8 May 2021 - Day 1

  I didn’t really want to consider what this meant. The biggest advent of human history was the moment when we primitive monkeys figured out we could throw rocks at lions from the safety of a tree. Primates have a unique mechanism in the shoulder in conjunction with arm power that allows for incredible rotation and deadly accuracy, which then results in the ability to heft heavy objects at high speed. All of our modern weaponry is based on that concept, heft and speed. Pick up enough weight combined with the ability to throw it around and that’s what it took for us to leave the goddamn trees.

  A bullet is nothing more than a thrown rock with a perfectly engineered shape and incredible velocity. A baseball is deadly if chucked just right, and fuck, we used to ‘stone’ people to death. The gun is simply that, the most accurate, the most deadly stoning that we could come up with, and now it doesn’t work. And if that doesn’t work, then we’re put back into the relative Stone age or maybe the Iron age?

  I broke out in a cold sweat as the implications of this were sprinting through my overworked brain. Forcing my hands to cease their quivering, I took several deep, purposeful breaths. I had to consider what this meant.

  From our starting technological point of making small things go fast for deadly effect, humanity figured out how to either make the projectile more inherently dangerous, from a common rock to an aerodynamic sphere, or propel it faster, using a sling instead of an arm. But this mystical bullshit puts us back over a thousand years of progress in weapons alone, and that's not even counting the amount of transportation related technology or medical technology.

  Historically speaking, the longbow heralded the death of knights in feudal England, each knight costing twenty years of training and piles of gold to make for the giant suit of plate armor and the well-trained and well-armored warhorse but some dumb peasant with a yew longbow and a few months training could kill that deadly ancient tank from over fifty yards away. The long range weaponry once again made history as technology advanced, the six shooter becoming the King of the Wild West as America expanded and then again as firearms evened the playing field between evil men and vulnerable women. At every turn, we simply improved on the basic concept of ‘small object going fast equals deadly result’ over and over until right fucking now when our most efficient version of that concept is suddenly out the door.

  My interest in weapons and their historical impact caused all of these thoughts to run through my head faster than my wife could freak out at me. It hit me right then, exactly how bad this situation could devolve.

  “Shit!” I yelled, gathering my firearms and dumping them inside the house on the kitchen counter. Running back out, I grabbed Sandra and yanked her inside. “Ok! Assume it’s right!” I freaked, my voice going uncomfortably high.

  “What’s right?” She asked, pulling back a little. Her eyes widened in fear, matching my frantic energy.

  I almost popped a blood vessel as I coughed to clear my throat. “The message! The warning! Possibly me and some other weirdo conspiracy theorists! The freaking magic words from God! Or Buddha on acid! Shiva on steroids! I don’t care! Assume it’s right!” I yelled, grabbing both of our stiff drinks from the coffee table and downing them one after the other.

  She took a step back from me. “You are acting crazy!” She said, her voice almost creepy calm.

  “Oh I’m sorry, did you have plans this evening?” I asked sarcastically. “No, no you didn’t. Indulge me for ten minutes.” Coughing at the harshness, I sputtered, not giving her a chance to talk before I got this maniacal thought out of my head. “If it is, IF IT IS! And we’re assuming so, then we’re at war with something we’ve never seen. Nothing works, and we’re going to be able to choose a magic or power in which compatibility means more than we know! And death! If we don’t choose, we die?! Die to what? What is going to kill us?” I was solidly wigging out, which is at least three minutes past the starting point of freaking out.

  Sandra stood there frozen, paler than a corpse. Her bloodless face drained of life even as her jaw worked with no sound coming out. Snapping out of it, she ran her hand over the shattered screen of her phone.

  “Choose a power, a magic, a seed, a bloodline,” Sandra corrected softly, getting up and making another drink with shaking hands. “We need to take a step back and think for a minute. Compatibility is important . . . so what does that mean? Something we like? Something we’re good at, passionate about? Interests, hobbies? If you're right, of course."

  “I DON’T FUCKING KNOW!” Giving myself a quick slap to the cheek, I let out a deep breath. “OK, if that’s true, then what do you like? What are your passions, your hobbies?”

  “I’m your wife! What do you think they are!?” She yelled, matching my own rising hysteria. The insanity of the situation was pushing us to fight, something we rarely did. Our chemistry was too good, too solid for us to get angry and stay angry for any length of time. For us, the fighting was almost stranger than our present situation.

