A Survivor’s Tale

Part Three

By: Rebecca Reynolds

Then

After having been allowed into the utopia that was Waterville, Tara and I spent almost two weeks erecting a livable building to call home. We planned it together, and did most of the actual building ourselves, though a few people of the town helped us out. We kept track of the help as closely as we could, so that we could repay their kindnesses later. Pieces were scavenged for our home from the wrecking crew as they demolished other buildings from their expansion efforts.

It wasn’t much, a simple three room building, but it would suffice. The larger room would be used for relaxing, cooking, and dining, while the other big room had two beds in it, with a large curtain divider. The final room served as a pantry. These people had brought their scrap-building to almost an art, and our house ended up looking pretty nice. Not nearly as good as society had reached before the war, but still better than most things people tried to live in these days.

I was given a job tending to animals to start with, hauling feed bags, shoveling out waste, and washing down the animals that needed it. It really was amazing that all of these things could be so easily hidden. Animals made their own respective amounts of noise, and then there was the smell of their waste; children were allowed to run and play, scream and yell; building and demolishing made noise; talking, walking, tools… Everything made a certain amount of noise and smell, and yet, to stand just on the other side of the buildings, you would never know that this small city was even here, let alone ever had been.

Tara had been set to work in the gardens, tending to the plants and their needs. Rain or shine, work was carried out. It was long and hard, and for the first while, I went to bed almost too tired to sleep, my hands blistered and red, my whole body sore and aching. Even Tara, whose load was lighter, went to bed exhausted. But it was enjoyable. I was filled with a peace that kept me running. I wasn’t hiding away in artificial lights, staring at words day in and day out until existence blurred.

Every day that we worked and strived here, we made someone else’s life a little easier; made things just a little better for the next generation. We were contributing to the survival of man-kind.

It didn’t take long for Tara, a natural beauty in her own way, to attract the attention of some of the young men who lived here. They begged for her attention, and sought her affections. I couldn’t help but feel protective of her, but I stood back and watched. Slowly, one of them won over the others, and her mind was set.

Within the year, she found herself married and joining him in his own house on the other side of the town. I felt a somewhat hollow abandonment, but I kept a smiling face as I bid her well. I wasn’t without my own share of pursuers; various women had made clear their attraction.

I was moved to the demolition crew shortly thereafter, where I was put to work pounding down walls all day long. It took me a while, but soon I fell into line with all the others, allowing us to form one continuous stream of work, movement, and in general, progress. It was somewhat stress relieving to spend the days destroying things.

I watched too as the son of Reuben grew. He had been ten when we moved in, and he grew handsomely. His mother hadn’t remarried after the death of his father, and they had fallen somewhat in their standing, simply because their own income was diminished severely. Now though, he was old enough to help in the fields, hauling water and lunches to the workers. The children were given simple tasks, to aid their parents with the income.

And then I met her. Karen. She was the most beautiful thing I had ever laid eyes on. She had thick black hair, bright blue eyes, and the cutest little nose. She was kind of on the short side, but even that seemed adorable to me. She worked as a teacher, in the assembly hall. She taught children who were eight their numbers and letters, and some basics about animal and plant care. Most didn’t consider her a worthy catch, as she didn’t do a lot of physical labor, but I loved her for the knowledge and willingness to teach others necessary skills to survive.

She didn’t seem to even notice me as I began trying to get her attention. I made a point of walking past the assembly hall to and from work, which often put me out of the way. It was the best parts of my day. I woke with anticipation to see her, and I walked home with a light heart knowing I could again lay eyes on her before I went to bed. I caught myself smiling sometimes on the job, thinking about her cute face, and the way her eyes sparkled in the afternoon sun. It wasn’t long before some of the guys I worked with learned of my crush, and started poking fun at me about it.

Until her brother heard I liked her. He approached me when I was on the way home and told me to stay away from her. Their parents were trying to present her to the son of one of the leaders of the town, as a valuable catch. They wanted her to be set for life, in a comfy position. The people on top worked too, but it was definitely easier work.

I wanted her for myself, but I also understood how much better it would be if she were allowed to live a somewhat easier life. I couldn’t stop from watching her, but I kept my distance as her parents tried their little ploy. She deserved at least that much.

Now

Rolling along on our cart, pulled by the two horses we’d purchased in Anchorville, we were better able to appreciate the land around us. The going was much faster, and easier on my aging frame. We also had to make less stops, as the horses could plod along most of the day without feeling it. It rained on us a few times, and I had shown Alec how to fashion a makeshift covering for it when we passed through a smaller town. Since then, we had been able to keep going through the smaller rains. The larger rains however had turned the roads into absolute nonsense, and we had had to stop during those.

Spring was nearly past us now, having been almost a months since we had left Anchorville. We were nearing Montana now, and I dreaded having to leave the horse and cart behind. However, I knew it was more for their safety. If we brought such treasures south with us, they wouldn’t make it very far. Even if they weren’t taken by raiders, they’d likely be hunted and destroyed by other people in the name of survival.

And so I relaxed on the front seat of our cart, teaching Alec, and soaking up the energy saved from not having to walk. The surroundings had gradually changed as we made our way westward, and now the forest mainly consisted of evergreens and junipers, and some scraggly brush. Wild raspberries could be found in some parts, and before long service berries and huckleberries joined them. The terrain also became noticeably more mountainous, the higher mountain air thinner and a little harder to get enough of. This in particular was taxing, but the freshness of it was also gratifying.

At long last, we ended up reaching an area where water ran wild. We passed a few streams, and then pools. They were somewhat gritty, as most everything else was, but still clearer than anything else we had seen. In some places further east, there had been a couple small streams, and ponds, but they were so murky you couldn’t see through even the shallowest points. Here, in some places you could actually see the bottoms. And the fish. There were some real, living fish in a couple of the shallow pools we skirted, lazily drifting about in the mild currents.

Every new wonder held its own adoration for Alec, who had never seen such things before. The fish; the pools; the birds in the air; the rodents; and on one occasion, a deer. Such simplicity to have such an impact. And all I could really think was, if only things hadn’t become the way they were, that just the sight of these things was a rarity, and a wonder.

The other thing that held my mind, causing me to sometimes spend long hours brooding about it, was Karen. Had it really been so many years? Such an age had passed since then… And whenever Alec asked me what held my thoughts so very far away, all I could do was shake my head. I wasn’t yet ready to actually talk about it. It was one thing to write it down in words, where it was merely a sentence, a fact in letters, but to truly discuss it… That was yet another.

And so, I watched as the trees rolled on by, increasingly coated in deer moss, or regular moss, and listened to the sounds of a forest. I spent a great many hours talking about the ways of the woods, the things one could use to survive out here by oneself.

Then

I watched Karen for more than a year, without ever once betraying my true feelings to her. And then finally, the man that her parents had so hoped would take her as his wife and spoil her in what was currently considered luxury and leisure, chose his bride. Another girl from a ‘wealthy’ family. Karen’s family of course was devastated, but they could do nothing about it. To contest the union and lose would have been a very dark mark on their family indeed, and so they kept to themselves the fact that they were so thoroughly and deeply angry about it.

Me, I was elated. Not for her of course, but for me. After such a deep blow as to be turned down by someone of such standing, none of the other men felt they could consider her for themselves. And so that left her to me. With no competition, I was pretty sure I could get her to like me. I started out slowly and simply. I left poems for her during the lunch break, or I asked if I could walk her to her classes. I ‘bought’ her fruits from the gardens. Slowly, I became her friend. She confided in me that she wasn’t too unhappy about not having married the pompous guy her parents had wished for. This made my day. In a matter of months, I finally asked her to be my wife, and she agreed. Her parents were still none too thrilled about having been turned down by the desirable husband, but I didn’t have such a poor position myself.

I had been raised once more, to the position of layman. That meant it was my job to be sure that the beams were in place where a building was to be rolled to in the next line of movement. It was really a wonder how that worked. All the beams were laid in place, long before the buildings were moved. And the necessary buildings were hoisted that needed to be moved, and finally, they spent two whole days moving all the buildings forwards.

In the dead of summer it hardly ever rained, so the dusty dirt that coated the rest of the land puffed up again until it was its old deep and shifting self again. All of this was carefully and meticulously brushed forward in anticipation of the new levels added to this city. It took roughly ten months for all the buildings to be ready to move, along with all the dirt being moved. Once the buildings had been settled into their temporary places, a crew brushed the dirt from the edge of the near buildings to the outskirts of the city and back, to bring it back about to level and erase the foot tracks of those who did it.

After that, it would take around eight to ten months to clear away all the debris left by the recently departed buildings, and another six or so to make the ground firm and useable. If it was to be used for gardening, it would be worked through with manure from the animals, and all the rocks removed. Ground for building was filled in with rocks, before capped with dirt. It had to set for several months to be sure it was firm enough to build on.

And so, between these jobs, and the endless cycle of rebuilding, I was kept busy for a great portion of my time. I had scraped and saved, until I had earned a pretty sizable standing with these people. Several people owed me hours of work, while others owed me materials I had scavenged for them while I was still a demolition man.

I traded some of these debts for help and decor for the wedding I gave my beautiful bride. It was a truly wonderful wedding. The sky was bright and clear, and it was warm. By then, Tara had had a little girl, and she carried a basket full of apple blossoms to scatter in the wake of Karen. She was only two, but she was such a doll that even though she kept trying to eat the flowers, she had fun throwing them all over the place. There were still some left when she got to the end, and she overturned the basket in one spot and stood there grinning.

After the wedding, her brother came up to me at the reception. I thought by the look on his face, which he had been wearing the whole day, that for sure he would pummel me where I stood, but all he did was hold his hand out to shake mine. Without a word, I shook it, and he walked away silently.

Now

I stared at the page before me, with its words etched forever in the yellowed grains. Running a hand over it, I thought back to that day. I could see her just as clearly then as if she had been standing right in front of me. All of her black hair spilling down her back, the biggest smile causing her rounded cheeks to appear full, and her bright blue eyes dancing in joy. I had found a bright yellow dress with blue flowers on it for her to wear, and she had seemed radiant.

Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Alec watching me. Smiling mirthlessly, I shrugged and folded up my papers. I couldn’t keep going at the moment. The thought of Karen with such beauty and life to her was so wonderful that proceeding to anything else would be heartbreak all over again.

As I had said, living as long as I had had inevitably meant the end of many joyous relationships and acquaintances over the years. I had watched the world turn around me, brought close to death myself a fair share, and yet here I sat, on a cold rock at the edge of a long forgotten pool of water in the midst of the struggling evergreen forest. It didn’t seem fair that the truly goodhearted and wonderful people of the world had long since passed on, leaving one more empty space in their absence, while I trudged onward. What was I, that I should continue?

And yet, my current survival was almost necessary, to bring about some justice and light for the people I had lost. By writing them down, I was in a way immortalizing them. For decades, maybe centuries, other people could read about these who meant so much to me.

Alec nudged my shoulder and I turned to find him holding out a crude plate with our evening’s meal on it. We had set a looped snare earlier in the day, and now we feasted on a rabbit. The meat was pretty tough and a little sinewy, likely from lack of decent food to give the rabbit some thick fat to tenderize its meat. But it was still many times over better than the ration packages the subservient humanity had relegated itself to.

As I gratefully ate our meager meal, I stared upward. Here, the sky seemed marginally bluer than it had out in the open company of the midlands, the barrens. Thin and daydreaming wisps of cloud drifted lazily across the view afforded by the gently swaying tops of evergreens. To hear the breeze blowing through the branches of these great and magnificent trees was still a heart lifting experience for me, even though I had heard it many times in the journeys of my life.

The sound of the water beside me teasing the rocks and strands of grass that grew alongside the life-giving substance; the bird calls in the still somewhat chill air… All of these things were merely dreams to most people.

Even here though, I could see traces of the devastation which had wreaked havoc unchecked across the lands. Among the green and thriving trees, bushes, and flowers, one could see blackened and long dead brush where the wildfires had come through. In some cases, whole patches of forest and field bore the effects of logging and burning. We had also stumbled across the horror of a site where some corporation or other had illegally dumped a massive pile of barrels and shipping containers, and miles around it were dead, and beyond that barely surviving as it seemed those parts of the forest struggled harder than any other to live.

As I finished the last small remnants of my meal, I beckoned Alec over and pulled out the back sack which had so long ago belonged to my great-grandfather. It had been a while since I had looked in there, and I had never let Alec see in it before. But I figured now was as good a time as any.

Opening it carefully, as the years had since worn on it heavily in my possession, I withdrew the most important of contents held within. The journal he had kept of his own struggles and perils. A recording of events; written during the time of the great plague, which had been the crux of the downward spiral to the world’s current condition.

Opening the journal, I handed it over to my companion. I explained its purpose to him, and its originator. He was awed. I could tell as his eyes scanned the first, carefully preserved pages, that he would enjoy many hours of reading and absorbing all of this knowledge, as I had many times in my life.

Then

It seems that nature has many rules, which those of us who live amongst it are destined and bound to obey. The first, and most important rule, is that all things have a cycle. Life has its own cycles, large or small according to animal, breed, and circumstance. Weather has cycles, which follow the movement of the planet around the sun, and the moon around the earth. And happenstance has a cycle, according to some unstated rules and regulations that drift in the universe and the air. But no matter what, you can and should always count on change. If a situation is one way, or has been for quite a while, you can guarantee that it will change. I wasn’t nearly as ready for or expectant of the possibility of change as time has since taught me to be.

The main point is that all of my time spent amongst the people of Waterville, the peace and fearlessness that came from living in such a safe habitat, all of that changed too. It always did. Sometimes more rapidly than others, but always shifting.

My life in Waterville changed in a single afternoon. I wish I had had the insight to recognize this change for what it was, but that is the problem with wisdom. You only learn it through experience, and fully recognize it with age.

I had been working for hours, laying out pieces of thick wood for another building to be placed on in the near future. I was thinking about Karen, because she was duly and entirely pregnant, expecting soon. Pregnancy predictions were not nearly as accurate as they had been before the third world war, but it was pretty sure to be within the next week. I was on absentee notice, which meant that if I suddenly got word of her labor I would be allowed to leave after only informing the crew boss, who would then inform the higher powers, thus saving me the time of having to find someone of higher power to request permission to take time off.

We were both very excited, as was my sister and her family. Karen and I had gone ‘shopping’ amongst the things taken from some of the buildings, and found a crib, and some infant objects. The people had since learned how to adequately create cloth, using sheep’s wool, and so we had gotten a few things new for the baby. Other people around the village had also lent us some objects left from their own children, long outgrown and unused.

I of course hoped that it would be a boy, but I would be ecstatic anyway. There was a measure of pride behind having a baby, which I didn’t mind flaunting somewhat whenever anyone mentioned it to me. My only source of sorrow at moment was that neither one my parents would be here to see the birth of my own children, let alone this the first.

I shook myself out of my reverie though when I heard someone calling my name. It was the crew boss. “Son, I know you’ve got a world of thoughts on your mind, but you need to watch what you’re doing. Straighten out that beam.” Glancing down, I saw that I had mistakenly laid the beam a tad to the side of the groove carefully dug by the smoothers. Shaking my head again, I knelt down and inched it back into place. Standing once more, I glanced around. It was almost the turning of the tide again, when the great buildings that lined the empty streets would once again be hoisted, rolled along the ground a good sixty feet, and settled into their new resting place until the next shift.

This time the buildings would cross a lengthwise street, which always took half a day extra to do. It was a lot of work to move an entire building, and some of them were a good seven or eight stories tall. There was one building that had been ten stories, but we had totally dismantled that one, and redistributed it. It would have simply been too much. Most of the buildings though seemed pretty uniform, hard to tell one from the next.

“Son!” I jumped. I hadn’t realized that I had drifted off again. Without even glancing at the crew boss, I turned to the next beam that had been shoved across the ground and bent to pick it up. “No, no! Son!” I straightened somewhat and glanced at him. He was waving me over, a look of consternation on his rough face. Sinking inside, I jogged over to him.

“You need to go on home. Hurry up now!” I tilted my head a little to the side, in a moment of incomprehension. And then it hit me. “Karen? Is she-?” The man nodded. “Go, go on, now!” He clapped my on the back as I turned and took off across the scattered and littered construction site. My heart had leapt into my throat, and my stomach rose to take its place. My blood ran quickly. Excitement nearly blinded me, but I knew my way around this site well enough that it didn’t really matter. I did startle a few of the other workers, who of course sent some hasty wit or other at my retreating back. I ended up stumbling over a few boards carelessly strewn across the ambling pathway that served to allow access in and out of the construction, but quickly regained my balance in time to avoid contact with the firm ground.

At long last, I reached the row of buildings which stood sentry to the city within, and raced through the nearest building. Once in the city, I made my way down the main path, and curved to reach our house. We were pretty close to the outer edge, though another young couple had built a house between ours and the edge of the city. We weren’t actually anywhere near the buildings that encircled Waterville’s biggest secrets, since expansion tended to keep a few paces ahead of the population growth.

From within the building, I could hear Karen desperately asking for me, and there was a commotion of persons around and in the little house. They stepped aside though to allow me to enter. Inside, Karen was in the little bedroom, her eyes wide with fear and her face pink with effort. In a Panic, I tried to figure out what to do, shaking my hands in frustration. The woman who was helping her birth rolled her eyes and snapped at me to calm myself, then started issuing directions to both of us.

After several hours, we were finally left alone with our new boy. Karen was exhausted. She had fed the baby, and promptly fallen asleep. At the moment, I was sitting in the rocking chair that had been a gift from Karen’s mother. It had been in the family for three generations, kept in excellent condition. Looking down at the freshest of small faces, those grey and indistinct eyes… I could only marvel at this little miracle.

A baby really changed one’s life, but not strictly because of the responsibility it meant. It also gave life itself more meaning, more depth. I felt my chest swell with pride as I gazed upon him. His eyes were fixed solely on my face, his hand wrapped around my pinky, as he softly sucked on the side of his fist. I was somewhat nervous that I would break him, but the birthing woman had said that I should hold him firmly, and not to worry.

Now

We were finally almost to our destination. After what seemed ages, but had been shortened by the presence of the rolling cart we had previously purchased in Anchorville, we had reached the middle of Montana. Or rather, what had been the middle of Montana before the lines of the country had changed. The president of Canada at the time had opted to keep the name, but had added to it. The portion on the northern side of the border was now called the Canadian Montana providence. As they had done to the other states which had been divided and sold to them.

This sight which I wanted to show Alec was something else all to itself. There was nothing like it in the entire world, and probably never had been. Here, in this secluded and mainly forgotten section of the country, was the only place that likely had not been affected by the falling out.

As we rounded a bend in the forest, we came to a large clearing which followed a large wall in the trees. It was about fifteen feet tall, and there were no visible ends to it. It seemed like it had just been pieced together out of chunks of various odds and ends of rock, but the truth was it was a very sturdy and reliable wall, which did the job it was meant for very well.

At this point in the wall, there was no obvious way to enter the area beyond. I knew that the entrance was merely another mile or so to the south, so I turned the cart to follow the tall wall. Alec though was deeply intrigued. He could hardly take his eyes off of it as the wheels of the cart bumped and rolled along the uneven ground at the base of the wall.

Finally he glanced at me, before returning his gaze to the barricade beside us. “What is it?” A small smile came to my face. “You’ll see. We have a little ways to go yet.” I wouldn’t say anything more about it. This was going to be quite the experience for him.

An hour later, we finally came to the entrance. There was a large archway, which a thick wooden double door. When we had come to a stop in front of them, I motioned for Alec to climb down.

