A Sci-Fi Smackdown Short-Story based on prompts 4, 6, and 8. 

29/4/63

I've discovered a bunch of scratches and bruises that I must have got yesterday, either from the initial impact, or from fleeing down into Lazarus in a panic. Dad thought it was a bomb, hence the bomb shelter. "Better safe than sorry, Maizey," he said. It felt like the Earth was trying to shake us off its surface. The first Earthquake in ninety-four years, the headlines said: a malfunction of the crust drills that are meant to relieve tectonic plate pressure. There's a nasty-looking bruise that spans right across my elbow, and I've had nothing to do but lie in my berth poking at its black surface. No terminals. No screens, besides the dumb holo-sphere in the middle of the room that's now filling with strangers. I've been reduced to writing in this dull journal that Aunty Mabus gave to me last year. Luckily, it came with a pen. I have no clue where you'd buy one those these days.  

PS. Dad says you're meant to start each entry with Dear Diary, because it's traditional, but it seems like a waste of time, so we'll be skipping that.

PPS. Handwriting is hard.

30/4/63

Everything is some awful shade of grey or white. The lights are harsh, and fluorescent: I'm sure those are illegal above ground these days.

They wouldn't let us out of the shelter this morning. So now I'm rooming with thirty-five angry, technologically deprived Londoners. The holo-sphere in the center of the room relays the dismal news from yesterday on a loop, but nobody except the snot-nosed kid to my right seems to be watching. I unsynced my headphones yesterday: I heard it all the first time. There was a massive earthquake in Newcastle, which Dad is worried about, because Aunty Mabus lives in Newcastle. But what are the chances of it actually killing someone? There wasn't even much to see, just a rising dirt cloud. I'm going to get breakfast. Not that shelter rations ever taste good. The last time I had them, I was seven. It's been a decade now. Back then, a holo-sphere was the biggest technological advancement since regular lunar shuttles. Now it's just another remnant of the past.

***

I was right. If anything, the shelter rations taste worse than I remember them. There's something about dehydrated meals that means they never taste quite like the original. When I got back, there was a new set of images on the holo-sphere, like something out of those cringe-worthy 20th century Science Fiction films, all smoke and torn up Earth. It's not just Newcastle: everything around it out to Middlesbrough has been obliterated. A giant, crater-like hole has been scraped out of the Earth: like a director took out a pen knife and cut it from the set, along with a chunk of the ground. The news lady reckons that its five kilometers at the deepest point. She didn't sound that heartbroken when she said that bio-scanners revealed no signs of life. Dad looks crushed. I can't believe that Aunty Mabus is dead. It just doesn't seem possible. Dad told me he thinks its the start of a war with China. Only there's no soldiers, I pointed out.

31/4/63

Just before the lights turned off last night, a new report lit the holo-sphere. There's been a massive earthquake in New China, a small island nation off China's coast, and another one in Australia. I get the feeling that we won't be leaving the shelter anytime soon. The berths lining the walls are beginning to feel less like a sanctuary, and more like coffins, stacked three high and twelve along the square of our sector like an old crypt. I lay in mine, on the top, with nothing to do but wonder what's going on.

The kid with the snotty nose is called Dave, and while we aren't running out of food, he's taking quite a chunk out of our sector's toilet paper ration with his nose. He's fascinated by my ability to write things using a pen, so I've decided to teach him.

3/4/63

There's been nothing. No updates. No announcements. Even the soldiers on duty don't have a clue what's going on. Mostly they just tell me to get back to my berth, and stay there this time.  Dad says that we'll be safe down here, but I have a terrible feeling that we're going to die before we see the sun again. After all, I'm certain that we aren't over 5 km under the Earth. If what happened in Newcastle happened here, we'd just disappear too.

 ***

Dave's mom, Marissa, is the head scientist working on the Genesis project, which is basically a moon-base loon project. She told me that they're trying to create human life without gametes, just chemicals and electronic enhancements; like a human being is a recipe you can just create on a whim. I like Dave much better than his mother. Though now I wonder about his origins.

P.S. There's no shampoo down here, and my hair's going crazy. It looks less like a neat regulation bob, and more like a rising, unruly mane. Just thought I'd get that sort of stuff down too. In case...

4/4/63

Still nothing. It's been a week, and we're still no closer to getting out of this dump. It's a good thing the rations are set to last for years rather than days. I forgot to mention: we are sector 54B, which means we are fifty-four stories down from the first Lazarus shelter level, and then second closest from the lift. There's no one near to my age: they all seem to know Dad though, which is probably how we've been assigned here. Sometimes it sucks being under-age.

