Sunset on Mars and Other Stories

Sunset on Mars and Other Stories

  by Laura E. Bradford

  Copyright 2011 Laura E. Bradford

  Cover by K. B. Wittke

  License Notes

  This ebook is a free download and can be shared or given away to other people with attribution.

  Contents

  Sunset on Mars

  …And Let the Apocalypse Happen

  How to Catch a Zombie

  I Don’t Dream Like That Anymore

  Sunset on Mars

  He chased her even as her ship touched the stars.

  At night he gazed through the glass of his telescope, feeling tiny compared to the evening sky, but his days were all routine: get up, go to work, watch the flying cars crisscross and block his chance to catch the faintest patch of gold in the sky. The streets of the city felt empty, even if a thousand people passed by him every day.

  He waited in her favorite café, ignoring the news reports flashing on the screen behind the counter. The world continued on without her--how could it, and how could it not? Now he could only count the remaining days until she returned. She had blasted away in her golden ship during the first snow of October, as he stood in a sea of snowflakes for one last goodbye. How she loved the winter, always dressing in a hat and scarf to laugh at the face of frost and chill. What was happening now to amuse her in the dark and swirling expanse of space?

  To distract himself he kept busy, tinkering on gadgets or mapping the stars. She would have taken him if she could, he knew that, but his land-locked heart couldn’t survive the journey. Besides, he had a job, clients, commitments. The world had roped him in while she sprang free, not even halted by gravity. So he waited, one fixed point in a shuffling world.

  One day nearing spring, a crackly message sounded on his inter-stellar radio, bringing a sentence that gave him an unsafe amount of hope and longing: “I wish you could see the sunset on Mars.”

  So she’d be home soon. He collected every scrap of paper he could find and added detail to his navigational charts: color, texture, a red planet, a path with a yellow dot reaching home. A tiny hologram of the ship spun over his desk, and he sighed and slipped a sky-blue map beneath it, the ship’s shadow quivering over the surface of the world.

  Her ship touched down as the last of the snow melted, and the first buds twinkled under half-frozen dew. The hatch opened and there stood his pilot, all honey-colored hair and blue eyes.

  “You won’t believe what I’ve found,” she said. “The contributions this mission made to science—”

  He swept her in his arms and kissed her. “I’ve missed you.”

  She smiled. “I brought a photo. Now you can see it.”

  It showed a dusty red sky with light filtering through, the sunset on Mars: an image he had guessed at in his dreams, a souvenir from space. He hugged her and said, “It’s lovely, Zoe, but how long are you staying?”

  “Forever.” But even as she said it, she raised her eyes to the sky.

  ...And Let the Apocalypse Happen

  The door to the office burst open, revealing a young man drenched in rain and wearing tattered clothing. He put his whole weight into the door to ram it shut, and once it was closed, he paused, gasping for breath.

  “Braiiiiins,” came a low moan, from behind the door. “Braiiiins.”

  “Can you believe it?” said Billy, wide-eyed. “I was just riding my bike and suddenly I was attacked by a horde of zombies! They followed me all the way here.”

  “Name?” said the receptionist.

  “Billy Winters. And I mean, it’s unbelievable. Luckily I wasn’t bit, but, my God. A zombie attack, and on a Tuesday afternoon?”

  “You’re five minutes late for your appointment,” the receptionist chided, pointedly moving her eyes up to the wall clock. “Any later and I’d have to cancel and charge you the $50 fee.”

  “Yes, but zombies—”

  “Have a seat,” she said, as she resumed typing. “A zombie attack isn’t a sufficient excuse. You know you’re supposed to allow an extra fifteen minutes’ travel time for that.”

  Billy sighed and found a seat. No one else was in the waiting room, so he grabbed a recent Newsweek and started flipping through it. Most of the articles were about world leaders dismissing their citizens’ concerns of a zombie epidemic. Billy looked out the window. The zombies were still out there, tapping on the window, moaning and pointing to their heads, then to him, then their mouths. He turned away.

  This morning he had begged his mother not to make him go to this appointment. Why, just last night on the evening news, the President had declared a state of emergency, even pulling out a shotgun to blast away the zombies that were trying to munch on the Secret Service. The National Guard was already arriving in metro areas that were under siege. School was cancelled indefinitely. But a six-month cleaning appointment was unbreakable.

  “Billy? Your dentist is ready.”

  Billy looked up, put down the magazine, and trudged into the appointment room. The dental hygienist got him set up; soon he was leaning back in the chair, plastic bib on, bright lights shining on him. His dentist came in, put on a mask, and had Billy open his mouth to start examining his teeth.

  “Oh, dear. Billy, your teeth look awful. Have you brushed today?”

  “No buh thu apocalis is ha’en’in.”

  “What?” The dentist pulled his tools back.

  Billy’s jaw ached. “No, but the apocalypse is happening.”

  The dentist’s eyes narrowed. “Billy, are you telling me you didn’t brush your teeth because of a zombie epidemic?”

  “Well—”

  “Billy, if you get eaten by a zombie tomorrow, I want you to die with a sparkling mouth. And if you live on to become a revolutionary leader and eventually rebuild America, I want you to also have a clean mouth.”

  Billy looked down. “I know, sir.”

  “I will do the best I can with this cleaning, but the rest is up to you.”

  He blinked, unsure. “So you ... you want me to just brush my teeth and let the apocalypse happen?”

  “Billy,” he said, lowering his sharp, silvery tools, “there are some priorities in life we can’t ignore. And dental hygiene is one of them.”

  How to Catch a Zombie