Wastelands: Stories of the Apocalypse

Will the last person on the planet please turn off the lights?

The dinosaurs never discovered what caused their extinction, either.

I've got a 486 downstairs with over five years of uptime. It's going to break my heart to reboot it." "What the everlasting shit do you use a 486 for?" "Nothing. But who shuts down a machine with five years uptime?

Thirty thousand people died. Every single one of them had a name.

Screw the end of the world. The world doesn't end. Humans aren't the kind of things that have endings.

On the day the world ended, Wyndham didn't even realize it was the end of the world—not right away, anyway. For him, at that point in his life, pretty much every day seemed like the end of the world. This was not a consequence of a chemical imbalance, either. It was a consequence of working for UPS, where, on the day the world ended Wyndham had been employed for sixteen years, first as a loader, then in sorting, and finally in the coveted position of driver, the brown uniform and everything.

The words of the prophets are written on the subway walls," he said softly.

The sign over the gate read: First Church of the Unleaded God & Ace High Refinery WELCOME KEEP OUT

Those two people in the back of the boat, he felt kind of sorry for them. They still lived in the drowned city, they belonged down there, and the fact that they couldn't go there broke their hearts. But not Deaver. His city wasn't even built yet. His city was tomorrow.

Where Deaver sat, the bow of the boat seems to curve under him. The faster they went, the less the boat seemed to touch the water. Just skimming over the surface, never really touching deep; making a few waves, but the water always smoothed out again.

Have you got anything to trade? I don't need much, but I've been trying to keep my spirits up by trading with the neighbors. It's like playing Civilization." "You

The hand that holds the pen (or chalk, or the stethoscope, or the gun, or lover's skin) is so different from the hand that lit the match, and so incapable of such an act that it is not even a matter of forgiveness, or healing.

Everybody promises during times like those days immediately following the tragedy that lives have been ruined, futures shattered but only Trina Needles fell for that and eventually committed suicide. The rest of us suffered various forms of censure and then went on with our lives.

We were waking to the wonders of the world and the body; the strange realizations that a friend was cute, or stinky, or picked her nose, or was fat, or wore dirty underpants, or had eyes that didn't blink when he looked at you real close and all of a sudden you felt like blushing.

What would life be like after the end of the world as we know it?

(what an ad campaign: "Levi's: We'll Get You Through the End of Civilization: Rated Number One in Post-Apocalyptic Scenarios"),

You, like Wyndham, may be curious about the catastrophe that has befallen everyone in the world around him. You may even be wondering why Wyndham has survived. End-of-the-world tales typically make a big deal about such things, but Wyndham's curiosity will never be satisfied. Unfortunately, neither will yours. Shit happens. It's the end of the world after all.

The end of the world had always been televised in Wyndham's experience. The fact that it wasn't being televised now suggested that it really was the end of the world.

We don't need the destruction of entire cities to know what it's like to survive a catastrophe.  Whenever we lose someone we love deeply we experience the end of the world as we know it. The central idea of the story is not merely that the apocalypse is coming, but that it's coming for you.  And there's nothing you can do to avoid it.

What's in these tacos?" a customer asked Del. "Nobody you know, mister," Del said.

To do the wrong thing, she has decided, is better than to do nothing.

A room is—it's a frame, and the people in it are the pictures.

Besides, the paper pushers refuse to let the world end until every form is turned in, timestamped and properly initialed. Apocalypse is the last gasp of bureaucracy.

The things we use fall apart and require constant maintenance. The things we abandon don't get used and they last forever.

But reason, under pressure, usually produces prudence when boldness is called for.

The turnings of history are never directed by crowds," he said. "Nor by the cautious. Always, it is the lone captain who sets the course.

We were just so busy then. Very busy. I wish I could remember. But I can't. What we were so busy with.

There's something attractive about all those people being gone, about wandering in a depopulated world, scrounging cans of Campbell's pork and beans, defending one's family from marauders. Sure it's horrible, sure we weep for all those dead people. But some secret part of us thinks it would be good to survive, to start over. Secretly, we know we'll survive. All those other folks will die. That's what after-the-bomb stories are all about.