Stricken: A Short Story

The following short story, Stricken, was written for our anthology of post-apocalyptic fiction, After the Fall, released around the time of (and inspired by) our first feature film, the post-apocalyptic drama, This World Alone.

We published the anthology to sell on our first theatrical tour in 2020 (and open each screening with a reading), which was (ironically) cancelled due to a real-life pandemic (you guys remember that).

Featuring 30 stories, comics, and poems from authors and artists all across the world (four continents represented!) who were brave enough to look into our potential future so they might change the way we look at the present.

This was my contribution to the anthology and still one of my favorite things I’ve written. Hope you enjoy!

Bonus points: I created a playlist for this short story (because of course I did) if you wanna catch the vibe as you read:

ONE

I’m in love, Cliffy thought for the first time in his life. Marie was her name. And he had just met her 12 hours, 14 minutes, and 29 seconds ago.

Cliffy wasn’t someone you’d describe with any love-filled adjectives. Loveable. Lovely. Lovesick. Lovelorn. No, Cliffy was a real bastard. And not like “take up two parking spots” kind of bastard, more like “makes his living from killing and torturing people” kind of bastard.

It’s not that he was overly proud of it, but it’s who he was deep down. It was in his core. He was brought up in an area where fighting wasn’t something you got in trouble for, it was how you survived. And he quickly became well respected for his survival skills.

He realized early on that survival required two things:

One, being able to take a hit and keep standing.

And two, not giving a shit about what happens to the other person.

And he was unrivaled in both areas.

Cliffy was now north of 40 years old, and from the time he was little, all he’d known was pain, suffering, and death. He had the scars to prove it. Physical scars? Lots of them. Emotional scars? Well, that might require having some emotions.

So imagine his surprise when he found said emotions swelling in his heart and travelling to his brain to form the thought, I’m in love.

He was standing at the hotel bar, holding two Mimosas and a fruit plate, when the thought occurred to him. Even more surprising, he wasn’t embarrassed by it. He was desperate to get back up to Marie. Marie, who he met the night before at this very bar. Marie, who demanded the attention of every pair of eyes in the room. Marie, who, for some reason, chose his pair. They spent the night talking. Drinking. Dancing. Laughing ... Making love. Could he call it that? He’d never used the term before in his life, thinking it reserved for virgin college students and suburban moms. But that’s exactly what happened. Over the course of the night, they had created something that wasn’t there before. They had made love. Invented it. Brought it out of thin air.

They were both in town for work. Marie was some kind of special technician at some kind of special hospital. It was all a little over Cliffy’s head. She was in town to meet with some health care associates. Cliffy was there to help someone meet their demise. But the sleepy resort town of Puerto Peñasco doubled nicely as a vacation.

No one was travelling to Mexico at the time due to the mysterious flu that was going around, so he thought, Why not kill a few days before killing a few people?

As Cliffy entered the hallway that led to their room, he was practically skipping. Thoughts of their future together. Going on the run. Travelling the world. Never having to “work” again. Being a father to her daughter, Annalise. A dad. He didn’t even flinch when Marie told him about her “niña.” Nine years old. As beautiful as her mom.

Even when Cliffy pondered how she could give so much of herself to someone who gives so little back, Marie responded, “Love doesn’t have to be a transaction. It can just be given.”

He was already smitten, but it might’ve been that line that tipped him over the edge.

He was all in. Ready to start over, to have a family, to have their own farm. He knew it was silly, but he didn’t care. He was even naming their future chickens when–-

The door blew off its hinges.

A white flash.

A loud blast.

And the next thing Cliffy remembered was waking up in the hospital, his ears ringing, his face stinging, handcuffed to the bed.

TWO

The explosion blew three stories off of the hotel. Six people were found dead. Marie was the last one found. With Cliffy’s history of violence, it didn’t take long for them to charge him with her murder. And they weren’t far off. While Cliffy wasn’t there to murder Marie, he was there to murder someone. And he was going to do it with a bomb. Enough evidence was found in the rubble to convict him.

