The Red Eye
He wasn’t sure what was more disturbing, the lack of people or the lack of things. He’d woken that morning to find the city not only deserted, but stripped bare. Shops, houses, office blocks, they’d all been left as empty shells. Just a few scraps remained here and there. An empty shelving unit, an abandoned desk, it was more than just a ghost town, it was desolate. He would have almost welcomed the sight of a shambling zombie, or a radioactive dog, anything to shatter the oppressive silence.
It was then that he realised just how silent it was. It wasn’t just the people missing, there were no animals either. There were no dogs barking in the distance, no birds singing in the trees. There was simply nothing.
Or was there?
He strained his ears and thought he could hear a faint hum in the distance. He left the empty shell of the department store he’d wandered into in the hopes that he’d be able to hear the sound more clearly.
As he emerged back into the harsh light of day, he couldn’t miss the hum, and the faint sounds of things crashing in the distance, because the source of them was all too clear. In the distance, across the city, he could see a large machine, like a cylindrical tower, covered in pipes and antennae, hovering above the buildings. The air beneath it was obscured by a shimmering heat haze, and countless robot arms dangled down from it, reaching into the city, scooping things up into the behemoth’s mechanical maw. A hundred smaller machines buzzed around it, flying down into the buildings below and then returning to the beast with offerings of God only knew what.
As he saw it he let out a soft gasp…and it stopped.
The machine fell silent, as did the multitude of smaller machines that surrounded it. They all stood deathly still. He held his breath as he watched a central section of the huge cylinder silently rotate.
Slowly a giant red eye swung into view and looked directly at him.
Rivka Jacobs
A nice variation on the theme, “The Last Man.” I guess he won’t be the last man for long. Or, the story could continue and become a survival and adventure story. I like the touch that the invaders are looting the material goods of Earth, not just killing off the life forms. And why did they miss him in the first place?
A neat little scifi tale that could easily be a prelude for a bigger story!
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Nicolas Papaconstantinou
This reads a lot like somebody (said in that tone of voice that makes it clear that it’s you I’m talking about) had a bad dream that they remembered clear enough to write.
It has that horrid, almost nonsensical quality to it, of things happening on such a large scale, incomprehensibly, and at the same time unfolding so slowly that you have a good amount of time to realise you’re fucked.
Creepy idea, Ian. Nice!
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