  Duh, stupid question, but at just the right, sharp volume and angry pitch to get me to refocus. “True, all right.” I said, forcing myself to take yet another deep breath and sit down on the couch. The cold Jack Daniels and ginger ale served to settle my mind. Our two cats, Earnest and Dozie, ran up the stairs away from us as they yowled. “M-music," I stuttered. "Uh, you can play the violin, the banjo, the viola, the guitar, and the other one that the dude in that West Virginia song shreds . . .”

  “The mandolin?”

  “Yes!” I agreed. “Oh, and you’ve got a Bachelors and Masters in psych, so the whole idea of how the mind works, that’s a passion and a career. Your video game of choice is both Portal and Left for Dead 2, so I’d say how portals and zombies work. You’re an awesome cook, a great housekeeper, and I know we’ve been trying for babies and haven’t gotten lucky yet but I know you’ll be a great mom.”

  My wife’s scared expression took on a pink shade of pain even as I grasped her hands, my thumb rubbing her wedding ring. “If I’m correct, then those are the things you’re compatible with.”

  She looked me right in the eye as she steadied. “You do know me,” she smiled. A bit of color returned to her face. “You work in IT as some kind of analyst, doing everything except coding in regards to how software is made. I think you’ve been up for a promotion to a project manager for a while.” I rolled my eyes at that one. That’s not a job role I wanted.

  Sandra continued on. “You can build anything with your hands as long as it takes an entire weekend,” she joked with a small smile. “Even if you curse the entire time you’re doing it. And you love to figure things out, how they work and how to make them better. Former soldier in the legal/admin side of the Army with a passion for weaponry but not much time to indulge, don’t think I didn’t notice all the times you bought extra ammo around the holidays, including the throwing axes from the gunshow you went to the weekend I spent with my sister in law.”

  I grinned sheepishly. “You never know when you’ll need a good axe or cheaply made modern sword!”

  “And you prep!” Sandra snarked right back at me, throwing her hands up in the air. “Your ‘camping’ is just an excuse to be a hoarder. Your million open tabs on Firefox full of prepping strategies on a budget and the growing stash of food in the basement pantry along with the much larger camping gear section in the corner of the basement is proof of that.” She stopped for a moment to squint at me. “Do we really need so many Lifestraws?”

  “We do now.” Standing up, I led her down the stairs to the basement and then stood in front of the door to the back part. This area served mainly as a storage area. The just after midday sun was coming through the basement windows, illuminating our camping gear section in the eastern corner. My old military gear that I was allowed to keep after my contract expired was next to it.

  “Don’t worry, I have extras.” I said, shoving an armful of old gear into Sandra’s arms. Army camo pants, socks, boots, camo jacket, and range gloves. She gave me an incredulous look. “Babe,” I admonished. “Indulge me. If we have to drop everything and go, you’re going to want to be in durable clothes instead of the basic white girl yoga pants and a tank top. Looking hot doesn’t keep you safe.”

  Begrudgingly, she put them on even as she muttered under her breath about ‘style and ‘comfort’. Myself, I decked out in the classics and whatever budget-buying off of Amazon and local thrift shops for the past two years could afford me. My Army boots were well broken in and the socks were a nice pair of calf-length athletic moisture-wicking socks. The thick camo pants had the elastic waistband so they still fit and the shirt was definitely tighter in the belly than I remember.

  Much tighter.

  The odd online purchases I put on were a set of motorcycle gloves with hardened plastic knuckles that I slipped on over the puncture resistant sleeves that were meant for either construction sites or people who worked in deli stores with the giant meat slicing blades. I dropped a sturdy Leatherman swiss army knife into a leg pocket just because.

  On top of that, I put on my Army top and then did the thing I thought I’d never do. The two sets of gear that the Army gave me but didn’t want back were a set of knee guards and a set of elbow guards, similar to the kind that hockey players wore. Biting back the thoughts of my wife making fun of me, I put them both on, making sure to put my old soccer shin guards on underneath my pants but over my long socks. If I’m going to look stupid, I’m going to at least go full bore stupid. And then I felt stupid, but enough weirdness had happened to make me shove that feeling to the side.

  “Really?” Sandra asked, arching one eyebrow as she finished donning the leftover Army gear. Damn, even after dating for two years and being married for three, the sight of her still got me going. “Now’s not the time!” She squealed, smacking me in the arm as she saw my hungry expression.

  “Yes really,” I answered. “Do you want to wear all this?” I pointed at my fully armored self. “I have more.”

  “No.” Walking over to the table next to the washer and dryer, she pulled out the two boxes underneath where I kept some more weaponry. “Your guns didn’t work right?”

