end of the world and i feel fine

I pressed my hand up against they high-resin polymer window, one of hundreds that honeycombed over me comprising my bio-dome.  It still felt cool, though through it I could see the firestorm whirling around outside.  I stepped back from the window and walked across the complex to the shed where I kept the CO2 scrubbers and water treatment machines.  I had a feeling that the burn would continue until the surface of the earth was rubbed clean of all surface life, both the feeble minded twerps that ignored my warnings as well as my green friends that I struggled to protect for all of those years.

Sure, they listened in the end.  I can smile now at the memory of them beating against my door, trying to turn their desire to get in into the means to achieve that goal ... but of course, the door held.  I designed it that way.  After all, it was designed to withstand all of this hellfire, but in the moment it was terrifying.  What if it hadn't held, what if their stupidity doomed me to their fate as well, what if ... no use concerning myself with that now.  It had held.  It held and it proved once and for all that I was right and they were not.

I paused to feel the trunk of the last oak tree on the planet.  In my other hand I held a small remote control that was tied into everything that made this pod function: power, lights, sprinklers ... everything.  Soon the fires will stop and the natural rains will return.  The world will cool again and then the grass and the trees will flourish.  Nature finds a way.  I wonder if anyone else completed their pods before the disasters came?  I'm not a soulless person, I don't wish ill of my fellow human ... well, not all of them.  The righteous and the prepared should be fine, they are the ones who had the intelligence to heed the signs.  Of course, I'm also not too proud to say that the way things went down didn't surprise me a little as well.  I can admit when I'm wrong, or in this case, only partially right.  I didn't see this apocalypse occurring from more than one battlefront.  I was prepared for Mother Earth's revenge, we've hurt her so much all of these years that it was only a matter of time before she got tired of it and unleashed her fury:  erupting the volcanos, ripping herself open to swallow those that would kill her.  I was prepared for that.  I wasn't prepared for the spaceship that preceded it (those idiots really believed that the creatures piloting the crafts were benevolent angels that would take them on a journey of the stars, even waved them in with flashlights and hippie music--they deserved to be the first devoured).  Those creatures worried me as the pounded away on my dome, wanting to devour me the same way.  Awful things really.

So first came the aliens.  Then came the volcanos and the earthquakes.  And now things seem to have quieted down.  Just the burning.  Don't hear any planes flying over anymore, don't hear those creatures outside.

Is that a cracking sound?  Are my windows giving out?  I circle around, cursing the contractors that I had to go through to get this place built.  Did one of them screw me over?  Low ball me?  I search and can't find the source.  Odd.  But the sound continues.  I track it back to the center of the compound, by the tree.  Housing unit to my left, treatment/ scrubbing shed to my right, the ammunition bunker behind me ... there is nothing here.  Nothing that could be making that sound.  Nothing ... on the ground, but under it.  I sit down so that I can feel the the grass on my legs and my feet, so that I can feel the rumbling under me.

My initial designs had been for a sphere, the bottom half to be buried under the ground.  I built the superstructure, the metal grid all the way around, but I only went part way under with the panels ... I didn't think I'd need to go deeper.  I lay back and looked at the ashen sky above.  The tentacles pushed through the sod near the tree and pulled the creature up and through.  Space monsters, I didn't expect them.  Who knew that they would be burrowers as well.  Smart as I was to know that the only way to wait out the hellfire and rebirth was in a pod.  The tentacle wrapped itself around my leg and I could feel the thousand little knives grip into my flesh.  The sandpaper muscle squeezed and began to pull me.  I looked up into its devil face and mouth full of teeth.  Smart as me.  Nearly.  I smiled as it pulled me into it's mouth and bite down.  I smiled as I pushed the button on the small remote control, the button connected to the small nuclear device I had in my ammunition shed (unlimited power supply, plus a nifty little contingency plan).  I smiled as the world around me went white.

Nearly as smart as me.  But not quite.