“There’s a small rope hanging there; pull it twice.” Eyebrow raised, he reached out and did so. Turning, he held out his hands with palms up. “Now what?” I shrugged. “Now we wait. The nearest person is half a mile away.” And so we waited atop the cart in the warm afternoon sun. The sounds of robins and squirrels enjoying the beautiful day instilled a sense of laziness.

At long last, we could hear the sounds of people on the other side of the heavy double doors, as pieces were moved. Finally there was much creaking and groaning as the large doors were opened. And immediately the nature of the persons within was revealed. They wore plain pants, grey shirts, and hats made of straw. They were cleanly, and looked very healthy.

I had visited here before as well, and so these people knew who I was, just as I knew what to expect. I stayed atop my cart for the time, and shook their hands as they approached. They then turned to Alec, and welcomed him as well. I could see that Alec was largely curious, though he managed to keep his manner polite.

Finally, once we had been greeted, they held the two doors open so we could steer our transport into the land within the wall. Alec walked with the other men as I rode the cart along the dirt path which led to the settlement.

All of the houses followed the same basic design, though some had variations, and of course they had different colors and layouts, along with having varying quantities of rooms. Most of the houses were wooden, with simple porches, and steeply peaked roofs. There were barns and large assembly halls, a church, and a school house. And this was only one of many. There were in total 22 towns hidden within this grand wall, each of them devoid of the things in culture which had ultimately led to our downfall, the crutch of electricity being the main absence.

Once in the town, we were led to a small house near the edge, where I was helped off the cart. As I reached the ground, my back suddenly filled with pain so deep my vision blurred and I caught myself on a wooden barrel. Alec came over and caught my shoulder, turning me some to face him. “Are you okay?” I nodded. “Fine boy, I’m fine.” I shrugged him off and straightened. Mounting the stairs, I made my way over to a swing which hung from the ceiling of the porch and sat down. I watched with a heavy feeling of disappointment as our things were unloaded from the cart and piled near the front door.

I wasn’t upset that my back was hurting so much as I was that I was beyond the point where I could ably be of any physical assistance to anyone. At one point, I was the one who could unload things for other old people. I used to haul large beams, and sling bricks and shovel dirt or gravel all day. Now the very thought of rising from this swing was enough to make my bones ache, and my legs quiver. I felt somewhat miffed, that such a beautiful day could be marred by such weakness. Why did the body have to age so quickly and entirely?

Alec sat beside me and I startled out of my thoughts, realizing that the other men had gone. They had taken out cart with them, likely to the stables. They would unhitch the horses and rub them down good, before turning them out to pasture. Our cart they would probably coat with some water resistant substance, and then put in a shed or something until it was needed again.

The swing creaked as it swung back and forth, holding our combined weight a mere foot or so above the boarded floor of the porch. Here, a light breeze drifted lazily, turned and disrupted by our motion, but otherwise relatively undisturbed.

There were some people out and about their business, some of which turned curiously to see the strangers in their midst. The children in particular could not contain their excitement and wonder. The girls and women all wore dresses and aprons, while the boys wore trousers and button down shirts, with suspenders. Some of the boys’ shirts were different colors, but most tended to be a shade of grey.

Finally I turned to Alec. “These are the Amish. For centuries, they lived out in the open land of the country, enjoying a moderate privacy from the rest of the world. According to their beliefs, and their will, they wished to live alone and lead a simple life, free of the necessities and ties associated with normal life.

“And so they chose to live away from the cities, with few belongings, and no electricity, and for years they were left alone to do just that. But then there came along some congressmen who decided that there was ‘untapped potential’ just waiting to be gained, and so they made it their goal to destroy them. They brought out many new laws, regulations, and small dictations, which made half of what these people were doing illegal. No more selling personally made goods at profit, no more raising livestock for meat or material, and no more building houses without electricity installed.

“There was a huge feud, during which there were actually a few casualties on each side. Finally, the people gathered together as much of their finances as they could, and got together with the Indian Nations, and they bought half of Montana, half of Idaho, and all of Washington state. After that, they divided it amongst themselves.

“ The Amish were given Half of Montana, while the Indians hold Washington and the Northern half of Idaho. They didn’t change the names, and when the US sold out parts of all the states along the border to Canada, they sold the states owned by the Amish and Indians too, as an underhanded way of breaking down the sale arrangements made. There was another small feud with Canada, until papers could be produced to show that these portions of the states were in honest not the US’s to sell, but finally the Amish and the Indians won their right to freely live the way they wished to.

“After that, the Amish built their tall wall, to further ensure their privacy, and being left alone. The war, the plague, the fallout… All three of these cataclysmic events simple drifted around them, and did not affect them.”

Alec turned to watch the small children, who had gone off to play some game or other a small distance off. He shook his head gently. “All this time then, they’ve lived here unbothered by all this? During the fires and the riots, the bombing and the plague? And the fallout? How do they keep the raiders away?” I shrugged. “I don’t think the raiders ever bothered to come this far. Once you come to the dead forest to the east or south, you figure there isn’t anything worth taking or burning or killing, and so they turn and go elsewhere. Anyone who did make it this far, would still have to get in here, and the Amish do not treat outsiders welcomingly. I am allowed in here, and you, being with me. But there are very few people who can come in here. I would guess too that it would depend how many there are. They’ve known probably for half a day that we were coming, they have spies out just like Waterville. They would have sent a pigeon or a dove to tell that welcomed visitors were coming.”

Again he shook his head, wonder plain on his face. The sunlight at that moment found its way along the bottom of the western edge of the porch, and slid down to cover my back. Again I felt that deep contentment I’d had sitting on the cart waiting to enter this place. There was just something nice about a good strong sunbeam. I felt myself yawn and nearly laughed at myself. What a feline demeanor.

Then

It had been nearly two months since the birth of our son. We hadn’t yet thought what to name him, and it seemed as if we might never find something we both liked. Her mother of course had her own ideas about it, as did my sister. In fact, half of the town had approached me at least once since word got out, to inform me of what their opinion of the perfect name was. The other half had likely talked to Karen. I stuck my tongue out at the thought.

If people didn’t stop telling me what they thought I should name our son, I was going to lose it. There were just too many options. What kind of a name would be absolutely perfect, when there were hundreds of them? And I didn’t want to just give him any old name off the top of my head, I wanted it to be something with meaning, something strong, and yet with character. That was his attitude anyway. He was unbelievably strong for a little guy, holding firmly onto fingers, clothes, hair… And he sure had a set of lungs to him. His cries were sometimes so shrill and long, that neighbors would drop by at any time of the night to check on us, or to give their advice on how to sooth him. Sometimes I greatly appreciated it though. Oddly, though I wasn’t overly fond of her, Karen’s mother had a knack for putting the little guy to sleep. There was just something about the way she held him, jiggled him, and rocked him, that made his little heart settle, his eyes droop, and he’d give this big shuddery sigh, before finally dropping off. In reality, I don’t know what we would have done without her, sometimes.

I had since returned to work, about three weeks ago, and Karen was just starting back today. She had been given a nice padded chair for the school room. A younger girl cared for the baby while she taught, and stood in for her if the baby needed to be fed.

I had also been moved to a new position, yet again. I now was in charge of stripping out the bases where buildings previously moved had once stood. I oversaw the clearing of the rubble, and the salvaging of items which might one day come in handy. There was one small building which had been kept intact, where we stored all of these kinds of things. And one never knew what might be needed.

Old pipes had been used to irrigate the fields or to make showers. Wires were used to bind some pieces of houses together, as had nails and screws. Old rebar was used to make frames for animal pens, and sometimes even the small and broken concrete bits left over from the demolition were useful, serving purpose keeping the weeds and grass down between rows in the gardens to make navigating easier. Most of the construction pieces were kept in a basement which had not been cracked or broken, and thus had also been, in its own way, salvaged.

It was kind of a fun job, going through all of these things which had been so recklessly and carelessly abandoned, trying to think of ways something could be useful to the community. I received somewhat better compensation for this job than I had the other one, but I believe that also was because of the little one. Until he was old enough to do some small jobs it was, of course, our job to buy food and clothing for his growing needs.

I now knew how Tara and her husband must feel. They had had another child, six months ago. With the first barely past three, they were busy. She was given a reduced workload for as long as she needed. She could leave the older girl in childcare for a few hours at a time, but the baby required more of her attention. The new baby was a girl as well, and she had gotten terribly sick right away. Tara had barely eaten or slept throughout, but finally the little girl had pulled through. Now she was healthily smiling and happy, as she helped her mother in the gardens. Tara had been given a new job, and she now tended to the berries and fruit trees. She carried the baby around in a makeshift carrier slung onto her back as she worked.

I had hired the son of Reuben on as my assistant when I returned to work, and now he brought me messages or went and gave directions as I told him, to the workers in the pits. He wasn’t yet old enough to do anything overly taxing, though I did direct him to do some carrying, or to move objects to allow others to pass. I myself did some of the work, sorting through things other guys brought over and helping to stack things up for the haulers to remove.

I was working towards a science position, as I knew that my extensive knowledge procured from the many years I had spent reading could be put to good use here towards improving the quality of life, but I wanted to work for it, not simply walk in there and show them up. They would have more respect for me if I managed to prove myself a reliable asset. Already I had implemented a few things around here, such as the irrigation, but I had also gotten their sewer system working, thus allowing for waste to be properly ‘flushed’ out, as opposed to the method they had been using where it was carted daily into the fields and churned in for the next year’s planting. I knew with the animals we had enough of that stuff. Also I had managed to find a better way to attach the walls to the frames, using the nails pulled from the buildings. Before they had simple used the wires or ropes they had found. And so we had gone around to all of the current buildings and reworked their bindings. The nails would last longer than the ropes, which had tending to need replacing about every two years.

In implementing my ideas around the town, I had earned the respect that Karen’s father had hoarded with the disappointment of not having given his daughter to an influential and marginally well off man. He saw perhaps that there was a fair chance that someday I would be just as well off, and his daughter was not therefore doomed to spend the rest of her life in desolation and dismay.

I would never earn her mother’s approval, but I didn’t expect too and thus I was not disappointed. It seemed to be a law of nature that a man and his mother-in-law would never see eye to eye. We tolerated each other for the most part, even sometimes appreciated each other, such as her talent for calming my son, but there were other times that only Karen’s intrusion kept things from escalating too far.

Now

We had been in the great Amish community for over a week, when suddenly I was struck with a heavy sickness. It clung to my lungs, and attacked my throat, causing my head to feel as if it was stuffed near to bursting. My whole frame ached, and I shook with chills one moment, then sweat with heat the next. I was reminded of my father as I lay in helpless agony. When I had returned to the fallout bunker to find him in much the same state. I felt tears roll down my cheeks and onto the pillow, just as helpless to stop them as I was against my sickness.

Thinking of my father again brought on a tightening in my already spent chest. My throat felt almost entirely blocked as pure agony threatened to bring on harsh sobs. My poor father, and then there was my mother… Both of them were taken from me under such brutal circumstances.

Dimly, I realized that I felt something pushing down on top of me, crushing me, wrapping around me, pinning me in place. And then I realized it felt soothing, comforting. I blinked several times and tried to see out of the haze that was my immediate world. I was vaguely surprised to see Alec’s face, inches from my own. He had wrapped his arms around me and was holding me tightly. I believed he was trying to comfort me. I hadn’t known he was in the room. Slowly, my deep anguish seeped out of me, and was replaced with absolute love and gratitude.

I patted his arm softly, to let him know I was alright now. Glancing at me, he withdrew and sat perched on the edge of the bed, with a hand held firmly on my shoulder. He sat by my side for a whole two days, only leaving for emergencies of the body. He spoon fed me, and tilted my head to drink. I was terribly ashamed of myself for not even being capable of the simplest of actions, but I appreciated his help and so I tried to hide my hurt pride and thanked him as much as I could.

And finally at last, I woke to find myself in a better state of being. My head had cleared, I could breathe deeply without coughing, and I could actually think. Glancing around the small room, lit with the bright light spilling in through the withdrawn curtain, I saw Alec slumped in a chair beside the bed. His head was a little to the side, and he was softly snoring. I smiled and swallowed thickly when I saw his disheveled form rather haphazardly strewn in the chair. He had worn himself out caring for my own withered self. That right there was the essence of humanity, which had so long been forgotten with the introduction of the Glass-net, and Glass-com. The willingness to entirely deplete and expend one’s own self, for the health and betterment of another person.

It broke the heart to see that even after a large scale disaster, people couldn’t be bothered to care for one another. Instead, they not only allowed others to suffer, but also caused much of the suffering. People had grown so selfish, that even now they would rather murder each other for a simple piece of firewood, than to give one over. It was sad the depths that people had fallen to, that they could not even help one another stand against the ravaging of time.

Eons ago, people used to actually go outside, walk for what might have been several miles for some people, and just spend time together, enjoying each other’s company. It had slowly been transitioned. The radio, the TV, the personal telephone, cell phones, internet and computers… All of those things had faded and warped our idea of socializing. We talked to people who were in other countries, but didn’t even know the people who lived on our own streets. We knew everyone in our kid’s schools, by chatting with them through ‘social’ medias. And gradually, the LCD screens and the printed word became the definition of social interaction.

And now, if you wanted to know how someone was, you had to go and ask them, to their faces. No more hiding behind technology. No more lying about who or what you were, to make yourself seem better than you were. Or at least, the convoluted idea instilled by endless media and movie presentations, which gave the impression that perfection was the only acceptable form. And thus, many people were disappointed to find themselves with people who didn’t fit that quota, and too many people were trying to find the perfect person to be with.

The second rule of nature is that beauty is to be found in imperfection. In the wile and unbridled nature, there was no perfection. People were initially a thing of nature, content with the naked face and the simple clothing afforded by lack of imagination, and lack of so-called fashion judges.

A field overgrown with flowers is absolutely wonderful, but none of those flowers are likely to be the cultured, bred flowers sought by humanity. A tree in the forest is overrun with pestilence, weeds, moss, and many other imperfections, all of which add to the character of the tree…

Shaking my head with a little sigh, I sat up in the bed and folded the cover away. I shouldn’t encourage my mind to wander as it does. I might get lost forever amongst the turnings and workings therein. Sometimes it’s a nice place to visit though, carefree and musing. Glancing once more at the sleeping, peaceful form slouched in the chair beside my bed, I rose and quietly moved from the room. Out in the main part of the house, there were few furnishings. A few small and simple chairs sat at a table in the corner. A large stove hunched close to that, a door giving access to stock it with wood. A simple rug graced the floor in the center of the room, and off white nearly sheer curtains draped beside a tall window next to the front door.

A somewhat small woman stood by the stove, stirring something in a cast iron pan which gave of the most wonderful aroma. My mouth watered some at the smells, my empty stomach rumbling in anticipation of the coming meal. I greeted the woman with a good morning, and she nodded but didn’t speak.

For the most part, they were like that. The women that is. Here in the village, very few of the women were permitted to speak to outsiders. This woman would cook for us, clean for us, and wash clothing for us, and never once say a word the whole time we were here.

Having been here before, I understood their laws, and would follow them. After all, I wouldn’t get in trouble, she would. It was permissible for me to leave a token of appreciation, which I would gladly do. She was after all giving her time over to us, with no actual expectation of return. Likely she was being punished for something, some small indiscretion. So she would regain her status with these people if I were to give her something.

Before long, I heard a loud scraping noise from the bedroom as the till-now sleeping Alec bolted from his chair. He came to an abrupt stop just inside the main room, holding his chest and gasping as he stared at me. Swallowing a few times he shook his head roughly.

“You gave me quite a start, Cam. I thought for sure you’d gone and -,” I waved away his comment unfinished. “I’m feeling right as rain, boy. Good for the going again.” He nodded, visibly relieved. Without talking to the woman, whom I had explained to him, Alec approached the cooking woman and leaned over the pots on the stove. She batted him away with one of her long dish towels, looking somewhat irate and at the same time mischievous.

Just then, a tall and thin man came into the house, giving me a passive once-over. “Glad to see you’re up on your feet again. I just came to inform you that there’s going to be a barn social this evening, if you care to attend.” Nodding I agreed to be there. That would be fun. They really cut loose and had a surprising amount of fun for such a reserved and humble society.

Then

I sat in the rocking chair in the main room of our little house. Holding my little boy, I was rocking him to sleep and singing a lullaby to him. His mother, who was three years younger than I, sat at the table with a soft smile on her face. For the most part, she knew these songs, but there were a few I had come across she’d never heard before. I didn’t know why, but she just loved to listen to me sing. I felt that a woman’s voice did a lullaby more justice, but I wasn’t going to argue. She needed the break anyway, and it was heart lifting to have such a tiny, fragile being so completely and totally absorbed with watching me, and trusting me with his little life as he drifted off to sleep.

He seemed to have passed through the stage of depression, or colic, or whatever it was called. He soothed easier, and cried less, sleeping more at night than he had before. At four months, he smiled, he laughed, and he tried to play with things around him. He didn’t sit yet by himself, though he tried to. He was kind of headstrong, like his grandmother, but he was sympathetic like his mother.

I glanced over at Karen, her eyes glazed over with deep content. I just loved her beautiful eyes. I realized that I too was smiling. It really was amazing how deeply one person could love another.

A few days later, I was working in the pits, when it suddenly came to me. I knew what I wanted to name him. I stood upright so fast the other guys around me jumped too, likely afraid there was something scary down in the pile of rubble I had been sifting through. Waving away their questions and bewilderment, I apologized and continued working.

I couldn’t just leave in the middle of work, I would have to wait until the day was over before I could tell Karen what I wanted to name our little boy. I was sure once she heard it, she would absolutely love it. I didn’t even know where I had come up with it, as I didn’t think anyone else had even mentioned it to me, or near me. It was something of an unusual name, though that didn’t take much these days. I was sure though that I didn’t know anyone by that name. I must have read it in one of the many books I had read in the fallout shelter, and it just sprang to mind.

I watched the time seep out of the sky, hour by creeping hour, until the sun dipped down below the line of buildings that graced our ‘horizon’, and then I pretty much dashed out of there. I had never felt this invigorated at the end of a work day before. But it was pretty exciting to have come up with a name finally. After all this time, with everyone now pretty irritated with us, and we being the main topic for most gossip passing around.

I zigged and zagged my way across the helter-skelter construction area, until I was at the gardens, then wove my way along the paths until I reached the school house. Karen wasn’t there though, she had already gone home they said. And so, without pause, I turned and hurried off in the direction of home. At long last, I burst through the door. Karen was busy at the little stove in the corner of the main room. She startled and whirled around at my sudden and hasty entrance.

“Oh! Cameron, what’s the hurry? Is something wrong?” I shook my head, pausing to try and catch my breath. I felt myself grinning like an idiot, but I didn’t care. I thought I had my voice back and tried to speak, but I ended up coughing instead. She brought me a cup of water as I lowered myself to the chair at the table. Drinking in big gulps to sooth my throat a little faster, I finally plunked the cup down on the wooden slab which passed for a table, and burst out with my news.

“Damien!” She arched her eyebrows high and scrunched them together. “What?” I nodded. “Damien.” She stared at me a moment, her expression uncomprehending, but then her eyes lightened and her face softened. “Ooh! Damien? His name? You think Damien?” I nodded again, so proud of myself I thought I’d burst.

She thought about it and I could see by her eyes that it she was giving it some serious consideration. “I don’t know. Maybe, I guess I’ll think about it.” I blinked a few times, my chest puffed like a bird from the cold. “Think about it?” She nodded. “Yeah, think about it. I don’t want to be too hasty with the decision.”

