This is not an official entry - just a wee tribute to the current short story writers contest (The RAIN [2018])
If you like Short Stories and would like to see more - or maybe even contribute a story to the contest yourself...
HERE is a LINK to the current contest Enjoy!
I'd always known about how life (as we know it) depends on water, but I'd never really put any thought into it until after the
great drought of '28.
"Global Warming" they'd said.
"Man's relentless push for Industrialisation"... pollution, depletion of our protective atmosphere, the wastage of our natural resources...
"Inevitable"... despite all of the green taxes and wind turbines.
And now it was all too late.
The Lakes and Rivers had run dry, the great seas vastly reduced and too salty & full of plastic to be of much use.
Crops had failed under the searing heat. The animals - died off by the million.
Only the coming of The Rain could have saved us... it was our last and only chance.
The scientists had worked and toiled in their research facilities behind their triple-layer security systems.
They PROMISED us that the RAIN would come, and that life would go on... but it never did.
Just a handful of us remained now, and our stores of bottled water and canned food had almost gone.
Our last hope; a desperate mission to get into the research facility and see for ourselves just how close the scientists had come to bringing the Rain
before they too succumbed to the inevitable death and desiccation.
One by one, the automated defense systems picked us off but we fought on... and now, here at last we stood in front of just one last door.
We thought it would be a time of hope, maybe even of joy - to be here with just a simple door between us and our possible salvation, but now the
sudden realisation brings us meekly to our knees in tears of despair.
It's over, all is lost, and all because of the 4 seemingly innocuous letters on that door...
R. A. I. N.
The rain that would save us.
THE rain that the scientists had been working on bringing, to safeguard the future of life itself on Earth.
But now we know the direst, ugliest of truths... It was never going to safeguard OUR future - not an organic Human future...