The Dog Days Of Earth.

The story contains scenes of the elderly dying bloody deaths, people exposed to extreme radiation, and the effects of deadly bacterial contagion.

It was the hottest day of the year. The Dog Days of Summer, they used to call them. But who knew anymore, because no one went topside, aside from the weather sensing bores we ran up through the Earth’s crust to monitor the surface. Every day was a Dog Day, perpetually — these were The Dog Days of Earth. The world had become one big dust bowl.

Deadly, radiated dust kicked up all over the planet, destroying lungs in days. Tissue-devouring bacteria sprouted on the surface, consuming flora and fauna alike since the sun’s intensity had increased fourfold. The sun’s radiation mutated the microbes living in Earth’s soil, turning them ravenous. If you somehow survived topside, and the full spectrum of harmful rays didn’t fry you, any exposed area of your body left you vulnerable to infection. Red lesions would spread rapidly, eating you alive within days until organ failure. The world had to go underground.

My folks died from the early effects of dust decay. Early on, people thought that just covering your mouth with a mask was enough for short periods outside in those first phases of planet degeneration. It wasn’t.

As a boy, I nursed both my parents through long, agonizing coughing deaths, covered in their blood spatter. If you believed in such things, I guided them into the next life. My dad believed — held onto some notion of a benevolent supreme being right until pieces of his lung started ejecting from his mouth, along with dark, coagulated blood I had to wash off his chest. Each convulsive, hacking eruption threw his body into a dance of agony. I openly wept, pressing my boyhood weight against his frail frame to keep him from breaking his neck — like my mother had.

She snapped her neck in one sudden fit of racking spasms I hadn’t seen coming, while I was washing the blood from the cloth I attended her with. Her bones, hollowed by calcium loss, couldn’t withstand the attack’s suddenness. It was a merciful moment, quick and unanticipated. I felt ashamed of the relief that washed over me as I turned to find her lying peacefully at long last.

I abandoned belief in a loving God for years. I questioned how anyone could entertain such ideas while watching loved ones suffer in bloody piles for days on end. But life taught me that everything—even my thinking—was subject to change in this unstable world.

I buried my parents together in a mausoleum-like crevice I dug into the side wall of the root cellar beneath our farmhouse — my central living space underground.

The chemical HIPPA-filters ran constantly on solar energy that had become as cheap as water once was. Now, water was the new gold, its price skyrocketing. Cavernous channels of linked springs beneath the northwestern continent—what was once the United States—provided for our country. Other countries weren’t so lucky. One month, media transmitted desperate cries for help via Solid Substrate Sound Systems throughout the globe’s interior. The next month, silence—signaling a region had run dry.

Gasoline was outlawed; it had caused the planet’s devastation. Anyone caught using petroleum-based power was tossed out of underground communities across the country. What happened to those criminals topside was a horror: rapid radiation would boil their eyes and body fluids until they burst. It took minutes and was one of the modern horrors of our existence.

North America had enough sense to shift agriculture underground fast. Countries bored thoroughfares like highways deep into the Earth’s core. The network of tunnels connecting me to the rest of the world was the ongoing business of life for years. In 4S wavelength broadcasts, life was now called “In-Earth.” Most of Arizona, my home region, was well connected to Continental America, In-Earth.

Underground City States traded and thrived on regional products: grains, fruits, vegetables, livestock, manufactured goods. Many nations lacked the infrastructure to survive this way, and cannibalism spread quickly in this new age of desperation.

My farm was part of this tunnel network supplying me with what I needed to nurture and cultivate the commodities I produced for sale or barter. My specialty was mushrooms, a variety my parents had grown for generations. Dad also foresaw the booming market for cannabis when it became legal. He started a small commercial, underground concern, which grew exponentially. People found comfort in the escape our exotic mushrooms and cannabis provided, though some districts registered these as ‘unsavory commodities,’ requiring licensed use in restricted facilities.

