The wash basin was once white, I know it was. I can remember scrubbing it faithfully every Saturday morning along with the toilet and the shower when water was still flowing from every faucet, when my muscles still understood my commands. Once friendly, the hazy mirror over the sink does not answer my sideway glance, so I keep my eyes cast down upon the rust and grime competing with the clustered strands of hair falling one after another from my head. If I were to walk into the kitchen and take a knife from the counter and slice myself open, would I choose a wrist or would I be brave enough to reach for an ear, connecting the dots all the way to its twin? These walls can no longer keep me safe as they once did, from the cold, from the enemy, from intelligence; so I may as well live outside with the remaining feral. Don't tell me the wounded deer does not know when it is time to lay down and die; surely he does, closing his eyes gracefully, so suddenly as if he had just opened them for the first time. So what about me? Why am I still searching for sustenance in the cold darkness of hell when I know damn well there is nothing left for me to pick up with two fingers from the ash; hand to mouth is gone like the wind so is my desperate attempt to lick the murky ground with my tongue down on my knees like a dog, expecting a result that will keep me alive for the next day, the next hour, the next minute, another second; for what?

My father once took me hunting in the dead of winter many years ago before the blast when I was too young to see what I can't unsee. He said, "Humans have to eat. The animals understand about dominion." Do they? Or are they just smarter than us in their understanding of the rhythm of nature in a way that humans will never understand, since if we did, would I still be clinging to life?

Do you remember the days we had? Of times with moments we played in the mud. With no care in the world. Do you remember the holidays we shared together? When we had days of fun, sun and laughter.

But now those days are gone and the sweet memories are starting to fade away. Drifting off into the darkness we have that now surrounds us.

Some of our neighbors had decided to pack up and try to move to places that still had some sun shining through the stratosphere. Others decided that it was best to just stay put.

My neighbor and I ended up helping each other after the soot started falling on the ground. Some of the kids were excited thinking it was the first ever snowfall in Zanzi.

I kind of thought it was a miracle, or another effect from global warming. My smart buddy, and neighbor, told me that things were only going to get much worse from here. I just shook my head in disbelief. I thought he was listening to a lot of nonsense from the news.

In a matter of few months, things did get crazy. The farmers produce did not survive the change of the weather. Stores did not have enough food to offer to the community. The local businesses and work places started shutting down. Even the electric company, Eszco, failed to keep the power supply going. Things were not looking good.

My neighbor seemed to be prepared for the sudden change. He boarded his windows. Placed extra secure locks on all his doors. Then he asked if I needed help securing my place. I thiught, why not. Better to be safe than sorry.

That’s how I started living. He ended up informing me about an underground tunnel network that led from his house to different parts of the city. I was in awe with all the stuff he had together in such little time.

One day~we were out and about-in search of food—and we came across an elderly woman. She smiled at us & winked at my neighbor. He smiled, but then quickly whispered to me, ‘‘Keep an eye on that one. We may be dealing with an impostor here.’’

As soon as we walked past the elderly woman, she tossed something onto the ground. There was a loud bang and my ears started ringing. Then I saw her remove her wig and toss it to the side. My neighbor was right. Now we stared in terror at the now 6 foot tall guy who held a knife in his left hand.

I charged toward him and reached for the knife. The guy had predicted my move. He quickly switched the knife to his other hand, and plunged it into my back.

He laughed and twisted the knife harder into my back. I screamed and fell to the ground. My neighbor took his jacket off to reveal his arsenal.

In one hand he pulled out an arrow from his back, and with his other hand he grabbed his bow from his shoulder. He shot the arrow and it landed straight into the guy’s heart. I gasped.

My neighbor rushed to my side and said, ‘‘Hold still. This is going to sting.’’

I cried and yelled as the knife was pulled out from my back. Oh, this was not how I thought living in Zanzi was going to be like. Maybe I should have accepted the mission exploration to Mars. The Martians probably do not have to deal with or worry about nuclear winters.

