Heads exploded around him as he walked through the crowd. Scalps and skulls hinged open to expose vacated cavities where brain had boiled and flesh curdled. The tanks and personnel carriers sat inert, soldiers slumped over the controls, blood soaking into the levers and wheels. Those far enough to run left behind wives and children who stood mute in the middle distance between freedom of thought and sudden concussive death. If they were lucky they'd come to when he had walked past. If they had the misfortune to be in his way, or to be standing next to something that caught his fancy, he would amble over the carpet of tangled limbs and sure enough they'd see that bright shining point of consciousness just before all of their glial cells dropped their electrons to the innermost shell and turned to steam.
Soon he made his way to the ocean, horseflies and sandfleas dropping as he approached, a swath of shoreline fish bubbling to the surface, inciting a circular feeding frenzy at its perimeter. Gulls swooped and fell. He skipped stones and shells into the surf, hearing the muffled pop of fiddler crabs and clams exploding under the sand as he walked down the beach.
He grew hungry. Not in the mood for fish, he went back inland to an abandoned supermarket. The drone of refrigerator compressors drowned out the single explosion of a fertilized egg that had somehow -- miraculously – found its way past all of the screens and tests. He could plainly hear the crackle of insects dying in the produce aisle, however. So much life! He filled a knapsack full of canned ham and peaches, some beef jerky and bottled water.
He needed to find a place where he could be alone.
--Steve Kilian
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