Even with political and moral censoring, my venture prospered—until the earthquakes of 2068 hit the northern continent.

The sun’s relentless pounding had heated and expanded tectonic plates, causing massive collisions felt worldwide. Deep inside the Earth, the upheaval was on a scale humanity’s early underground engineering wasn’t ready for.

On the morning of the cataclysm, I awoke to the sound of snapping support beams as my root cellar ceiling collapsed just outside my tubular sleeping quarters. The taste and smell of dirt filled my mouth and nose. The underground’s independent power source kept the lights on, but my vision blurred and danced with the massive vibrations.

I scrambled toward the trolley tunnel, the outgoing lane for my wares. The magnetic dynamo shuttle was my only escape. I landed on top of the long steel coffin-shaped car, flipped the power switch, and gripped the sealed lid’s handles.

The magnetic motor shot the box trolley down the charged rail. I put my head down, trusting the tunnel’s clearance. I braced myself for the long ride to City State Phoenix.

Darkness enveloped me. The earth groaned around me, shaking violently. The smaller tunnel circumference held better against the pressure, though the flexible composite tube was bent in places. Air rushed against my head, pushing on me. For the first time in my life, I called out to my father’s God. I was filled with dread. The tunnel ahead might snap, burying me alive.

My hands cramped from squeezing the trolley handles. “Breathe,” a small, firm voice whispered inside me. The air remained clean, reassuring me. Time stretched infinitely as I prayed atop that steel container, hurtling into the unknown. Sweat soaked my clothes; the small tunnel’s temperature rose.

Almost imperceptibly, I felt the trolley slow as approaching light grew brighter. I hooked my boots over the lid and braced myself, fearing a sudden stop.

Horrid images flashed—being thrown forward and crushed. Then I recalled safety protocols that slowed the trolley gradually to protect cargo. The trolley eased to a gentle stop.

I looked up and saw the cargo depot’s bustle. A station foreman shouted, “Hey Maggie, look what the MagRail brought in!”

Two foremen rushed to me as I looked on. “Is this Phoenix Central Station?” I asked.

“Yes, but this is a cargo platform. You’re very lucky, son!”

Workers swarmed the area, their voices echoing around the circular station. Layers of walkways spiraled upward, fading into a vaulted ceiling.

“You just came through Pinal’s tunnel, and its gone. Catastrophic collapse, a few survived. That tube you came through is gone too. You're the last.”

“What?!”

“God must like you. We lost Maricopa, Pinal, Apache, and Flagstaff. Half of Arizona’s buried.”

My face fell as the loss hit me.

A director gently helped me off the container.

“Want me to log your belongings?”

“Yes, this is all I own. But what about Phoenix?”

“Sixty years ago, Phoenix built eight titanium water reclamation tanks, buried deep near the Superstition Mountains. Each can hold an entire city. There are eight districts, each in a tank, all unharmed. Other City States built only with wood and composites and didn’t survive.”

“Are you injured? Lost anyone?”

“No, my folks died years ago. I’m alone.”

“Welcome to Phoenix’s Light Rail District. I’m Richard Maggalus, the station director, everybody calls me Maggie. When you’re ready, we’ll take care of your cargo.”

I nodded, overwhelmed but grateful.

I unlatched the cargo container, pressing my index finger on the scanner. It hissed open. Two bags of seeds and spores filled my vision—a good start for rebuilding. But the payment satchel was what lifted my spirits: a sealed briefcase for Phoenix Botanicals. It covered their costs for redistributing my farm’s products. They’d never receive this shipment, I was keeping it.

The locked attaché's LED numbers flashed brightly: $1,000,000.00.

With this, I could start a hydroponics shop in one of the Northern Continent’s most prosperous cities.

No more farming—my Dog Days in the dirt were over.

It surely was the hottest day of the year.

…and maybe, just maybe, I thought—there was a God.

END