  “Nope. Not even a spark.”

  “Then melee it is.”

  God, I love my wife. Most practical woman on the planet. Putting the two boxes on the table, she opened them both up, setting aside the smaller cartridges of ammo. “And most of this is useless,” she muttered, pulling out the long thin box. “You said you found a ‘zombie apocalypse’ sword for forty bucks at a gunshow right? Our chainsaw probably doesn’t work so can I use that?”

  You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

  I chuckled. “You can have or use anything you want babe. What’s mine is yours. Besides, you know there’s always more.”

  And there was. I’m not paranoid but Walmart, Amazon, and local gun shows are full of handheld weaponry which was one of my hobbies. With the modern age bringing advanced technology to the average Joe, melee weaponry occupied its own niche of the market with a large part of it not being too expensive. One of my favorite knives was a Nepalese Kukri knife that was about a hundred and fifty bucks off of Amazon and yes, it was an impulse buy. Taking my time, I strapped my Kukri to my belt, grabbed the tomahawk off its setting on the wall and then grabbed the bearded Norse war axe I bought for the hell of it.

  “What about the spear?” Sandra asked. “Did you ever actually finish it?”

  I chuckled with more than a bit of pride. “Yup! I bought the head and attached it to the sanded, finished shaft from Lowes!” This particular baby I had put behind the massive defunct cast iron boiler that was a fossil from the sixties. Our house was small and didn’t have a lot of room for storage. The boiler had broken down and it was way too expensive to fix, especially when modern heating and air conditioning turned out to be far less for the former owner of the house to install compared to fixing or removing a dinosaur. Pulling out my latest project, I handed Sandra the spear. “Other than a rock, it’s the easiest weapon to wield. Point the pointy end at an enemy, shove and retreat. The long blade will cut as it pulls out and that’s stainless steel, much better than sharpened stone or bronze.”

  I barely heard the rough knocking on the front door from down here in the basement. It pulled us up short. “Fuck,” I cursed. “I told Mike that I’d meet him in the front yard. Come on.” My wife followed me as we hefted our weapons up the stairs and out the front door.

  “Whoa!” Mike backed off with his hands in the air as I swung the door open. “It’s just me!” His eyes went wide, clearly not expecting his quiet neighbors to be decked out in pseudo-medieval weaponry.

  “Sorry,” I apologized, shrugging my shoulders. My weapons clanged against each other due to my inexpert attempts at getting them to sit nicely on my clothes. “We’re a bit on edge, especially after thinking about that damn message more and more.”

  Mike looked at me like I was crazy, eyeing the weapons Sandra and I were holding. “Amazon, Walmart, and a couple gun shows,” I explained hastily, holding up each axe and sword in turn. “Pretty cheap if you find the right deal. Anyways, is Isabella out here? She’s gonna wanna hear this too.”

  “Hun!” Mike yelled, stepping off the porch into the front yard.

  As Isabella walked out of their house and stood up on her porch, I started talking loudly, not even giving them a chance to speak. I had to make sure they heard me. “Ok, hear me out. First, the weird part after the crazy message blew our shit up is that all of the electronics in my house and your house are broken, yeah?” Mike and Isabella nodded, both opening their mouths to speak but I cut them off with a slash of my hand.

  “Right, well it gets weirder!” I said. “Your cars and our cars don’t start, which is even worse. We watched the Doomsday Prepper show on Netflix and if this were a bad electromagnetic pulse like from a sunspot or solar flare, some cars should start. The metal shell acts as a Faraday cage which would protect the electrical system from the emp, but it didn’t, even for your old truck which is mostly steel. Maybe I’m wrong about that but nobody’s car seems to start.” I pointed at the pizza delivery guy angrily kicking his car.

  Mike and Isabella echoed Sandra’s earlier statement. “Dude, you sound crazy.”

  I held up a hand, cutting them off. “Just hold on a damn minute. To make it even worse, my guns didn’t fire, none of them. I even tried the most reliable one, the revolver, and it didn’t work. That’s next to impossible.” I said, putting emphasis on the word ‘impossible’. “I cannot stress enough how WEIRD this is.”

  “What does that mean?” Isabella asked as she glared at me. She obviously still didn’t like the fact that I dared to have firearms in a safe suburbanite neighborhood. “And you got all that from a tv show? Is that even real?”

  “Why do you have weapons from the Medieval Times?” Mike asked at the exact same time.