I took a deep breath and slowly got back onto my feet. I turned around to see my neighbor cutting the guy into pieces.

‘‘What in the world?’’ I sighed. ‘‘Why?’’

He stared at me and stopped cutting for a brief second, ‘‘We need some meat. In the current state we’re in— we can not be picky about where it comes from.’’

My neighbor tore the clothes off the dude’s body, and sliced the guy’s tummy. Then cut into the man’s intestines.

‘‘Hmm, they don’t look too bad. I’ll clean them when we get back to my place.’’

I covered my mouth. I could not stand the sight, or smell, of all the blood.

Bleugh!

To make the moment even crazier, my neighbor ran when he spotted something scurrying by. He picked up the rodent by its tail.

‘‘No! Please, don’t add that, too.’’ I begged. Alas, my plea was tossed to the side.

#RATS ©

26th Oct., 2020 Lundi

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=OLj8EcECKxk

Opposites collapse onto opposites.

Monsters born of sparks melt into children of the cold, crystalline beads of glass.

The plants, corn and beans and squash, blackened and curled back into the salted earth. The sun cloaked herself in shadow, crept along the low-hanging clouds, fading away from whatever beauty she may have posessed.

And these ghosts, they eat away at my skin, killing me slowly, sand pouring viscously into the bottom of the hourglass. My mind is dead, but my body clings to existence.

I am hungry.

I've learned to starve over stretches of weeks, they are empty times, times for me to think. To ponder my loneliness.

I don't go outside anymore. I'm too afraid. I see dark forms swoop the alleyways, not exactly human, when I gaze through the frosty glass of the second story.

One day, my stock, this castle, will only contain dust. But until that day, we are both infinite.

I check the desks, peruse the drawers and slam them shut. Just papers, fragments of other lives. But they aren't mine. So, they shall be forgotten, they shall dissipate.

I should be ash, turned back into the form that my lifeline began at. While the city sits silently, my footsteps clatter along the stairs. It feels so wrong, echoes through these drafty halls like a sour note.

There are four vending machines, two of them stripped skeletons. The third is drained, but houses scattered reamins

This is the present. The present is immune, blind, to consequence.

The plasticine glass is shattered. I claw around inside, my ragged nails scraping against the metallic shells, settling on a dulling yellow one, contrasting with all the grey.

I've almost forgotten how to open it, to split it apart.

It's been a long time since the last time.

I tear it apart, and the tang of a churning ocean wafts into the icy air.

One day, this forced habit will cease. But for now, I must endure this taste.

Stale.

Bitter.

There.

I heard a creak.

A rusty chain was moving, back and forth, back and forth.

I turned my blurry and blinking eyes towards the source from my little hollowed out space in a stack of pallets. Some snow fluttered down that I hadn’t disturbed yet from the wood above, and I carefully brushed it off my cheek with one gloved finger. I could barely feel the touch in the penetrating cold. I had been there for three hours, hoping one of the rare deer would come by for the sparse grass still left at the elementary school’s playground.

Instead of deer though, I saw a little figure on the swing, going back and forth, back and forth. I could feel their warmth, feel the cloud of mist that their breath left in the freezing air. The narrow viewing point I had was still enough to see the little figure’s blue puffy coat, with black zippers and black boots.

Why are they out here? That isn’t enough clothes for this winter. Surely there is some shelter?

But reality is harsher, and I knew this little figure probably had nothing left, in fact my own stores of food were gone, and I was far better prepared to survive the aftermath than this child. Suddenly, the thought dawned on me.

What if I…? No, that’s terrible! But they’re not likely to survive much longer now are they, not like that. I won’t, I can’t, I will never stoop so low!

Despite my resistance, my hands moved instinctively, finding the ow I had found in the sports store on the other side of town, my right hand fitting an arrow. Conveniently, that narrow gap was wide enough to fit an arrow head.

Even as my hand drew the string back to my cheek, and my eyes sighted the target’s little neck, something stopped me. Some shred of humanity left alive, despite the beast in my stomach. I relaxed my grip, and tears started to flow, but before I could even process it, my hand jerked back to my cheek, the woolen cloth barely cracking my icy exterior.