Arching an eyebrow, I gestured widely. “Hasty? It’s been four months! The poor little guy is going to be crawling soon, and then walking! Hasty would have been before he came. Now we’re at ridiculously overdue!” She shrugged and went back to her cooking. Back stiff and motions jerky, she clattered a little extra loud as she resumed cooking. “I just want to be absolutely sure before I stick him with just any old name.”

I felt as if the balloon of my insides had been deflated so far they were going to collapse in on themselves, crushing me to oblivion. “Any old name? Just any old name? And what would you like to name him? Please, give me a name. Any name. At this point, even a girl’s name would be better than nothing! What am I supposed to call him for the rest of his life? ‘Little guy’? Or maybe, when he gets older, I can call him ‘Big guy’?”

She glared at me over her shoulder but then turned back to her work. We didn’t speak for the rest of the evening, but ate in silence, then got ready for bed and went to sleep without saying a word to each other. I wouldn’t be upset if we didn’t choose the name I had suggested. All that really mattered was that she treated it as if it was just some stupid name to add to the growing list of names we laughed about.

Now

I put the pen down and rubbed my wrist, extending my fingers their full length before clenching them tightly. All of this writing was cramping my hands up badly. The seemed to ache quicker and easier than they had before, all the way up my elbows, and into my shoulders, and if I kept at it, down into the small of my back. My hips, my butt bones, and even my knees grew tight and achy after a few hours of steady writing. It was important to get it all down on paper, but it would be pointless to expend my hands and leave them useless with so much left to go.

And it hurt too to think about how we had argued during that time, and about such petty things. In hindsight, they seemed like such pointless arguments. We could have easily come to a decision about the name of our son, if we had bothered to be even the least bit compromising, or if we had been more considerate of each other’s feelings. But it was hard to back down when she pushed like that. And I know that there were a few names she had considered which I had carelessly cast aside and ridiculed.

Staring out the window to the little house, massaging my aching arms, I thought back on that time in my life. Even after everything I had been through, and all that I had learned, I was still truly self-centered back then. It mattered more to me to have a name that I really wanted, than to have a name that she didn’t even have to think about but liked immediately.

The lighting in the room changed suddenly and I blinked away the reverie. Glancing out the window, I noticed that huge storm clouds had rolled in and it was likely mere minutes before the rains fell. The men of the village had brought out the rain catchers, to gather rain for use later. That way in the heat of summer, when it wasn’t likely to rain as much, they would have enough water collected to supplement the small streams and rivers that meandered not far off. Each village had a portion of the water that was considered theirs, and then whatever they could amount from the rains was theirs to keep. So the more water they could save, the better.

The women had been busy closing shutters, and bringing in laundry and other objects they didn’t want to get rained on. I noticed Alec at the far edge of the village, helping the other men to set legs for one of the funnel shaped rain catchers. Made out of seasoned and waterproofed animal hide, the devices were somewhat crude, but they served their purpose well. The funnels were tall and wide, the best to catch the most rain, and they opened at the bottom, where the rain fell into a long trough which branched to the other catchers, and ended up in a large cistern dug into the ground. There were four sets of these rain catchers, to each of the four main directions out from the village. And each one of the cisterns was capable of holding well upwards of five thousand gallons of water, though they never tended to reach over probably two thousand gallons. Some years were better than others though, and one year they had actually flooded out their cisterns. Other years, they scraped to make even the one thousand lines.

Finally the men were done setting the poles in place, as the thick black clouds in the sky burst and began dumping heavy rain to the earth. I couldn’t hardly see the edge of the porch, not ten feet away through the little window, let alone Alec some two hundred yards off. I sat watching the rain, waiting for Alec to appear, as the sweet and chill smell of the rain seeped into the room. The woman who was our caretaker came into the room and made to pull the shutters closed, but I waved her away. She glanced at me in frustration.

As a man, she was not allowed to go against me, but it was against everything she knew to leave it open during the rain. “Alec is still out there, we can’t close it till I’m sure he makes it.” She folded her arms and stood beside me silently, watching as well. The minutes seemed to drag by. It passed slower than it might have if we had had any means by which to count them, but either way, they seemed to inch slower than a snail in March. I shifted my weight uneasily.

I began to worry when he didn’t show. With all that rain, one could even get lost, or fall down and get hurt. I thought perhaps he might have holed up in another house though, so I tried not to allow myself to completely lose my head. And the rain kept on pouring, stronger than any rain I had ever seen. It was actually even more than what had fallen while Tara and I had hidden within the cave wall, on the way to Waterville.

The sudden thought of Tara made my throat tighten, and tears sting my eyes. That had been so long ago, our trek to Waterville, and it stood out as brightly as if the sun were to peer through this rain right into my mind.

Stubbornly blinking away the tears, I gazed once more out of the window, and yet there was still no Alec. Finally I motioned that she could close the window. The woman, whose name was not even to be spoken and so I did not know it, hesitated, unsure, but then went and slowly closed the shutters. They were on the outside, but the people had devised a method to close them from the inside, using wheels which turned in the wall and brought them together tightly. They would latch themselves from the outside, and then one had to leave the house to open them.

Just as the windows thumped firmly into place and latched with a solid click, I heard a loud crash on the porch. Turning abruptly, I jumped to the door, but the woman still beat me to it. As she swung it open, I saw a heap of clothing struggling to right itself, and nearly doubled over when I saw that it was Alec. He’d made it after all!

I reached out and helped him right his coat, before giving him a hand through the door. Immediately the woman set about helping him to remove the soggy and dripping outer clothes, which she promptly dropped into a waterproof clothes basket. Once it was down to his damp underclothing she motioned for him to go into the bathing room. As he made his way there, she set a large kettle on the stove and brought the flames to roaring. As the woman prepared him a hot bath, and brought fresh clothes for him, I sat down in one of the chairs at the edge of the room, and put my head on the palm of one hand. My blood was still coursing, and my breathing was somewhat ragged.

It had been quite a fright to have him missing out there in the rain, and then to see him so bedraggled. My best guess was that he had both fallen and gotten lost. You wouldn’t think that something as innocent and easy to walk through as rain could be so devastating or scary, but this wasn’t just any rain. This was thick, somewhat dusty rain, built for ages in the sky, before suddenly pelting the earth. I wouldn’t be surprised if the grass in the wake of the storm was all flattened, maybe even rutted and badly damaged.

The woman handed me a tea cup in passing, and I gratefully took a long sip of it. The warm chamomile eased my shaking and settled my heart and mind. I closed my mind and allowed steam from the cup to waft over my face. All the extra wrinkles and grooves of my face held the steam, which sought to caress almost lovingly.

I shook my head. Ah how the mind likes to go for walks! It must be canine in nature. I finished up the tea and returned to my desk for writing. The papers were still laid out as I had left them, but now there were a few droplets of water on them. Frowning, I picked them up and shook the water off carefully, before patting them dry with a stray piece of cloth. It didn’t look like they would be too badly ruined. The drop spots would dry as small circular stains, but the actual writing would not be harmed much.

I hung the wet papers to dry, along the edges of the night stand and the foot rails of the bed, then sat down to resume my writing. I clenched and opened my hand a few times, just to be sure it would be up to the task, before once more bringing pen tip to paper. If there was one thing to be said of rain, it’s that it was an inspiration.

One of the natural muses of humanity must have been rain. It brought out the best and deepest creativity for most people. I would guess perhaps because rain in itself was a manifestation of sorrow. Which was sort of interesting because rain was also a foregoer of rebirth. Rains replenished the earth, and caused new life to spring in its wake. It cleansed the earth, leaving room for the plants to grow, and giving cleaner, fresher water to the animals and people. By washing away the layers of dirt and ash that coated the ground, it gave the struggling plants a better chance at finding true nutrients.

Blinking and swinging my head a little, I gaze down at the paper before me. My eyes are a little blurry and I realize that I am chilled. The sudden rains have brought with them a deep chill. In a way, that is good because it means that even this summer will be cooler than ones before. With the rains and snows, the earth was slowly cooling back down.

Rising from my chair and gathering all of my writing supplies, I returned to the main portion of the house. The caretaker was standing once more at her stove, stirring something on top of it. She didn’t glance at me as I made my way over to the small table next to it, where a chair sat for meal use. There were three of them, one each for me and Alec, and one for her. She was not allowed to eat with us, as her punishment was still in effect, but she was also not supposed to use the same chair or place at the table as us, and so she had her own.

I set my books and papers down on top of the sturdy surface, set everything out, and began going through my notes. As my mind was so eager to explore other territories, I felt I should use my notes to keep it grounded and closer to subject.

Then

It was late evening, and I was sitting atop one of the outer buildings watching the sun set over the true and natural horizon. It had been perhaps a week since my little argument with Karen, but I still felt I should avoid having to be there for very long. I didn’t know what to say or do anymore. Everything made her mad, or jumpy, or just sounded stupid.

It was peaceful out here in the rest of the city, where there was no one around. I had this part of the city all to me, since the lay crew was done for the day. We were in the process of moving yet another ring of buildings. This time, we were surpassing the courthouse where my family had stood so many years ago, and where Tara and I had met to determine our fates.

They weren’t going to try to move the courthouse, but refurbish and remodel it for use among the village. I couldn’t remember off hand what they had said they were going to use it for. Perhaps the science department, or the school, or the nurse/doctor stations… Maybe all of the above, as it was a very large building. Other than the crack in the front steps, it was in pretty decent condition.

The sound of scraping and the clang of the metal door which led out here to the roof caused me to turn sharply and half rise up. Seeing that it was Karen though, I sat back down and returned my gaze to the sky. The sunset was almost gone now, faded to deep purples and blues which would precede night. Stars had started appearing to the east, as the sun’s departure cleared the air to allow the feeble light of the stars to shine through.

Karen sat beside me without a word and gazed at the sky with me. It had been a while since just the two of us did anything together. Since the baby had been born, it had been all about him, and making sure he was happy and safe. Even in silence, sitting just with her was nice.

After a little while, I put my arm around her shoulders as she started shivering. It was late summer, but the nights could sometimes be pretty cold. The direct absence of sun made it seem chillier than it likely was.

Finally she turned her head a little and looked up at me. “I do like it you know.” I glanced down at her. “Huh?” She smiled a little. “Damien. I do like it.” It took a few seconds for understanding to reach me. “You do?” She nodded. “I’ve thought about it, and I do like it.” My heart swelled with love and admiration for her consent. I held her close and apologized for how I’d been acting, and she apologized too.

We stayed out there on the roof for the longest time, watching the stars shine and glimmer in the night sky. Finally I realized that my rear end was getting chilled to the bone from sitting on the roof for so long. I stood and helped her to stand and we made our way back to the little hut we called a home.

Inside, the house was empty and dark. I raised an eyebrow, but she just laughed softly. Once inside, we quietly but passionately made up.

Now

“Cam? Cam, wake up.” “Huh?” I lifted my head foggily and peered around through blurry eyes. I was confused at first. The wall directly in front of me was white. I distinctly remembered the bedroom was tan colored. So why was I not in the bedroom?

Rubbing my eyes with my palms, I tried to clear my thoughts. With a deep breath, I opened my eyes and again looked around. I had been sleeping with my head on the page spread out across the table, in the large main room. I realized I must have dozed off while writing. The steady pounding on the roof told me it was still raining with vigor.

I almost jolted as I remembered what was written on the pages that were laid out, and I gathered them up quickly and began stacking them. I couldn’t let him see these things yet. The time wasn’t right. How would I explain everything?

Alec helped me grab them up, which made my heart lurch, but I tried to keep my hands steady as I packed them away in my sack.

Just then the caretaker came into the room carrying a ladle and two bowls. At the stove she scooped out portions for us and set them before us, pulling spoons out of a pocket in her apron. Her current job accomplished, she once again disappeared into the room we were not permitted into; hers. Or rather; the store room where her cot had been placed. It was filled with everything the little house needed to get by, and that left only the small aisle. Her cot had been placed near the far end of it, with barely room to pass through to another door. I knew all this because I had accidentally stumbled into it the other day, half asleep and seeking the bathing room. The bathing room had a small closet to the rear, where a sort of ‘outhouse’ had been built to be accessed from within the house.

Alec didn’t question me about the hasty disappearance of my writing, but ate his meal in near silence. There wasn’t much to talk about at moment. We could perhaps find time to do more lessons to while away the evening hours, but a meal’s greatest virtue was silence.

Then

When our boy was four years old, he was delighted with the arrival of a brother, Harold. Harold was named in honor of my father, and his name was chosen much faster than Damien’s had been. Many people plagued us with jokes and teasing about how long it would take to choose a second name, since the first had been so long. We laughed them off and had a name picked out before he even came into the world. We had a girl’s name selected as well, allowing for the possibility.

His birth was not easy, and Karen was laid in bed for many weeks afterwards. He was a small boy, and he seemed more fragile than I remembered Damien being. He had a particular gentleness about him, and yet he was a fighter. He became ill just shy of his first month, and Karen and I could only watch and worry helplessly as we waited to see if he would make it through. A week and a half later he seemed to be regaining his strength, and a week after that he was back to his old self again. He didn’t fuss much, but when he did he complained loudly. Mostly for want of food or clean bottom.

Finally, three months after Harold was born, Karen was able to return to work at the schools. There was a different system in place than there had been before the collapse of society, although for all I knew it had probably been in place here ever since they began building this literal ‘inner city’.

Instead of having their schooling begin in the fall and run through the spring, this cycle had no real start or stop. It was actually harder to do school during the winter months, so they were more likely to take off a month or so in the winter than in the summer. It was also more convenient in this society, where every member worked every day, to have the children learning valuable lessons during the hours their parents were away. Rather than simply leave them to be cared for, they were sent to learn. There was no other method, nor had the children ever heard of anything else, and so they did not complain or yearn for anything else. Even the adults had never really known anything else, their own generations having been born and raised under these conditions.

It was a touch of luck then that Harold was born in the month of November, when winter’s breath had sent a chill across the earth. It hadn’t snowed here in Waterville even once since I had been here, and ever in the history since before the great world war three, but it still got cold enough sometimes to allow frost to build up on everything.

As the sun was beginning once more to warm the earth, in mid-February, Karen resumed her duties, and school was back in session. This was good, because then the society could return to their usual schedule. While school was out, parents were given lee-ways. They would rotate who was working and who stayed home, to be sure that there was always someone responsible watching a child. Sometimes they would arrange to have a few people watching most of the kids, to allow more persons to work in a day.

As cold as it was in the night, the daytime heat turned all of the frost to kind of a slushy mess, and all the dust and dirt and ash which layered the city on the outside caked and turned into a thick mud, which clung to everything which ventured outward.

Around the time Harold turned three, and Damien was seven, I was changed to outside duty. I was a watcher, not one of the people who chased others away. Not many people ever entered our city anymore, but occasionally someone would. We didn’t just stand around outside waiting for someone to enter though. There were spy ports where we could determine for hours ahead when someone was coming, and then one set of chasers would head out and waylay them before they got too close to the middle.

When there weren’t people coming, I was now in the science department. I had managed to convince them I could contribute enough to make it worth changing me to that line of work. There was somewhat better pay, which helped with feeding and clothing the newest member of our family.

It was my job to help design and build new conveniences that could aid in the everyday survival of the other people, and other objects which helped make the progression of our building easier.

We had actually managed to overtake most of the city now, and there were only nine rows left to go one way, and eleven on the lengthwise. That was going to be kind of tricky, moving the buildings like that to fill in gaps, but I was assured that the city planners had already figured that part out. As I was no longer in construction, it was none of my business I’d been told. Ah well.

Now

It had been two days, sitting in the little house in the Amish village, and the rain had not shown any sign that it would slow, let alone stop. Our supplies would hold nearly indefinitely I had been assured, but there was something else that would not. My patience. I was growing tired of being cooped in this house, reading and writing by oil light, as even in the day there was not quite enough light to see the words. And even Alec was beginning to seem as a tiger caged, pacing one end of the house to the other and back. Sometimes he too would read, paging through the few tattered books I had in my possession, or writing out on a drawing board the Amish used to teach their children.

The house seemed to grow chillier with the passing days, and the three of us had dragged our beds out into the main room of the house and shut tight the doors to the other rooms, to conserve heat in the main portion. This way it took less wood to keep us warm. For being early spring, perhaps April or May, it was very cold. It seemed even somewhat possible that it would turn to snow, which would not be good at all. With the road ahead long, it wouldn’t do to be trapped here. Especially since we had only just managed to escape the snow-laden Anchorville recently.

WIth all this writing, and having to conceal this portion from Alec, it was almost nerve-wracking. It made it hard to concentrate, and whole portions of it seemed sketchy, maybe even a little ill fitted like a big glove with little fingers. The pieces didn’t always flow as smoothly as I had hoped they would, and some of them didn’t truly capture the full meaning and emphasis as I wished.

It was also a little hard to stay on topic. Thinking about my boys again, and how I had watched them grow, it was hard sometimes not to just burst out crying. The hardest thing in the world is to lose a child. They are supposed to live long after yourself, and pass from this world long after you were cold and a distant memory.

But I had lived so long that those lines had been crossed, and my life had been twisted and turned, wrought with grief, anger, and sometimes, absolute desolation. I had had quite some time to come to terms with it, but that never meant that it was acceptable. And for sure, it would never stop hurting. Any of the people I had lost along the way. Even should I live another decade or more, I would still feel the pain of their loss as heavily and strongly as if it had happened only the day before. But I would keep on pushing, keep moving, and hold my head up as high as my slowly giving frame would allow, if for no other reason than to lend an amount of dignity to them. As I lived, their memories lived.

I feel though as if I have visited this topic before. Perhaps I should erase this segment? But no. This is an accurate accounting, and as detailed without boring to tears as I can get, and all should be left as written. Within reason. I had scrapped a few pages along the way, which either drew long on subjects of little to no interest to anyone, or had been so full of wandering or scratch-outs it merited re-writing.

Anyway, having a child die made it feel as if your heart had been yanked out of your chest, and you could feel every agonizing rend as some giant tore it harshly and savagely into the tiniest shreds imaginable, and then for good measure lit fire to it to watch it burn for the rest of your days. Waking every morning was like getting hit in the chest with a sledgehammer, as the memories of each lost person hit anew.

And it doesn’t matter how old the child is, brand new, or many decades. It still hurts terribly. Just thinking about it I felt my chest begin to tighten, constrict. Breathing became a struggle and I put a hand to my chest as I forced my lungs to open and allow refreshment to enter.

I realized that both Alec and the woman were watching me sharply, expressions of deep concern blunt on their faces. I shook my head and waved them away, but my hand shuddered as I reached for a cup of water beside my writing. As I went to pick it up, I accidentally knocked it over, spilling the happy to be free water across my pages. Quickly I snatched them up as I bolted out of my chair, shaking water onto the floor in my haste to clear the papers. My precious papers soaked in water. Water was one of the most damaging elements a paper could ever know. For sure, there were bugs that could devour pages, and various diseases that could eat whole books. But water, moisture, and other forms of liquid, could ravage entire libraries.

I’m sure I said a few unpleasant words as Alec helped me to dab at the soaked pages, but I don’t care to record them for reference. Once most of the water had been sopped up, we carefully hung the pages on the backs of the chairs, and across the edge of the table. I had hidden the pages which referred to my children, but I gave them all a careful once over to be sure.

