Apocalypse Man Rising

Author's Note: This is the second installment of my "Apocalypse Man" story, it starts where the first chapter left off. The first chapter is also posted here on Reedsy during contest # 82 (https://blog.reedsy.com/creative-writing-prompts/contests/82/submissions/56228/) and I highly recommend that you read that one first before starting this one. But it's your call. Alright then, here we go...

   I blink my eyes a few times, letting them adjust to the brightness around me. I’m not entirely sure when was the last time I opened my eyes, which is normal because when things like this happen it is impossible for me to keep track of the time that passes, be it hours or days. I do, however, vividly remember losing my eyes – along with the rest of my face and several other vital parts – in a vicious attack the last time I was awake. That’s how it always is in this post-apocalyptic nightmare world: I roam the continent for a while until a spider-shark from outer space decides to ambush and eat me. I die, temporarily, and the nanites in my corpse rebuild me as best as they can. When they finish, I wake up and resume my lonely wanderings until another monster gets me, or maybe I fall into a hole or something and die again. Sometimes I wake up part of the way through the rebuilding process. That is how I know just how badly hurt I was the last time I was conscious; I woke up before the machines had finished rebuilding my eyes, limbs, and face. But a quick check – look to the left, look to the right, wiggle all ten toes, do the jazz hands thing – proves that I’m better now. But as I look around I can see that quite some time has passed, unless I was carried off to another world?

    When last I was conscious, the Earth was surrounded by a thick cloud of ash and dust, the result of a meteor strike that created a new ocean and shifted the magnetic poles out of alignment. The temperature was roughly 20 degrees – in July. At least I think it was July, it’s not like I was carrying a calendar with me. Call it July, give or take a month. And everything was dead. The whole planet was a lifeless grey husk of its former glory. No birds, no bees, no bears, no people, no trees, no flowers, no life of any kind – except me and my nanites and the damned spider-shark aliens that had picked the world clean until there was nothing left for them to eat. But this… this is not the same world that I remember.

    The sun is shining brightly in a blue, cloudless sky. I haven’t seen the sun in… a decade, maybe two by my reckoning. Yet here it is on full display. I can feel its warmth, too. The nanites had been protecting me against the detrimental effects of hypothermia to the point where I barely noticed how cold it was anymore, but this is very nice. It reminds me of my childhood:  lazy Sundays napping in the shade of the old alder tree in the city park near my house, while my friends played basketball. Wait, it’s not just the sun that brings that memory to mind. There is grass here, too. I’m quite sure that it all died out after the meteor strike due to freezing temperatures and lack of sunlight, but it’s here now I am sure of that. I like the way it tickles the bare skin in the places where those alien monstrosities tore my clothing off last time I was… well, killed. It sort of itches; I had forgotten what allergies feel like since there were no organisms around to cause a reaction anymore. I don’t want to move, for fear that this is all just a dream, or a fragile memory. I want to stay like this a little longer, soaking up the sun and breathing in the scent of the grass. 

    I take a deep breath, and the whole world shifts. Everything is spinning and I feel like I’m being pulled up from deep water by some kind of tether around my brain. The sensation is very strange, but not entirely unpleasant, much like the vertigo children feel after spinning themselves around like a helicopter and then quickly stopping and looking straight up. It leaves me queasy and giddy for a moment. Even through the disorientation I can hear voices. Not the guttural chuffs and clicks from the damn spider things either, but real seemingly-human voices. And I smell familiar things that were nearly forgotten by my post-apocalyptic brain. Hospital sterilization fumes, freshly used floor cleaning solution, body odor – not sure if that is my own or someone else’s if I’m being honest – and something flowery and vaguely familiar. Perfume, perhaps? My loins give a kind of twinge at the thought – I haven’t felt that in quite some time, what with all the women being dead and all. The images of the sun, sky, and grass suddenly start spinning before me and I want to throw up but my stomach is empty because there has been no food on this planet for more than a decade. I try to shut my eyes but I still see everything spinning. I want to scream but I am afraid of what will happen if I do… there may still be spider-sharks lurking nearby, or worse. And all the while I keep feeling this tug against my mind, dragging me away from that sunlit lawn. It is, I think, inexorable. And I am still very tired, so I stop fighting it, stop trying to make sense of things, and let it pull me to wherever it wants me to go.

    Everything goes blue for a moment. Not black, not exactly, but a very deep and dark shade of blue. Then I see yellow and red, as if someone is shining a flashlight at my face while my eyes are still closed. I hear a sound, too, which slowly resolves itself into a regular beep every few seconds, accompanied by a click and a whoosh each time. I’m not sure what is going on here… I was certain that my eyes were wide open but I can still see the afterimage of my eyelid veins from that recent bright flash. I try to open them, just to be sure. Nothing happens. I try again, with more emphasis this time. I feel an eyebrow flutter but that is all. Now I am sure my eyes are closed, but not sure why. I am also sure that I am determined to open them. I pour all of my willpower directly at my facial muscles, mentally shouting at them that they will move now! Another eyebrow flutter, I push through it and keep going. The eyebrow stays raised, I can feel the eyelid getting stretched thin, I can feel the eye starting to twitch expectantly, the strain is intense but I will not be denied. Slowly, my left eyelids peel apart and open, but it feels like I’m trying to push a dump truck up a hill. The light blinds me for a moment, but I manage to hold the eyelid open long enough for the pupil to adjust. I find myself staring at a grid of perlite ceiling tiles with fluorescent lamps interspersed every few feet. How strange.

    It takes a few more minutes (at least I think it is measurable in minutes, possibly seconds or hours though) to get the other eye open. Then I let my eyes roam, taking in my surroundings. A clock on the wall says it’s 2:30. A slender girl is dozing in an ugly office chair beneath the clock. A table beside me is laden with several small vials full of liquids, there is a portable rack from which several plastic tubes are suspended. Those tubes seem to lead into various parts of my body, which is covered by a white sheet and a white blanket that itches quite badly. There is a plastic mask covering my nose and mouth, and a tube has been forced down my throat. Obviously trying to speak or swallow is a bad idea then. There is a curtain drawn around one side of me, and a window on the opposite side with a view. It is daylight outside, blue cloudless skies. And the view is… spectacular. I can make out a tall slender structure in the distance, and instantly I know where I am. I was here once before, actually, before the meteor and all the ash and death. I am in Seattle, and this is the hospital where I once was treated for a broken arm that I received during a high school football game. The Seattle skyline looks much the same as I remember, but that is not a fair indicator of how much time has passed. It can just as easily have been a single night or twenty years. But I remember all of it, the last fifteen years in hell, so vividly it cannot have been a dream. Could it have been a dream? What the hell happened to me? And who is that girl in the chair? I don’t recognize her, but I think her perfume is what I was smelling earlier… it is familiar somehow. 

    These beds usually have a buzzer to call a nurse, as I recall. Now where is it?