Dark. Dripping, oozing dark. The horizon has been glowing a deep
emerald for days, and the atmosphere was leaking shadows like paint running
wet from the canvas. The scene of crumbled western civilization that lay
before me-the wasted ruin that was once America-was sunken into the
cavernous blackness of sky and rain. I worried about the rain: there was
no way to completely shelter from it, and it was almost surely toxic.
My companion was looking at me; eyes a steady gray were so bitter that I almost expected them to crack like ice in intense cold. He has spoken, a few minutes past, but I had not been listening and now he looked at me expectantly. I stared blankly back at him, and finally he gave an exasperated sigh.
"What are we going to do now?" His voice was tinged in irritation. We'd been spending all our time together, and we were grating on each other's nerves slightly. Other than having to deal with his constant sarcasm and self-righteousness, I was holding up alright.
I'd begun this journey alone, wandering the blasted and ravaged landscape forlornly. I had dug into rubble until my hands were bleeding and swollen to salvage a vinyl tarp, unbroken Coca~Cola bottles, and some scattered Starburst. I had spent a miserable night wrapped in the tarp, sheltered from the poison-rain by sheets and blocks of concrete that had once composed a sidewalk that had run past expensive shoppes and boutiques. The next day, I had hiked out into the country, and found that the going was a little easier out of the urban sprawl. Not so many buildings were collapses and in ruin, and I had gratefully begun stocking up on more supplies that I knew I would need: nonperishable food, rope, a knife, a tent, a water canteen. I didn't know were I was going, but I knew I could not stay in this miserable place. I'd spent nights in barns of sweet- scented hay, and when I found one that still had horses running in the pen in back, I had taken the most docile of them-a fine buckskin I called "Mouse"-and made much better progress.
It was on what I reckoned as my fifth day out of the city when I ran into him, the first other human being I'd seen since the day the sky was lit with the most unholy of all light.
He hadn't offered me a name, and so I called him Jonathan.
We caught him a horse, and I taught him how to ride. Now, we travel together because there is no one else. They are all dead, or in hiding for reasons I cannot fathom. We do not discuss where we are going, because it is becoming more and more apparent that there is nowhere else to go. Every place is just the same, even areas that are not destroyed. and there are no people.
There is rain. Rain that comes at least twice every single day in fierce, great downpours, and we always run for cover when we realize clouds are gathering thick together, like the gods over the smell of Pernapishtim's sacrifice after the Flood. We do not want to be caught in the rain again. The one time that we were, Jonathan and I experienced terrible muscle cramps, painful breathing, and nausea that lasted for days. Each cloudburst leaves the roads slick and dangerous, and if they occur in the late afternoon, sunsets blaze blood-red instead of the usual emerald and go on until midnight.
The plants are growing back with insane vigor that seems to defy the land's over-exposure to nuclear radiation. They are a vivid, exotic shade of green, and they are growing in huge, chaotic clumps. In some areas, they have already begun covering the rubble. Those places look like they were demolished years ago rather than weeks.
I looked around the green-dominated landscape and ran a hand through my hair. "I don't know," I answered. Jonathan was giving me that look again, but I nuzzled my face into Mouse's neck and avoided his gaze. "I guess we could stop here for the night, but we have another four hours of good light left. We could get to Tulsa by then."
"Do you still have a headache?"
My, but he almost sounded concerned! "Yeah," I answered, and kicked Mouse into a rough trot. His iron shoes clipped and bounced in the rain- slick asphalt, and I could hear Jonathan nudge his horse to keep up with me. I didn't mention that my throat had been dry and inflamed for two days now, and that, no matter how much stale bottled water I drank, I was always thirsty.
Death would be a mercy, but I knew that however I was going to die, it would likely be drawn-out and excruciating. God had already denied me the swift and mindless end that He'd granted to billions of others in the War-to-end-all-Wars. Iodine isotopes were seeping into my thyroid gland; plutonium was being sucked into my lungs with every single breath I took. Jonathan and I were meant to know the meaning of pain before everything was over.
I wondered if we were the last representatives of the human race left on the entire planet. I tried to rationalize that this was almost certainly not so; that there were still starving Ethiopians and Hindu peasants tending their hump-backed cattle in places that were not bombed into oblivion for political transgressions and hubris. I tried to believe that Hope was still alive and playing in the lands she loved best: the savannas of Africa and slopes of the mighty Himalayas. If life survived anywhere on this forsaken planet, it would survive there, and those people would bring forth a new nation and a new breed of human being.