Then I sat back in my chair, picked out a fresh piece of paper, and began once again to jot down memories from my life. At this point, I was near to what I called middle aged. Now days, about twenty-five was middle aged, because most were not expected to live past fifty-something. For me, it seemed that forty-something was to be middle aged. Already I had aged a year since I began this accounting. At eighty five, I was something of an anomaly. I stood out like the fabled green thumb, or how hunter’s orange stood out against a green or white backdrop.

I glanced at my hand; gently and almost loving wrapped around the stalk of a pen, long since wrinkled, the veins on it nearly visible through the skin. I guess I really was lucky though. To be carrying my own weight most of the time, breathing the air the planet had to offer, and consciously aware of my surroundings most of the time, to know who I was, or where, and what was going on… I hadn’t suffered the effects of aging as completely and depressingly as some might have when this age was not such a hard-reached goal.

I closed my eyes firmly, seeing the hard caked dusty dirt of Waterville. I needed to clear my mind, and focus. Let the words come, and splash about, dance across the page and spew knowledge, wisdom, and understanding.

Then

As the boys grew, I taught them everything I knew. All the things I had learned myself, either from the books I’d read or knowledge gleaned from surviving the crash of society. They grew strong, and with every passing day, a little bit smarter, of course not wiser, that came with age. And the biggest fact of youth is ignorance, which was made all the worse by the thought process that one in reality was truly intelligent. Their teenaged years were filled with worry as they explored the world around them with a reckless almost negligence that kept me on the edge of my seat, and Karen’s teeth gritted.

That’s not to say they were stupid, they never left the safety of the village if they knew outsiders were coming. A healthy fear of outsiders had been instilled in every person from the time they were old enough to understand what the word outside meant. It was taught along with ‘ouch’ and ‘bad’. But they still liked to check out places that were not entirely considered safe. There were two rings of buildings left at this time, but it was felt that we should leave these areas as they were, to give us better means to defend ourselves.

It would have been hard to convince people that there was no one here, or at least no one worth bothering, if they were simply faced with a solid row of buildings with no visible way past them. Oddly, not many people felt the urge to enter these dark, decrepit looking buildings in search of answers. They sought a road or an alley which would lead them there. And with the dirty dust now piled more than knee high around most of the buildings that were left, many decided it was better to just go around the town.

Night time was the only trouble for us. It was hard to hide so many lights up until people went to bed, especially in the winter when the nights came so early, and lasted so long. There was no real knowledge of time, such as what hours were truly night, or simply evening, but everyone knew that the nights were longer in the winter, and one usually ended up spending at least a few hours awake after the sun had bid the world good morrow.

At any rate, it was something of a wonder that both of them managed to make it to adulthood, with all of their limbs and senses intact. They grew into fine young men, despite their strong rebellion as teens. They fell into line as they were given jobs that were more important than the toiling of teens, Damien as a wrecker, and Harold who had always been a little softer, as a designer for the science crew. When they had been working for more than a year each in turn, they ‘purchased’ lots and built houses for themselves. Both chose a simple design along the lines of my own house.

With the both of them out of the house, things grew quiet in a hurry, and the place seemed very empty indeed. I often found myself staring at the places alongside the walls of the main room where they boys had been moved after their third birthdays and they were old enough to know better than to wander from the house. On cots which were made to fold up against the wall for more space in the day, they had occupied little room. And yet, the house seemed as if it had gained acres of barrenness in their absence. I suppose though that it wasn’t all bad, I mean, they lived within the confines of Waterville, whose inner city had grown to encompass roughly sixteen square miles. So in all reality, I could go and see them any time I liked when we were not working. Harold spent more time at his job than most, determined to come up with some new revelation that would be the ultimate contribution. So seeing him was a little harder than it was with Damien. But still, he was bound to be somewhere within the basic area of our utopia.

And then there was Karen. She seemed ravaged by some unknown illness. Her chest ached terribly some days, making it hard for her to concentrate on anything, and some days almost debilitating. She had been changed to simply a teacher’s aide, to ease the amount of thought process necessary.

We had asked the physicians for help, but they were stumped. They had no idea what ailed her. They had given her some things to null the pain, and some days it helped. It hit me that she was aging, and her body could not handle these kinds of things as once they had. And that frightened me. She wasn’t actually old, as far as I was concerned, but even here sixty was a stretch, beyond that virtually unheard of. She was only thirty-eight, so she should have had a good twenty-two years left in her. Enough to see the birth of grandchildren, and watch them nearly reach adulthood.

Shaking my head though, I literally stamped my foot. She wasn’t gone yet, and there was still hope. My Karen was a strong woman, she would pull through whatever this was.

Now

After nearly a week, the rains had finally stopped. They didn’t putter or lessen, but rather were simply suddenly and entirely gone. One minute, the rain was so heavy and thick that the buildings across the road were barely dark smudges, and the next there was blue sky with the sun shining down so brightly on everything that it made my eyes squint in shock.

Raising a hand to shield my eyes, I rose and opened the shudder on the front of the house. For sure, there was not even a cloud over us. Cautiously opening the door, I stepped out onto the porch and looked around. The ground was covered with water, perhaps beyond knee height. Other people were beginning to venture out of their own homes as I went down the top two steps, stopping at the edge of the water. Glancing at the sky, I could see the clouds that had so strongly doused the land for so long, retreating over the horizon far off. A rain wall could be seen beneath them, trailing somewhat behind even as a harsh wind blew the storm away.

That same wind was currently lashing the houses and other buildings, causing roofing to flap; sticking the clothes I wore to my body on one side, to stretch it out on the other. Had there been any part of the ground dry during a wind such as this, dirt and dust would be blown away. Causing a near sandstorm I imagine.

It was just so good to feel the sun on my cold and aged body that I withstood the wind to stay there on the step for a long minute. However, the wind soon drowned out the effects of the sun, bringing the chill back with fervor as the gusts blew the water against the steps and splashed droplets across my pants and shirt. In some places, the water splashed up even when no object was met.

Finally I turned and once again retreated into the safety of the little guest house. Closing the door behind me with a deep seated feeling of depression, I strode back to my seat by the fire. I sighed. For now, we were still stuck in this place. I guess at least it was a safe place, with no worry of capture, injury, or worse, death.

Then

I felt so helpless. Standing on one of the decrepit buildings at the edge of our society, tossing stones to clatter against other buildings before landing with a soft poof in the once more dry and lofty dusty dirt that coated the outer city, all I could think of was how angry I was. Why did everything that happened have to have such high prices? I had survived the Crash, only to see my mother brutally murdered. I had reached adulthood relatively unharmed, only to have my father horribly taken. And I had married the most wonderful woman ever to have lived, and she was being slowly, painfully taken away. Each day she faded just a little more, but each day took such a toll that it was almost selfish of me to wish her to continue. She kept telling me that she was going to be okay, that everything would be fine. But I knew better. She had been ill too long. She hurt too much, too often.

I just wish I knew for sure what was wrong with her. For all that reading I had done, for all the things I had seen, and learned, I couldn’t figure it out. It was unlike any illness I had ever heard of. Which of course included the plague. This was unlike that. The pain had spread from her chest, down to her stomach, and up into her head. There had been a few days when rising from the bed had been too much of a struggle, and she had succumbed to the urge to simply lie still. It didn’t hurt so much she said, if she didn’t go anywhere, or even move. I didn’t think I had ever suffered anything to even come close to the pain she seemed to feel on the worst days.

And then there were the good days. One of those days was the day our oldest boy, Damien, told me that he’d chosen a girl to court. Her name was Alice. And he told us he was in love with her deeply. She hadn’t yet had any suitors call, and so he was uncontested. I was happy for him, but she didn’t seem to like me much. I couldn’t fathom why, until I heard the rumors that were floating. A few people who hated the science division, calling them lazy squandering filth, had come up with a terrible rumor that it was because I had been an outsider, and had brought outside diseases with me, that Karen lay ill.

The day I heard that, I sought out the instigator of such a lie, and I attacked him. My fists went flying faster than I could think; red filling my vision so entirely all I could see was his face as it first flew away from me, then lay on the ground without argument or fight. Thankfully Damien worked with the lout, and he pulled me off of him before I could do enough permanent damage to kill the thick headed bully, but I had done the damage. There was a review before the council, where they determined whether or not to eliminate my privileges as a citizen. In short, kick me out of Waterville forever.

Harold and Damien both spoke on my behalf, informing the council both of the malicious lies, and the fact that most of the physical laborers viewed the science community as a joke, a waste of time, and a means for lazy men to sit about and play with pens and pencils.

Finally they decided that I could stay in Waterville, as long as I stayed away from the man I had bruised and battered. The other man was given a constriction as well, to sear clear of me. Damien was given a new position, to remove him from the toxic presence of the terrible, jealous and hatred filled menace. It was well known among the other workers that the guy had been a problem since childhood, giving even Karen a hard time in schooling.

Another rock clattered against old brick, and I saw pieces of it crumble away to leave a pockmark quite visible against the solid grey wall. I stared at it for a moment, realizing that my cheeks were both wet and hot. Reaching a hand up, I felt them. They must have been red enough to rage a bull. The absolute atrocity of the claim that I could be directly or even indirectly responsible for Karen’s illness…

I threw another rock, and felt a thrill of pleasure as I heard the sound of breaking glass. Few windows still contained glass, and it felt great to break it. That high pitched tinkling shatter was so gratifying.

“It won’t help you know.” Karen’s voice made me turn sharply. She stood at the entrance onto the roof, on hand bracing herself on the frame and the other held gently across her stomach. I rushed to her and lent her some support. Taking the arm against the frame, I wrapped it around my shoulders and held her hand.

“What are you doing here? You should be resting.” She shook her head and swallowed thickly. “All I do anymore is rest. I don’t want to rest. Not on a good day.” Even her voice sounded weaker, as if she barely contained the strength to speak. And yet there was also solid determination.

I nodded. I understood too. If I thought I might die anytime soon, I sure wouldn’t spend that time in bed, waiting. I would be out trying to do something. Even the day father died, he had been actively doing something. He had read part of a book that morning. I knew because when we had packed everything up, we had found a book open on the night stand, with the family picture lying on top of it. I had kept that picture, and even now still had it. It was in a safe bag, tucked under the bed in my little hut. Every now and again I would get it out and gaze longingly at the fading images of my family.

Pictures were not something that had been common even before the crash, but we had had one done. Or rather, we had set a pair of Com Glasses on a shelf, posed with a timer, and taken the image, then printed it up ourselves. We didn’t often use that old printer, paper was too expensive. We had never had real paper, but there was a sort or synthetic material that had been used instead for a few generations, and we had always had a little on hand. Most people had preferred to use Glass-COM for everything, especially since there was no more actual mail, no documents kept on hand, and no paperwork to fill out yourself. It had all been electronic, digital. Images too had been reserved to pixels and dots representing the idea. Pictures could be taken, but few bothered to actually create a hard substance copy. After all, if life was played out virtually, why would anyone need reality.

I was glad now that father had insisted on using some of our fake paper to create this long-lasting copy of our life, that I could look on it and see perfectly what we had all looked like, and my parents in their prime and more than three years from the end of the world. Mom with her brown hair and eyes, father with his bright blue ones and somewhat dusty blond hair… Geeky, newly teenaged me, and not even preteen Tara.

Karen and I sat on the roof for maybe two hours, just watching the world slowly drift by outside in the barrens, no real signs of life out there in the vast and seemingly unending expanse of deep dust and dirt which drifted, sifted, and resettled on the whims of the winds or even gentle breezes. There were no birds, or other animals. No plants even bothered attempting to gain a foot hold, let alone replenish themselves out there were even the rocks seemed hopeless and depressed.

And yet, the sky was blue, and the sun was bright and warm on our backs. The sky of course was not exactly blue, holding something of a grey tint to it. But how do you explain true blue to someone who had never seen it before? Even I had never seen a truly blue sky with my own eyes in reality, but simply the bluer than life images recreated through the lenses of Glass-COM. So how would I explain such a thing to my own boys? Or rather, my young men.

Now

It took three more days for the water which covered the land to settle in and reveal the soggy earth beneath. When at last we ventured out into the town, our feet slid a little or sank inches in the mud. Within only a few feet, my hips hurt from the awkward walking necessitated by the muck.

As we came into sight of the rest of the village, it became obvious that this was not the only effect of the heavy rains, and the other was more devastating. A house near one of the cisterns had sunk partially into the ground, most of the front porch entirely gone. The roof seemed to have collapsed after the main portion of the house had sunk and shifted irreparably, leaving a section of the house exposed entirely to the elements.

People were already approaching the house at a run, eager to determine the fate of the family who had lived there. All I could do was to stand and watch, as Alec ran after them. “Don’t go in!” I hollered. “If the whole house falls you’ll be crushed!” He didn’t listen to me though and I watched with my heart in my throat as he vaulted the front steps in a beeline for the front door, which sagged at an unnatural angle in the wall. My vision blurred and my ears rushed with the sound of my blood raging in terror. Hands clasped, I sank to my knees almost pleadingly.

At long last, a woman came out the sideways front door, holding onto the higher side to keep her balance. She carried a bundle which was issuing the highest of piercing cries, the sound of which brought me out of my momentarily binding horror. I rose to my feet with unexpected grace and strode toward her.

Before I could get anything out of my clenched throat though, she answered the question. “That gentleman, he’s still in there!” She seemed horrified. “And my babies. And Paul!” She turned to face the house, leaned forward somewhat as if she wished to return herself.

There was a great creaking and moaning from the house, which shifted somewhat. I felt my heart lurch at the noise, though there was truly nowhere higher it could go without fleeing my mouth. The wooden building settled and seemed still, though I knew that was a lie. It could easily crumble to pieces at a moment’s notice; even a firm wind could have knocked the thing over. And still there was neither noise nor movement from within.

And then a small bundle of fur dove out the front door, skittered down the steps with many tiny scratching noises, and darted under the edge of the woman’s dress. She started at the abruptness and stepped back to reveal a cowering little dog.

As we were watching the dog however, a man brought his head around the edge of the doorframe, and then hoisted a child over the frame, to be grabbed by another man who had climbed onto the sagging, buckling porch. The child was handed down the stairs and set by his mother, and then a little girl was handed out. Finally the man climbed out as well, then turned back toward the doorway. He helped an older boy to climb out beside him, then the two of them made their way down the broken steps hanging jaggedly to bent nails.

The pounding in my chest and head was so loud I thought the volume would collapse the unsteady structure before me. Where was Alec? How could he have gotten hurt without me hearing it? He’d only been in there minutes, practicality deemed, or had it been hours, my mind asked.

The gathered people were startled backward as the entire house gave a shuddering heave, like a sleeping giant turning over. As it shifted, there was a loud yell from within the dark building. “Alec!” I yelled hoarsely. I reached toward the house as if I could make him appear in the doorway with my sheer will. And still the doorway remained dark and horribly empty. The end of the house which had mostly sagged into the ground began to fold like a strange card house toppling.

And then he was there. Not in the doorway, but in view of one of the large windows along the side of the house. The window was slanted so far over that he seemed diagonal to it. The curtain hung sideways over the window stretched and dipping where the gather beside the wall held it from falling all the way.

The glass had long since shattered, leaving jagged pieces hanging from its frame. Alec was attempting to shove something through the window, which clawed and fought against being released, grabbing at him in desperation.

One of the men from the crowd joined the owner of the house in racing to the window. As it was near the ground by now with the house sinking, they had to get down on their knees to grab the bundle, which then fought against the men from taking it, until the man began yelling at it. “Yelda! Yelda! Come, its Papa!” He had to yell a few times, and by then his knees had sunk into the deep mud around the edges of the house, but finally the ragged pile of clothing and limbs stopping fighting and instead turned and clung to the man. This was a help because his hands were then free to try and pull himself out of the mud, which sucked at his clothing, legs and arms, intending to claim him as well.

The other man then reached through the window, which was now half gone in the mud, and grabbed ahold of Alec’s arms. Since leaving the building was his main concern, Alec was no challenge in exiting the window, but his legs were knee deep in mud, even though he had been standing on an overturned table, and the suction of the mud made it nearly impossible for the man to pull him out. Another two men left the crowd and braved nearing the building, which was still collapsing and slowly sliding deeper into the mud with great sucking noises and sloppy squelching.

Just as they reached the window to help, a section of the house near the other end gave in to the extreme pressure and began to split, cracking along the main beam and down the side of the house. I was forced to back up to avoid flying chunks of wood and glass. I saw that some of the pieces were nearing the woman, whose gaze was solely fixed on the face of her husband as he ran toward them. The children had been pulled away by other people, but she didn’t notice the dangers arcing toward us, so I grabbed her and yanked her with me as I ran for cover behind a tree trunk. She fought though, and my frame was not nearly so able or firm as it had been, and it was only with the aid of the adrenaline coursing through my veins that I was able to at last toss her behind the tree, just as several pieces of debris flew into the air where we had been standing moments ago.

The tree was not large enough to hide two full grown bodies, even with her being a woman and myself being a shrunken version of my former girth. I felt tiny pieces of house hitting my back and hair, some of them stinging with the strength of impact, but it was nothing compared to the damage that would have been wreaked had they been given full access to my body.

It was only after the initial round of debris had flown past us that I realized I had last seen Alec halfway inside a house sinking into the mud. I risked sticking my head out from behind the large trunk to see where he was. I couldn’t see him. Where was he?

Just then the rest of the house gave way. With a huge crash, and several lesser ones, the building crumpled like a pop can, flattening out across the ground. Broken boards and glass flew through the air again, with such force and thickness I was forced to once again retreat behind the trunk. The woman was curled up against the trunk of the tree, soothing the baby. And then there was a wall of dust rolling past us, and I could see nothing.

Slowly the air settled and there was no sound, and no movement. Cautiously, I peered out from behind the tree. The air was still very dusty and I could hardly make anything out. There were no people visible between me and the house.

“Alec?” I yelled out dryly. “Alec?” There was no response. I stepped out into the open and again called out for him. Still nothing. Warily I approached the house. I tripped over something I hadn’t seen across the ground and I almost landed on it. It was a good thing I managed to catch myself, as I heard the form groan. Dropping, I moved the shape over and saw that it was the man of the house. He was laying on his front on the ground, many pieces of wood haphazardly tossed over him. Brushing it away, I checked his neck. He was still alive. And then I remembered. He’d been carrying a child. A wild, terrified, clawing child.

Rolling him over, I saw that the child was still clinging to him, hidden beneath his sheltering form, staring up at me with wide, brown eyes begging me to help, scared I would hurt her. I couldn’t just leave them, so I called out to the woman. “Your Yelda needs you, woman!” She leaned around the tree, then jumped to her feet and raced over to fall on her knees beside the man and the clinging bundle attached to his front. I didn’t stay to see that they were okay, I rose to my feet and again walked toward the building, now laying crumpled and defeated on the ground. A sucking, squelching noise let me know it was still sinking slowly, so to be careful.

“Alec?” I again called out. Still there was no response. I felt my eyes sting and blinked rapidly to clear away the tears attempting to free themselves. And then I heard it. “Cameron?” I swiveled around abruptly, coming almost face-to-face with him. The surprise of finding him this close held me suspended for a moment, and then I threw my arms around him in the biggest hug I could ever have given, never intending to let go again.

He gave a bit of a grunt though and I relaxed my grip a little. Except it wouldn’t have been my grip. My frame hadn’t been able to elicit actual discomfort in years. It seemed that just as everything else sagged or loosened or lightened, even my hugs had lost some of their fervor and strength.

Pulling back, I gazed at him. He waved away my worry, but I could see the sharp tinges of pain lancing through his eyes. I turned him around and felt my mouth gap a little. The back of his shirt was shredded, and small circles of blood were spreading out in the worn fabric. He assured me it was nothing, but I shook my head. It was not nothing.