They’re just another living thing, like all the rabbits and deer from the fall. They are human! It’s survival of the fittest. They are a child! That won’t survive long enough to have to make decisions like this. What have I done to deserve this? Just keep surviving. I WANT TO LIVE! Why, why did I live? What crueler fate could have been bestowed on one human? Keep fighting. Yes, I’ll keep fighting. I’ll live on this meaningless life as I lose the memories of those I held dear before the blast. But I’ll do it right. Right is a relative term, a grey area.

So it continued for almost an hour, the string becoming taut and lax as either side was winning, death on the line. The arrow went back and forth, back and forth, a pendulum of destruction. Throughout it all, the small, puffy figure kept swinging, oblivious to the presence of another. Eventually the internal battle was interrupted by a new sound, the faint sound of crying. So strange, the two of us sharing in this deep tragedy, loss as stinging as the salt of our tears in open wounds. For five minutes, I mourned the near loss of my humanity and the growling of my clenching, empty stomach. For five minutes the little, blue figure cried, and I think it was because of the memories of a time that would never be again, when the worst thing they had to worry about was that one grumpy math teacher. What a simple time.

The crying abruptly stopped as the little figure fell forward into the snow, and lay still. I was stunned for a moment, but slowly got up and removed the lid, showering myself with a dusting of snow. I shook it off as I climbed out and replaced the top pallet. I realized that the sky had grown dark quickly, and I had gone another day without a catch. I crunched through the thin layer of snow on the ground in between the shed and the playground until I reached the prone body.

I flipped the small body over and saw that the eyes were frozen shut with a pair of frozen streams down each cheek. I touched my own cheeks, and felt ridges that said I had them too.

I knew she was dead, but there must be a way to melt her frozen heart right? Maybe it was her reminder of a half remembered neice. I carried her back to my hunting pallets, as it was too late to get back to my shelter, and set up a tarp, covering it up for the fast approaching cold of night. In the pitch black of that hole, I rocked the frozen body back and forth, back and forth.

I am still human. I am still human. I am still human. I am still human. I am human. I am human. I am...

Delirium has set in and I see before me, floating in the midday sky, a fantastical array of food. A bright glimming vision of a banquet fit for a king laid out in all its glory, a vision so real I could almost reach out and touch it.

I lie spread-eagled in the fresh virgin snow and I behold a carrousel of roast chickens and legs of beef; vegetables and fruits in the full spectrum of colours, wine, juice and teas of mouth watering varieties and I can almost smell the aromas.

The snow is bone chillingly cold and my worn torn quilted jacket that lost its polyester padding a while ago, does little to insulate me from the subzero temperatures.

I don’t care.

The cold is nothing in comparison to the hunger. It truly is a wonder what a human being will do to fill this basic need- we will beg, steal, fight- the things I’ve done send shivers down my already frozen spine and I pray silently to an unknown God for redemption.

After spending weeks hunting for food in a completely ravaged land, a barren desolate God-forsaken place and finding nothing but animal carcasses and dried withered plants, I’d had enough.

My fight has gone.

So now I lie motionless in newly fallen contaminated snow, comprised largely of radioactive water from the nuclear fallout, with a toothless smile on my face and I watch the hallucinatory banquet dance around before my eyes.

Snowflakes start to fall silently, fluttering into my fading vision like glitter and I drift off to somewhere far away from here... dreaming of a meal fit for a king.

Tati left the bunker as quickly as her frayed limbs would allow. Swollen, cuts in small 'x' patterns across the thigh.

She hobbled against the wind until she was forced to crawl. She had no destination in mind, but the food had been gone for 5 days now and Tati was growing desperate.

Back in the bunker, she had left her brother Tom to watch over the rotting corpse of their mother; they hoped to bury her once the ground was no longer frozen. IF the ground would ever unfreeze.