Up ahead of Mouse's surging nose, a beryl-green highway sign read, "Tulsa 12 miles".
There would be nothing in Tulsa-buildings as dust and people as ash- and the rain would fall. even there.
My companion was looking at me; eyes a steady gray were so bitter that I almost expected them to crack like ice in intense cold. He has spoken, a few minutes past, but I had not been listening and now he looked at me expectantly. I stared blankly back at him, and finally he gave an exasperated sigh.
"What are we going to do now?" His voice was tinged in irritation. We'd been spending all our time together, and we were grating on each other's nerves slightly. Other than having to deal with his constant sarcasm and self-righteousness, I was holding up alright.
I'd begun this journey alone, wandering the blasted and ravaged landscape forlornly. I had dug into rubble until my hands were bleeding and swollen to salvage a vinyl tarp, unbroken Coca~Cola bottles, and some scattered Starburst. I had spent a miserable night wrapped in the tarp, sheltered from the poison-rain by sheets and blocks of concrete that had once composed a sidewalk that had run past expensive shoppes and boutiques. The next day, I had hiked out into the country, and found that the going was a little easier out of the urban sprawl. Not so many buildings were collapses and in ruin, and I had gratefully begun stocking up on more supplies that I knew I would need: nonperishable food, rope, a knife, a tent, a water canteen. I didn't know were I was going, but I knew I could not stay in this miserable place. I'd spent nights in barns of sweet- scented hay, and when I found one that still had horses running in the pen in back, I had taken the most docile of them-a fine buckskin I called "Mouse"-and made much better progress.
It was on what I reckoned as my fifth day out of the city when I ran into him, the first other human being I'd seen since the day the sky was lit with the most unholy of all light.
He hadn't offered me a name, and so I called him Jonathan.
We caught him a horse, and I taught him how to ride. Now, we travel together because there is no one else. They are all dead, or in hiding for reasons I cannot fathom. We do not discuss where we are going, because it is becoming more and more apparent that there is nowhere else to go. Every place is just the same, even areas that are not destroyed. and there are no people.
There is rain. Rain that comes at least twice every single day in fierce, great downpours, and we always run for cover when we realize clouds are gathering thick together, like the gods over the smell of Pernapishtim's sacrifice after the Flood. We do not want to be caught in the rain again. The one time that we were, Jonathan and I experienced terrible muscle cramps, painful breathing, and nausea that lasted for days. Each cloudburst leaves the roads slick and dangerous, and if they occur in the late afternoon, sunsets blaze blood-red instead of the usual emerald and go on until midnight.
The plants are growing back with insane vigor that seems to defy the land's over-exposure to nuclear radiation. They are a vivid, exotic shade of green, and they are growing in huge, chaotic clumps. In some areas, they have already begun covering the rubble. Those places look like they were demolished years ago rather than weeks.
I looked around the green-dominated landscape and ran a hand through my hair. "I don't know," I answered. Jonathan was giving me that look again, but I nuzzled my face into Mouse's neck and avoided his gaze. "I guess we could stop here for the night, but we have another four hours of good light left. We could get to Tulsa by then."
"Do you still have a headache?"
My, but he almost sounded concerned! "Yeah," I answered, and kicked Mouse into a rough trot. His iron shoes clipped and bounced in the rain- slick asphalt, and I could hear Jonathan nudge his horse to keep up with me. I didn't mention that my throat had been dry and inflamed for two days now, and that, no matter how much stale bottled water I drank, I was always thirsty.
Death would be a mercy, but I knew that however I was going to die, it would likely be drawn-out and excruciating. God had already denied me the swift and mindless end that He'd granted to billions of others in the War-to-end-all-Wars. Iodine isotopes were seeping into my thyroid gland; plutonium was being sucked into my lungs with every single breath I took. Jonathan and I were meant to know the meaning of pain before everything was over.
I wondered if we were the last representatives of the human race left on the entire planet. I tried to rationalize that this was almost certainly not so; that there were still starving Ethiopians and Hindu peasants tending their hump-backed cattle in places that were not bombed into oblivion for political transgressions and hubris. I tried to believe that Hope was still alive and playing in the lands she loved best: the savannas of Africa and slopes of the mighty Himalayas. If life survived anywhere on this forsaken planet, it would survive there, and those people would bring forth a new nation and a new breed of human being.
Up ahead of Mouse's surging nose, a beryl-green highway sign read, "Tulsa 12 miles".
There would be nothing in Tulsa-buildings as dust and people as ash- and the rain would fall. even there.