I hurried him back to the house that had been ours for quite a while, and the woman who had helped us since the beginning was out on the front porch, arms gathered together in front of her. As we approached she saw the look on my face and reached to help me get Alec inside. His eyes had become glazed by now. She helped me get him to lie down across the table in the main room. With little care to the already ruined shirt, we ripped it back to reveal the full extent of the damage.

Alone, each tiny piece of wood or sliver would have been no more problem or pain than that of a simple sliver on the finger. Combined though, the many slivers and pebbles engrained in his back were enough to cause him to slowly lose consciousness. Add to that the mud, and the glass, and this was actually something worth worrying about.

Had we been in a town with less water, or out in the barrens and he sustained an injury of this magnitude, he might actually have died. From infection if not from blood loss. That was the one consistent fact of humanity. You could take the world and burn it, or flood it, ravage it, destroy it. You could devastate it, you could turn it upside down, and you could take most of the people, animals, and things away from it. And through it all, bacteria would prevail. The world was mostly gone; there were not even a tenth of the populace left as had been even eighty years ago. And still, infection was one of the five deaths.

The five deaths was an unspoken rule. There were five forces of nature that were guaranteed to kill, if one was not careful. Hunger, thirst, infection, raiders, and earth shakes. There had been many earth shakes since the fires ravaged the open lands,, a few hundred years ago. It was said that all the bombing from the war had disrupted the shelves of earth far below our feet, and caused them to tremor as they shifted. I didn’t know a whole lot about that subject, just what I had read from various documented records.

Anyway, we used clean rags, boiled water brought from the cisterns which were flooded over from the rains, and two or three women came in and helped clean his wounds. I use ‘we’ loosely. The women cleaned him up, while I hovered like an anxious mother hen as they doctored this, the most important person in my life.

That isn’t to say there were no other people left in the entire world that held any meaning to me. It was just that, he was my legacy. He was the one I had chosen to carry on my story, and to be a cornerstone for the rebuilding of humanity. One would argue that perhaps I was the true cornerstone, as I was the one who recorded this story, and I am the one who has dedicated a greater portion of my aged years toward the betterment of society and the rejuvenation of ourselves.

I see myself more as the blueprints though. You don’t pick the oldest stone in the pile to be a cornerstone, especially when it is cracked and in danger of dissolving completely. I knew my end was coming, and it couldn’t be helped. I know I have lived a full, long life, and seen more than my fair share of things. But yet, I still sometimes wished for more. More life, more time.

I watched as, like magic, the objects lodged in Alec’s back were transferred into a small bucket on the floor. The sheer number of them was astounding. The dripping blood had covered up many of them, hiding the full extent of the injuries. Some of the pieces, particularly the glass, were frighteningly large, causing me to gape once more each time a huge piece was dropped in the bucket.

At long last, the woman who cared for our house took my arm and looked me in the eyes. Her message was plain, though her mouth remained tightly closed. I was not helping, but distracting by my presence, and I should relocate myself to a more productive or at least more refreshing location. I swallowed deeply, but nodded. Turning, I shuffled out onto the porch, basking in the sunshine. The dust had mostly settled from the collapse of the building down the road. It was easy now to see the full effects of the damage.

The building looked as if a giant had taken his hand and smashed it palm first, which drove that end into the ground. Not even the chimney remained upright, the bricks of such scattered in all directions. The ground around the house was littered with rubble, the mud having sucked some of the bigger pieces into their depths. Once it dried out, there would be no traces of most of those things, and the house itself would be irreparably lodged into the ground. The whole area would be unusable for a long time as things were broken down and rotted, before finally being absorbed as dirt. The glass though would take much longer, and a new house would long since have been erected in its place.

I tried to think, but I was sure that all of the people had made it out of the house. The children hadn’t all been theirs, just three of them had been. The girl Yelda, the baby, and I think the younger boy. I had heard that the man of the house had taken in his brother’s kids when the brother and his wife had both been taken by an illness that had ravaged the village a few years ago.

Sitting on the porch swing, I let the sun sink into my bones, facing away from the house that had just vanished. Already, the people were all out of sight. I wasn’t sure what had happened to them, but they were probably settling into a guest house until they could build a new one for themselves. The entire village would join in for the project, to have it completed within the matter of a month. That was one of the awesome things about these people, and their society. A bond that had long since vanished from the majority of society. A willingness and brotherhood that had inclined them to help each other without need of recompense, because they knew that come round to themselves needing help, everyone else would join together to build, or harvest, or can, or create.

For now, there would be a pause while they were settling in and grieving the loss of their home, and appreciating that none had been taken in this near tragedy. There would be also a time while they sorted out where to build the new house, and gathered supplies to do it. They wouldn’t start putting the actual house up until they had all the things they needed to complete it. They had been doing just this for so many generations, that it had almost become an art. They could have the things compiled, the area cleared, and the house put up and painted inside a month. And it wouldn’t put a dent in their care for their vast crops, their livestock, and their other daily routines. Men would rotate in and out of helping out, around their own chores and agendas. I had once spent an entire summer with these people, in this very village. Back when the man from the fallen house had been a boy, before he even knew he wanted to marry the woman who now cared for three children of his. I had seen two houses built in a summer, for couples who had married and moved out of parentage houses.

Usually, when someone passed, and they were the last alive in their house, it was cleared out and offered to the next bridal couple, but there had been no recent deaths that year, and so there had been need of two new houses. They didn’t waste anything around here though. Houses were maintained and repaired until nature, mishap, or age finally got the better of them.

Then

The Third rule of nature is that all things come to an end. When their cycle runs its course, and comes full around, that thing is then removed from existence. Other things may spring up to take their places, such as with flowers and trees, grasses and bushes. And even with animals, there is sometimes something new to replace it. Species are exterminated, extinct, and new species are created or discovered.

Even in man-made things, there was an end to be found. Plastic bags were melted down until there was virtually nothing left, paper dissolved, yellowed, and eventually turned to dirt. Metals rusted and bent, turning into piles of rot. Bricks, glass, cans, gadgets, clothes. Everything had an expiration.

But not everything reached the full potential of their expectancy. My lovely wife Karen fought hard. She tried so very hard to live. In the end, I think she only hung on because she knew it would ruin me if she left me. That I would fall apart and die as well. At long last, I knew she had had too much. Her body had swollen in odd places, and there were large lumps. She had lost so much weight I was afraid that she would cave in on herself. It was only with the presence of the lumps, increasing in size almost every day it seemed, that I finally realized what it was that was taking her away from me.

Cancer. I had read about this once. It was a disease of the body, where masses of tumors and polyps grew in the body, and the body rejected it. The body was not able to fight it though, so all the energy it spent in that effort was useless. She could have been happy and healthy till the moment that there were too many of them in her, if her body hadn’t had the urge to fight it.

In these days, where even medicine was unavailable, there was no way to help her fight it. And even so, by the time I knew what it was, it would have been too late. The doctors could have told us what it was though. And so I cursed. I cursed the doctors, for not being there anymore. I cursed the world for having been so selfish as to drive itself to an ending. I cursed fate for having born this illness upon her. And I cursed the cancer for existing.

After a few weeks of watching her suffer though, I was able to accept what was happening, and what needed to happen. I put it off as long as I could though, selfishly holding her hand and binding her too me. I couldn’t stand thinking of the morning when I would have to wake without her by me, and realize she never would be again. That forever, that half of my bed would be empty. That her clothing and the things of hers I didn’t need would be divided up and given away to others for use. I would never again see her smile, hear her laugh, or watch her enjoy a moment. I would never get to see her wondrous blue eyes again. They had lost their sparkle somewhere along the battle, but she still had the most gorgeous blue eyes I’d ever seen.

But one day I looked at her and realized she was watching me. The look in her eyes was that of a chained animal. It seemed to say, you are the anchor which holds me here. I desperately need you to let me go, but I love you too much to ask you for that. Even for that. Her grip on my hand was reassuring. The arch of her body said she was willing to give me a hug if I needed one. And that was the moment that it truly hit me. I had known it all along, but I had turned a blind eye to it in the hopes that I would be wrong, that she would pull through this. That she wanted to pull through this.

But her eyes told me so much more. She had long since given up the hope of getting better, of pulling out of this. She had accepted the fact that she would not be here much longer, and she was at peace. Now she wasn’t hanging on with the hopes of seeing tomorrow, or the fear of being gone. She was still here, because she knew I still needed her. She breathed every painful breath, and she opened her eyes to the treasonous light, she faced each and every day, for me.

I sobbed. That isn’t to say that tears fell down my face. That is to say that tears cascaded down my cheeks, soaking my shirt. My body wracked so horribly and every single centimeter of my being grieved. I held her hand to my lips and kept it there, unaware of spilling my grief down her pale and slender arm. By the time I finally quieted and was still, I felt like I had been dropped off of the tallest building in the world in the middle of a tornado, and then left to die in the deepest pile of dirty dust one could find. My tongue felt like it was swollen, as did my stinging eyes. I realized there had been just as much mucous as there had been tears, maybe more.

When I finally looked back at her face, I saw that she was watching me with the deepest warmth she possibly could have conveyed. She was sad for me, but she was also comforting me. If she could have spoken, I’m sure she would have been trying to console me.

I felt then a hand on my shoulder. I turned to see that somehow at one point or another in my sobbing, both of my sons had joined me and were standing silently with me. My heart panged with the compassion on their faces. I turned back to look at Karen. She licked her lips, swallowed thickly and squeezed her eyes in pain.

Then she gripped my hand and pulled somewhat towards herself. She wanted me to come closer. I bent as close to her face as I could, sure she just wanted to see me again. I was deeply shocked and heartbroken by what she did next.

She gathered what must have surely been every single last ounce of strength she had and whispered to me. “I love you boys so much.” I turned to stare at her, but she was already in the throes of dying. I had seen this kind of thing before, but the boys never had. I stood and gathered them in my arms to protect them, but I didn’t stop them from watching as her body gasped and jolted, before finally laying still and quiet. Swallowing my heart, I leaned over and closed her eyes, holding them for a moment to ensure that rigor would hold them closed.

Somehow I made it out to the main room of the house, and sat down at the table, before I dissolved completely to my absolute sorrow and heartbreak.

Now

I could feel hot tears coursing down my cheeks. The fact that Karen was gone remained constantly in my mind, but actually remembering her death was still so entirely breaking that I tried my hardest never to think on it. It just seemed that things got worse and worse, every time they got better. I’d had two kids with the woman I loved more than anything, and then she had been taken from me by the stupidest, cruelest twist of fate. She hadn’t died of plague, or raiders, hunger or thirst. In the midst of one of the easiest places in the world to live, the slushest abundances of food and water, with little to no threat, she had still been taken from me far before her time.

The memories of the time immediately after her death are hazy, as if everything had constantly been shrouded with thick fog. I knew though that it was simple, pure grief. I had sunken within myself, only coming out long enough to speak at her funeral. The day had been in sharp contrast to the feelings of those in attendance. Her father, whom I had mostly liked, had already left the journey. Oddly it was the mother, whom I had never particularly liked, who was still alive. She actually gave me a hug. A deep, consoling, motherly, comforting hug. She had wept on my shoulder, and held my head to hers. That was her way of saying that even though she had bickered and argued with me endlessly, that she had still found me an acceptable choice for her daughter. That meant more to me than anything that anybody else said aloud to me.

The sky was bluer than I’d ever seen it before, and the warm sun soaked into our bodies. There was the smallest of breezes keeping it from getting too hot, and I was sure I’d heard more than a couple of birds singing that day. And all I wanted was for it to rain. To thunder and slash the sky apart with bolts of lightning. Until I remembered how well Karen liked the sun, and the blue. And I realized it was nature’s way of saying goodbye to her. It was giving her final rest the kind of day she would have loved.

At the moment, in the now, it was just as sunny as it had been then. And here, for sure, I could hear many birds, chirping and twittering, twilling and peeping.

It took a while before I realized that there was a weight on my shoulders. Not the kind of weight that losing all the people I had loved the most in my life had wrought, but a physical kind of weight. I turned and through the blurry haze that salty tears had misted over my eyes, I could barely make out Alec’s concerned face as he hugged my from behind. He seemed to be saying something, but I couldn’t hear him. I wiped my eyes on my sleeve, then turned back to him and focused.

“Are you alright, Cameron?” I nodded and sighed, the tears finally dried and wrung from me. I told him why I had been so emotionally overcome. He sat in the chair next to me and held my hand reassuringly as I gave him the details I hadn’t been able to share aloud with anybody in decades. I had been forty-three when she had been taken, barely over forty years ago. And it still cut as deeply as if it had just happened, minutes ago. I felt my heart tighten painfully, and feared the tears were about to begin again. Alec must have noticed the difference, whether in my strained voice or the look of sharp pain in my eyes, because he pulled me over in a consoling hug.

Instead of drawing comfort, which indeed would have led to actually more crying, I braced myself and drew strength. Strength helped me get through the days without my Karen, better than any other feeling. By focusing on other things, finding tasks, and doing things, I had managed to fill the days and lend meaning to my continued existence. I knew that if I curled up and died, she would never have forgiven me. She would have come back and scolded me for wasting my life, when hers had been so cruelly ended short of her intention.

And so for her and for all the other people I had lost in my time, I bid her another farewell, forced my heart to relax, and straightened my back. Alec let me go as I sat upright once more.

“I’ll be okay now. Thank you, Alec. I think I will be done with my writing for the day. Come; show me this house you are building.” Hesitantly, Alec helped me to stand and led me out the front door. We had decided to stay while the community built a new house for the family whose own home had been destroyed by the tides of nature. Alec had insisted on helping them to build the new house. The community had been adamantly against such a thing, arguing that they were unsure of how to repay such a debt.

Alec had stunned them all with his request for recompense. He didn’t want money, or things. He didn’t even ask for provisions for our journey, or animals or land. He asked that the woman whose home we were staying in be allowed to once more converse openly in public and private. There was much discussion and deliberation, but finally the answer was given. Her crime had not been so harsh that the people could deny his request, especially with the kindheartedness of it. I had been sure when he made that request, a sure intrusion on the politics of these people, that we would henceforth be banned from this city. And so it surprised me greatly that they not only agreed to it, but did so warmly.

It had been another week since then, and the ground had dried up enough that construction had started. The base was laid, and the framework was taking shape. It didn’t look like much right now, but I knew within a few weeks the place would be mostly, if not entirely, finished and ready to live in. These people knew how to build things efficiently and swiftly. Although I believe perhaps I may have already visited such topic.

Either way, walking through the place amongst the workers, who were returning from a meal break to continue their project, watching and asking questions while a rather proud Alec summed up what the finished product would look like, and showed me his contributions, took my mind away from the immediateness of having related Karen’s death.

There had been one more, and possibly more devastating result of the heavy rains. It had drowned their already planted crops, ruining most of them. It had taken most of this last week to sort through the vast farmland, to determine what was salvageable, and what needed to be replanted.

Finally, they had it figured out, and they were now in the process of replanting. But it would be harsh on the people. This set back their harvest by more than a month, as now the young seedlings would have to start all over, taking more than another month to sprout and straggle their way above ground. If the winter came early, these people would be in dire straits. They had enough set aside and preserved to maybe last them half the winter, but not nearly enough for the duration of such.

They planted with eagerness and efficiency, devoting as much resource as could be diverted from the erecting of a house, intent to get as much seed in the ground as possible while it was still somewhat damp, which would help them sprout a little faster.

Much prayer was put forth that the plants would grow swiftly, and that the winter later in the year would be held at bay for as long as necessary to see their crops come to completion, and be harvested. Storing could be done even with the snows falling from the heavens, as most of that would be indoor work, but harvest had to be done before frost could damage it.

At any rate, the entire village was busy, split between planting, and constructing. The people bustled about, the men laboring, while the women cleaned or brought water or food to the working men.

Then

I was afforded a few weeks off from my job, to grieve the death of my wife. I took them and used them to their fullest extent. The world around me seemed to drift by with little meaning, and no notice. The day that Harold came to tell me that I was being sought after to return to work, it took him a few times saying my name before I realized I was no longer alone. I blinked a few times, and then he was there. His face inches from mine, and I could just barely hear my name being uttered. Shaking my head, I focused on his face. Concern had etched lines around his eyes and across his forehead that seemed out of places amidst the youth of his body.

I reached out a hand that didn’t quite seem like mine and tried to smooth the creases out. He didn’t look pleasant with worry so strong across his features. He sighed and straightened up. “Are you back then?” I shook my head and closed my eyes, breathing deeply what seemed like the first breath I had really taken since they had put her in the ground. Opening my eyes again, I glanced at Harold. He had his arms folded and was just watching me, waiting for me to show that I was here with him.

Finally I nodded and stood. Without another word, he led me out the door, and down to our jobs. We worked in the main city building now, in a section of rooms located underground. Most of our work these days had to do with finding ways to reduce waste, and improve our daily lives. I was far behind the majority of the people we worked with, as I had been away from work for quite a while and had only really been halfway there while Karen had been ill. The sudden thought of her nearly pulled me back down into the depths of absolute terror, but I caught a glimpse of Harold’s face and tried to pull myself together.

I was only put to work for a short time each day, to ease me back into things. I shoved myself into my work, trying my hardest to become a functional piece of society once more. It became an almost seamless, meaningless toil of work and daydream, sleep and eat tasteless food I later couldn’t quite remember. Sometimes I could remember that various people had been to see me recently, but I couldn’t entirely remember when or why. Tara, Damien, some of Tara’s kids…

At one point, Damien told me he was going to marry Alice. I vaguely remember that there was a wedding, and I made a speech for him about how wonderful he was. I told everyone that he was such a good thing, it had taken me and Karen a long time to come up with even a name we felt was good enough for him. Then I made a mistake. I turned and scanned the crowd, trying to find her, before remembering she wasn’t there.

Most days I did okay. I went to work, I ate meals, and I even socialized. Eventually, I even managed to pull my brains together. The hardest parts of the day involved the bed. It seemed to have grown disproportionately huge. And it seemed empty. I lay in it at night, staring at the other half, which seemed to stretch for miles. I would wake after tossing and turning, to find myself greeted by the same vast expanse of nothing.

I would close my eyes and draw myself tightly together, imagining that Karen was still there in bed beside me, and if I opened my eyes, she would be there smiling at me and asking me if the day were truly so scary as to necessitate hiding from it under the covers. I would tell her that nothing was scary as long as I had her there with me.

And I would dread opening my eyes in reality, to be brought back to this harsh, gritty, barren place, where she was not. If I just kept my eyes closed forever, maybe I could pretend she’d never gone anywhere at all, and that it had all been just a really sad, awful dream.

But eventually I would open my eyes, swallow my heart, and keep living inside my nightmares. Because as badly as I wished to waken into a better place, I knew I had to keep going. I did still have my boys, and Damien’s son. Damien’s wife had had a son, I was sure it had been a few months ago. The little boy was adorable. In my waking hours, he was a reason to keep going. The thought that I was a grandfather was something else. It made me feel really old. And it was delightful. Even though she didn’t like me much, Alice was happy that I wanted to hold her baby as much as I could. She let me come over after my work, and stay with her a few hours till Damien came home. Sometimes I would stay for dinner, other times I would head off to either eat alone at home, or enjoy a meal at the community building.

I still went to see Harold a lot too. He and I had an understanding of each other that Damien and I didn’t. Damien and I were friends, and I loved him, but it was different than it was with Harold. Harold and I were cut of the same cloth, Karen used to say. He was a lot like I was at his age. He was a thinker. He was more likely to try to solve a problem, than actually fix it or work around it. He was determined, and yet a little soft. He didn’t like the idea of violence, and the thought of shooting someone or otherwise ending their life was something he tried to avoid altogether.

