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A Tale of the Flashback
Table of Contents
Title Page
02:28 Hours to Yuma: A Tale of the Flashback
A Tale of the Flashback | by | Wayne Kyle Spitzer
A Tale of the Flashback
The Story Previous ...
72 HOURS TO ANIMAL
Some Other Tales from the Flashback ...
THE WINE DARK EARTH
THE WINE DARK PASSAGE
URBAN DECAY
THE DREAMING CITY
THIS SAVAGE AND BEAUTIFUL NIGHT
FOR A DEVIL HAS FALLEN FROM THE SKY
THE WAR-TORN HILLS OF EARTH
OTHER BOOKS BY THE AUTHOR
72 Hours to Animal
The Wine-Dark Passage
Legends of the Flashback, Books 1-3
X-Ray Rider and Other Dark Rites of Passage
The Devil Drives a ’66 and Other Stories
The Place: Stories from the Region Between
The Witch-Doctor Diaries
Beyond the Black Curtain
Napoleon
A Tale of the Flashback
by
Wayne Kyle Spitzer
Hobb’s End Books • A Division of ACME Sprockets & Visions, Inc.
Copyright © 2025 by Wayne Kyle Spitzer. All Rights Reserved. Published by Hobb’s End Books, a division of ACME Sprockets & Visions. Cover design Copyright © 2025 by Wayne Kyle Spitzer. Please direct all inquiries to: HobbsEndBooks@yahoo.com
All characters appearing in this work are fictitious. Any resemblance to real persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental. This book contains material protected under International and Federal Copyright Laws and Treaties. Any unauthorized reprint or use of this book is prohibited. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system without express written permission from the author. This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
For my sweetheart, Trinh. And for my father.
Author’s Note on the Flashback Stories
These are stories of the Flashback, the time-storm that vanished most the world’s population and returned the earth to primordia, and thus are all connected. What they are not are chapters in a novel—even though they follow an approximate sequence and all come together in the end (and along the way). All of which is my way of saying that if you treat this book like a novel you will almost certainly be disappointed. If, on the other hand, you are able to take these stories as they were intended; i.e., separate but overlapping tales which share the same universe and eventually merge—I think you’ll enjoy reading them as much as I enjoyed writing them (in what has been a 30-year passion project). Either way, know this: I’ve given you my very best. Take heart, take care, and as always, thanks for reading.
—WKS
A Tale of the Flashback
The dream had ended much as it had begun—with murder; the only difference being that it had ended with the girl being set ablaze on the roof of the Saveco instead of being extracted from her on the abortion table. And yet the beeping of the heart monitor persisted, at least, until Zola’s eyes snapped open and she realized the sound was not, in fact, a part of her dream but rather the Decision Height indicator flashing incessantly—meaning the autopilot had done its job and she was on a glidepath into Yuma.
Yuma with its abundantly-supplied (and quite probably mythical) FEMA camp and haunted, sallow-eyed refugees from the Flashback: the very place they’d been headed before a stopover in Phoenix had cost everyone their lives—everyone, that is, save Zola. A place which, according to the atlas, had a population of some 95,000—but which seemed little more than a suburban hamlet from the air. A place which didn’t come anywhere near meeting the size and odometer requirements needed to actually be Yuma.
She watched as the helicopter’s shadow undulated over what appeared to be the town’s fire station—as well as the dead sauropod lying in its parking lot—scanning for large predators, identifying powerlines—before circling back and pitching up to neutral, reducing collective, settling onto the tarmac even as dust billowed and a cloud of pterodactyls exploded up from the corpse.
She killed the engine, which whined and cycled down like an electrical turbine, as she stared at the station’s overgrown pediment—until the blades of the gray MD520 Notar had come to a complete stop.
ORACLE FIRE DEPT.
Station One
She frowned.
Oracle. A good 100+ miles southeast of Phoenix—and in pretty much the exact opposite direction of Yuma.
She reached for the atlas but didn’t open it, just held it in her lap as she peered at the sky and the Aurora Borealis-like curtain of light suspended there—less visible in the daylight but still predominantly red, angry, as it had been the night before. Still hanging lower than usual so that she’d had to fly straight through it even as her compass and altimeter spun like roulette wheels. Still full of inexplicable lights.
Yes, well. If the strange atmospheric phenomenon, which seemed to be everywhere, had been responsible for scrambling Time itself, then it was certainly capable of confusing the autopilot, even the new Genesys
She opened the atlas to the mark and ran a fingertip along the now worn paper. Okay. So. First things first. Northwest to Casa Grande to top off on fuel—she knew there was an airport there, a fairly big one, if she recalled correctly—then follow Interstate 8 all the way to Yuma. About 02:28 hours total from Casa Grande; pretty much the same as from Phoenix. She looked through the chopper’s side window at the sauropod’s bloody remains and the few carrion birds that had been brave enough to return.
Easy now. You’ve got this.