This wasn’t Cliffy’s first stint in prison. It wasn’t his second. It wasn’t even his third. Honestly, he’d lost count. But this was the big one. A life sentence gives you a lot of time to think. And he was all-consumed with one thought: Who killed the love of my life?

He didn’t like where the answer landed because ultimately he knew he was responsible. The bomb was meant for him.

He’d made a lot of people angry over the years, and it finally caught up to him. And once again, he did what he did best. He survived. But at what cost?

Cliffy knew if he ever got out of here, he would make it right. No, not if ... when. He would find who was responsible and he would kill them. Then, he would find Annalise. He’d make sure she was set up for life. He had money. Being a bastard pays surprisingly well. He’d been stockpiling it away. Enough to make sure she’d never have to work a day in her life. She’d have a fair shot to end up somewhere better, to end up someone better. She wouldn’t have to just survive.

The one great thing about prison is that it provides easy access to information. Every crime boss in the country was represented there, and Cliffy knew how to get the information he was looking for. It only took three broken noses (and the occasional rib) to get a name: Leon Reid.

He knew the guy. Leon was a real shit-head, but knew how to get stuff done. Cliffy had pissed him off one too many times, and Leon took his shot. Unfortunately (for Leon), he missed. And now Leon Reid, like so many on Cliffy’s list before him, must die.

Over the next year, three names remained on repeat in his brain, each with its own emotion.

Marie, Annalise, Leon.

Love, Protection, Revenge.

He was lying in bed, running the names over and over in his brain, when he first heard the news of the outbreak.

THREE

Vampire Bat Disease has an official scientific name, but you can see why calling it Vampire Bat Disease is more appealing (and fear-inducing).

It turns out that the flu going around adapted to their attempts to stop it, evolving into something a little more… apocalyptic. The virus started in the southernmost parts of South America and worked its way up and around the world. A microscopic airborne virus, easily transferable through the air.

They call it a flesh-eating virus, but really it eats much more than just flesh.

Starting in your stomach, it feeds on the lining, which one could mistake for a stomach bug or a grumbly tummy. Next, it works its way up through the lungs, causing coughing fits. As it moves outward, it begins to affect your appearance, skin literally falling off your bones.

The virus works fast. The average time from infection to death is six days.

And there is no cure.

The first thought through Cliffy’s mind after learning of the virus was, Please, not Annalise. Followed swiftly by, Please not Leon Reid. He didn’t want the virus to beat him to it. He needed this kill.

The thought, Please, not me, never entered his mind.

The infected were being quarantined away, cared for the best they could as the virus ate away at them. They started testing in closed-off communities where the virus would transfer most quickly: retirement homes, hospitals, and prisons. By the time the doctors arrived to test the inmates at Yuma, where Cliffy was being held, six million Americans had already died and they were now losing people at the rate of a million a day.

Two days ago, Cliffy first felt the pangs of a stomach ache. He hoped it was the meatloaf. But then the coughing started. It wasn’t death he feared. It was unfinished business. He knew he had to get out of there.

Six days at best.

The more obvious prisoners, the guys with skin hanging off their bones, had been separated out long ago. Those remaining were marched in one-by-one into the prison clinic, where they would draw their blood, run their tests, and send them in one of two directions.

Left door or right door.

Back to your cell or to quarantine.

Life in prison or death by virus.

As Cliffy was escorted into the clinic, he started coughing. He did his best to keep a straight face but was sweating profusely. He could see the doctors exchanging looks under their surgical masks.

He sat in the chair as the doctor rolled up his sleeve, inserting the needle into his arm. As the doctor filled the syringe with blood, Cliffy knew this would be his last chance. There was only one way out of here alive.

He snatched the syringe out of his arm and stabbed it into the neck of the doctor, his thumb on the plunger.

The doctor froze.

“Let’s go for a walk,” Cliffy whispered, the last word coming out as a cough.

Ten minutes later, he drove out of the prison parking lot in the doctor’s car.

