Rockets and Ray Guns - An Anthology of Sci-fi short stories

My Day at the Beach - Fire from the Sky

It was a strange sort of counterpoint; hearing the lapping waves on the shore in between the snarls from the sky announcing yet another piece of the moon falling into the atmosphere. He took a hit of Trim and looked up in time to see a particularly large piece begin its descent, wreathed in a cocoon of superheated plasma, the flames ranging from pale translucence to brilliant orange and yellow.

"You know that stuff will kill you," a dolphin said, sticking its head out of the waves ten meters out to say.

He glanced at it and smirked.

"Like rock falling from the sky won't?" he asked, his voice sounding like he had huffed helium, thanks to the Trim.

"End of the world probably isn't the best time to be injecting a nanite-enabled neuro-narcotic," a rock crab pointed out in a gravelly voice as it traipsed past his sandaled foot.

"Who are you? My mother?" He dismissed the crab with a wave of his hand. "Besides, the end of everything sounds like the perfect time to be injecting." And he illustrated his point by taking another shot of the potent drug, pressing the hypo against his carotid and letting the auto-injector do the rest.

Looking up, he watched as the sky changed from red-touched orange to lavender and pink.

"Mmm, cotton candy," he murmured. "The best thing for a day at the beach!"

He was still staring into the sky when there was a crunch of shod boots against the gravel that marked the beach's edge.

"You're not thinking of drowning yourself, are you, Trimtop?" a hard voice asked.

"In cotton candy, maybe," he dreamily replied. He gestured at the sky.

"Isn't it beautiful?"

"The moon dying ain't my idea of beauty, pal," the voice grated. "Why aren't you in a shelter? Rock is falling from the sky. One could drop on you."

"Or I could die when my shelter collapsed, thanks to the gravity flux triggered by the moon's destruction," he quickly countered. He looked over his shoulder at the pair of men standing on the beach's edge. Dressed in paramilitary gear and sporting law enforcement flashes on their shoulders, they were obviously part of Emergency Services out of the city, rounding up strays like him and getting them to safety.

"If this is to be my last day, I'd rather spend it on the beach," he finished with a thin smile.

"Ident," the other cop said after a confused pause. 

Sighing, he held up his hand, the back facing the cops. Holding out a small scanner, the one cop sent a beam of light over the back of his hand, the location of his ID chip.

"What, ... Doctor Isen??" The cop looked up at him, stunned eyes staring at him from beneath his helmet visor. "Aren't you the one that, ...?"

The harsh discharge of a stunner interrupted the rest as it threw him roughly back. The other cop swore and clawed for his sidearm, only to get the second blast in the chest.

Satisfied that the interruption was dealt with, Isen turned back to the ocean just as another  large chunk splashed in, triggering a tsunami. Watching it grow as it raced towards him, he smiled.

"Ah, such a nice day to be at the beach!"