But of course, she “had” no such thing. At least not so long as she remained here, on the ground, undistracted by the helicopter’s rotors, unentertained by the Notar’s CD player. Not so long as she could hear the wind coursing through the fronds and the pterodactyls pecking and swallowing their meal. Nor, for that matter, while fully three quarters of the human population remained vanished—just gone—or each place visited remained a perfect carbon copy of the last: haunted, empty, lost. Places tenanted only by the beasts and the lizard brains of beasts—by prehistoric plants and the souls of prehistoric plants. By melancholy and despair and bare, bleak hopelessness, even, just perhaps, by the ghosts of all the people who had—
She pressed the ‘start’ button and then rotated the throttle, causing the engine to leap up and the rotors to begin turning.
Casa Grande. Fuel. Maybe even some food. And then 02:28 hours to Yuma.
And she climbed.
The truth is she wasn’t sure just what the strange, almost crystalline structure—what with its multitude of hexagonal windows, all of them backlit by the setting sun, and its two hemispherical domes, one to either side—even was, never mind what it could possibly be doing sprawled out here in the middle of the desert. All she knew was that she could have sworn its lights had been on when she first noticed it—so much so that she found herself scanning the area carefully even as she passed it over, not that such scrutiny turned out to be needed; for she could clearly see a woman, or possibly just a girl, waving up at her from the structure’s shadow. Waving up at her and jumping up and down.
A woman, or possibly just a girl, that she promptly ignored, having no intention of repeating the mistakes of the last 24 hours. A woman or girl who seemed in good health and would sadly have to find her own way, regardless of the abortionist’s table or the “lost” child in Phoenix or the dreams that dogged Zola with every sleeping breath. Because the fact remained that had she not insisted on rescuing the girl, the others—Dan, Redhorn, Pappy, all those children, for Christ’s sake—would still be alive. The fact remained that it wasn’t the Flashback that had killed them but Zola herself and the decisions she’d thought sound and sane at the time. Decisions she didn’t trust herself to ever make again; not even as she swung the chopper around in a wide arc and headed back to the compound—or whatever it was.
Not even as she set the helicopter down in the overgrown parking lot, the bushes of which rattled and shook, and the girl—yes, the girl, who couldn’t have been more than, say, eleven, came running. Running and shouting and crowding the hatch while Zola powered everything down and hoped she’d made the right decision—hoped she hadn’t blundered, like the last time, into a perfect trap. Hoped and prayed as she cracked her window and said, simply: “It’s gonna be okay—it’s all right. Give me a minute.” She took off her helmet and unbuckled her harness. “Watch your head.”
And then she was out and the girl had driven herself into her arms—a nice moment, thought Zola, if she hadn’t looked over the youngster’s shoulder and saw a man standing in the doorway to what she now realized was essentially a giant terrarium, an entire world closed in upon itself, a biosphere.
The biosphere, she realized, having read about it years ago. Biosphere 2, as they’d called it (she’d never understood why); that grand experiment in self-sufficiency and sustainability in which eight so-called biospherians had been sealed up inside its confines and kept there for two years in the hopes of better understanding what it would take to col onize other worlds. An experiment, she thought she remembered, that had ended in failure and later been sold to the University of Arizona for use as a research facility.
None of which changed the fact that she was suddenly facing a strange (and strangely dressed, considering he wore the red coveralls favored by the original biospherians) and very intense-looking—no, scratch that, just plain angry—man; nor did she have any way of defending herself, not even the flare gun Dan kept under the seat but which she’d neglected to bring out of the helicopter.
“Look, I’m not looking for any—”
“Amelia,” said the man gruffly (though not, oddly enough, crudely). He indicated the door with a jerk of his head. “Go inside.”
“But I don’t even know her name ye—”
“I said go inside.” His voice was both harsh and strangely mellifluent. “And turn the lights back on; there’s no point in hiding now.”
The girl—Amelia—moved to speak but seemed to think better of it. Neither Zola nor the man said anything as she huffed back toward the door and hurriedly squeezed past him.
The wind blew and somewhere an animal, a long-necked herbivore of the kind which had lain dead in Oracle, perhaps, bellowed its forlorn cry.
“You have to understand,” said the man. “We don’t get a lot of visitors out here, nor passersby.” He didn’t even leave the door. “But if you stopped because the girl was waving her arms at you, well,” He appeared almost to chuckle. “You’re the most exciting thing to happen since this—this Flashback, I’m sure.” When Zola didn’t respond to that, he said, “We can bring you out some food, if you’d like. Otherwise, there’s a FEMA camp in Yuma that may be of help. I wish I could offer you more but, well, my responsibility is to this biosphere and to my daughter—although not, I confess, always in that order.” He looked at her almost sheepishly. “It’s, ah, it’s something I’m working on.” He then did something wholly unexpected by approaching her quickly and with confidence—and yet not too quickly nor with too much confidence—and extending a hand. “I’m the caretaker, by the way. Donovan James.”
Zola didn’t even hesitate before accepting, although why she should be so accepting was a bit of a mystery. “Zola Skirata,” she said, and smiled. “Denver School of Flight.” —a stupid thing to say but she went with it. “And no, thanks, I am on my way to Yuma now. I just—” She hesitated, still shaking his hand. His eyes were the deepest, most mercurial reddish-brown she had ever seen. “I just saw your daughter and thought I better check it out.”