Now that the doctor was left safely behind, the guards didn’t put up a chase.

One less body to bury.

FOUR

Societies respond to mass-scale shake-ups in one of two ways. It either brings us together or rips us apart.

The virus had caused the world to go to shit. Work abandoned. Families torn asunder. Economies crumbled. The government tried their best to quarantine those affected, but it spread too fiercely, too fast.

This would be our destruction. A worldwide catastrophic event the Earth hadn’t seen since the time of the dinosaurs. They always knew it was coming, but they didn’t know it’d be this soon. They didn’t know it’d be like this.

Cliffy drove through the night from Yuma to San Diego. What should’ve taken two and a half hours took eight. Riots. Fires. Bodies lining the road. He didn’t stop to eat. Didn’t stop to sleep. There’d be time for that when he was dead. He only stopped to piss and siphon gas. And he only did that once.

Cliffy banged on the door. He didn’t expect an answer. Who in their right mind would answer the door in this world? But apparently the couple on the other side of the door was expecting someone.

A shaggy-looking tattooed kid opened the door. He was probably 20.

“Who the hell are you?” the shaggy kid asked.

“I’m looking for Annalise,” Cliffy answered.

He could see a young girl of about 13 standing behind the kid. A pang ran through Cliffy’s insides. She looked so much like her mom.

“Who is it?” Annalise asked. He noticed a bruise around her eye.

“Some old dude,” the kid said to her. “We never heard of no Annalise. Fuck off, pal.” He shut the door in Cliffy’s face.

“Thanks anyway.” Cliffy sniffed, nodded his head, and walked back towards his car.

He climbed into the driver’s seat and pulled off down the street, slowing the car to a stop. He put on his seat belt and slid the car into reverse. He slammed on the gas.

The car plowed into the house, back bumper first. The entire front of the house collapsed.

He was surprised how far he actually made it in. Enough to open his door, get out, and punch the kid square in the face, knocking him out on his ass.

After a good 30 minutes of Annalise screaming and cussing up a storm, with the occasional attempt at running away and frequent fists thrown his way, Cliffy finally got her to sit and talk.

Annalise didn’t exactly have the same charm as her mother. Foulmouthed, poor grammar, bad hygiene, she seemed rotten to the core. But that endeared her to him even more.

Since her mom died, Annalise had gone from home to home until eventually, three months ago, she ran away with her boyfriend (who was still lying unconscious on the floor). She said he was cheating on her anyway, so it wasn’t like a “serious thing,” but she had nowhere else to go.

Cliffy told her the whole story. How he met her mother, what happened that night, how he ended up in prison, how he got the virus, how he intended to find her mom’s killer and make him pay.

Annalise was surprisingly cold to the whole thing. Cliffy was expecting some tears or something. It was a hell of a story.

The whole “crusade of vengeance” thing didn’t do much to stir her enthusiasm, but the $1.5 million he had stashed away did the trick.

“You have a mask?” he asked.

Annalise held up a gas mask. It was painted with skull and crossbones. Probably belonged to her shitty boyfriend. But, honestly, it was kinda badass.

“You’re gonna need it,” he said as they left behind his now destroyed car in her now destroyed house next to her now destroyed boyfriend.

“You ever fire a gun?” Cliffy asked as he handed Annalise a pistol.

“Hell yeah, all the time,” she responded under her gas mask.

“No, you haven’t.” Cliffy knew when someone was bullshitting him. “But that’s okay. It doesn’t have bullets in it anyway.”

“What the hell?. I can handle it. What if something goes wrong?” she asked. “What if I need to–”

“Look, it’s my job to protect you,” he interrupted.

“I don’t need some dude protecting me,” she said.

Cliffy chewed on this while they walked.

He was now regretting wrecking the car. The virus was catching up to him, the skin on his face and hands starting to crack. It was harder for him to breathe. Harder to walk in a straight line. But he wasn’t giving up yet. He had a job to do, and he was going to finish it.