He had his mother’s hair though. It had darkened, until it was the purest form of black I had ever seen. And he had her quick smile. He was something of a charmer. He had half the girls wrapped around his fingers. And yet, he hadn’t shown a particular interest in any of them. He liked the girls, and I was pretty surprised he hadn’t yet chosen one to settle down with. Whenever I commented on this subject, he merely said he was waiting for something. He didn’t know what, but every part of him said to wait. Not yet. I didn’t understand this, but I let it lie each time he said that. I figured that if he ever felt ready to take on a woman, than he would do so.

Vaguely I wondered if it was to do with the fact that Karen had died. Was he afraid to fall in love, to settle in and have a life, only to have it brutally and mindlessly taken away by things he couldn’t control? I knew though that pressure wouldn’t motivate him, might even turn him even further from the possibility of love. And so I left him be with nothing more than a few light pokes into the subject. He cooked well and usually I found the meals quite enjoyable.

Now

I sat back in my chair, dropping my pencil on the desk and rubbing my wrists. Sighing, I then rubbed my face with my palms. Stretching my arms out to either side, I groaned softly. Finally I relaxed into my chair. The evening sun was warm on my face as I sat there absorbing it. I knew that before too long the sun would lay itself down for the night, and the chill of dark would steal across the land and seep into every nook and cranny.

In the main room, I heard the woodstove open with a whiny creak, and then the solid thuds as a couple of chopped pieces of wood were carefully placed within. Soon I heard the crackle of a fire as it sought to gain a foothold on the dried and ready lumber. The promise of the warmth emitted from the large stove was enticing, and soon I found myself drawn out to the main room of the house.

Alec and the woman had been in soft conversation, but it stopped as soon as I entered the room. They both looked at me with idle concern, but I just shook my head. “I’m fine,” I assured them.  Ever since my breakdown last week, Alec had been treating me like an egg. Easily shattered. He spied on me frequently and found reasons to drop in on me while I was writing, or resting. He must have told the woman about it, because she too held a look of worry every time she saw me.

I tried my best to show them that I was okay, but I guess viewing someone in a complete emotional breakdown leaves a lasting impression of vulnerability, because they didn’t believe me. I figured that was just as well though, because if anything ever did happen I would be proving them right, and their worry would be justified. And at this age, every morning that I awoke I considered to be a blessing, because it was one more day for me to keep on relaying my tale.

Sometimes I felt that the fact I was writing about my life was very conceited. I mean, obviously other people had survived the fall of society. There would be no one left to write for had there not been survivors. What made my story better than anyone else’s could have been? Why should people read my story? And what good could it do for people to read it? It had mostly been a story that was filled with sadness and riddled with tragedy.

And yet, it had also had its joys. My marriage had been happy, the birth of my sons had been wonderful, and the addition of a grandchild had been a blessing. My story was not in fact better than anyone else’s. Other people might have been better suited to the idea of recording facts that would actually help mankind renew their bent and broken society.

But that was just it. How many ‘other people’ were actually taking the time to write it all down? How many other people out there felt that there was any reason to leave something for the future generations to enjoy or gain from? The fact that I was writing down my story, was all that mattered as for why people should read it. It was a true recording of real events, told from the perspective of someone who had actually lived them. It was not edited for content, and it did not soften the blows dealt by hardship, or the horror of things. I had omitted a few actual details that I found to bloody or crude, but I had not dulled down the reality of things.

Society had fallen because of selfish people who had been either too self-involved or too scared to make any changes. Too many people felt that they could just misuse and destroy the world around them, and that other people should clean up their messes or fix their problems. Really, when the satellites had finally broken and stopped, society had already been a broken and hunched version of itself. The satellites had been like duct tape, holding a doomed people together. Eventually, even the duct tape had worn out, and the world had tumbled into the long withheld chaos that had been just waiting for opportunity to present itself, to allow madness and insanity to dominate. There were small pockets which resisted this fall, and hopefully they would be there to clean away the ashes and return the world to its former self.

I looked up and realized that Alec was watching me intently where I stood warming my hands by the growing fire. I waved a hand dismissively. “Worry not, Alec. My mind merely wanders. I’m still here though.” He glanced away, but as soon as he’s sure I won’t notice, he returned his gaze to me. To reassure him, I lean over and lift the lid from a cast iron pot on the stove and sniff the contents, murmuring my pleasure at the smells I am greeted with. He seems mostly satisfied, though the look of worry never completely leaves his face, a small twinge of it visible at the edges.

I further convince him by engaging in small talk with the woman, discussing the house being built, the weather, and other simple things that require little to no actual thought. I know it’s a trifle attempt, but I also know I am not currently capable of much more. It had been more than a week since my breakdown, but I still felt that I could at any moment be pulled away again.

We ate in near silence, enjoying the wonders this woman could come up with. She was actually a wonderful cook. She would make a man happy someday. It was a wonder really she wasn’t married already, but she informed me that rule breakers were not looked on highly as potential spouses, and this little bout of silence was not the first time she had been in trouble. She said she felt like a kitten sometimes, as her mother had called her. She didn’t set out to make trouble, but she somehow always ended up in it. That made Alec laugh. It was nice to hear him laugh.

Then

As time passed, and Damien’s little boy grew into a handsome child, it was obvious that he had inherited most of his father’s adventurous spirit, and his need to explore. The word ‘outside’ didn’t scare him the way it did other children. It seemed almost to lure him really. He was determined to find any possible way to sneak out of the confines of the city. When asked in school what he wanted to be when he grew up, the boy simply said ‘outside’. His mother was summoned to bring him home, as he had devastated some of the other children.

I tried to keep an eye on him, when I wasn’t working, as I knew that the dangers outside were very real. I also knew that his busy parents couldn’t possibly hope to keep up with him. It wasn’t my responsibility, but what ended up happening was so horrible, that when people later said it was all my fault I accepted it without contest.

But I’ll start with the beginning of how things led to that point. We had received word from a traveler that a society very much like our own thrived down where Florida had once been. That people there never had to worry about being raided, as the raiders didn’t know there was anything south of Georgia. This city was actually vastly larger than our own.

This same traveler also brought news that the raiders were on the move again, raging across the nation in one large wave. It was said that they were going to send some people out even this far, to see if anyone was here. They were rounding up everyone this time. They were going to leave no survivors, taking with them any able bodied person available.

Waterville was in hysterics. What would we do? How could we avoid detection if they sent more than one or two persons our way? Surely we would be discovered. We would be taken or killed. Of course, the science team was tasked with finding a solution to this problem. It was our job, we were told, as the thinkers, to avoid annihilation.

And so we spent a few days debating, until we came up with a solution. We would all retreat underground. Many of the deeper underground sewer systems were still in place. Some people fretted and cringed at the idea of living in filth, for any amount of time. Others hailed us for our genius. What would we do though with all of our plants and animals? It was fall, so it was nearly harvest, but there were the trees and bushes, which could not be replenished by replanting.

It was figured though that if there were no sounds, no smells, and the place seemed deserted, that we would be passed by. We had decided that it would work to our advantage to disassemble the lighting system as well, as that would further lend an air of abandon to the place. It would seem as if we had died out or left long ago.

And so we worked hard on clearing out the sewers, to fit all of the people inside of them. We didn’t have to worry about moving our stuff, because the inner part of the city would be sealed away. We would block all of the passages into the city, and even go so far as to destroy some of them.

At long last, the scouts confirmed that there were raiders on their way. A party of about a dozen men was headed for our village. They were on foot, as there were still no animals south of the Canadian border that we did not own. But they would be here within a day or so. With the impending threat looming very literally on the horizon, there was a definite hysteria about the people. Never had the threat of exposure and death been so close to these people, even when the world had first ended and the raiders went around in full strength. The news that Waterville was an empty husk had widely been encouraged when they had retreated into the inner city during the plague. And so the first round of raiders had assumed that the place was still empty of all but desperate outcasts.

With the death and cycle of newer persons though, the newer generations knew nothing of the plague, or empty cities. They knew nothing of how things used to be. And so our little city had made its way back into their maps. The ‘x’ that marked plague-ridden cities on most of the maps society had owned were now entirely misunderstood. People didn’t know what they meant anymore.

It had been about forty-two years since the end of society. Before that time, people had relied on the Glass-COM network to teach their children the basics, and the fundamentals. Normal people hadn’t taught their children anything other than speech in a long time, and so the idea of teaching their children didn’t come about afterward either.

With the cloud on the horizon increasing gradually in size, the people carefully made their way down into the sewer network which had lain untouched beneath the thriving populous or Waterville. We had used the smaller systems closer to the surface of the ground for their intended purpose, but these larger ones laid well beneath those smaller ones had been empty and useless till now. The animals too were herded subterranean, to diminish their noises and smells, which might have attracted unwanted attention.

There was a hushed thrill about the place, as if even the air was bated in anticipation of the oncoming gang. The children were confused, but they sensed that there was much fear, and they too remained silent. Infants of course neither understood, nor sensed, and so some of them cried at the sudden motions of being whisked away, bundled up, and brought somewhere different. We had spent the time of cleaning with the sewer entrances opened, to allow most of the fumes to waft away. Of course, this was only advisable in areas where there weren’t currently any populace, as those same fumes would have likely killed.

In a basic sense of order, the people of Waterville were led below ground, in a row of people narrow enough to navigate the makeshift stairs that had been strung from entrance to floor, and the animals were taken into a completely different section of the tunnels.

Being on the science team, it was my job to ensure that people got there in relatively safe condition. I stood at one key point along the route some of the people were taking to enter the sewers, guiding them and helping them, showing unstable portions of the path. Other members of the science department were positioned at various other points, all the way down to where the people were supposed to end their brief journey. A few of us were helping with the animals, but that wasn’t such a sensitive issue. Animal instinct helped them to see disruptions in the footing better.

It wasn’t until Alice came running at full strength and speed that I knew anything was wrong. She slowed some as she approached me, but she still ended up literally running into me, using me to stop herself completely. I grasped at her arms to keep her from falling. “What? What is it, Alice?”

She tried to catch her breath enough to speak, but she ended up coughing when she opened her mouth. Finally she turned her worry stricken eyes to my face. “Have you seen my son, Cameron? Where is he!” I raised my eyebrows in confusion at first, but then realization. I hadn’t seen him. He wasn’t along this route. I gazed back the way people had come from. There were a few stragglers, but it was easy to see that he wasn’t among them.

“Where is Damien?” She shook her head. “I don’t know!” She sounded desperate. “Alright. He was supposed to be helping with the animals, and then he is supposed to help secure the exits to the sewers. Have you checked your house?” She nodded, giving me something of a glare as if to say ‘well, duh!’ I cringed for a split second but then nodded. “Alright. You go and check with the animals persons, see if Damien is there and if he’s seen your boy. I will go and see if he wandered off somewhere.” Without a word or motion, she pushed herself away from me and darted off in the direction of the animal entrance.

I looked around, but now even the stragglers had made it past me and were just easing out of sight toward the sewers. The other helpers were waiting for me to let them know if there were any more people. I waved them onward, then turned and headed for my own house. Maybe the boy had gone there?

As soon as I walked in the front door, it hit me. The boy was curious. The outside was his greatest wonder, beyond was his greatest desire. Raiders were coming. They were from beyond the barrens. Where would the boy be? He would be outside!

I nearly fell over with the shock of such an idea, but I shook it away and turned. With little thought or consideration, I tore through the village, toward the entrance nearest Damien’s home. I saw Damien running across the uneven ground, nearly losing his balance in some places, and I waved him over. He didn’t hesitate or question, he just turned toward me. Understanding dawned horribly on his face as he saw that I was heading toward an entrance. Further behind him, I could see Alice and, more out of breath than the rest of us, Harold. I would have waved them all to leave, and only myself go out there, if I’d known what the consequences would be. But it didn’t happen that way.

I reached the doorway first, heaving it open with the full force of my running body. In the hallway, I raced around corners, until I came to the outside. The raiders I knew would be here at any moment, and so I didn’t call out for him. I knew though what he would do. He was a curious boy, but he wasn’t a stupid one. He would have found a place to hide, where he could witness the action, without being caught. They were coming from the South and west, which was just barely south of where I was, so I took off in the right direction. There were only two rows of buildings left, but the sandy-haired boy could have picked any building to hide in. Behind me, I heard a stifled yell and I turned. Alice was being firmly held by Damien, who had a hand clasped over her mouth. He seemed to be saying something in her ear, and then she raised a hand to her own mouth as he let go. I saw Damien motion that he and Alice would break off and go one direction, and he motioned for Harold to go another, while I nodded in my own way.

Without looking back again, I turned and rushed off through the deep dusty dirt. Some of it had been blown away by harsh winds we’d had lately, but there was still enough of it that it clung to my knees in some places, coating my pants and sifting into my shoes. It took a while, but I finally found a trail through it. There was a disturbance in the ash and dust, winding and twisting like a snake trail. It seemed to stay closer to the edges of the buildings, where the grit was the deepest, and in places I could see smudges against the greyed and crumbling bricks. Places where the boy had likely leaned against the walls to listen and to spy, determining whether or not the raiders had yet entered Waterville’s decrepit and seemingly abandoned edges.

I glanced around to see if I could find any of the others, but they were all out of sight around the buildings. Reluctant to leave the others out in the open, I nevertheless turned to continue following the trail. I did however keep glancing around at every intersection, on the off chance that I could spy at least one of the others.

That paid off when I spied Alice and Damien at one of the turns. I gestured them over and waited while they quietly yet eagerly traversed the length of a structure to come near me. I pointed out the trail to them. With nods of excitement, and partial relief from Alice, we trudged further along the trail, which seemed to be leading straight towards the furthest building of the city. Near the edges of the city, the buildings were more uneven, scattered almost hazardously in every which way. The streets were not entirely straight, some of them veering off in odd angles, with triangular buildings at their heads. One such building ended up being on the southwestern most corner of the city, as fires had taken out the rest of the structures beyond that.

We could see even from a distance that the trail meandered its way there. With renewed eagerness, we hurried across the street and rushed towards it. The metal and glass door was ajar slightly, and we all rushed to open it and ran inside. The building was eight floors high, with probably more than two dozen rooms to a floor. Luckily, the dust which coated us had also clung to the boy’s feet and pants, leaving a trail up the stairs.

Following it, we were led to the third floor and down a hall, towards a set of what had once been doctors’ offices. But at the door leading into the offices, we were stunned to see that the trail seemed to double back, and it headed away from us, towards another stair set at the other end of the building; toward the raiders.

With a deep look of dread, Damien sprinted away from us as fast as his tall legs could take him. “Damien!” Alice shrieked in a whisper. The two of us followed as fast as we could, but she was a small woman, and I was not as agile as I had been in youth. The door to the stairwell had already swung back into place with many complaints, when we got there. I was surprised how fast he could move, propelled by adrenaline and paternal instinct. Opening the door, I could hear his feet clomping and clattering down the stairs, far below.

Careful not to slip on the now dust covered steps, me and Alice made our way down the stairs. She was quicker than I, reaching the door to the street a full floor before me. At the bottom, I opened the door, ignoring the searing pain my raging breath was causing in my lungs. My shaking hands lost their grip on the door handle though, and it began swinging shut again. Cursing I yanked it open and looked out. Damien was standing in the middle of the street, staring. The raiders were here. They were a good hundred yards out, but that distance was quickly shrinking, and we had been spotted. I couldn’t see Alice though.

Swiveling my head, I saw that she had ducked down behind a huge metal dumpster, out of sight of the raiders, but surely not safe. If they- No when they came, they would check behind the dumpster. They had gotten good at finding hiders.

And Damien, full in the open, he would be the first to die. “Damien!” My voice was dry and wispy with fright. I coughed to clear it and yelled again. This time he turned, yanked out of his shock. He saw me standing in the doorway, just out of view of the raiders, and he saw Alice, hiding behind the dumpster with absolute terror on her face.

He stopped for a moment, then he blew her a kiss. I knew what he was going to do, and I nearly screamed. “No! Come in here, let us go out the other way, or down below. There has to be an entrance here!” Damien just shook his head though, and he turned and ran. He ran Northward, along what was the edge of the city. The raiders were within earshot now, and I couldn’t yell anymore, couldn’t even talk without fear of giving Alice away. I would have gladly drawn them to myself, let them drag me away while he saved his life, but I didn’t dare give away Alice too.

Once the raiders had turned to follow Damien, and I knew they couldn’t see me anymore around the edges of this odd shaped building, I peered out to Alice. She was crumpled up on the ground, holding her mouth and rocking while she shook like a fall leave in a stern wind. Her eyes were closed and she was whimpering, moaning. I could see tears hitting the ground at her knees.

Reaching out, I grasped her shoulder. “Listen, we need to go. We still don’t know where your son is. We need to find him.” She bolted upright, a new look of horror on her face. Using the dumpster, she clambered to her feet, shoving me away when I offered a hand as she slipped. She gazed around in the dust, trying to figure out in all the disheveled tracks which ones might be her son’s.

A weak cry came to our ears just then. “Mother!” My ears pricked. Alice’s though jumped. She turned and ran in the direction the voice had come from, around the side of the building and into an alley beside it. There, just barely hidden from view by a stack of broken boxes and crates, was the little boy. His face was frightened, his skin pale. With wide eyes, he begged of his mother. “What of Father? Will he be okay?” Alice shot me a look that said if she had her way, I would be dead. “I don’t know. I just don’t know. We need to get back to the village, and down to the sewers.”

Just then my head shot up. Where was Harold? I hadn’t seen him since we split up. He had headed… “West!” Alice looked at me blankly. “Harold! He was going westward! And the whole group of raiders just went-!” I broke off my sentence and began running. “Go back! Get down there!” I yelled back over my shoulder.

I ran as fast as my aging and less than nimble body could allow, determined to find Harold. I didn’t know what would happen if they were caught, but I was sure it wouldn’t be good. They were both men, which had not been highly valued by the raiders in their previous treks around the states. Someone had said they were rounding people up this time, capturing more than they were killing, but that didn’t mean the sport of chasing and killing some lone man in a bent and crumpled city didn’t offer an amount of pleasure for those men.

As I rounded the corner of one building, I caught myself at the last moment and pulled back behind the edges. I gripped the rough bricks with my fingers so tightly the knuckles and pads turned white. There was Damien! He’d been caught by the raiders and he was on his side on the ground. I could see that his eyes were open, and he was breathing laboriously. The men surrounded him and were idly discussing whether to kill him or bring him back.

I stayed where I was, wracking my brains for any way to get him out of this. Now that they had caught him, it seemed unlikely that they would simply leave him unattended while they raced after me. And being as old as I was, they probably would only send one or two men after me. After all, I probably only had a few years left on me, how hard could I be? And that would still leave Damien with a dozen men, whom he couldn’t possibly overpower.

I rubbed my chin and mouth in thought. What could I do? I felt my stomach lurch when one of the men kicked Damien harshly in the side, urging him to roll over. On his back, they looked him over carefully, almost as if inspecting a wild mare to determine the chances of taming it.

Just then, one of them slapped another on the shoulder, and they pointed up into the building nearest them. The all glanced at one another, and then a few of them took off into the building. Harold! The must have seen him, looking out a window or something. Looking at the remaining men, I saw that there were still nine men left, standing over Damien. I could possibly distract a few of them long enough to give Damien a lee-way, but how could I get enough of them away that he could get away?

