"The Aftermath" by Frances Monro

"Come on you sons of bitches! Do you want to live forever?”
--- GySgt Dan Daly, rallying Marines at Belleau Wood, June 1918

[J K Bower’s note: GySgt Daly is one of only two U.S. Marines to have been twice awarded the Medal of Honor, the United States’ greatest military accolade.]

The Aftermath
By Ché Monro

        Dannel ached. The pounding, all-over ache assaulted his senses with shrieks from every muscle and nerve in his battered frame. Blood? No, he decided, not his own but sticky on his skin and clothes just the same. “How long?” his groggy mind asked.

Why was he covered in blood? He wiped at the sticky fluid that soaked his flimsy hospital gown. Not blood, but the viscous amniotic fluid of a cryo-stasis tank. How long? he asked again. Where were the doctors, the Med-Techs? Muscles shrieking, he staggered to his feet. The facility was filthy, it’s pristine white surfaces covered with dirt, broken glass and debris, even soil and leaves.

It had seemed like an infallible plan, to sleep for fifty years while the magic of compound interest increased his fortune and science finally delivered it’s long promised panacea of eternal life. The recent advances in genetics and nano-technology that made such wonders as cryogenic suspension possible were surely on the verge of delivering the age long goal. In a few short years death would be vanquished forever, but Gordon Dannel was dying now, his aged body failing, for all his wealth. It had seemed a simple, infallible plan. Gordon Dannel would not go gently into that infinite good-night, following the countless legions of his forebears who had dumbly marched down into the darkness. Instead he would sleep for fifty years and then wake to an eternal sunrise.

“How long?” his parched throat croaked. Gordon Dannel turned to the cryo-tank. No answers there. The state of the art machinery seemed as ancient as the pyramids, it’s glass fogged and dim, metal corroding. Some spark in it’s failing circuits, some wrinkle of ancient code tables had caused it to rouse him at last and spew him forth into this ruined laboratory.

Far longer than fifty years. Outside the shattered windows of the lab trees pressed against the broken bricks. Massive oak trees. How long? Too long. Much too long, hundreds of years, perhaps thousands. He slumped against the bricks, dirt staining his face, the renewed pain of illness gnawing at him.

What had happened? Where were all the people?

Outside in the forest something growled, deep and threatening. Something big, something hungry.

His story was over, Dannel realized. Whatever followed now could only be the aftermath.