This is a piece of post-apocalyptic fiction that can be found in issue #69 of Cemetery Dance magazine. The nice thing about magazines is the illustrations, in this case by Chris Odgers. The bad thing is the small type. Miracles for The Damned, is an offbeat tale of the supernatural set two years after a plague called the Blood Wrack.
What I like about this story is the ignorance of the three survivors. They just don’t know what happened or why. They are also not functional as a unit. This is an astute element. Aboriginal populations who lose a high percentage of their population in a brief period [I think it is above 75%] suffer a kind of cultural death and the survivors have difficulty functioning on a social level.
There are three survivors: Kurt, a horny meathead; Tanya, a stuck-up beauty; and Mercer, a level-headed middle-aged cripple confined to a wheelchair. Their story is brief, disturbing and unfinished. After the last word the reader knows no more than the final survivor. That is the kind of mystery that appeals to me, the mystery that is worthy of the designation by virtue of maintaining an unresolved state.