Then it hit me. I raced to an alley that also reached the street where Damien was being held, and I hoisted a stack of junk against the wall as hard as I could. The clatter that filled the alley, bouncing and rolling on the bricks, was tremendous.

Without waiting to determine if it had been heard, I took off once more and reached the other side of the building. Once there, I hefted a handful of rocks and threw the whole load towards some glass windows with jagged pieces protruding. Immediately I streaked off again, heading for another street that crossed the main one. On this road though, I could see nothing of interest that might make noise, and so I shouted at the top of my lungs.

“Surround ‘em! We can take them out! Vantage points, men!” Again I took off, racing around till I had come nearly to the opposite side of the men than I had been on before. I couldn’t go all the way around, for fear of actually being seen, but I held my spot where I could see them in the middle of the road. Only two of the men remained, weapons held directly over Damien. They were peering around in all directions, obviously afraid of attack. The other men had been drawn away toward the sounds I had made.

I waited now, breath bated, to see if Damien would understand. He too was looking around intently, trying to see down the alley ways and roads around him. I wondered then, did he assume there really was an attack about to be mounted on the invading raiders? Was he waiting for some sort of signal, or a weapon to be launched on the two men there, who could so easily have been stripped of their weapons by even a few men?

My stomach clenched and I held my spot, fear coursing through my veins. I knew though, the moment he attacked, it was too late. The other men were beginning to return to the alley, when Damien leapt to his feet, throwing the wary guards off balance. He grabbed the wrist of one of the men, and slammed it downward as he brought his knee up. The makeshift knife clattered to the ground, but Damien ignored it. He turned instead and kicked at the head of the other man.

I felt my muscles spasm, as if they could help him by imitating his movements. As the second man crashed to the ground in a plume of dust, Damien whirled and caught the first man in the chin with a solid fist that had spent many hours hefting and moving heavy loads. This man smashed onto a set of stairs leading up to an apartment door. Diving into the dust, Damien grabbed for the huge spiked club the second man had wielded. Lunging to his feet again, he faced the other men, who were all running towards him now, anger etched deep into their features.

He caught the first one in the side of the face with the spikes coming from the club, sending him rolling along the street with strands of blood flying through the air. The second man was more ready for this attack, and he smartly sidestepped the flying death and brought his knife around so he could slice into Damien, but Damien ducked at the last second and kicked the man on rebound. The man lurched backward, but another hand was already there in his place. Damien managed to avoid getting his head chopped off by the large and rusty ax, then swung his club directly up between the new attacker’s legs. The high pitched shriek that emitted from the man was almost unearthly, and I felt my body tighten in horrified empathy.

As the stricken man sagged to the ground, Damien swirled in the air to meet the next oncoming threat. His club met a jagged piece of metal held in the split of a wood handle, a few of the spikes catching the blade and flinging it in the air. The hand that unwillingly released the blade swung forward in an attempt to punch Damien’s face, but Damien caught him on a backswing to the shoulder. As the spikes dug in, there was a feeling or nausea in my stomach. The club was stuck deep in the man’s shoulder. The man turned away to avoid a blow that never came.

Having lost his greatest weapon, Damien dove to find the long knife the first man had dropped, another blow shattering the air where he had just been standing. Flailing through the assortment of blood and carnage underfoot, Damien just managed to deflect a few other blows. His hand curled around the handle of the knife, and he swung upward, slicing the leg of the man who was desperately trying to remove the firmly lodged club from his shoulder. Crying out, the man sank to his knees.

Just then, before I could shout, a man kicked Damien in the back. Lurching forward, Damien turned to defend against the new attacker, knife swinging fluidly. It caught the man on the arm as he jolted backward. Again the attacker lunged, this time jabbing with a long shaft of wood tipped with a spike of some sort. The spike ripped through Damien’s side as he tried to dodge it. Groaning loudly, Damien again swung his knife. This time the man was not quick enough, and the knife almost completely ripped through his neck. Shock frozen to his lifeless face, he sank to the ground.

I watched as Damien fought with four of the men at once, ducking and dodging, swinging and slicing. At one point he lost the knife and he grabbed up the rusty ax that had been mostly lost in the dust, dirt, blood and bodies. Three more men fell, as he suffered more injuries. A deep gash across the back; spikes to the legs, and a few thin but deep slices to the arms. He was kicked and punched, but his determination never wavered.

I was just beginning to think he had a solid chance, when something happened to stall the fighting. The four men who had gone into the building long before the fight, reappeared. They held a bedraggled, somewhat bloody Harold in their grasp. He was out of breath, and his eyes were half closed. Immediately Damien lunged forward, intent on rescuing him, but one of the men held a sharp looking knife to Harold’s throat. “That’ll be enough of you,” the one with the knife said. Damien stayed poised, like a venomous snake about to strike, unsure of what to do. My heart was in my throat as I watched the scene, terrified of how it would turn out. Would they kill Damien now, in return for his actions? Or would they take him with them, to be beaten and ‘tamed’ into service? His strength would be a valuable asset.

Finally, Damien dropped the knife into the dirty dust and blood, holding his hands out. I could hear his words, echoing somewhat off the brick buildings. “Let him go.” They laughed at him, though the ones who had just been fighting him didn’t even crack a smile. They were still in the bloodlust and they wanted nothing less than, or more than, his blood.

“Why should we? This one is less trouble than you. He would be quite easy to tame. Two for the price one inflicts.” He gestured at the bodies as if to imply they were the price. Damien growled. “You don’t want him. He’s a thinker. Not a doer. He wouldn’t be much use for hard work.” The look in Harold’s eyes was hurt, though I knew what Damien was playing at. I urged him to stop though, because I knew how these men thought. There would be no releasing him. If they couldn’t use him, they would kill him. At least in service, there was a small chance he could escape.

The man with the knife cast a gaze over the smaller, more humble looking Harold. “A thinker you say? Well, maybe we need one of those. Not many of you Freebies seem to know how to do that!” This time most of the remaining men laughed. Damien held his ground, though now there was no escape.

“And what should we do with you, gladiator?” The man who seemed to be in charge said. “I think we’ll take you. We could use some building muscles. You look to have more than your share of them. Tie them together. I would say if there are any more Freebies here, they’ve all gone in this scuffle.”

Other than to take anything considered valuable or useful, they left the dead where they lay in their own grimy, ash sticky piles of blood. Binding Harold to Damien’s waist, they then tied both of their hands together. Leading them on a lengthy piece of rope like a couple of wild dogs, they led the two men off through the deep ash and dirt that covered the streets.

I held the edge of the building and turned away, closing my eyes against the sight. There would be no way to get to them right now, but if I got back to the city, we might be able to mount a rescue party to go after the men tonight while they slept. I waited until I was sure they were out of sight and couldn’t hear me before I pushed off the side of the building and raced through the streets until I reached Waterville’s utopian entrance.

Immediately within, Alice was waiting. She rushed to me and clung to my arms. “Where’s Damien? What’s happened?” I shook my head and kept moving, making my way to the sewer opening nearest me. She badgered me all the way there, but I didn’t say anything. Once down there, I sought out the council, who were hidden in a separate tunnel away from the majority.

As soon as I saw them, I presented my dilemma, and my plan. They listened silently, before telling me they needed a moment in conference to reach a decision. I raised my eyebrows. How could they confer on such a matter? Surely they should simply agree to help me, and race after the men who had taken my sons! Even if people still held me in contempt for being an outsider, they should agree that my sons were valuable members of the community.

I hit the stone wall in frustration and stomped off, seething at their nerve. Alice followed me quietly, one hand over her mouth, the other on her hip. A few times she moved her hand and seemed about to talk, but then she would look like she would throw up and covered her mouth again, pacing a few feet of the sewer.

At long last one of the lesser members of council approached me. He motioned me closer to the wall, although that was futile. Even in this sewer tunnel, which was pretty large as far as sewers go, it was crowded and sound carried a good distance. Any within probably ten feet would hear a whisper, and twenty a normally spoken sentence. But I humored him and edged the foot or so closer to the wall.

“I’m sorry-,” he began. I growled, not letting him finish his sentence. I knew exactly what he was going to say. Some bull crap about the good of the people. Seven men held my sons captive, and three hundred were going to let them die? For the good of the community, seven men were going to take my sons away from me, most likely forever.

I didn’t stop, didn’t think. I barged out of the sewer and tore through the streets until I was in my home. Once there, I began digging through all of our stuff. I had taken my father’s example and hidden the guns under the ground. In the bedroom of our house, I yanked the bed away from the wall. There, the wall was a foot thick, instead of the usual six inches. Everyone had questioned me when I built it that way, but I had said that I intended to insulate it better against the cold. Other people had actually followed this advice, minus one detail I left out.

At the bottom of the wall, I pulled open a small section which revealed the ground under it. The earth under that piece of wall had been dug out, and at the bottom of the foot deep, two feet long hole, were guns. Two pistols and a rifle. I grabbed all of them, and the ammunition. I had told Tara we weren’t bringing any guns with us, but I had snuck these along with my stuff. I had had to hide the pistols in my sack, and the rifle rolled in by bedroll.

Checking the barrels to be sure they were clean, and then loading the rounds into the chambers and magazines, I hastily wrapped them into a bundle of cloth. Just as I was setting them on the table in the kitchen, there was a loud rapping on the door frame of my house. I knew who it was so I merely hollered for them to enter as I set about preparing something to eat. I couldn’t go after them until nightfall, though I would leave beforehand. I wanted to be on a satisfied stomach though, as there was no telling when I would have the chance to eat again.

Alice came through the door and stopped when she saw me bringing out vegetables, dried meat, and water. “Lunch?!” She nearly shrieked. “My husband is being dragged off to slave-hood by raiders, and you’re eating LUNCH?!” I held up a hand to stop her, but she bowled over my attempts to explain. She ranted and raved about the indecency of outsiders, and how it probably was true about how callous we were. She then said something she never should have. She told me that I probably was the one who had gotten Karen sick in the first place, and that it was justice that Karen had died for betraying her people by being with me.

I couldn’t stop myself. I charged across the small main room and slapped her across the face as hard as I could. Shoving her against the wall, I held her there with only my gaze. Absolute hatred poured out of me. “I will say this, only once. GET OUT OF MY HOUSE.” Alice stayed there for only a second, then she rushed out of the little house, leaving me alone to my thoughts. I could feel the spiral starting, see the traces of black at the edges of my vision. My heart tightened, and I could feel my fingers digging into the palms of my hands.

That simple, physical pain brought me back faster than anything else could have. I focused on the pain in my hands, trying not to think about Karen. I knew there had been rumors, had even heard some of the whispers myself. But no one had dared to say such things to my face, so boldly and bluntly. I knew they were just a bunch of frightened, secluded people who had been taught rightly to fear the outside, and I was the outside. I had always been the outside. Some people honestly feared me.

For reasons I never understood, no one had ever treated Tara as an outsider. She had been welcomed with open arms, and drafted into the community as well as any new baby. No one ever whispered that she was terrible, or dangerous. When her husband fell ill for a whole winter, no one blamed her. When her second child succumbed to pneumonia, no one cursed her. When her eldest grandbaby crawled into a deconstruction zone while she was supposed to be watching him, and ended up losing a few fingers, no one yelled at her, or whispered about her.

But pondering why a village chose to accept one person as their own and not another wouldn’t help me in my current problem. I shook my head until I grew dizzy and my vision turned a hazy brown, then I sat in the chair at the table. As my vision cleared, I forced myself to eat the food I had set out. It seemed bland and without any real texture but I made myself swallow. I knew that I would need the energy this food would provide, and the sustenance I would glean.

Finally I put away the remnants of my small lunch, grabbed up the bundle of weapons, and began making my way to the city entrance. People were beginning to make their way back into their utopia but I didn’t pay them any heed. I could see though that some people were gesturing in my general direction, trying not to be noticed as they whispered, and yet others openly pointed and gawked. Their loony, creepy, terrible old man with his ragged bundle of cloth was leaving the village, without the knowledge or permissions of the council. Had I lost my mind, they wondered openly.

The sun was flirting with the horizon as I made my way through the empty streets. I knew the raiders would have been heading Northeast back toward Green Bay. This was the most likely area the raiders had come from, because I didn’t know of any other raiders. This was fortunate, as I didn’t wish to pass by the carnage to the south, where both of my sons had been taken away from me in a single moment. Why oh why hadn’t I encouraged Harold to be more of a fighter? Why couldn’t this have happened ten years ago, when I still possessed the ability to hold my own in a fight?

I gently shook my head to clear my thoughts, breathing in the air that was still warm from the heat of day, yet clear with the promise of night. I focused on the task at hand. Being caught up in the what-if’s, should have’s and why’s wouldn’t help to fix the current problem.

The sun was starting to sink low on the horizon as I approached the area where the land turned into barren and despairing ground. Looking out across the land, I could see no one, but I could see the tracks of the nine men who had so recently crossed it, trailing off unevenly, even staggeringly, toward the north. One way or another, I had to get my sons back.

Now

A soft pitter patter woke me from sleep. It took a moment, but then I realized it was rain. A gentle rain tapped against the wooden boards of the house, easing the world into a refreshing drizzle. It didn’t seem enough to cause any problems though. It was just the lightest of rains. In the dark, I couldn’t make out more than vague shapes. Alec’s bulking form under the thin blankets rose and fell, just barely perceivable in the gloom. His breath though was audible, the slightest of snores issuing as he slept peacefully. I could hear no other sounds.

The shutters were open, as were the curtains, but I couldn’t see much of anything. With the cloud cover that was surely the source of the drizzle, the moon was hidden from view. All other persons in the little village were sleeping, meaning no outside sources of light.

Rising from the bed though, I walked over to the window. Glancing out, I saw the porch swing hanging alone on the porch. It swayed gently with a simple breeze, almost as if begging me to come out and sit on it. I couldn’t turn down such a nice invitation. I felt I wasn’t sleepy anyway.

Grabbing up the light blanket on my bed, I wrapped it around my shoulders and headed for the door. I took a last look to be sure that Alec still slumbered, then I stole through the house. Easing the door open nearly soundlessly, I stepped out into the warm summer air and closed the door most of the way behind me. I left it open a crack to be sure the sound of the latch catching wouldn’t wake anyone, then crept over to the swing. Shifting carefully onto it, I began slowly swinging. The air was warm enough, but the mist of the drizzle lent a slight chill. It would send me back in before long, but I could stand it for the while.

I gazed out across the village. The light drizzle blurred everything, but I could still see pretty well; at least as far as the clouded night would afford. None of the houses shone any light, or emitted any noises. I was alone in a peaceful setting. I let my mind drift over my years. So much had happened, and I had met, loved and lost so many people. I had seen things that most people only ever dreamed of. I had eaten things many people didn’t even know existed, and I had done things some people probably couldn’t imagine. I had fought battles, and I had escaped death’s clutches on more than one occasion. I had even outlived expectation, almost two-fold.

I held out a hand and studied it. The skin was somewhat grey, mottled by small scars, tiny freckles, and in some places, veins stood out darkly under the skin. I thought back to what the old woman in Chicago had said. It was true, I had aged well. The years had been kinder to me than most, physically. I did have a few scars no one knew of, but I was not crippled or bowed. The air I breathed was sufficient in itself, and I ate what I wished.

I could even still run when necessary, though to some it might seem a fast jog. And though my mind wandered now and again, I could still think and comprehend. I knew what day of what year it was, my full name, and even what was going on around me. I had seen some people who sat in the corner, muttering to themselves. Their faces were blank as if they didn’t even comprehend what they themselves were saying. I had seen still others who were immobile, crushed with the weight of aging. And they had been merely in their late fifties or early sixties.

At any rate, I had aged well. I was mostly sound, physically. I blinked. I know I just was thinking about that a moment ago. I sighed, returning my hand down under the blanket and holding it tight. It occurred to me that one of the ladies in this village likely made this blanket. They made all their own things, and surely this was one of them. I looked at it closer. It had been knitted or crocheted; I don’t pretend to know the difference. Intricate patterns of flowers and leaves were interspersed across it, seeming without pattern. Until I realized that the while blanket was one pattern. A cascade of the petals and leaves that seemed as if a strong wind had blown them and sent them into flight. Whirling, twisting, turning and dancing in a breeze.

Again I gazed out into the rain, which had picked up some and now fell with vigor. The clouds didn’t seen dark enough to unleash a downpour to match the one received a month ago, but it could change without warning. I hoped it didn’t.

The house the village had been building for the family that had been uprooted was near completion. After a final paint job was done, they would get furniture for the place, and then move in. I wondered how they slept in this rain. Did the sound of drops wake them from their slumber, terrified they were reliving the scene, or worse, living another?

I started when I realized that a set of eyes was watching me. Blinking, I tried to steady my racing heart as I peered deeper into the rain, trying to make out the face. The rain, however, hid the face from my view. It didn’t move, barely blinked, and made no noises. I wasn’t sure it was human. I pulled the blanket tighter around me. There was nothing I could use to defend myself here on the porch, and if I yelled for help, it could probably be on me faster than I could move.

And so I stared at the eyes, and they stared back, neither one of us moving, nor making noises of any sort. I finally realized it wasn’t going to attack me. If so, it would have already. Perhaps a curious dog then? Or a wandering deer. The eyes were large, and deeply brown. It hit me then that I had seen these exact eyes before. Not ones like them, but these same ones. If it were an animal, it had to be a dog then. The odds of seeing some strange animal eyes more than once were truly far-fetched.

And then the rain parted and the face which held the eyes drew nearer, into sight. It was human. A small child. Dark hair clung wetly to her face, rain coursing down her cheeks as he stepped under the edge of the porch, onto the bottom stair. Her clothes clung to her frail and thin body. I couldn’t place her at first, but then my mind flew back to the day Alec had rescued the family from the sinking house.

“Yelda?” I whispered softly. She didn’t say anything, but I knew it was her. She stayed on the bottom step for a moment, then slowly eased up onto the next one. She seemed like a lost dog for sure. As if, if she slunk in slowly and silently enough, she could be taken in. There was also a wild fright, looming behind the apparent intensity.

I slid to one side of the porch swing and held the blanket edge open, invitingly. She stopped, frozen on the top step of the porch, staring deep into my eyes. Finally, she darted across the porch so swiftly and silently, I would have missed it had I blinked or had my heart beat in that instant. Without warning, she was simply suddenly at my side, under the blanket, shivering and pressing into my side. I put my arm around her tiny body, wrapping the blanket snuggly around her. I felt though that if I held her too tightly she would take flight again, flitting away into the rain as silently as she had come.

I didn’t say a word to her, sure that even the sound of my voice made startle her away. We sat and watched the rain clean the earth, her shivering slowly subsiding and finally leaving. At one point I realized that she was watching me again. She seemed to be studying my face, trying to peer inside me. I finally spoke, in almost a whisper.

“The first rain I remember was like the storm. The one that took away your house. It was just after my father died. I was angry, I was sad. I had to hide it, because I had to be a strong older brother. But the rain scared me. It was so strong, and so deep. And it went on and on. Not as long as that one did, but still I felt we would be washed away. When the rain finally stopped, I was able to see the land outside. The rain had washed away some of the damage done to it by uncaring people, leaving behind in some places real ground.

“You see, the barrens and outlands have been covered in ashes and dust and grime so deep, you can’t even see the ground. Nothing green has grown there for a long time. But the rains make things clean out there again, and give moisture back to the earth that was long ago burned away. And now, some green things grown.

“And so when it rains, I think about that. That in the areas where things are terrible, the rain cleans the land, and will someday bring back the things of beauty. Things you have here that other people took for granted, abused and abandoned them.”

