The ruins lay before us, crumbling stone buildings covered with moss, abandoned centuries ago.
“What about Michael?” Valerie whispered into my ear. “It’s time to make a decision, Dale.”
I looked ahead at him, already approaching the outlying buildings of the Old City. Neither of us had ever trusted him, but so far, he had kept his promises. “Not yet,” I said.
She frowned, but didn’t answer. We followed. Michael was about to enter a small house with its walls standing, although the roof had caved in long ago. We couldn’t let him get out of our sight.
“Wait for us!” Valerie called.
Michael stopped, briefly, then entered. I’m not sure what he did inside, but the ground started rumbling, then shaking violently. We dropped to ground out on the open road. Thank God there was nothing to fall on us. The earthquake lasted what seemed like forever, though it was probably only a minute or two. But the Old City wasn’t much more than a quarry after it was over. The house Michael entered had become a pile of boulders.
Valerie and I spent the rest of the day trying to dig Michael from the rubble. He was barely able to speak when we found him.
“It’s done, I’ve saved the world,” he said.
Those were his last words.
“You don’t think he really had anything to do with it?” Valerie said after he died.
“Of course not,” I said.
We excavated the site for months, but found nothing left of the weapons we sought except twisted, crushed metal.
Clinton Lawrence is a high school science teacher and former engineer. His fiction has appeared in Realms of Fantasy, Galaxy, Reflection’s Edge, T-Zero, Ray Gun Revival, and several other publications. For several years, he was a staff writer for Science Fiction Weekly. He lives in Davis, California.
Did you like this story?
A new and interesting story is posted every day.
A new and interesting story is posted every day.
Subscribe to the RSS Feed! (what is rss)
Don’t miss another story! Subscribe to Every Day Fiction via RSS.- Share on Facebook
Rate this story
18 Responses to “THE OLD CITY • by Clinton Lawrence”
Comments
« BURIAL OF THE BELLS • by Sarah Hilary | Home | A FRIGGIN’ STAR • by Joel Willans »
September 3rd, 2009 at 3:23 am
What there is of this story is well-written.
However, it’s not thought through to a conclusion, ending with the wishy-washy suggestion that something fantastic / supernatural may have happened – possibly.
Even a dangling conclusion would be preferable.
September 3rd, 2009 at 3:27 am
By the way, the star rating’s not working for me.
September 3rd, 2009 at 5:24 am
Okay! The rating’s working now.
September 3rd, 2009 at 5:52 am
This has kept me thinking. Thinking is good!
September 3rd, 2009 at 5:53 am
??????????
September 3rd, 2009 at 6:10 am
This was the bones of a good story. We needed more to care about the characters though.
September 3rd, 2009 at 7:02 am
The ending on this came out of nowhere. There was no hint why they were heading for this Old City, no indication that we were in a post-apocalyptic world. And the earthquake hitting just as Michael entered a building seems like just too much of a coincidence … perhaps there should have been minor tremors earlier to presage the “big one.”
And, by the way, WHY did they distrust Michael? Shouldn’t we be given some indication of that?
Seems to me there was just too much that WASN’T in the story that should have been,
September 3rd, 2009 at 7:40 am
I got that it was a post-apocolyptic city, but otherwise didn’t get much. I don’t know iff they were planning to kill Michael or honestly didn’t know. I couldn’t tell they wor looking for weapons at all.
September 3rd, 2009 at 8:32 am
I like it. The ending came out of nowhere for me, and I’d have appreciated a little hint inside the story for it. Just a half a line about a weapons dump or something would have been good. But otherwise I like it. You made me care about the characters, though I didn’t know if I liked them or not yet, when the earthquake hit.
September 3rd, 2009 at 9:46 am
I like the idea, but have to agree that it needed more. Specifically more description of the city and more tension between the characters. It’s a great set-up.
September 3rd, 2009 at 11:50 am
I assume the mention of weapons at the end is in some way meant to twist what has happened before – to make us realise that Dale and Valerie were actually bad people and Michael was good.
However there just isn’t enough before that point, for me, to have established that. We know they “don’t trust him” but we dont know why, just as we don’t know what they are looking for. We also don’t know if it was something Michael did that caused the earthquake – and if it was, did he do it deliberately or accidentally.
So in general, I agree with most of the comments above – there just isn’t enough information for me to work with. Obscurity and doubt have their place, but this goes too far in not telling us things we would like to know.
September 3rd, 2009 at 12:28 pm
One sentence too long.
September 3rd, 2009 at 4:05 pm
Didn’t give the reader enough to go on to grab the story. Just left me confused and unfulfilled.
September 3rd, 2009 at 6:40 pm
Too little info to make the story a good as it had the potential to be.
September 3rd, 2009 at 6:48 pm
Wow was that short! It felt like alot was missing by way of information about the characters – the why, the what, the who, etc. The ending came so quick.
September 4th, 2009 at 1:54 am
[...] story at EDF is “The Old City” by Clinton Lawrence. I personally enjoyed it — the prose is clean and sparse, [...]
September 4th, 2009 at 6:29 am
Flash fiction is tough. When you pare it down to this short of a story, tougher still.
–John
September 4th, 2009 at 8:24 am
So they were seeking a cache of weapons and expected Michael to try to thwart them? Well, maybe he did. But was it by luck or good management? Sparse.