The Last Warm Place by Barry Napier

 

Philosophers and scientists have for thousands of years made a job speculating about humanity’s place in the universe. Sometimes I wonder about poor old Aristotle, if he could visit any decent observatory now and talk with cosmologists and astrophysicists how would he handle learning that his view of the universe was so completely wrong. Of course we have the high ground of over two-thousand, three hundred years since his death to figure things out.

And yes, I’ll hazard an assumption that humanity has pretty much got the basics figured out now. And no, I will not speak of all the new conflicting data we’re receiving from the James Webb Telescope. We’ve stirred up a shitstorm of issues with our models of the universe and what that brilliant piece of engineering floating out at the second Lagrange point about a million miles away.

But thing with science is that all the astrophysicist boys and girls are as happy as pigs in mud trying to rework their theories to fit the new data. That’s how science works.

The problem that occupies a small collection of poorly working brain cells my head is whether or not our science boys and girls might be missing something we can’t see. Or even worse something that our puny human minds can’t conceive. Some aspect of the universe or even the structure of reality that puts us back in the same category as my boy Aristotle.

That’s where the subgenre of “Cosmic Horror” makes its presence known.

Cosmic horror, for those with much better taste in reading, deals with the terror of realizing the universe does not give a flying damn about humanity. That we live in a vast, uncaring universe that has existed for almost fourteen billions years and our species just can’t comprehend how insignificant we are.

This is where the book I just finished reading comes into play. It’s entitled The Last Warm Place by Barry Napier.

Here’s the SITREP (situation report).

Time and Place: Pretty much our modern day world.

Giant slug-like monsters have begun appearing all over the Earth. Yeah, think Gozilla-sized creatures that flatten cities just like my atomic powered Japanese lizard buddy. And as you might expect the national governments of Earth are unable to stop the creatures with conventional weapons.

Since the novel is set in our current time societies all over the planet begin to fall apart. Not just because of the monsters. The only things that kills them are nuclear weapons. Here in the United States it’s mentioned that the government tried to evacuate the cities about to be attacked, but it was nightmarish chaos.

People are scrambling to survive and there is almost everyone is out to save themselves. That’s where the main character of Eric enters the story. He was in New York just before it got nuked and got away after saving a young woman named Kendra. Kendra had been raped twice in the chaos and as they make their way out of the city and move south Eric does his best to protect her.

Because of the sexual assaults Kendra is pregnant and gives birth months later as the two continue to head down the eastern seaboard. Eric helps Kendra deliver the baby and it is born healthy.

They are now a de facto family with Eric hopelessly in love with Kendra and the baby. Eventually they grow tired of moving and they take up residence in an abandoned house in rural Georgia and spend their times scavenging for food.

Because of the nukes and the monsters the world is a gray dead place. Think Cormac McCarthy’s The Road.

Eric and Kendra and the baby are surviving, but only barely. Things begin to change when two other survivors happen up the house Eric and Kendra are living. There is a short fight with the two stranger attempting to assault Kendra. Eric kills one and Kendra the other, but one of the dead strangers was carrying a piece of paper that says there’s a government run “Safe Zone” back up in Virginia. That paper is actually a ticket for admission and Kendra immediately wants to leave their house and head north.

Eric has reservations about leaving but with supplies getting harder to find he knows they will eventually starve if they stay. The trip north is dangerous but it’s fellow humans that pose the biggest risk. That is until Eric and Kendra start encountering these large burnt circular areas that other survivors call “nests.” These nests have strange effects on human minds and they are filled with creatures that don’t belong in our reality.

The Last Warm Place is not literature. But it is a damn good story of survival and fighting to retain just a small spark of hope and humanity. One of the things I liked the most was that Eric is not some highly trained soldier. He was just a decent and caring guy attempting to take care of his mother before the monsters appeared. As for Kendra, she was just a normal young woman working a standard 9 to 5 job.

Most post-apocalyptic books have the main characters as harden survival experts who already knew what to do in these situations. I got the feeling that Eric and Kendra only survived as long as they did out of sheer luck. More to the point I was rooting for that small family and hoping they would find a place where the baby could grow up. And yes, Eric and Kendra fall in love while heading north. They were both in love while living in house down in Georgia but their individual traumas kept them from admitting it to each other and themselves.

The main point of the book that hit me hard was the idea that there is a real possibility that we do not have existence completely figured out. That while highly improbable, the universe and the nature of reality could send something our way that defies our ability to comprehend.