She said nothing, but she didn’t leave either, so I kept talking. “I m a very old man, little one. I have seen and done things no one would even understand anymore. I’ve suffered losses, but it is important that I keep going. I need to move on to show the world that I am strong. I won’t have much time left, I’m sure. But I’m going to live it to its fullest.

“The most important thing you can do in life is try. You don’t always have to succeed, as long as you can say you tried. Life doesn’t get any easier to live, just easier to accept.”

She was still watching him intently, dark eyes big in the near gloom. I kept on. “The world beyond your great wall was once a thriving, beautiful place. People loved the land, and they cared for it. But their children, and the ones after them, stopped caring about it. It became more important for people to care for themselves, to improve their own life’s quality. But they lost sight of true quality, instead settling for the thin and unstable version, where being false and lying, hyping ones own image up, were considered necessary. Nobody cared anymore about the plants, or the animals, or even the air.

“People now are left with a rotted and desolate land, where surviving is the biggest struggle. But people need to see beyond that. People need to see that they can’t just survive. Just surviving, near the end, is what has left these generations with nothing. People need to try not just to live, but to improve things for the next generations. People need to look beyond themselves, and see that the people who will be left when they are gone, are just as important if not more. Life will not be great for the people who are alive today, but if we try hard enough, the people who come after we are gone will have it easier. And further, maybe one day, people will have good lives ones more.”

She stared at him with deep eyes, searching what might have been his soul. Somehow, he knew she understood what he was saying.

He looked back into her deep dark eyes. Somehow, they seemed a little calmer, as if his words had triggered something in her mind that hadn’t been there in a long time. Peace.

They returned to watching the rain once more, the to and fro of the swing sending a gentle creak into the air.

A gentle hand on my shoulder stirred me. I blearily opened my eyes, then went to rub them. The hand however stalled my movements. “Shh.” A soft voice bid me. “You’ll wake her.” “Huh?” Confusion flowed groggily through my head. “Wake-?” I glanced over and saw a mop of brown hair matted onto a tiny head. Lifting my own head, I peered around. I had fallen asleep on the porch swing, the little girl pressed up against me. There was a stiffness to my neck that told me I had been asleep for a while now, with my head lolled down onto my chest.

In front of me, Alec and the woman of the house stood silently. Alec had roused me from slumber, and now waited for me to wake fully. The morning sun warmed the damp earth, the sky clear and bright. Roosters declared their importance in the near distance, as cows bellowed and somewhere sheep bayed. I breathed deeply and blinked firmly before finally glancing at Alec again.

“You gave me quite a scare, Cameron. When you weren’t in the bedroom or the kitchen. Luckily I glanced out the window just here before I came out. I would have startled the poor girl nearly half to death I’m sure.” The whisper was loud, but Yelda didn’t even stir. Gently I eased my arm out from around her, then tucked the blanket down around her thin body. She seemed like she needed a good meal, though that contradicted the way of life here. They wanted naught, and yet she was so slight that I felt better with the blanket covering her little ribs.

I grimaced as a thought came to me. “Her mother and father will be just as scared at her absence. You must go and inform them where she is before they get too frightened.” The woman nodded and hurried off down the stairs, through the village and out of sight. Turning, I saw Alec looking at me with a weird expression on his face. “What?” He shook his head, the look growing deeper. He seemed to be puzzling something, yet dismissing it at the same time. Again I prodded him for an explanation. Finally he shrugged and gestured at the little girl.

“Well, what-, I mean, you-?” I raised an eyebrow, unsure of what he was trying to say. Alec sighed and stuck his hands in his pockets, casting a look at the boards under foot as if seeking encouragement. “Why was she here? Why were you out here?” I blinked. “I couldn’t sleep, she couldn’t sleep. I bored the little thing to sleep with stories of my past.” He looked at me a moment, then laughed softly, almost relieved sounding. “Cam, if there’s one thing I know, it’s that your past is not boring.”

Just then a terrified looking woman came bounding down the street, a hesitant Marna in tow. She barged up the steps and onto the porch, planting a finger in my chest hard enough to hurt, stunning me thoroughly. “You stay away from my daughter, you here?” Her voice was one of anger and threat, mingled with fear and horror. Confused yet again, I glanced at the other two. Unsure of how to respond, I felt my mouth hanging open uselessly. “You set foot near my daughter- No. You even glance at her! I will have you removed from our peaceful country faster than you can say ‘but I-‘!”

“Mother.” We all turned at the little voice that suddenly spoke with such sureness. Absolute shock spread across her face as she gazed at the little girl.

“Leave him alone, mother.” There was no question in her face, or her words. The mother’s mouth worked a few times as she stared openly at the little girl. “I like him. He’s nice. We watched the rain together. And we talked. He is meant for greater things than your misplaced wrath.” Now I stared. This wild child, whom I had never heard speak before, and who had kept to herself, had just spoken plainer than most adults, and shown her mother up.

But the absolute shock etched into her mother’s face was deeper than that. It was as if this little girl had walked on water, or flown in the sky. She fell to her knees, at eye level with the Yelda. “My baby? My little girl?” The girl nodded and put her arms around her mother’s neck. For a moment they stayed like that, then the mother stood with the girl still in her arms, and left us standing there uncertainly. I didn’t understand exactly what had happened, but somehow I was off the hook. I didn’t even understand what hook I had been on, but here I was, free.

Finally the woman with me spoke. “The child! She’s- she’s cured!” Her awe was entirely audible.” My brows scrunched in confusion. “Cured? Of what?” The woman shook her head. “We don’t know.” My face must have been truly twisted because she shook her head again. “I mean, we don’t know what ailed her or why. She came out that way. She has never said a single recognizable word to anybody. As a baby she would babble, and as a toddler she would make noises, but then she stopped doing even that. She would make some noises, if she was frightened or angry. But never anything else.” She turned to stare after the woman and girl. “She never spoke to anyone until now. We thought maybe she was a half-mute, or that her mind was addled.” She then gazed at me.

“She was here. What did you say to her? She never goes with anyone other than her parents. You saw how wild she was when Alec here tried to remove her from that house. She only calmed when she heard her father’s voice.” I shook my head in wonder. “I don’t think I really said anything. I talked about life. I talked about hardship. And rain.” Alec gazed at him in wonder, as did the woman. He shrugged. He was sure that whatever he had said had not been what brought this girl out of the depths of her mind.

Then

Beyond the edges of the city, the dust from the city had scattered and blown for hundreds of feet, mixing with the sandy dirt. It made for uneven walking. I hadn’t been very far out of the city for a long time, and I wasn’t used to walking in the sandy dirt, and so the first while was a matter of getting accustomed to the simple task of walking. My feet shuffled and slid in the shifting dusty dirt and sand. It gave me a very strong sense of nostalgia, remembering the long trek years ago that had brought me from the hideout way to the north, down here to Waterville. We had not been used to the shuffling gait required in the outlands then, and now it was very close to the same.

I was surprise though when, after passing the dust which had blown outward from Waterville, the ground firmed a little. Solid ground stood mere inches below the grey and powdery surface. I slid my foot sideways and was even further surprised to see the ground itself, brown and dead looking. On the surface, one couldn’t tell the difference. The land still drifted over with the light sandy dirt that had settled in the wake of the fires which had ravaged the land many years ago. The surrounding area was a dusty grey color, little patches of lighter or darker shades streaking through it. In some parts of the land I knew, the sand held more of a yellow tint to it, lending it an Arabian Desert sort of feel. But for the most part it merely seemed as it was; a deserted wasteland, uninhabitable by most standards.

How had a simple- how many years had I been cooped away inside this utopia? About twenty years, I was sure. I had been keeping track on some paper I had found while going through one of the apartment buildings, but I couldn’t say offhand exactly how long it had been. Twenty years had really made this much difference? I could clearly remember that on my journey here all those years ago this same sand had been about six inches deep. It was settling though, packing itself tightly into easily traversable land once more. It was still difficult walking, but now the ground below was easier reached. It didn’t feel so much like walking on mud, which might slide or shift out from under you at any moment, plunging you into some deep crevice in the earth, never to be heard or seen again.

After that moment of utter surprise, I shook my head and forced my mind back to the mission at hand. I tried not to think of it so much as the desperate situation that it was, because otherwise I might just crumple to a heap on the ground and never do anything about it. I didn’t want the horribleness of it to sink in, and so I convinced myself that this was just an easy rescue mission. I calmed my inner self, and strode forward into the barrens.

After walking for what seemed many hours, but was in fact likely only two, maybe three, I came across a large pile of boulders. The land seemed to have changed in more than a few ways. I didn’t remember these boulders from my original journey. But then, how would a pile of boulders simply appear? There was no mountain directly near for the large rocks to have rolled down or fallen off. I glanced around in all directions. There were the dead trees we had passed through to get here that first time, when I was still a teen. Most of them by now lay down in defeat, rotted into a black pile of soot and decomposed burned wood. A lonely few stood against the harsh world, in strong defiance of the ravaging which had sought to destroy the world.

A lot of these cities in the burning areas had only managed to stay standing by getting rid of all the trees directly around their edges, and coating the entire area with massive amounts of flame retardants. A couple of the smaller cities had vanished in the flames, leaving smoldering heaps of crumpled buildings. Their inhabitants too had vanished, the smell of burned flesh and sometimes heaps of blackened bones, all that remained. A conspiracy theory had floated around, sometimes still cropping up on the Glass-NET ages later, that the towns that had burned were not given the flame retardants by the government because they had been against something that politics were trying to get passed. Perhaps the gun laws? The records showed that they had indeed been given such substances, but they had not worked. It was blamed on faulty batches, all of which could be traced to one particular distributor. This worked in the favor of conspiracy theorists though. Obviously this so-called faulty batch had been engineered to be just such.

If I hadn’t read the journals of my long dead relative, and heard some of the things my father had mentioned about the things the government people were willing to do, I would have just dismissed such theories, never to think on them again. But since he had been gone, many things had come back to me over the years that I had read or heard on Glass-NET.

Either way, I guess none of this goes anywhere towards explaining the large boulders which now huddled against the wind and sun in the middle of this seemingly endless field being watched over by the lonely sentries of a once great forest. Shaking my head to clear it, I peered around at the rocks as the setting sun cast a reddish hue to the boulders. I would assume that the men who had taken my sons were camped in that ring of rocks. It would be the safest place to camp, with the wind protection, and the open expanse which wouldn’t allow any to cross over unseen. The only area that looked remotely promising was a spot where the trees on the other side jutted out in a sharp edge that drew near to the rocks. Granted most of the trees lay in heaps, but that still left a rather large pile, which could be crawled through.

Glancing once more at the rocks, I noticed a bright orange-yellow glare beginning in the middle of the rocks. A fire. They were there alright, camped out in what they assumed to be a protected area. Ha. It would actually work in my favor, I was sure. I had the guns, and they had crude weapons which could not ward me off. They would be trapped in the rocks like bugs in a jar. They knew where the openings were, and thought they could reach them, but I would be there to squash them if they tried to flee.

I stuck the rifle into a sling I had fashioned to the back of my pack, where I could easily reach over my shoulder and draw it, the cord pulling loose to allow room to shoot. Then I stole deeper into the piles of burned trees, ducked down some so that my arched back didn’t show over most of the black and rotting trunks, and began making my way around the edges of the field which sought to betray any rescue.

Now

The people of the little Amish city beheld me with wary suspicion. After the girl had started speaking, she seemed to command a certain authority that no one could account for. She seemed to be trying to instruct them, which didn’t entirely go over well. For one thing she was a child, and for the other, almost more important matter, she was a girl. Both of these very important issues worked against her, and she was written off as insane. A girl child giving anyone instructions was either child’s play, or if as in this case, she was serious and meant to be taken seriously, devilry.

And since I had been the one to, at least in their opinion, work the magic which made her speak, it was thought that perhaps I was a witch and had cast a spell on the girl, or manifested her with some sort of demon. I insisted back and forth that I had nothing to do with it. That I merely watched the rain with her, and the next morning she spoke.

But they would hear nothing of it. They were set in their decisions and their perceptions. Finally though, the girl told them that she had had words in her mind for years, but she had been unable to form them. She told them that she didn’t know why she could suddenly speak, but that it had been through no real effort on my part. She said that she had observed many of them all her years; and that was how she came upon such wisdom for her age. She then told them that as long as she didn’t break any of their rules or laws, what would it hurt if they listened to her, sketched some things out, and determined whether or not these things worked. She said that she didn’t want power, or status, or even recognition. If they chose to use her ideas, and claim them in the name of a man, she would be fine with that, because she would hold the knowledge in her heart that she had helped bring her people to better things.

After that assembly, the people of the town had stopped giving me looks as if I had two heads, or would explode all over their recently rain cleansed town. The house was finished though, and I felt inclined to move onward. We had sat here for what felt like far too long. If this kept up, I wouldn’t be able to show Alec all the things I wanted him to see. It seemed that every time I reached a destination, something happened to keep us from continuing onward. I didn’t know if I would be able to keep my promise to Alec not to die before I’d got to finish my journey with him. I shuddered at the thought.

“Are you cold, Cam?” I looked over at him, confused, but then just shrugged. “No, just chilling thoughts.” I gave a small dry laugh.

We were packing our things, preparing to leave. We were going to take the horse and cart with us, at least as far as the southernmost Amish town, before leaving it. We couldn’t take it back into the states with us. People there would try to kill the horses, maybe burn or scavenge the cart.

The woman who had housed us for so long helped us by sacking up food for us, and stacking some freshly washed clothing for us. Most of this too would be left in the last Amish town we came to. The more things we had to carry, the bigger a target we would be. Alec carried most of my writing now, sometimes paging through it. I was careful to keep the most recent things close to me. I wasn’t yet ready to share this bit of information with anybody. I didn’t want to face that yet.

At any rate, with the writing divided up as it was, it was easier to pack it along without it looking more valuable than it really was. For sure to me, it was a gold mine. It was my life, scrawled and hewn across many pages, in black and blue ink, and some places the easily erased etchings of pencil.

But to anybody else, and definitely the people who couldn’t read, it was nothing more than fire-starter. The people who couldn’t read would burn it, the ones who could, might read it before burning it. Fire material was becoming scarce, and sometimes people had been killed for the simple fact that they had something burnable. People it seemed could get very aggressive for the sake of keeping warm, most especially during the harsh winter months up north. The south had not so much to worry about even in the winter months, but sometimes up north, even in the absence of snow, the bite of winter’s breath could become so strong that it had killed.

Having the pages split up and wrapped in cloth, it was also easier to carry other things in our own bags. I had some water pouches and rations in my bag, along with a few small bags of dried foods. I also had a small knife, and my writing utensils, along with two of the three paperbacks I had started out with. One of them had been cringingly sacrificed for the same previously mentioned necessity of keeping warm, on the long trek northward when we were nearing the border of Canada. It had saved our lives most likely, but it was still kind of gut wrenching to do it.

I also still had the picture of my family, and a few other simple knickknacks that I had picked up along the way. My bag was still light enough I could carry it, but I would be preserving my strength for the next week or so, as we headed south in the comfort and style afforded by having the cart with us. There were none in the United States who had such luxury anymore. Granted, the mansions to the furthest south provided luxurious housing, as long as one could defend them, but their modes of transportation were still extremely limited. And so our ‘horse and buggy’ was the fanciest, most luxurious ride this side of the Canadian border. I had to laugh at myself at the thought.

This of course drew another odd look from Alec, but I just waved him off. He was mostly used to me making weird expressions, or laughing randomly. I had told him it was a quirk I had developed since beginning to write this long recounting of my life. That my mind was continuously working, and that sometimes it just happened upon a subject or concept that I found humorous, or sometimes saddening, and I couldn’t help but express it even if I didn’t say it aloud.

At any rate, after having spent a few days prepping for the long journey ahead, we set off. We followed a well-worn path in the dirt, which followed the length of the wall headed south. On the inside of the grand wall which bordered what had been Montana and south into Idaho, we were safe from anything happening in the outer lands, and we could make our way without worry of many or, in the case of the Rockies, beasts.

Alec had been surprised when I told him that there were still bears and wolves alive in these mountains. It had generally been assumed that there were no animals alive in the states, other than some wild birds and rabbits which had managed to elude capture or death, and had propagated and spread. Indeed, there were still some predators left in the mountains, as well as more docile creatures such as dear and moose, even a few elk. Not many elk, they had been mostly hunted to extinction when rationing became common place, and grocery stores had been shut down for lack of demand.

When only the super-rich could afford real food, the stores had closed. The rich could have their food delivered to them by private plane or helicopter, making even the need of store for the rich obsolete. So the people in the western states had kept to their gardens, and lived off the land, as most of them either couldn’t afford the rations, or they had decided that they would rather spend their trifle earnings on other things, such as clothing or Glass-NET things.

At any rate, there were still wild animals alive and thriving; making me glad the wall was as high as it was. I had heard that there were mountain lions around here that could jump as high as ten feet easily, scratching and clawing their way to make that extra three or four feet to the tops of ridges. I had never seen one of those ones personally, but I had talked to a man once who had.

I didn’t mention those ones though, because I knew Alec would likely not have wanted to go where we were going. The wall didn’t by any means stretch to the southernmost end of the Rockies. It curved to follow a natural basin which etched its way through the large splash of mountain ranges. This natural valley lay in Wyoming originally, but massive bombings had left some of the mountains as piles of rubble, and the wall had stretched out over a portion of that, reaching all the way to the ocean on the west coast. I had heard that the approximate length of the whole wall was about fifteen hundred miles, as it also crossed the length to the north of the Amish villages.

To go south then, one had to pass over several miles of uneven rock and earth, some of which had piled to form their own miniature versions of their former selves, before reaching the valley and the long narrow passage which finally led to the once beautiful land which had been California.  But that was also part of the plan. I intended to introduce him to a few of the people I had met in the Rockies, though I wasn’t sure any of them were still alive. It had been a while since I had been this way.

With the morning sun on my back, the urge to curl up and fall asleep was strong. I felt like a cat for sure. I think people are at least partially solar powered. While vast amounts of sunlight can cause the brain to addle, this gentle warm day was good for the body and soul. It made the section of writing I was currently engulfed in not so entirely terrible.

And yet, nothing took away from it. It was what it was. My life had been one terrible event to the next, and this was no different. The world had become a harsh and barren place. I had defied it by living as had any of us who still presumed to eke out an existence on the surface of this planet, and it had made me suffer endlessly. Anything that had been mine had been taken away, or destroyed, and this would not be any different.

I had come to terms with what had happened ages ago, but it still caused a lump to form in my throat. Especially when I glanced over at Alec, smiling and breathing in the fresh air as we drew nearer to the Rocky mountain ranges which would lead us to our destination.

I shook my head though. There was nothing I could do or say to change to past, I could only write it in its truest most honest form, and pray that people could forgive me. Though I knew that there was nothing about any of this that was my fault. I could not have saved any of the people that I lost in my time, but I always had those nagging doubts. The little voice in the back of my mind that tells me ‘what if’. ‘What if I had been sooner? Faster? Smarter? More skilled? What if I had done this? Or that? Had more ammo? More guns?’ But no matter how many what-if’s my mind threw at me, I couldn’t change the facts. And I surely couldn’t change the past.

Other books by Rebecca Reynolds:

A Survivor’s Tale, Part One

A Survivor’s Tale, Part Two

Forthcoming:

A Survivor’s Tale, Part Four

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Table of Contents

A Survivor’s Tale Part Three

Other books by Rebecca Reynolds: