The Concrete Veldt

How did it all begin? That depends on where you were and who you ask. In some places it started with the weather—which quickly became unstable and began behaving in impossible ways. In still others it started with the lights in the sky, which shifted and pulsed and could not be explained. Elsewhere it started with the disappearances: one here, a few there, but increasing in occurrence until fully three quarters of the population had vanished. Either way, there is one thing on which everyone agrees—it didn't take long for the prehistoric flora and fauna to start showing up (often appearing right where someone was standing, in which case the two were fused, spliced, amalgamated). It didn't take long for the great Time-displacement called the Flashback—which was brief but had aftershocks, like an earthquake—to change the face of the earth. From The Concrete Veldt: I finished my rows and took out my Bick; followed his gaze. "Looks pretty quiet," I said. "Yeah." He readied his lighter. "But we can fix that." And we started flicking; lighting up the rows with grim precision, setting off a hail of sparks and hisses, retreating into the grass as first one then another then another piffed and launched—screaming into the air; whistling toward the target, exploding like grenades on its roof and in the bushes. Turning the suburban street into a warzone. Laughing and carrying on as the carnage unfolded and at last subsided; the smoke drifting, the embers settling. Patting ourselves on our scrawny backs for another mission accomplished; even as shots rang out and something whizzed past—a blunt thing, a humorless thing. Something which struck a granite tombstone deeper in the cemetery and punched a dollar-sized crater in it. And then we were scrambling: crawling as fast as we could—double-timing it toward the car as still more shots rang out and echoed along the streets; as bullets pocked the mausoleum and cut the air like knives. Until we reached the Charger and leapt to our feet, throwing open the doors—even as raptors gathered and encircled the car—at which I lit a string of M-80s and threw them into the group; and the fireworks exploded like dynamite, reverberated like shotgun blasts. At which the animals scattered in perfect unison and we peeled from the lot—en route to the Nunnery, I suppose. En route to Alexa. En route to the last shag of our lives.