Read an excerpt from the upcoming novel Oblivious Paradise

the-electric-coma-dream

Chapter 1

The Empty World

I

It was time to leave – this time for good. No hesitations; no looking back. It was time to face forward and never turn back – it would be his downfall to turn back. Perhaps a change of scenery was in order. Sure, he’d said it before. He’d threatened to leave a hundred thousand times each day since he woke in the ruins of what once was the metropolis of Ortona, but this time was different. This time he meant it. This time, there would be no retreating to the safety of his sanctuary.

He was fed up. He was through. He was done. The itch had grown too strong for him to ignore now.

For months his stomach swelled with a nauseating hatred. The sight of the crumbling buildings with their smashed windows and boarded doors; the desolate streets littered with abandoned vehicles and floating tumbleweeds of aged newspaper and pamphlets reading in faded ink sordid tales of Armageddon and The End Being Nigh – it all left him with a feeling of bitter distaste. If this was how the end of the world was supposed to happen, he seriously wished he’d died with the rest of the population. He wouldn’t put up a fight. Death would be a greater pleasure then meandering through a pillaged and desecrated city.

That’s what the city was to him now. But desecrated was putting it mildly. The city was raped and violated and beaten sadistically, rolled into a ditch and left for dead – used, abused and forgotten. The sight alone made him miserable. He hated everything – no self-help book, no meditation, no tai chi, no palates and no Feng Shui could change his karmic outlook. He’d made his decision. He was ready and willing to follow through with it.

He’d been lying in the sand for hours with the sun roasting his back as he stared across the vast stretch of dunes that made up Ortona’s outskirts. It was still morning, but the sun was threatening another blistering hot day. Slowly, with the sleeve of his arm he swiped the beading sweat from his forehead, feeling the sand clump together on his face in thick muddy balls. In the distance he spied a single lizard scurry slowly before him.

Life, he thought quietly to himself. The appearance of the lizard only strengthened his conviction to leave the ruined city.

Lifting the dust-covered goggles from his eyes, Flint rested them on his forehead, the tight elastic band pulled at his sand-filled hair.

Slowly, he rose to his feet and looked to his left – desert. Then looked to his right – desert. Finally, looking ahead, he spied… even more desert. He knew if he looked back, he’d only see the city – that once sprawling metropolis. Now, Ortona, or as he liked to call it, Old Ortona, was nothing more than a crumbling jungle overrun with the wild overgrowth of vegetative life. He forced his gaze ahead. He didn’t want that kind of temptation. There was a kind of comfort within the ruined city he had settled in for the last few years. It was the comfort of safety and familiarity and it always left him apprehensive when he decided to leave. But this time…

This time was different.

He could feel it in his aging bones. There was no way he could continue to live in the city, isolated and alone and living in constant fear of the unknown. He had to know if he was truly the only one left. He had to know for certain if there was a better place.

It was hard to explain, but in his gut he felt there was more. Vague images flashed in his mind of a new society where people prospered, alive and well, already picking up the pieces of post-pandemic. He imagined them rebuilding their civilization – a utopia beyond dystopia – and for that he needed to be sure. He needed to see paradise with his own eyes, even if it meant none existed. He couldn’t go on any longer living with the lingering thought in the back of his mind that there was nothing more than just him.

Shit or get off the pot, a familiar voice said in the back of his mind. The voice wasn’t his, but rather some anachronistic relic of his past. Often he wondered if it was the voice of a friend, or someone he had once known. Most days though, he simply dismissed the voice for what it was – a spectral reminiscent of what once was.

Tugging the handkerchief covering his mouth, Flint inhaled a long breath of humid air. “Well,” he said, “it’s now or never.” Just hearing the sound of his voice caused his ears to perk. How long had it been since he last spoke out loud?

…Days?

…Months?

…Years?

Regardless, it was comforting knowing he still had a voice, even if it sounded foreign to him.

Placing the goggles over his eyes and covering his mouth with his handkerchief, Flint began running through the desert. Each footstep he took sent a cloud of sand whirling in the distance behind him. Occasionally, as he came to a small dune, without missing a beat or falling out of stride, he would jump and continue running well before he landed. With his arms shifting at his sides, he could feel the weight of his knapsack swaying back and forth, the sound of his collection of canned foods smacking against one another resonated like an orchestra of brass being smashed by a tone deaf musician.

It didn’t take long for his throat to dry and swell with a painful burn. He wasn’t the young man he once was any longer. With the heat of the desert growing uncomfortably torrid, it was becoming increasingly difficult for him to even notice whether he was breathing or not. Even after distancing himself from the city, he could feel his pace slowing until he was sluggishly dragging his boots. But even as his heart pounded within his ears like war drums, it wasn’t enough to drown the sound of a high pitch whistle that wailed in the distance, growing louder with each passing second.

Flint stopped and struggled to see beyond the bright sun as he surveyed the horizon.

“What the shit,” he said in a low voice as he watched a small soaring spec in the distance moving toward him. For a moment he squinted, narrowing his vision as best he could as he focused on the spec. Whatever it was, it was moving at an increasing speed, hovering just above the sand dunes, then Flint’s eyes widened with dread as the spec gradually took the form of a low-soaring missile.

