Photo credit: Anurag Bakhshi
Kurt stood on the cliff overlooking the tiny Southern California. It was 30 miles west of Santa Barbara and it was all his.
“It looks so peaceful from up here,” he said just to hear something besides the wind. Even the gulls and squirrels were gone, having deserted this doomed land if they could or otherwise having died, just like all the people.
He rubbed his left hand over his short-cropped gray and white hair. “Well, guess I’d better get to it while I still have daylight.”
He knew the National Guard had sealed off everything between Santa Maria and Ventura north and south, and Bakersfield to the east. No one would imagine anyone would want to stay in the danger zone with them, but Kurt did. His family was down there, what was left of them, and now that he’d wired the whole place to blow, he’d exterminate the last of the infected. He wasn’t planning to escape. His wife, kids, grandkids were turned into something like zombies or vampires by the mutant virus. Only he was immune. Standing in town with his back to the ocean, he pressed the remote and the next California wildfire began.
I wrote this for the Sunday Photo Fiction challenge hosted by Susan. The idea is to use the image above as the prompt for crafting a piece of flash fiction no more than 200 words long. My word count is 198.
I chose this theme for no particular reason other than it was what popped into my head. Although the limited word count didn’t allow for it, I set my tale in the small southern California town of Gaviota. I’m sure it doesn’t look like the image above, but I needed a location that was small and isolated.
To read other stories based on the prompt, visit InLinkz.com.
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I only hope a burn is enough to put it asunder. Good man, though willing to die for the well being of others.
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It was as much because of despair as anything else. This entire family had become monsters and the only way to save them was by exterminating them. After that, he wouldn’t have much to live for anyway.
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A touching tale of sacrifice.
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Sometimes it just takes one brave hero. Nice one James.
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Thanks, Iain.
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A tough call, one that no one would ever want to take. The pic was taken in a small village called Jardim Do Mar on the Madeira Islands in Portugal, btw, since I know you like knowing the settings of these prompt pics 🙂
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I figured it probably wasn’t anywhere in California. If I’d have known where the photo was taken, the story might have ended up in a very different place.
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Can Kurt kill a mutant virus by wildfire? I doubt.
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The carriers.
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Such drastic measures are sometimes unavoidable. Excellent James.
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Thanks, Keith.
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Life is difficult.
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Yes, it can be.
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