  “First, it was a documentary. I’m using basic logic to deal with something that probably ISN’T logical. I hate to sound like the neighborhood kook but this means that shit has and literally is about to hit the fan!” I yelled. Pointing my tomahawk at Mike’s truck and my bearded axe at my car, I kept on. “Think! No electronics, no cars, no guns, and then the weird floaty warning that gives us less than twenty four hours! What do you think is next? It said, “Choose a magic?”. That means magic is real and it’s coming! Or at least, some part of it in the way that we understand it. And if magic of some kind is coming, then magic creatures will probably be part of that deal. Some disaster is on its way, dude.”

  Sandra scoffed the same time Isabella did but Mike didn’t fuck around. “Got any extra weapons?” he asked, his eyes pleading as he put his arm around his wife and his baby.

  I could see it in his eyes. I knew exactly what he was thinking.

  I nodded. “Yeah man, gimme a few.”

  Making sure to keep my axes in my own hands, I jogged back to my shed. The basic wood-felling axe was hanging up on the wall, the fiberglass handle still in good shape from the workout I gave it last year. Grabbing that and a shovel, I set them next to the door as I pulled out a long wooden chest from underneath my workbench.

  “And here’s the fun stuff,” I muttered. These were the rest of the weapons I had before I married my wife. The K-bar that my dad gave me when I turned fifteen, the M-48 cyclone knife with three corkscrewing blades that a buddy got for me for Christmas, the pack of throwing knives from my older brother who used to perform in the Renaissance fair, and the odd looking six foot knobby oak staff in its cloth pouch that I got from my crazy aunt’s ex boyfriend before a bad motorcycle accident.

  “I might have too much shit,” I whispered, chuckling because I knew that there’s never enough weapons. No such thing. I took the time to strap the K-bar to my left calf and then attach the throwing knife pouch to my belt.

  Grabbing the rest of the goods in my arms, I hobbled back to the front yard muttering to myself the whole way. “I know this looks stupid, I know I look stupid, but better stupid than dead.”

  I stabbed the shovel and wood axe into the lawn as I handed the cyclone knife to Sandra. “Put that on your belt,” I said to her softly. “Remember, that one is only for killing.” Turning to the neighbors, I gestured to the shovel and axe. “You can have both of those if you want. Mike, I know you have a shed full of tools, I’d recommend grabbing a hammer or sledgehammer or something like that. And you might think this is also a stupid idea, but maybe duct tape some strips of wood to your arms and legs if you don’t have any body armor.” His face said it all. “Yes, it sounds paranoid, but you can always take it off if nothing happens and make fun of me for the rest of time. I’ll even mow your yard for a year if I make you look stupid.”

  A scintillating wave of light washed over everything with excruciating brightness right as Mike reached forward for the axe and shovel with a quick "Thanks". The sky itself turned bright orange and then flashed to green before fading back to a hazy cerulean blue. Thunder rolled in the clear sky as the temperature spiked from a breezy sixty degrees to a much more humid ninety. Every animal in the neighborhood started caterwauling until they hit a unified pitch of glass shattering proportions and then all sound cut off.

  A great silence hushed the world as if Creation itself was holding its breath. An iridescent screen flashed in front of every sentient being at the same time:

  Blinding pain spliced my brain into fragmented slivers of epileptic agony and from the screams around me I wasn’t alone. I didn’t have time to spare a thought at all for those to which the last line applied to.

  The asshole barking messages in my brain that I couldn’t ignore made them glare brighter and brighter until I focused on them, the information fading even as I barely kept up wiping my face from the involuntary flood of tears that my eyeballs were putting out. It felt like I had been forced to stare at a magnesium flare. “Are you seeing this shit?” I gasped, doubled over in the yard, reaching out for Sandra as I pushed the fallen weapons out of the way.

  “Jesus Christ that hurts!” Sandra shrieked, clutching her head. “How do I make it stop!”

  “Just look at it! Focus on it and absorb it! It goes away!” My yelling only made my migraine worse but if I didn’t put in the effort to violently expel air I don’t think I would have been able to even whisper.

  My stomach staged a revolt that made the aftermath of St. Patty’s day in college look like a one year old’s birthday party. Over one billion people had already died?! Icy blades crept into my veins as my vision showed all kinds of colors that I didn’t even have words for. They streamed down from the sky, little meteors of incendiary fun that sank into everything, vanishing like smoke immediately after.

  Every part of me was fighting the sensation of white hot cast iron rods being pressed against my skin. Not one inch of flesh was spared this treatment. It felt like being very carefully scrubbed and washed with a rabid porcupine dipped in highly concentrated acid.