Tati knew she would need to hurry. Tom was growing weaker and she herself was no longer feeling like a teenager. Crawling inch by inch, she managed to drag herself into a clearing where a young boy appeared to be stuck under a fallen tree.

"Hey. Hey! can you help me please? I was cutting down this tree for firewood and, well, it crushed my legs," the boy called out to Tati. She paused in her tracks. The boy didn't appear to me in much pain, but Tati assumed that was due to the fact he could no longer feel his legs.

A few feet away from the accident lay an axe. Sharp enough. Good enough. She looked at the axe and then at the boy.

"Can you just cut the tree and maybe I can drag myself out? I don't know what the damage is yet," the boy said. He looked pale: whether from the injury or the cold Tati couldn't tell.

She nodded her understanding to the boy and went to pick up the axe.

"Maybe you should close your eyes. This might hurt a little bit," Tati said with a wry smile. Tati limped up to the stump and to the boy with his crushed legs. She swung the axe.

“Mutations that are acquired in life are called somatic mutations,” Ellie said, reading from a dusty biology textbook as her feet dangled from the edge of her bed. “Often, they are localized and are not passed on to progeny unless they occur within the gametes.”

“What does that mean?” Tom said, squinting his eyes at the page as he hovered over his sister. He hated biology.

“I don’t know,” Ellie said, shrugging. “It’s your textbook. I’ve got six more years until I take 9th grade biology.”

“Well, keep reading,” Tom said. He started pacing back and forth. “There’s got to be something useful in there.”

Ellie found her place on the page and continued reading. “If the gametes of one parent contain a mutation, that mutation will be passed on to their offspring, and the mutation will be present in every cell of the resulting zygote.”

“So, does that mean the animals are safe or not?”

Ellie flipped to the end of the book, found the glossary, and ran her finger down the page until she found the word gamete. Her eyes widened and her cheeks blushed.

“Um,” Ellie said, closing the book and handing it to Tom. “I think it’s saying that if the blast happened after a birth, the animals are okay.”

“Only okay?”

“Well, as okay as we are.”

“Fair enough,” Tom said, drumming his fingers on the book’s cover. “And, what about animals born after the blast?”

“Well, then, they may have inherited a mutation.”

“Is that bad?”

“I don’t know.”

Tom’s drumming grew louder and fiercer.

“Dammit!” Tom said, tossing the book on the floor. A cloud of dust rose up around it. “I’m going out there. I don’t care what mom says. I’m sick of being stuck here.”

“She hasn’t said anything,” Ellie whispered.

“That’s the point. She’s been sick for five days now, and she needs food. Good food. And Dad’s not coming back. Deadbeat said he was going to drive to town, listen for a radio signal, and hope that the President had something meaningful to say about all this. As far as I can tell, Dad’s got nothing to tell us, and neither does Kennedy. The fact that we haven’t heard anything from anyone, and no one’s coming around says it all. We have to do something, unless you want to start eating the flies and the rats in the wellhouse.”

“Where are you gonna go?” Ellie said, looking out her bedroom window.

“I’m going to check our trees. Someone has to.”

Ellie raised an eyebrow. “And that’s it?”

“That’s it,” Tom said, turning toward the door of Ellie’s bedroom.

Ellie stood up and dusted off her dress. “Then I’m coming with you. It’ll at least stop you from doing something stupid.”

Tom smiled. “Then maybe you shouldn’t come.”

“I’m coming!”

“Well then, put on your coat, and grab a scarf. It’s cold out there.”

Tom went to the closet near the front door of the farmhouse and pulled out his father’s fur-lined parka. He didn’t have one of his own. He hadn’t needed one until now.

Ellie was in the kitchen, dressed and ready, pulling a potato sack from the wastebin.

Tom walked over to her. “I don’t think we’re going to need that,” he said.

“Why not?” Ellie said, holding open the bag. “Look how big it is. Imagine how much fruit it’ll hold.”

