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Black Plague



Estimated reading time — 4 minutes

I stood where the bronze sand and blue water met, creating a seamless border that extended south for as far as I could see and on the north side disappeared beyond the formidable sandstone cliffs. The Sun on the horizon of the ocean was setting quickly, tinting the water a brilliant gold. Once it dipped out of sight beneath the surface of the sea, two others would remain.

Three brilliant celestial bodies in the sky could not fulfill the void left by our long forgotten centre of the Solar system. I buried my toes in the blistering sand trying not to flinch, blinking hard against the piercing glare that bounced off the water surface.

Each day in this part of the world was equal to two hundred and fifty two earth days. The time was soon approaching now when the temperature would spike beyond tolerable limits and the heat would get strong enough to boil the flesh from our bodies.

I had witnessed two nights and two days in total, this being my third. We were a team of explorers, never staying in one place more than an E-week. The E signifying earth. The campers had their own communities. They were willing to settle and to live with whatever they were blessed with on the spot. We were not.

I scoffed at the idea that some idiot had once referred to the planet as habitable. I started to trudge up the coastline, away from our encampment, the sand getting hotter every second, careful to steer clear of the range of the waves and it’s spray.

This liquid resembled the stuff of life. Every physical trait appeared similar, but we knew better what it was. A lot of sacrifices had been made by the ignorant before we learned better. This sprawling expanse of ocean was not water, but thousands of square miles of vicious acid.

The forty first survivor pod had accidently missed its designated landing spot and instead landed inside the ocean, almost a mile off shore. The steel compartment had not been designed to navigate through water and definitely stood no match against the malevolent acid which ate through it. The pod, along with its two dozen survivors, was chemically disbanded within less than Twenty-four hours.

Scouts had been dispatched almost three E-weeks ago to assess the landscape and consider locations in which we could escape the impending heat wave. I expected them back any E-day now, thus I had taken to spending a lot of time on the beach.

The scorching Suns beat down upon me and I made sure to keep myself hydrated. I was wearing a makeshift turban to prevent heatstroke. The horizon shimmered before my eyes and I considered departing back to the cave for a while to cool down, when suddenly, in the South, a speck became perceptible to my eyes through the rough haze.

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I squinted, trying to ascertain whether I was mistaken but it soon became apparent that I wasn’t. There were three distinct specks now and they were growing larger every minute. We had dispatched six scouts to different locations but they were all supposed to meet up at an agreed upon rendezvous zone and return collectively to home base. We had not lost a scout for almost a whole world day, which was two-hundred-and-fifty-two Earth days.

As it was, the sight of only three, instead of six figures rolling down the desert landscape made my heart lodge in my windpipe. I kept standing. the adrenaline in my system would not let me sit. My throat was getting dry and my lips parched beyond belief.

Twenty minutes later, the approaching figures converged and the signal went up. Apparently they had just spotted me. The signal was a green flag, only to be raised in cases of emergency. There was no mistaking that green cloth fluttering in the menacing wind almost two miles away.

There was a moment of hesitation from my end but with a sudden bout of strength, I turned on my heels and sprinted in the opposite direction. They needed help. From what or who, I did not know. I ran as fast as I could, ignoring the jabs of pain as I stepped on small stones and rocks.

Our cave was located in a very discreet opening at the base of the rocky cliffs. The mouth of the cave was completely invisible to those who didn’t know where to look. From there it went down an incline and dipped deep into the ground. Hence it was way cooler than the outside.

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It was exceptionally roomy and further in transformed into a labyrinth with many intricate pathways. It was easy to get lost in there, hence our group had carefully marked their path with white arrows.

I broke into the main chamber with my lungs completely devoid of oxygen.

‘They’re back! They’re back!’ I croaked. My voice echoed inside the place that was taller and wider than a cathedral with charcoal black walls.
Every head in the hall turned to face me, with excitement on their faces. There were about fifty people in there.

‘But… something’s wrong. There’s only three. They raised the flag’

The jubilant excitement immediately turned to shock.

“What do you mean?’, said a voice from the throng.

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‘Come with me. Quick’

Accompanied by a dozen strong men, we raced back to the beach.

As we got near enough to the arriving party, I witnessed one of them collapse, as if the life had been sucked out of him. The other two didn’t stop to aid their companion but continued limping towards us. I could see now that they were heavily bent and almost on the verge of collapsing themselves.

Within minutes we reached them. But the moment I caught a glimpse of their faces, I froze in my tracks.
Their faces looked like they had been bleached.

‘We are all dead’, whispered the nearest one, in a voice that horrified me.

Credit: Salman Khattak

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15 thoughts on “Black Plague”

  1. I feel like the story ended way too early. The story was just starting to build and you cut it off. Why are they all dead? What happened to those 6? Lots left unanswered

  2. I loved this. I see a lot of complaints about your vocabulary usage, but I’d say everything you wrote (grammatically) was correct, so if that’s how you plan on writing then keep it up. Literally, the ONLY bitch I have about this, I just need more. I need a prequel, I need a sequel, and then I need all of it tripled in length. The base has been put down, I have pasta…. Now load it with sauce. LOTS of sauce. 6 / 10.

  3. The concept is interesting, but I felt like I was thrown into the middle of a novel. The author did the best they could to orient the reader to the world he/she had created but there was way too much take in too little space.

    Also, how did they keep track of earth weeks? I might be getting hung up on a really minor detail, I just couldn’t figure out how or why they would bother tracking things in earth weeks when a single day on this planet was 252 earth days. It was an interesting idea but it doesn’t seem practical to stick to an arbitrary measure of time on a world where earth days and earth weeks fail to denote any significant passage of time on the new planet.

    1. I think the author was just trying to keep everything shown in a way that we as the readers would be able to understand. We all know what a 24 hr day is, so the computing is easy. Also, since they’re explaining in earth related terms, most of the ships’ functions *should* run off of a standard earth clock / calendar system. That’s how I assumed it in my head anyway.

  4. I have mixed feelings about this one. First of all, it’s a really cool idea to build on. Scifi-pasta can be really good, and this one have a couple of baselines already laid out. Three suns, long stretches of time with heat and light, acid oceans. Some sort of plague that threatens the peoples existence on the planet. All good things to build a story around. But the way it was written… fancy words dont make a story. Writing in words that people acctually use is a much safer way to make the readers able to truly understand the story, without having to think long and hard to understand what the previous scentence was trying to say.

    Write simpler. Stay on that weird planet and expand. But cut the high and mighty wording.

  5. Cool! Love the idea of human inhabiting a different planet and all that. Wish it was longer though with a little more explanation about this “plague”. But I think that would kind of ruin the ending. And if the three people that came back knew they were infecting with something and going to die, why did they want people to come help them? That would just help to infect everyone else.
    Anyway, I like it. I can see why others gave it bad ratings but this is my personal cup of tea :)

  6. Why are they all dead? Were they dead all along? There is so much to this story that isn’t explained to help develop the story. Why are they on the planet? Was there a crash? This needs more information.

  7. Ƥуяσмαηιαc

    The wording is good, it gives a vibe. But let’s be honest, i doubt you’ll get a lot of good from that. The story is not quite solid, i couldn’t get into it. Seemed a little dull, maybe because of your vocabulary. Either that, or you didn’t think it out.
    5/10.

  8. It looked like you used the thesaurus a lot without understand the context.Moreover the reactions of the characters to situations seemed unreal. Keep it simple I would say.

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