She heard herself giggle like an idiot before quickly withdrawing her hand. “I’m sure you must be busy,” she said— taking care to adjust her tone. “I’ve taken enough of your time already.”
He hesitated but seemed to agree, then surprised her again by reaching around and opening the Notar’s hatch for her. “Safe travels,” he said, as he guided her in with a hand on her back. “Meanwhile, I’ve got a father/daughter fence to mend.”
And that was that, or nearly so, as he secured the door firmly and gave it a little pat and they just looked at each other through the glass—that is, until she rolled down the window and said, “You know, Donovan: I think I might be able to help you with that father-daughter thing.” She added: “What’s it like in there, anyway?”
At which he just smiled—a warm, rakish, mercurial smile—and said, “Ah, hell. It’s not like she doesn’t already want to meet you.” And then he twisted the handle and re-opened her door. “Well then, that being the case I have just one thing to say ...” He made a frame with his thumbs and forefingers. “Dinner tour.”
And they went in.
“So there you have it,” concluded Donovan, “at least; that’s it in a nutshell. Biosphere 2. Because Earth itself is Biosphere One.”
He leaned against the wooden railing and looked down at the man-made ocean and coral reef, which had been lightscaped (presumably so it could be studied in the dark, which it now was).
“Seven distinct biomes, each completely self-contained: our humble human habitat; which you’ll see when we have dinner; the agricultural system, and then the five natural environs: fog desert, savannah grassland, mangrove wetlands, this wonderful ocean, and the last and largest, the rainforest, which you’ll see in a minute.”
He held a hand to his chest and took a deep breath—then let it out slowly, meditatively. “And then I’ll show you one of the lungs.”
Zola perked an eyebrow. “The lungs?”
He smiled warmly, disarmingly—she could tell he was enjoying this. “Well, they’re not currently active, and a lot of their elements, the breathable ceilings, for example, were replaced with cardboard substitutes years ago, but, yes, that is what they were called. The lungs are what equalized the pressure in the facility when the air expanded due to the Arizona sun. Remember: this was all built to be completely self-contained, so it's not like they could just open a window. At any rate, it hasn’t been self-contained for over two decades and is particularly compromised at the moment. I’ll explain more about that when—"
“Why at the moment?”
He paused, appearing reticent to answer. “Well, you’re here, for one. I mean, I didn’t want to actually say it. And for two, so are they.”
She shook her head slightly. “They? You mean there’s others? Why on earth didn’t—”
He placed a finger to her lips, which, to her surprise, she didn’t object to. “I think it might be better—if I just show you.”
He moved his finger and used it to indicate she should come—once, twice. Then he went to the faceted wall of the biome and gripped the door’s push bar.
“Do you have any weapons on you?”
She shook her head, confused.
“Then stay close. Real close. In fact, stay right here in the doorway.” He eased the door open, which squeaked and moaned. “I’ll see if I can get their attention.”
“Look, whatever it is, we don’t have to do it right now.” Her pulse had begun to quicken noticeably. “Seriously. I mean, I am quite literally starving and if I remember correctly you said there’d be—”
“Shhh.” He put a finger to his lips as he stepped out into the biome, which was huge, and which they looked down on from a kind of viewing platform. “I’ve observed them in the wild and trust me, they don’t attack until they are sure. We’re just going to check each other out, that’s all. Just a nice little meet and greet.”
Zola scanned the biome carefully, tracking left to right, past the fruit trees and ferns and a man-made mountain (which reminded her of Disneyland), but didn’t see anything.
“What exactly are we looking for?” she practically whispered.
“Look for colors that are too perfect, too vibrant, you’ll know it when you see them. It’s called chromatophores—the ability to change one’s coloration in order to better suit an environment. You’ll see it because the nanotyrannus’ cells tend to over-compensate at night, so they’ll stand out like a sore thumb once you know what to look for. Also pay particularly close attention to the caves and hallows, because they just love to hide there. You might even want to—wait a minute, wait a minute. Okay. Right there—between that instrument tower and the mountain. About two o’clock.”
She looked to where he’d indicated but didn’t at first see anything, that is until the large frond she was studying suddenly blinked and cocked its head, which caused her breath to hitch and for her to wonder how she’d missed it, because the eye was wild-cherry red.
“Thought it was fruit, I suppose,” she said, mostly to herself, and laughed nervously.
“There is no fruit,” said Donovan.
“What do you mean, there’s no ... But it’s all over the damn—”
But she could see that she was wrong and he was right, there was no fruit, no blinking wild cherries, no biome filled with fruit trees. There were just eyes—eyes staring out from caverns and hollows and from between jiggling fronds; eyes studying her with cool precision and unwavering intent; eyes looking on her not like a bird, which would have at least had to turn its head, but squarely, directly, with perfect binocular vision. Eyes triangulating her and studying her every move—that were long and tapered and reddish-brown, like Donovan’s. That were keen and pure and not multi-faceted, as the lights in the sky had been; but rather consistent and uniform and a deep, bloody red—as the sky was now.