“Fine,” Tom said with a sigh. A sigh not only for the useless potato sack, but also for the calendar hanging on the wall in the kitchen. According to the calendar, it was August. The calendar doesn’t lie. Looking through the kitchen window, it looked like December. With another sigh, he waved Ellie along. “Let’s go before Mom wakes up.”

Tom walked to the front door and pushed Ellie behind him before he opened it. The chill of the air was enough to make him want to close the door again, but he had already come this far. The sky was gray, and the sun was gone. It felt like winter, but there was no snow. And, yet, the ground was covered.

Tom bent down and ran his fingers through the gray dust that coated the wooden porch. It smelled like a cozy fire on a cold winter night. It was ash.

Tom led Ellie out through the front door of the farmhouse and around to the side, beside the chimney. There stood a pile of firewood stacked high as the roof. Set a few feet out from it was an old tree stump with an axe stuck in it. It probably hadn’t seen use since February, back when real winter had come to an end. But now they were in a new winter. An August winter; made real enough by the madmen with their fingers on the buttons. The way the government talked about it, you duck and cover and it’s over. But it had been a week now. It wasn’t over.

Tom pulled the axe from the stump and hoisted it over his shoulder. It felt good. “More useful than a potato sack,” he said.

“We’ll see,” Ellie said, clutching the potato sack tight between her fingers.

“The first orchard is about a half-mile down the road, and Dad’s still got the Ford, wherever he is.”

“Like you know how to drive it anyway.”

“He lets me drive it when Mom’s not around.”

“Me too,” Ellie said, smiling.

“Well it’s gone now, so let’s get walking.”

Tom twirled the axe in his hands as they walked down the dirt road, following the path of a wooden fence toward the first of the orchards. It was an apple orchard, and the harvesting season was already in full swing. The hired help had been working it while his father lounged on the couch. They must have fled on the day of the blast because Tom never saw them again. They probably took what they could and went home to their families. That’s what Tom would have done. Every man for himself. Mom had been out that day. She was driving home in the Ford after bringing a lunch out to the workers. She inhaled more than a bit of what rained down out of the sky that day.

Even when his father left for town, Tom didn’t believe for one second that he was coming back. He probably thought that anywhere was better than here. He was probably right.

“Here it is,” Tom said, pointing the head of the axe over toward an opening in the wooden fence.

They didn’t really need to wait for the opening in the fence to see the state of the orchard. It was like summer had crashed straight into the wall of winter. There were apples, alright, but they were all on the ground, not on the trees.

The apple trees themselves were bare to the bone. Leaves littered the ground around them and appeared to already be mulching. The new soil was as black as the apples themselves.

“We can’t eat this,” Tom said, tipping the rusty axe back onto his shoulder.

“It doesn’t smell so bad,” Ellie said.

“If we eat them, we’ll be as sick as Mom. Believe me.”

Ellie massaged the burlap of the potato sack between her fingers. “So, what do we do?”

“We keep walking,” Tom said. “These orchards are useless.”

“All of them?”

“All of them.”

“But… then… where are we going?”

“Roger Alder usually keeps a healthy crop of livestock in his pens. He might be able to spare something.”

Ellie seemed to be eyeing the axe in Tom’s hand.

“It’s two miles back the other way,” Tom said, pointing back toward their farmhouse. “You sure you still want to come?”

“I’m coming,” Ellie said firmly.

“Good,” Tom said, tapping the head of the axe into his palm. “We might have a lot to carry.”

They walked for over half-an-hour before finding themselves in the driveway of Roger Alder, looking up at his screened-in porch.

Through the screen, shadowed beneath a gable, was Roger Alder, sitting in his rocking chair, but he wasn’t rocking. He was just sitting.

“Mr. Alder?” Tom called out from across the driveway.

There was no response.

“Mr. Alder?” he shouted again. “It’s me, Tom, from the Barrows farm.”

Tom could feel Ellie tugging on the back of his parka. “He’s not moving,” she said.

“I’m gonna go see about him,” Tom said, his fingers gripping the axe tight and squeezing it firm against his chest. “Don’t go anywhere. You hear me?”

