Beacon
Apocalyptic fiction: if there was one man to save us all, what would he be like?
“Keep the warmth of the sun in your heart”
Robert Muller, a UN diplomat
The old lighthouse wasn’t haunted, but it was hiding something far more dangerous.
Himself.
Snow, twilight, and despair surrounded him as John fought to cover the last fifty feet separating him from the base of the ancient structure. His legs plunged into lakes of fire that seemed to open beneath him with every step on the ice, yet he managed to pull himself out and press forward to the next patch.
Fire and ice, fire and ice — go, go, go. It’s your only chance. It’s humanity’s only chance.
On all fours, he crawled up the corroded staircase, the grayish iron melting beneath him. His heartbeat thudded like a time bomb: click, click, click — each beat edging closer to eternal damnation…
…or salvation…
In the keeper’s ruined quarters, he spotted a radio — an ancient relic, its rusted frame half-buried under a roof caved in by snow and ashen gray dust. John hadn’t seen such radios since he was a child. His father used one at work — and not only that, there had been a shiny blue uniform, a gun, and handcuffs, too.
“How many bad guys did you catch today, Dad?” little John would ask, his eyes wide with admiration when his father came home, shedding the weight of police glamour with a heavy, room-shattering sigh.
“Well, let’s just say I made the world one ray of sunlight brighter,” Dad would reply, tousling his son’s hair.
If only you’d stayed alive, Dad… What would you say about what became of your son?
John grabbed the radio, twisted the giant, rusty knob, and caught a faint buzzing.
He closed his eyes for a moment.
Faces flashed through his mind — people. Hundreds of people on the brink of death, huddled together in half-ruined houses in a world colder than an old man’s worst nightmare. A world without electricity, without living plants, and with barely surviving animals. A world where the sun was permanently hidden behind a veil of ash from erupted volcanoes, mingled with snow, clouds, and endless mist.
In this desolate world, once the canned food from before the asteroid impact was gone, humanity turned to hunting for survival. But the animals were dying out. And the corpses of trees, chopped and burned for warmth, were vanishing, too.
For three years, John roamed the frozen wasteland. At first, he wore only frayed jeans and a light sports shirt. By the end, he had nothing on, his body’s intense heat melting every piece of fabric he tried to put on.
In the beginning, he walked from place to place, touching people, and sharing with them the warmth that emanated from a mysterious source deep within him. Once infused with his warmth, people could retain it for weeks, passing it on to others in need.
John had saved thousands of people — hundreds of colonies — from freezing to death.
Touched by him, the last struggling plants had sprouted leaves again, their shriveled surfaces coming alive to photosynthesize in the faint light that broke through the ash clouds.
He had saved thousands of people — hundreds of colonies — from starving.
John opened his eyes. The radio loomed before him, a massive gray box from a time long gone — a time when he was just a normal person, not a freak transformed by the meteor’s fallout. Whatever he’d caught from the fallen rock had mutated his genes, turning him into a walking light bulb.
“Hello?” he rasped, his voice hoarse. His throat burned, his entire body aflame. Every breath felt like inhaling ice and exhaling fire.
And his heart…
…click, click, click…
“Is there anybody there, on the West Coast? Can you hear me? Hello?”
“John?” A faint voice crackled through the static, distant yet painfully familiar.
Tears streamed down John’s cheeks, their glow like molten metal. They burned his flesh in fiery streaks, but he didn’t feel the pain.
“Andy!” he whispered, his voice trembling. “Andy, is that you?”
“Yes! It’s me! John, where are you? I thought… I thought we lost you.”
“It’s… I’m reaching the critical point, Andy. I think I’ve got an hour… maybe less. Listen — tell everyone to get out of there. Evacuate the West Coast as fast as you can. It’s going to be big… just like you said. I can feel it. I can feel it inside me.”
