The Mammoth Book of Apocalyptic SF - Mike Ashley [52]
"Who knows? Maybe it's a good thing. Cleansing."
"You think?"
"Who knows? Wash the whole world away, we'll start again. Rain's okay by me."
"Me, too," she said, and now she thought again of the fragment of radio program. Is God out there? the host had wanted to know. And is He angry?
She is, the woman had replied. She is.
Melissa's hand stole over her belly, where the baby, her baby, had grown and died. Abruptly, the crazed logic of the idea, its simple clarity and beauty, seized her up: this was the world they had made, she thought, men like Stuart, this world of machines and noise, this world of simple tasteless things. This is the world that is being washed away. Their world.
Outside, Stuart began to blow the horn. The sound came to her, discordant, importunate. Melissa glanced out at the Jeep, at Stuart, impatient behind the steering wheel, anxious to be off, anxious to get to higher ground. Three rooms in the mountains, just three. She and Stuart and all about them the imprisoning rain. It fell still, beyond the roof over the fuel islands, blowing out of the sky in sheets, dancing against the pavement, chasing neon reflections of the Texaco sign across black puddles.
"Lady? You okay? Miss?"
"Missus," she said, out of habit. She turned to face him.
"You okay?"
"I'm fine, just distracted that's all."
The horn blew again.
"Nice guy."
"Not really. He tries to be, sometimes."
The horn again. Impatiently.
"You better go."
"Yeah." She dug in her purse for money.
"Forget it. Like it means anything now, right?"
She hesitated. "Thanks, then."
"You're welcome. Be careful. Who knows what the roads are like in the mountains."
She nodded and stepped out into moist air. Stuart had gotten out of the Jeep. He stood by the open door, his flesh orange and spongy beneath the streetlights, his arms crossed against his chest. He stared at her impatiently, beyond him only darkness, only rain. Water fell from the night sky, against the gleaming pavement, the buildings, the shining neon Texaco sign. Against everything, washing it all away.
"Hurry up," Stuart said.
And she said, without even realizing she was going to say it, "I'm not coming. You go ahead." When she said it, she was suffused suddenly with warmth and excitement and life, a sensation of release, as if a hard knot of emotion, drawn tight in her chest through long years, had suddenly loosened.
"What?" Stuart said. "What are you talking about?"
Melissa didn't answer. She walked past Stuart and the Jeep, stopping at the edge of the canopy that sheltered the fuel islands. She shrugged out of the raincoat, let it drop to the pavement behind her. Ignoring Stuart, she lined up the tips of her toes against the hard clear edge of the pavement where it was wet, where the roof left off and the rain began.
Stuart said, "Melissa? Melissa?"
But Melissa didn't answer. She stepped out into a world that was ending, into a gently falling rain. It poured down over her, cool and refreshing against her cheeks and lips and hair, caressing her with the hands of a lover.
THE FLOOD
Linda Nagata
Linda Nagata lives in Hawaii where she is currently a programmer of online database applications. She produced a loosely connected series of novels developing concepts of nanotechnology of which The Bohr Maker (1995) won the Locus Award as that year's best first novel. The following enigmatic story, published in 1998, has haunted me since I first read it. It contains several compelling images that cloak the horrors of a global deluge into a mystical allegory.
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MIKE LAY AWAKE in the night on a bed of damp leaves in the towering shelter of a eucalyptus grove, listening to the pounding surf. His young wife Holly slept on the ground beside him, clutching their thin blanket to her chin, her legs half-tangled with his. He rested his hand lightly on her rib cage, feeling her breathe.
Nights were the worst. At night he couldn't see