Ellie nodded.

Tom took his steps across the driveway with caution. The view was no better, even when he placed his foot on the first step of the porch. He mounted the second step, flipped the latch on the porch’s screen door and swung the door open.

“Mr. Alder?” Tom said, feeling sweat collect around his palms in spite of the cold.

He stepped inside.

Roger Alder sat in his rocking chair, motionless, his eyes closed and his face peaceful. A thick coating of ash covered the brim of his straw hat, the legs of his jeans, and the hollows of his eyes. He was dead. Tom was sure of that.

There should have been a smell. But not even the rotten apples and leaves going to mulch in the orchard had much of a smell. Maybe being out in the air for so long was having an effect on their senses.

“Tom!” Ellie cried out from somewhere beyond the porch.

Tom looked out through the screen door to find Ellie absent from the driveway.

“Dammit, Ellie!” Tom called out. “Where the hell are you?”

“Around back!” Ellie replied.

Tom descended the porch stairs and slammed the screen door behind him, causing the whole porch to rattle. He raced around the side of the house to find a small red barn in the back. The large barn doors were swung wide and only shadows lurked inside.

“C’mon, Tom!” Ellie called out from inside the barn. “Come see!”

“What are you doing in there, Ellie!” Tom said, walking up to the open barn doors. “I told you to stay in the driveway.”

“But… look,” Ellie said through the darkness.

The barn was unlit except for the back wall where a missing roof board allowed a bit of dim, gray light to shine down from the bleak sky above.

On the straw ground sat Ellie and a single sheep resting on its side. The sheep’s wool was patchy and hung off its body in limp, yellowed clumps.

As Tom walked deeper into the barn, he could see that the pens were empty. The gates had been opened and the animals had been released. Whether it was Roger Alder who did it or someone else, Tom didn’t know. All he knew was that the animals were gone. All but one. Even from where he stood, the sheep didn’t look well. In fact, it was moving about as much as Roger Alder.

Ellie draped her potato sack over the sheep’s body.

“Is she?” Tom said, kneeling down beside Ellie.

Ellie nodded. There were tears in her eyes. She wiped her cheeks with the sleeve of her coat. “But… look behind her,” she said.

Tom craned his neck to find that there were two little lambs behind the sheep, behind what was surely their mother.

“Look how tiny they are,” Ellie said, reaching over and running a finger through one of the baby lamb’s wool. Her finger came back wet.

“They must have just been born,” Tom said, setting his axe down on the straw of the barn floor.

Ellie was staring at the axe, and tears were flowing again. “Are we going to…”

Tom shook his head. “No, I don’t think we can.”

Ellie rubbed at her cheeks again, this time with both sleeves. She looked relieved.

“They came into this world no worse for wear,” Tom said. “Maybe they survived, protected inside from it all. Just like us. I bet they’re hungry.”

“Yeah,” Ellie said.

Tom reached over the mother, picked up one of the lambs, and handed it to Ellie. “Can you carry this one?” he said.

Ellie nodded.

Tom reached down for the other lamb and picked it up. As he did so, something scurried out from beneath it. It looked like a cockroach, but it was blood red.

“You ever see a red cockroach before?” Tom said, cradling the second lamb in his arms.

“No,” Ellie said, standing up with her own lamb. “I don’t think there are red cockroaches.”

“Must be my imagination,” Tom said. “We’d better get going.”

“Where to?”

“We keep on walking,” Tom said, scanning the ground for the red cockroach. “Mom needs food. We need food. And I think there’s a lot more that we need to see.”

Tom was turning to leave when he heard Ellie scream.

“Ow!” Ellie said. “It bit me. It fell out of the lamb’s mouth and bit me.”

“What bit you?”

“It was red.”

“Like a cockroach?”

Ellie nodded feverishly. She was still clutching the lamb, but a red welt was rising up on the back of her hand.

Tom held out his own lamb in one extended arm and pried open its mouth with his free hand. He gave the lamb a quick shake, and two red cockroaches fell out onto the straw floor. They were gone in an instant, scurrying away to who knows where.

