Flash Fiction: Fire On The Sea

Chuck Wendig is back from his Australia-bound carcass flinging and this week we again have a new and exciting adventure for our Flash Fiction Challenge. It’s the usual “1,000 words or so” and the random song title I got from my iTunes collection (11,752 songs and growing) is track number one on Heather Alexander‘s “Insh’allah – the Music Of Lion’s Blood” album. Amazingly, I was able to get in at only 825 words, a rarity for me. As always, comments and constructive criticisms are appreciated.

FIRE ON THE SEA

Omar sat on the beach, facing east. The hard sand was cool after it had bled away all of the day’s heat. Before him the sea was angry, the waves rolling in, the surf steadily crashing higher and higher. A dim bioluminescent glow lit the foam. Just audible over the growling of the surf were the sounds of chaos, sirens and explosions, coming from the city behind him.

Other solitary watchers sat on the beach with Omar, all of them silent and lost in their own thoughts. A few families were scattered across the beach as well, but the children were all quiet and sleeping, innocent and oblivious.

Overhead the stars were crystal clear and beautiful. Orion was high in the east, rising up on his side above a mass of thunderheads far off on the horizon. Above the ancient warrior, closer to the zenith, the last quarter moon and Mars hovered near Taurus, the red planet preternaturally shining far brighter than the red giant, Aldeberan.

As he watched the wall of clouds race toward him from the east, Omar could hear a few of those near him praying quietly. He had never been a very religious man to begin with, but after cancer had taken his wife when she was not yet thirty, Omar had found few occasions to want to speak with Allah. The sons he had raised without his beloved were now spread across the country and would have to decide for themselves if they needed to meet their fates as holy men or not.

Earlier in the evening, one of the television stations had been taken over by an armed mob of religious zealots. All night they had been shouting and wailing their theories about how Allah was punishing the world of men, cleansing it with fire. Without a shred of evidence to back them up, they continually promised that the faithful would be saved in order to rebuild the world in Allah’s name.

Omar didn’t know why the world was being destroyed. He had listened to the increasingly horrible news reports showing the cities of Europe and America burning before going silent. Some commentators had tried to interview experts to see what precautions should be taken in the few brief hours they themselves had. At first there had been speculation that the flames from the sun might be just a flare that would die out in a few hours, leaving those lucky enough to be on the night side to survive. Those hopes had faded as the night went on. With Japan and Asia starting to burn with the sunrise, Omar had come down to the beach to face the end on his own terms.

Throughout the city, thousands of others had chosen a different path, spending their last hours looting, killing, and raping. Others panicked and were desperately trying to flee with whatever belongings they could, although there was no place safe to flee to. Omar had simply left all of his belongings behind and managed to avoid the mobs until he reached the beach. After that he had turned up the coast and walked away from the madness until he found a quiet spot.

Omar did not have any family left in the city. The few friends he had were not that close to him and would face this in their own way. Alone with just his dignity and his self-respect for many years now, he had decided that he would do what he could to keep those things with him until the end, meeting the end of all things as he had lived his life.

While it should still be over three hours before sunrise, Omar could see that the eastern horizon was starting to brighten. The line of the horizon far out to sea was being defined by the constant flashes of lightning smashing down from the turbulent wavefront being driven away from the burning Pacific Ocean.

An intensely bright, white line appeared and grew in the sky parallel to the horizon. The tops of the clouds beyond the horizon were being illuminated by an amazingly intense light. Stretching up higher than any clouds ever seen by humans before, the inferno’s fury was rapidly hemorrhaging the planet’s life off into space.

Driven before this final storm to end all storms, the wind began to pick up, soon going beyond hurricane force. Carried on the wind was a rising wave of heat, raising the temperature beyond anything Omar had ever felt, even here near the Equator.

Omar could see the clouds and lighting were approaching unbelievably fast, towering up into the stratosphere and beyond. While many of those around him hunkered down and faced away, Omar chose to stand and face his fate. Holding onto a tree with all of his strength, leaning into the howling, blast furnace wind, Omar watched as the sea rose and the world turned to fire around him.