“I don’t mean protection in the traditional sense,” he finally responded. ”I’m not gonna be around for much longer. There’s only so much I can do in a couple of days. But if there’s anything I know, it’s my own life. So, I can at least tell you how to avoid doing what I did.”

“Step one. You’re never gonna take a life. No kid should have to go through that, no matter how much the world is falling to shit around them. I’m gonna make sure you’re safe, we’re gonna do what we’re here to do, and then you’re gonna get the hell out of here, find yourself a nice community, settle down, and never have to fire a gun. Ever.”

FIVE

Cliffy knew how to find people. It was part of what made him so good at what he did. This was a different world, but the same rules apply. You start pulling at whatever thread is closest, and you don’t stop until the whole thing has come unraveled… leaving Leon Reid standing naked in front of you, and putting a bullet in his head.

The problem is that finding someone takes time. And that’s not something Cliffy had on his side. It’d been three days since he first started feeling sick, meaning he’d have roughly three days left. But while the rich all took off for their vacation homes when the virus struck, the poor stayed put. They didn’t have much, but you can be damned sure they’d protect what they did have. So, most of the guys Cliffy needed to talk to were right where he needed them.

Tommy Dukes was a mutual friend. Well, mutual acquaintance. Okay, so maybe Cliffy killed his brother. But you know, they ran in the same circles.

Tommy worked for Leon, and he was a good “end of the thread.” Easy to find. Easy to crack. Always honest.

Cliffy recognized him from a good quarter mile away. Tommy was wearing a mask, but Cliffy could make him out by his long legs and limp. The limp was Cliffy’s fault. But it could’ve been worse. Most guys who get thrown out of a second-story window end up with something a little more serious than a limp.

Guys with a bum leg don’t do a great job at sprinting, so even though Tommy spotted Cliffy, it only took about 20 seconds for him to catch up, rip off Tommy’s mask and pin him to the ground.

But those 20 seconds took it out of him.

Cliffy, now sitting on Tommy’s chest, couldn’t stop coughing. He’d seen better days.

Annalise stood over his shoulder, gun pointed at Tommy.

“Leon … Marie ... Explosion... Prison, ” Cliffy got in through the coughs.

Tommy got the idea. “Look man, the world is falling apart around us. Leon doesn’t give a shit about you anymore.”

“Yeah, well I give a shit about him,” Cliffy said. He sneezed, and a bit of his nose flew off.

Tommy gagged and tried to squeeze out from under him, but Cliffy doubled down on the pin.

“Just let it go dude,” Tommy said. “You look like shit. Get your life in order. Say goodbye to your loved ones or whatever.”

“I’ve only ever had one loved one,” Cliffy responded, “and Leon had her killed.”

“Had her killed … Wait, you gotta be kiddin’ me. Did you fall for it?” Tommy was almost laughing.

“Fall for what?” Cliffy asked, afraid of the answer.

“Marie worked for Leon. She was sent there to kill you. I dunno what went wrong, but you were the mark, dude.”

Cliffy blinked. His head went fuzzy. His stomach sank. Could it be true? Was the one time he fell in love all a scam? Did it mean anything?

A shot rang out.

Loud.

Cliffy and Tommy both looked down to see that they were both intact.

“What the fuck!” Cliffy and Tommy spat out in unison, now turning their attention to Annalise.

A terrified Annalise held the gun, now clearly with bullets. The gun was aimed at Tommy, but lucky for him, she was a lousy shot. Cliffy grabbed the gun from her, giving her a scowl like a dad catching a kid playing with his power tools.

SIX

Cliffy was able to get an address out of Tommy before shooting him himself. The kill did nothing to improve his mood.

Cliffy and Annalise walked in silence.

Cliffy stumbled. His insides ached. He wasn’t sure if it was the newly broken heart or the virus eating away at his intestines.

“I’m sorry my mom was such a bitch,” Annalise said under her mask.