***

I've noticed that Dave's got the same freckles and auburn hair that his mother in the berth across from him has. She calls him "Her little angel," and he scowls back. Dave is rubbish at writing. He can't help it, I guess, being six, and only having used a keyboard before. He can spell his name alright. But he mangles mine. Maizey gets its M turned into a W, and a backwards z whenever he gets hold of the pen. Mostly, Dave just tells me what to write, and I write it for him.

For example: There was a soldier who loved his family, then he got blown up and turned into a cyborg. He fought a lot better with his gun-hands. But he forgot about his family. He never saw him never, ever again. The End.

***

Dave's mum heard me reading him the story and teared up and stormed of the room. Dad tells me that it's partially a true story. "Tony was a good man. He was good to Marissa and Dave." And now he's dead. Everyone seems to be dying these days. I hate it.

Maybe Marissa is trying to recreate her husband. That's my theory. But the models she's shown me of her work are all baby-sized. I can't imagine her wanting to raise her husband up from being a toddler. The models are terrifying: the 'pods' open onto a clear roofed laboratory, so techno-baby can enjoy the sights of stars and solar flares. She seems so happy about her achievements; that she's got a fleet of Bots to carry out all the important stuff while she's here. 

5/4/63

Finally. The holo-sphere sorted itself out. There was an address from the Prime Minister this morning. I still can't get my head around what she said. All the usual jargon about conferences with the rest of the world's leaders. The holo-sphere showed images of Newcastle, New China's Lin district, and what used to be Sydney, Australia. They looked like craters: like the Earth popped the cities like zits, leaving ugly brown gauges in its wake. Then she utters the word. "Aliens."

Mutters are shared through sector 54B. No one believes in aliens like they used too: not after some Austrian Billionaire impersonated 'alien' life by bouncing messages off his own private, moon-orbiting satellite. Seeing is believing though, the holo-sphere pans to show a glimpse of it.

***

It's hard to describe what I saw. It looked like a shark, only hovering above the ground like a predatory airship. It was green. A massive forest that grew all over its back and fins; the most forest that I've ever seen. Jutting out of its mouth were black teeth the size of small apartments. The creature knifed through the air as easily as a real shark would swim through water. Its eyes were unforgiving, as steam pulsed out of its gills   Fire storms raged beneath it, casting a hellish light over its body. It must've been in a war zone, for all the rubble and destruction.

Then Dad nudged me and pointed to the camera drone's location. London. Only it couldn't have been London. Because we live in London, and London is clean and white, with skyscrapers that rival even Singapore's. London is  alive, and filled with people who can't afford shelters like Lazarus. The background behind the shark monster couldn't have been London. Because there was nothing there. The last shot showed the creature trawling along the burning ground, devouring everything in sight. I swear I felt the ceiling rumble as it scraped the ground. Snot-nosed Dave started to cry.

***

The biologist who spoke after the Prime Minister wasn't much use. Something about the end of the Cretaceous period, 65 million years ago: Scientists found massive craters from there and thought impact. Only it wasn't impact. It was departure. This has happened before.

***

Our world is getting eaten by gravity defying mega-sharks who hatched out of the Earth. They're growing too: the one in New China is at least twice the size of our one in Newcastle. They don't seem to be bugged by explosions, or missiles. Morale is low in sector 54B. There's a war unraveling outside, and it's on our sphere like a game of anti-grav hockey. Only our team's losing. The green brutes eat everything: like some horrendous recycling machines that plough the earth until it's just brown and bare.

There have been five mass extinctions since the formation of Earth, and now I think I'm writing to document the sixth. It sounds a bit melodramatic, and that's what I think.

Dave's story: There was a hungry green shark, and then it ate the whole world until there was nothing left but ground. The End.

I think I'll have nightmares tonight.

6/4/63

I was right. But I wasn't the only one: so did Dave, and Dad. The butch lady with the shorn head (Katrin, maybe?) doesn't even sleep. She's got a robotic eye with a blue LED that shines out of it when she's awake. The light never goes out at night. There's no off-switch for the holo-sphere either. So we just keep watching our team lose the fight.

***

Newcastle (that's what they're calling the monster ploughing through London) is bigger than the moon base now. He seems to absorb the energy of anything fired at him. Katrin jokes that maybe Newcastle will get big and fat, and then piss off back into space. She's got a strong Turkruss accent, so it sounds like: "pieze ov buck eento space."

