More Stories from the Twilight Zone by Carol Serling

spend as much of my days and nights as possible enjoying the sun, the sea, the women, the cognac. And the stars. Ah, the stars.”
    â€œSounds like a plan,” the FBI guy said wistfully.
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Infinitely small, self-replicating eating machines going about their singular business until nothing remains of our planet but another lonely rock tumbling in space. Just call it an anomaly in the progression of scientific ingenuity. Or, to put it another way—there are no limits to the perversity of human beings, and even the most brilliant among us are merely carbon-based fodder for the appetites of our own creations.

DEAD POST
BUMPER

Dean Wesley Smith

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    For your consideration, the desert-preserved remains of one Elliot Leiferman, successful businessman, world traveler, and husband. He had earned everything he felt he needed: a beautiful home in Malibu and all the money he could spend. Talk of the world ending annoyed him, nothing more. His world was orderly, well-planned, and in his control. And he planned on keeping it that way, no matter what his wife believed. What he didn’t plan on was an afternoon drive to the end of the world, and the edge of . . . the Twilight Zone.

    Elliot Leiferman: Summer 2016 near Death Valley
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    The dust and light sand swirled along the edge of the ancient road like a runner fleeing a threat, twisting in streamers on the dry desert wind, vanishing, then appearing a step or two later. The sagebrush whipped back and forth, its faint rustling quickly snapped away by the force of the hot wind and the empty nothingness of the desert. A fence of rusted wire and old wood ran ragged beside the road, sometimes upright, other times nothing more than a remnant of splinters mostly covered in sand.
    The road, gray with age, vanished under sand drifts and piles of dry sagebrush as it stretched into the distance. Nothing but dust and sand and waves of heat had traveled down it in a very long time.
    The rusting hulk of an old automobile rested on four flat tires,tipped slightly in a shallow ditch. One of its two doors hung open and the hood of the car was tucked against a still-upright fence post. The metal figure of a leaping wildcat adorned the hood, and the word JAGUAR in metal script rusted on faded blue paint.
    A man’s body sat behind the steering wheel, the skin mummified in the heat and dry air and constant wind, the old seat belt still holding the body in position. Dead eyes stared at the fence post against the hood of the car as if it were an insult to even the living.
    Dust swirled inside the car for a moment and then settled over the thick layer already covering the seats and floor. Sand was building a dune against one side of the car, already up to the bottom of the windows. In ten more years the car and man inside would be nothing more than a large pile of sand, and the highway would be completely covered.
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    Elliot Leiferman: December 20, 2012, Malibu, California
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    Elliot watched in disgust as his wife, Casandra Lieferman—Candy, to her few remaining friends—grunted as she lowered her large bulk into a chair beside the bed. She had a chocolate-covered maple bar in one hand and a large vodka-tonic in the other, three limes of course, more vodka in the tumbler than tonic by a factor of two.
    Nothing he could say, no amount of pleading, begging, threatening, had helped Candy to either stop her drinking problem or go on a diet. His thin bride of eighteen years had ballooned in the last three years to over 350 pounds and she now regularly downed ten vodka-tonics in tumblers before dinner. He gave up counting how many she had every night after her huge dinner. She just passed out in her bedroom, eating and drinking while watching television.
    He had moved into his own bedroom almost two years ago.
    Something had gone horribly wrong in both of their lives andtheir marriage, and he had no real idea what. He had remained thin, actually five pounds