Stumbling backward, he shuffled to his feet and quickly calculated his rate of survival. He knew full well the moment he stepped out of his sanctuary and even considered the trek, his odds of life expectancy had dropped to a bitter zero. It was too late for him to outrun the missile but… but with a proper degree of timing he figured he could probably create enough of a distance between him and the impending impact the ensuing blast would cause. Possibly enough to remove him out of harm’s way.

Without hesitation, Flint threw his body into the air, lunging forward in what felt like slow motion. In his mind’s eye, he pictured those archaic action movies of pre-pandemic – the ones where the hero leapt through the air the moment the explosion erupted behind them, their bodies landing safely on the ground, unscathed and in one piece.

But Flint was in no way a hero and this wasn’t the movies. The moment he landed, he swung his hands over his head and waited for the blast of sand to blanket his body. He waited with anticipation, tightening his core and bracing for a whirlwind of force. But nothing happened. So he waited, holding his bated breath anxiously.

Still, nothing happened.

Opening his eyes slowly, he looked up only to see the missile still making its slow and steady advancement. A slight over-calculation on his part made him realize he had just fucked himself. Scrambling to his feet, he staggered carelessly in the sand as he struggled to lift his heavy boots. All he had to do was outrun the missile. If he could just create enough distance, he might just be able to…

Before he could move more than three feet, a loud explosion erupted behind him. A burst of sand rose from the ground with a force so powerful his body was pulled into the air and thrown forward. With limbs flailing wildly, his body hit the sand with a heavy thud before rolling to a slow stop. Pain coursed through his body instantaneously.

If he had succeeded at finding new life in a world he saw as barren and desolate, he was beginning to think they weren’t interested in meeting him with the same amicable pleasure he once had.

Wincing with pain, he struggled to lift his weighted body. Thoughts flooded his panic-fuelled and disoriented mind. He couldn’t tell if he was lying on his back or stomach, and when he failed to feel the movement of his arms, he imagined he was now nothing more than a limbless torso left to bleed out in the sand.

Desperately he tried to placate his mind. He tried to remember those meditation books he loathed reading. Didn’t they say to take deep breaths and to clear one’s mind of all thoughts? He tried. He really wanted to believe he tried, but he couldn’t take a breath. He couldn’t breathe. Then the numbers began reciting in the depths of his mind. Always the same numbers. Always in the same order. Those damnable numbers that had long haunted his memory.

3, 9, 18, 23, 64, 79, 103…

The adrenaline had already taken effect, the pain was momentarily subdued. As he started to lift his head, a phantasmal force pushed his face into the sand abruptly interrupting him.

“Well, well, well, look-it what we have here,” a gnarled voice said above him. “No picking up body parts this time; he’s still in one piece.”

“D'you think he’s one of them,” asked a second voice.

“You can’t be too careful,” replied a female voice. “The stories I’ve heard… If he’s not a pillager then he’s got to be a spy for The Corporation. Regardless, I’m not taking any risks. These pillagers are getting ballsier. I heard about a sneaky little bastard infiltrating a traveling family heading toward one of our refugee camps. Guy played off the families’ sympathies and one night, as they pitched camp, he butchered them all and cooked them up as a stew. We’re not taking any chances with this asshole.”

Flint forced his head up in an attempt to plead his innocence. He had never heard of pillagers, refugee camps, travelling wanderers or any kind of corporation. But he hoped, if he could just be heard that he could explain his situation. Before the words could creep from his lips, his face was buried into the sand once more.

“Shut the fuck up,” the first voice snarled.

“What should we do with him then,” the second voice asked. “D'you want us to kill him?”

“Nah,” the female voice said. “Bag him. I think he may be of some use to us.”

The pressure eased from his head, but before Flint could shake off his surprise, he was pulled to his feet. They made no attempt to handle him delicately. Instead, before he could see his captors, they spun him around and pulled his arms behind his back before shrouding his face. Flint struggled uselessly. The man who held him was unequivocally resolute.

“I can explain. I mean not who you think I may be,” Flint stammered to deaf ears before being pushed forward.

“Walk,” the second voice said, “and keep quiet, lest you want to be gagged by your severed tongue.”

As much as Flint wanted to protest, he kept quiet and did as he had been instructed. He walked without complaint, always following the sounds of the voices. Even as hours passed and sweat poured from his face, he remained silent. In the nearby distance, he could vaguely hear the three people speaking around him, but in their conversations – or rather what he could decipher through the faint muffle – he learnt their names.

The woman was known as Myopia, and the more she talked, the more Flint decided she was in command. Each time she spoke, it wasn’t with ratification that sought validation, but rather with firm conviction. The other two men, Hunter and Ty, they listened without debate.

It didn’t matter that Flint’s knees were giving way, or that he sagged and struggled to keep pace, his captors continued to pull him through the desert. Occasionally, he wondered if he could escape. Would he be able to run off into a random direction? How far would he make it before he was gunned down? He decided his best chance was to just follow his captor’s lead.

By the time the desert was filled with a cool breeze, Myopia broke the hard silence with an abrupt command. “Put him in the trailer,” she said. “We’ll interrogate him after we’ve had some dinner.”

Through the bagged darkness, Flint was led up a few steps and forced into a chair, where he sat compliantly as Hunter bound him in place.

“Don’t go anywhere,” snickered Hunter.

“If I do,” Flint said with growing disdain, “should I leave a note telling you where I’m headed?”