***

The Prime Minister addressed us while we were eating lunch (dehydrated bread and stew combo) They want evacuate us. There's enough space for us in the British colony on the moon. I've never been to the moon before, but for the first time, I want to stay here. It seems like a bad idea to leave this place. Here, we're alive. The Evac-ships are coming by in twelve hours. We are told not to pack anything at all. But this journal is the only thing I want to bring. I'll smuggle it out under my shirt if necessary.

7/4/63

The shuttle arrives in an hour. The first floor of Lazarus is cramped, like trying to cram a  twenty-four terabyte hard drive with an artificial intelligence download. I should know. I've still got the glitching remains of Char in my pocket. He was meant to be a calculus tutor, but I only got eighty percent of him downloaded before the drive crashed.

Right now, Dad, Marlene and Dave, Katrin and I are sitting down by the exit. Ahead of us, there are soldiers all kitted out in space recon gear. They're checking names, and confiscating large objects. They have retro space-bubble helmets, that make them look like 20th century astronauts, but Katrin told me that it's in case of a riot. She pointed to their guns. They're long, aggressive phasors. "Not deadly, but painful." Then she lifted up her shirt to reveal a nasty set of scars. Sometimes, the Turkruss woman with the glowing blue eye scares the hell out of me. She's got a strong, hearty laugh though. That almost makes up for it.

???

I'm writing now from the ground. I don't know where I am, but it's not the moon. I am alone, cold, and my right arm doesn't move properly. Good thing I'm left handed. I think we've crash-landed. My pen's left a black bruise from where I landed on it. Every breeze of wind has me glancing upwards, my heart racing, and my mind sure that I'm going to be snapped up and eaten by some god-awful shark creature. My throat burns dry, and my head hurts, and I have more cuts on me than I can be bothered to count.

Dave is lying next to me, but he isn't breathing. He's cold to touch, but I can't find it in myself to do anything about it.

When I woke up I could make out four silhouettes, in the fading light, standing poised to attack on the horizon. I thought they were the space recon soldiers, and they were, sort of. Because instead of handsome faces, there were skulls, like the flesh had been boiled from their bones, with big, gaping eye sockets trapped inside their bubble-head helmets. I'm sure the sharks are to blame. Somehow. I can feel sleep pulling me under. I hope that Dad's okay.

 ***

I've made the executive decision to make tomorrow the eighth of March.

8/4/63

I slept awfully. Mud stuck to my back, lumpy things embedded in its surface. I shivered half the night, with only the moon and a dead boy for company. I shut his blue eyes last night, but it  didn't help me sleep at all. I hope Dad made it, even though the it seems impossible. In the sunlight, I saw Dave, all dead and missing his legs, and threw up. A horrible part of me wonders whether Marissa will just order another Dave to order as part of  her sick little moon-base project. Maybe with a few upgrades- there's sure to be a software patch for his snotty nose.The sky is blue today, and I can't see Newcastle anywhere. The emptiness around me makes tears roll down my face.  For Dave, and me, and everything that's happened so far. No wreckage. No London. Just dirt and mud as far as the eye can see. And nothing to eat. My stomach rumbles. What I would give for some shelter rations now.

I'm certain it's something bad, but I can't feel my right hand. It's gone all purple and swollen like it's given up and died already. I'm determined not to though. The dead soldiers stand guard over me, and I'm going to rob them of a phasor.

***

The phasor's much too heavy to hold in one hand. That much was obvious after I pried it from the dead soldier's fingers. I noticed their bubble-head helmets had holes bored into them. Three each. Screwed precisely into the edges of the bubble- where they would be inconspicuous. I wonder who sabotaged the operation. A couple of feet away, there are some tasseled yellow ribbons- a welcome sight in this wasteland of brown. My stomach jolted when I realized that they were seat belts.

Next to one of the seatbelts was a strange green thing, growing up from the ground. One stem of green against the brown. That's when I realized what the sharks were doing. I shook out my jacket, and let more seeds fall to the wet ground.

***

I've made a sort of sling for my new phasor, so that it will hang out in front of me when I walk. I've decided to follow the sun, there's nothing except wasteland where city once stood, and I'm eager to get past it. Find some food, maybe some water. I cock the phasor, like I've seen on the screens, and it hums to life. Then I place one mud encrusted foot in front of the other, and begin to limp.