As he spoke, John glanced down. The iron floor beneath him had started to warp and sizzle, the heat from his body eating away at it. He stepped aside, seeking another stable spot. He had to hold out here as long as he could.
“Where are you, John?”
“At the Lighthouse. The one on the far side of the sea strait. Don’t… don’t ask me how I got here. I think I turned the sea into a lake of fire. The devils must be throwing a party there right now.”
A faint laugh crackled over the radio, followed by a soft voice,
“So… it’s all in your hands now, Beacon. You can either save humanity or completely destroy it.”
“You told me we couldn’t know what would happen,” John whispered, “but that we should try anyway.”
“Yes, I did.” A sigh came through the static.
Andrew Martin had been a prominent scientist before the Catastrophe, hard-edged and uncompromising in his youth but visibly softened in middle age. John had met him by chance at one of the colonies when he first realized that every connection he made with another person didn’t just share warmth — it stoked the fire inside him.
In the last three months, John’s body temperature had risen to such extremes that he’d become dangerous to others. Anything he approached, touched, or lingered near melted or ignited. The heat was relentless, a process that, once set in motion, couldn’t be stopped.
John was now a living bomb, more powerful than any nuclear weapon, on the verge of…
(click, click, click)
…so very soon…
…detonation.
“You could destroy what’s left of humanity,” Andy repeated, his voice cracking. “Or you could shift the Earth back to its proper axis, disperse the ash, and restore the climate.”
“You didn’t kill me when you had the chance,” John was still whispering. He noticed that the radio had begun to glow from the heat of his breath alone. “You took that risk. Why?”
“Because we’re already dead,” Andy replied, his tears almost visible in the breaks in his voice. “In ten, twenty years, we’ll all be gone anyway. And because…” His grief seemed to spill through the radio, a fragile blue current mixing with the red glow of heat. “Because I care for you, man!”
“I care for you, too,” John’s voice was so faint now that Andy probably didn’t hear him. The signal faded, crackling into nothingness, as the radio melted into a heap of red lava.
John crawled across the keeper’s quarters, his hands and knees leaving smoldering holes in the floorboards. Every breath was a gasp, his insides scorched by the unbearable heat. His stomach — pain. His bowels — pain. His kidneys — pain. His lungs — pain.
His heart.
Click. Click. Click.
Oh God. Oh God.
Faster. Faster. Faster.
The floor beneath him gave way, and John fell.
He plunged through the cracking structure, spiraling down, down, down, into a fiery eternity. His father’s words echoed in his mind as the world became fire and light:
“I know you’ll be the true Beacon, son. Not me. I was just the path. You’re the traveler.”
Hell
and heaven
erupted.
“What happened, Mommy?” The little boy pointed toward the green forest, vibrant and alive. Branches heavy with fruit swayed gently, furry creatures darted through the underbrush, and warm streams leaped in rhythmic splashes, as though nature itself had found its dance. “Why did the trees come back? Why is it warm again?”
The woman knelt, pulling her son close, her gaze lifting to the clear blue sky. The sun, a hot golden sphere, hung in the middle, its edges shimmering as though melting, dripping radiant drops into the pristine atmosphere of the restored Earth.
“Because there was a man with a warm heart,” she said, a big smile spreading across her face. “So warm, he could share that warmth with others. But he didn’t want to do it for just a few people or plants — he wanted to do it for the entire Earth. He didn’t know if he could, but he gave his life trying.”
“And it worked?” The boy’s wide eyes sparkled.
The woman ran her fingers gently through his soft hair.
“Yes, my love,” she whispered. “It worked.”
The story was originally published on Medium, in First Line Fiction
Is it weird that I want to be alone in a frozen wasteland? Maybe. 😁
This was an excellent read.
"In the last three months, John’s body temperature had risen to such extremes that he’d become dangerous to others."
It's been so cold here in New Hampshire this winter, I've been having this same fantasy myself-- too bad it's not working... 🥶
Great tale, as is your custom! 👍