Far Horizons: Tales of Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Horror. Issue #19 October 2015 | Page 56

and was inconvenient, but not fatal. Sometimes it
was a horror. He had gotten caught robbing a gangster once and was treated to bound limbs, a weighted
down body, and a shove into the water. He must have
died a thousand times, fish nibbling at him, drowning
and resurrecting, drowning and resurrecting, before he
got free. That was an experience he never wanted to
repeat.

space promised.
When it came down it slammed into Africa
with the force of billions of bombs. The shockwave
was quick, destroying continents in pieces while ash,
and debris, and gas rained down. Within a matter of
days all was gone. All that remained of humans, animals and vegetation was a few hardy cactus.

Time spanned first decades and then centuries.
Mankind did not manage to kill itself as everyone had
anticipated, at least not immediately. He kept away
from the law somehow. There were always places to
hide, even as options narrowed.

And the man.
Even the cactus died after a time. The ash
cloaked the sun, and the toxic fumes released by the
asteroid destroyed the atmosphere. Temperatures
plummeted and glaciers began crawling in as each
continent began to freeze. The only place some life
remained was in the oceans, buried under a thick layer.

Cataclysm came not in the form of a nuclear
bomb, but in the good old fashioned threat from outer
space. Not aliens, although that may have been more
palatable. An asteroid, as big as New York City, got
jarred loose from its huge elliptical orbit in the Oort
cloud and after a bounce off Jupiter’s gravity, made
its deadly approach to Earth. It took years before the
threat was noticed. Then it was months while it came
ever closer after its encounter with Jupiter before it
became clear that the monster was going to hit Earth.
Panic ensued.

He had wished for death along with the world.
He tried to starve himself but his body kept resurrecting. The ice preserved some food when he tired of the
ocean fare, and, reluctantly, he ate. Hunger was omnipresent. His lungs burned with the effort to breathe
unsuitable air. Sometimes that did the job hunger
couldn’t manage. Temporarily. Always he came back
to life, sputtering. The frost crept over the continents,
layer after layer, year after year. He watched it accumulate with grim fascination. Still, it didn’t kill
him. He had the resources of the dead planet’s former
occupants at his disposal and managed to eke out an
existence. The silence was eerie, like being in a cave
where nothing could penetrate. Man would never walk
these lands again. No man, that is, except him.

By this time he was sick of living, of life. He
had long realized the futility of trying to track down
the man who had changed him into this thing. He
decided that the man bestowing this “gift” on him
had given it to him as quickly as he had for the same
reason the man now hoped the asteroid would destroy
everything. He hadn’t realized what a slog it would be
for there never to be an end to anything. Ever.
Perhaps he was the only one who eagerly
awaited the asteroid. The governments of the world
united together to deal with the menace. First they
tried to nudge the thing out of its orbit, but their rockets were no use against the giant ball of rock and ice.
They regretted cannibalizing their space programs, too
late. Then they attempted to blow it up, but there was
nothing big enough to cause it enough damage. The
pieces that did break off rained early hell on the Earth,
causing widespread devastation, flooding, and climate
change. Worse, perhaps, than the death the rock from

Sighing, he sat down on a bare rock at the top
of Mount Everest. All around him there was snow
and ice, higher than it had been half a century ago. He
looked at the sun, glowing faintly in the occluded sky.
It was yellow now, like billions of its kind. As it died it
would become a red giant and engulf the earth before
retreating to be a dim red dwarf star. That was four billion years in the future. Then it would burn everything
off the surface and leave behind a rocky husk, stripped
of everything. He prayed that when the sun final B