Cliffy was inches from her mask by the time she finished the sentence. He didn’t hit her. But the threatening look on his face might have been worse. “Say one more bad thing about your mom.”

“What?” Annalise was taken aback.

“One more and our deal is over,” he said.

“But she was pulling one over on you. You’re just a sucker,” she said.

“Maybe she …” he stopped short of saying it. Maybe she fell in love. Maybe she changed her mind. Maybe she wasn’t going to go through with it. Maybe it was all real.

Cliffy walked out ahead of her, growing slower with each step. “Love doesn’t have to be a transaction,” he said, more for his own benefit than hers. “It can just be given.”

That night, they came across a church. Actually, a more accurate description would be they came across church. Thousands of people pouring out the doors on all sides. Candles lit by photos of their loved ones. All singing the haunting tune of Ave Maria.

Cliffy and Annalise watched silently from up on a hill.

Eyes closed and drawn to the crowd like a snake to a snake charmer, Cliffy started walking without thinking. Annalise stopped him, motioning to his face.

“Maybe a crowd isn’t such a good idea.” She shrugged.

Cliffy nodded, catching his reflection in the eyes of her mask. It wasn’t pretty. It wouldn’t be long now.

“Come on, let’s just rest here for the night,” she said.

Cliffy shook his head. “I can’t.”

“It’s been a long day. You need the rest,” she said.

Cliffy sank to his knees. His breath quickened.

Annalise sat next to him. Pouring water over a handkerchief, she dabbed it to his forehead.

“Do you believe in an afterlife?” he asked her.

“I’m 13,” she responded. “I don’t even believe in Algebra yet.”

Cliffy laughed, and it turned into a cough.

“I’m sorry. Don’t talk,” she employed.

He took a drink of her water.

“Can I see your face?” he asked.

Annalise hesitated, only for a moment, and then removed her mask.

He looked into her eyes, and she held his gaze for the first time, refusing to look away from the mess his face had become.

“Marie ...” he said, coming out like a sigh.

And then he fell over.

Never to rise again.

SEVEN

Annalise held the address in one hand and the gun in the other. She looked up at the warehouse in front of her, and it made her feel small.

She was covered in dirt, having spent all night burying Cliffy on the hill. She didn’t want him to end up like one of the bodies littering the streets. Tears streaked the dirty face beneath her mask.

After going through Cliffy’s things, she found the safe deposit box information. A small, nowhere town in Arizona. The box seemed to be in her name, just as he promised. She just had to get there.

But first she had a job to do.

Leon Reid was on the other side of this door, and she couldn’t leave town until he was dead. She didn’t doubt that she had what it took to kill him, but she also knew it was a choice. Was Cliffy right? Could just one pull of the trigger determine the rest of her life? She didn’t care. If that’s what it takes, so be it. She knew she had to do it. She had to finish it. For her mom. For Cliffy. For whatever weird one-night love affair they had.

Annalise was surprised to find that the door opened on its own.

She walked in, gun held high.

The warehouse was empty, ravaged and turned upside down. Was she too late?

Then she heard it, the faintest meow. It was coming from a door at the back of the room.

She made her way towards it. Another meow.

She put her hand on the door and swung it open, gun at the ready.

Annalise jumped as a cat ran past her, but she kept her attention on what greeted her.

There sat Leon Reid.

Or what was left of him. His skin now falling off his bones, it looked like he’d been dead for a week. Succumbed to the virus like so many others. He died alone.

Annalise exited the building and pulled off her mask. She threw up on the ground and sank to her knees, tears pouring from her eyes.

The cat rubbed its face on Annalise’s arm. She smiled and scooped it up.

“You wanna come home with me?” she asked.

Meow.

“How do you like the name Cliffy?”

The cat purred in her arms as Annalise coughed a single cough.

If you wanna pick up a copy of After the Fall (with nearly 300 pages of incredible post-apocalyptic short stories, poems, art, and comics!), it’s GORGEOUS and feels phenomenal in your hands and is now available on the Mirror Box store for only $20 HERE.