I slipped out of Janelle’s grasp — easy when you’re as slick as I was, just then — and leapt onto Zapp’s bicycle. Before anybody could try to stop me, I was already pedaling back up the ramp the way we’d come, past the people trying to seal and camouflage the entry to the tunnel, leaping from darkness into the light of day. I raced close enough to Ricky Artesian to make eye contact and hurl my last baseball — absolutely coated at this point with my own blood — at his pinstripe-suited torso. And then I spun and tore off in the direction of Storrow Drive again, not looking back to see if anyone was following me, racing with my head down, on the ramp that led up to the Turnpike.
My phone thrummed with messages but I ignored it. I was already reaching the top of the ramp, all thoughts of Horace Burton, and lovable fall guys in general, forgotten. The checkpoint was a collection of pale blobs at ground level, plus a swarm of men and women with scorpion heads rushing around tending their one statuesque mecha and a collection of mustard-colored vehicles. My eyesight was going, my concentration going with it, and my feet kept sliding off the pedals, but I kept pedaling nonetheless, until I was close enough to yank out my last limited edition promotional baseball, pull my arm back and then straighten out with the hardest throw of my life.
Then I wiped out. I fell partway behind a concrete barrier as Ricky and the other bandanas came up the ramp into the line of fire. I saw nothing of what came next, except that I smelled smoke and cordite and glimpsed a man with the red neck-gear falling on his hands and rearing back up, before I crawled the rest of the way behind my shelter and passed out.
When I regained consciousness, I was in a prison camp, where I nearly died, first of my wounds and later of a fiendish case of dysentery like you wouldn’t believe. I never saw Sally again, but I saw our last movie, once, on a stored file on someone’s battered old Stackbook. (This lady named Shari had saved the edited film to her hard drive before the Internet went futz, and people had been copying Ballpark Figure on thumb drives and passing it around ever since, whenever they had access to electricity.)
The final act of Ballpark Figure was just soldiers and red bandanas getting drilled by each other’s bullets until they did a terrible slamdance, and I have to say the film lost any of its narrative thread regarding Horace Burton, or baseball, or the quest to restore professional sports to America, not to mention the comedy value of all those flailing bodies was minimal at best.
The movie ended with a dedication: “To Rock Manning. Who taught me it’s not whether you fall, it’s how you land. Love, Sally.”
Charlie Jane Anders is the author of All the Birds in the Sky, a novel coming in early 2016 from Tor Books. She is the editor in chief of io9.com and the organizer of the Writers With Drinks reading series. Her stories have appeared in Asimov’s Science Fiction, The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, Tor.com, Lightspeed, Tin House, ZYZZYVA, and several anthologies. Her novelette “Six Months, Three Days” won a Hugo award.
THE GRAY SUNRISE
Jake Kerr
Don Willis is forty five years old and has just finished loading his grocery cart. He bypasses the cash registers but pauses at the entrance. A man and woman are fighting over a can of baby formula, blocking the doors. The man punches the woman in the face, grabs the formula, and shoves his overloaded cart through the doors to the parking lot.
A mass of bodies surge forward, their own overloaded carts banging together as they are pushed through the bottleneck. The woman is gone by the time Don makes it to the doors. He takes care not to slip in the puddle of blood she left behind.
Donnie Willis is ten years old and watching a TV show, long forgotten, about rich people doing rich things, and there is a feature about a yacht. It is majestic, with billowing white sails, and colorful flags that adorn a line from the cabin to the bow. Donnie scrambles closer to the TV, as if he could crawl through the screen and onto the boat, surrounded by the sea, the sun, and the beach.
“That’s the home I want,” he tells his dad, who walks over, kneels down next to him, and smiles. He squeezes Donnie’s shoulder and asks, “What do you like about it?”
Donnie explains about the flowing sails, the blue water, the freedom of being alone, the golden beach, and — more than anything — the excitement of being free under the sun and the sky and how he could sail anywhere. “That’s a good dream, Donnie. Don’t let go of it. Live your life in a way to achieve it, and you’ll never regret it.”
Falling asleep that night, Donnie dreams of waking up before the dawn, standing on the deck of his yacht, and watching the sun rise, the sound of seagulls and waves and flapping sails his only company.
It’s too late. The bags of groceries are shaking in Don’s arms. Please don’t make it be too late. Even without official confirmation, the word is spreading everywhere that the asteroid is going to hit North America. Escape is their only hope. He rushes up to his son’s room. They have no time. How desperate will people be?
He walks into Zack’s room. His son is playing a video game, looking bored. “Son, I’m sorry. You know what’s going on, and I’m afraid we don’t have much time. We need to start packing.”
Zack shoots him a glance but pays most of his attention to his video game. “Is this about the asteroid?”
“What kind of question is that?” Don walks over, grabs the VR controller from his son’s hand, and tosses it on the bed. “Of course this is about the asteroid. We need to get to safety. We’re leaving tonight on the Southern Cross.”
“God, Dad. You know I hate your boat.”
Don stares. “What do you mean ‘I hate your boat?’ We need to get away, Zack!”
His son shrugs.
Closing his eyes, Don gets his anger and fear under control. “Zack, this is not a game. We don’t even have time to track down your mom or my family in Austin. We need to get to safety now.”
“Sure, Dad. Whatever.” Zack moves to put his VR controller back on.
“Whatever? Do you have a better idea?” He had worked two full-time jobs over ten years to achieve his dream, and that dream would now save their lives, and Zack’s response was “whatever?”
Zack shrugs. “I just assumed we’d die.”
Don’s anger collapses under the casual acceptance in his son’s voice. “Zack, we can make it. You know that, right?”
A painful pause and then Zack replies, “I guess.”
“Think of the future, Zack.” Don sits down next to his son. “We can get away, and we can survive.” Zack nods, but there isn’t much heart in it. “Think of the future, son. Where do you want to be? What do you want to do? We have to put all this —” Don taps the controller. “ — behind us.” His son’s face is still blank, emotionless. “Don’t you have a dream?”
“I don’t know.” A nonchalant shrug. “To live. I guess.”
Donnie is sixteen and gets through the pain of junior high by clinging to his dream.