripped Gard up from the floor, perhaps a little too roughly. “More will be coming.” He made a sort of half-moan, half gurgle, but followed her back down the hallway, into the smoke. Almost there.

“Ramirez.” Dalton’s voice crackled over her earpiece. An explosion rocked the tunnel. Dust trickled down from the ceiling onto the back of her neck. “They’re in the tunnels,” Captain Dalton shouted in her ear, voice almost lost among the sounds of falling rock and static. 

No shit, she thought. But responded, “Understood. Ramirez, out.”

Davis wouldn’t be the only person she’d kill today.

Gard stumbled along ahead of her, nearly blind in the smoke. Molly reached up and pressed a button on her EVO-Max9 helmet. Glowing blue grid lines sparked to life in the vidscreen, showing her the locations of rocks, debris, and bodies. She grabbed Gard’s hand. 

“Come on.” Their footsteps echoed in the spaces between the klaxon alarms.

The launch chamber had gleaming walls of metal and stone. The carrier shuttle stood on its end in the centre, the same design as every space shuttle since the Columbia in 1981. It would carry them out of Earth’s gravity well to the larger, more advanced ship that floated in outer orbit. Mars only had 38% of Earth’s gravity. The new ship could escape Mars’s orbit just fine if there was a problem. 

Captain Dalton was waiting for them, his old .40 Glock 23 in one hand. With the other he helped the President on to the ship. His own Tek-49 was holstered on his belt. Molly released Gard and he hurried up the ramp, leaving her alone with Dalton.

“Davis?” asked the captain.

“Dead,” she said.

“Good. Better that way.” And then he raised his gun to Molly’s forehead and pulled the trigger. 

The gun clicked on an empty chamber, the hollow sound bouncing off the metal walls until it faded to nothing.

She raised an eyebrow. Dalton looked at his gun and opened his mouth in disbelief. 

Molly shot him in the kneecap. The Tek belched out an electric whirr and blue fire tore the bottom of Dalton’s leg off. He crumpled with a howl that echoed against the stone walls. The Tek filled the chamber with that low, buzzing hum as it charged for the next shot.

“Traitor,” he snarled. Molly pretended not to hear him. Instead, she put on her best soldier’s face, the one she had been working on since boot camp, raised her Tek, and shot Dalton between the eyes. 

A lot of being a soldier is pretending.

She pretended not to notice the red mist that hung in the air, that clung to her clothes when she brushed past his body and entered the shuttle. She pretended not to notice when the president and his cabinet gave her sidelong looks, clearly shocked that it was her and not Captain Shane Dalton accompanying them to Mars. No, instead, Molly Ramirez strapped in, pulled the military-grade paracord around her chest and waist, and closed her eyes. Molly was used to pretending.

She shoved down her emotions, locked them away like they had trained her to, in that deep part of her subconscious reserved for regret and darkness and the terrible things that she had done. She imagined that she was a little girl, floating in her uncle’s swimming pool. 

She thought of that dark, weightless place as her Box of Broken Things. Recently, it’d been stretched to breaking, but she didn’t let herself think about it. That was kind of the point of the box; if you thought about the things in the box, they weren’t in the box anymore. Molly’s Rule #1 was: “Don’t open the box in your head.” Rule #2 was: “Don’t tell your therapist about the box.” No one knew about it. Except Will. 

While memory’s waters sloshed in her ears, beneath her the ship moved. It started with a vibration deep in her chest, a frequency so low that she could feel it in her bones before she heard it. Then came the rumble. Her shoulders strained against the paracord. She squeezed her eyes shut as the pressure intensified, growing from mild discomfort to a burning, buzzing, searing pain in her sinuses. The rumble became a roar, and the vibration, an earthquake. Then nothing.

Molly opened her eyes. Outside the porthole window, the blue sky had faded to midnight black. Her heart beat out a tinny thumpthump in the lonely silence. Soft blue light permeated the cabin, cast from the many LEDs recessed into the ship’s ceiling and walls, but a harsh orange steadily overtook the tranquility. She knew what that was...and she made herself look. The spaceship’s wing stretched outside her window. Beyond it blazed 433 Eros.

It hurtled past the ship, seeming to just miss its mirrored surface, a mass of molten rock, consumed by indigo flame, that streaked across the sky making the stars pale in comparison. It was primal, dangerous beauty.

When she and Will were newlyweds, they hiked the Colorado Rockies. On the way up Flattop Mountain, they passed a sign that read “Don’t get summit fever! The mountain doesn’t care about you.” The sign was meant to caution hikers to turn back if conditions were bad. If a storm blew up, snow and lightning were often seen in tandem. Mountaineers could freeze, slip and fall off a cliff, or be struck by lightning. To Molly though, the sign meant something different entirely: “The universe doesn’t care about you.” And from that day it stuck in her brain like a wart. The universe didn’t care about her, so she would take care of herself.

Molly shoved that memory back into her Box of Broken Things and forced herself to watch as the Rocky Mountain asteroid plummeted toward Earth. She told herself she wouldn’t cry, but she found her face hot and wet with tears anyway. She told herself, when she had entered the labyrinth of tunnels that lead to the launchpad, when she decided to kill Dalton and take the seat for her own, that she wouldn’t remember the little house in suburban Ohio with the fenced-in yard and the hardwood floors and the little black corgi. She told herself she wouldn’t remember Rachel smiling at her when she first held her, damp with sweat and half-mad with pain from the birth. She told herself she wouldn’t remember her husband’s tears on her face when she kissed him goodbye for the last time. The scratch of his beard on her chin. The feel of his arms around her. The heat that rose in her chest, in her very soul, that called out to be held, to be kissed, to be loved. 

But she did remember. And as the piece of fucking space rock slammed into the Earth’s surface, vomiting molten rock and painting the atmosphere bloody crimson, tears flowed hot and fast over her cheeks. And for a moment, Molly Ramirez let herself feel. She tried to picture her husband’s face in her mind’s eye—tried to tell his memory that she was sorry—but she couldn’t. All she could see was 433 Eros and the little house and the little dog dwarfed by the fireball that consumed Earth. 

She’d had dreams about this moment. Not about the asteroid exactly, but dreams where blood and tears ran like rivers and she’d wake screaming in the sticky summer nights to the fan buzzing angrily in the window and her husband clutching her arm in that night-terror panic he always got when she woke him abruptly. Dreams that were creeping and ugly and stuck with her no matter how hard she tried to forget them. Dreams where she lost everyone she ever loved in horrible, gruesome ways. Now those dreams had come to fruition. 

Rachel was all she had left in the entire universe. She swore to herself (as she had countless times in the seven years since her daughter had been born) that she’d never let anything bad happen to her. 

She closed her eyes and shoved the memories back into her Box of Broken Things. Told herself everything would be all right.

But it was just an empty lie.

She was about to turn away from the window when a blinking blue light blazed up in interstellar space. She leaned closer to the window, her breath fogging the glass. She wiped it away. The light travelled in a straight line toward Earth’s lifeless husk. Even from this distance, fire burned on its surface and massive arcs of lightning flickered in the crimson sky. The light stopped, hovering, or so she supposed, just outside of Earth’s gravity well, as if it were watching. Gard leaned across her and pointed back at the cosmic murk.

“Look.” 

More blue lights flared. Swarms of them, all blinking out of time with each other. They coloured the vacuum like neon flies and streaked toward Earth’s husk.

The Avandii had come for her planet.

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