“Put down your lamb, Ellie,” Tom said, setting his own lamb down onto the ground.

Ellie bent down, and the lamb practically fell through her arms onto the straw floor.

Tom picked up the axe, swept Ellie behind him, and reached out toward the mother sheep’s head. He had to know. He just had to.

Tom pinched the wool beneath the mother lamb’s chin and gave it a sharp tug.

The mouth fell open, Tom gasped, and red was all he saw.

"Gods I hate fish." I grimace, scraping scales yet again as my childhood friend tidies up the aquaponics setup in our bunker. She's really into this; I am not.

"It's the most efficient ecosystem, though? Land mammals just take too much energy."

"I get that but...I dunno, maybe we could have raised some micro pigs?"

"I think I already did." She jokes, looking in the other room where her two kids are plugged in again, playing on their aging computer systems. Discarded textbooks - our pathetic attempts at home schooling - lie in a study area adjacent to what proves to be the ultimate distraction, even without an Internet connection. Neither kid has much weight on them, given our limited setup. Yet that wasn't the point of her attempt at humor.

"How many recipes for tilapia have we gone through now?"

"If you want more cookbooks you'll have to hit up the library again. Just fry them in oil like you usually do."

"Right. We're gonna run outta that too soon, I'm gonna have to put it on the list." I grimace, not enjoying the freezing trips to the surface, even with all my gear. Actually especially with all my gear. But there's no way I'll risk leaving these kids without their mother and their father. I never bring him up; just like I never bring up my own loss. "We got enough soap to last another quarter?"

"I think so," she pauses, her mind running a quick inventory. Without her keen sense of planning, I admit I wouldn't have made it this long on my own. I was never the planner in my co-op team. "The seeds you picked up won't be mature enough for awhile still, and I still have to figure out how to squeeze safflower oil anyway."

"You wanted a, what was it, 'pressing' machine?"

"It'd be useful, but honestly I'm not sure how much more space or power we can allocate for one. I think I can rig something myself." The slight excitement in her intelligent eyes gives me a sense of joy. She's faced a lot - a widow raising two kids in the end of times - yet it's still there. That spark. The one I worried might not make it; apparently nuclear fallout is less soul-crushing than high school or college.

I shrug. "I can always swing by the farm supply store anyway. See if I can find anything useful, or better yet mechanical." Electrical appliances have lost their appeal, given our little generator can only power so much at a time.

"We'll make it a few more weeks yet." Her smile weakens a bit, as I realize she's worried. I give her a reassuring pat on the shoulder.

"Hey - you know I go stir crazy down here, right? No worries."

"I know you workout more than you ought to, and your 'slow metabolism' isn't a problem anymore." She glares at me, the skinny black hair falling out of her hair tie. I just shrug.

"Gotta stay strong, otherwise ya'll might vote me off the island."

"Then I'd have nobody else to beat in Tripoli."

"True, your kids hate old school cards but they still beat your ass every time."

"They've beat you too."

"That's not a hard feat, you know. And isn't tonight my turn to pick?" I point to my own stack of board games against the wall, my sad contribution to our bunker setup. Not as cool as the aquaponics setup, which my friend had started up years ago when pandemics were the most of our worries.

"Fine. We'll beat you at whatever game you choose."

"I'm so happy your family took me in out of the kindness of your hearts." I roll my eyes.

She smiles, her eyes softening. "I'm so happy you made it out here before...the bombs." We don't mention the funeral that brought me out. We don't mention that I came alone, or that after the bombs fell the few news reports that got out in the aftermath basically showed my old home in vaporized ash, the West Coast wiped out by the first round of nukes. "I don't know that I could do this alone."

I give her a hug, flexing my carefully developed muscles. "You're right - those girls would eventually break your spirit."

Laughing, she hugs me back. "Maybe they still will."

"Then we'll go down together." I promise. As we embrace our rings bump against each other, silent symbols of our mutual grief.

"Eww."

"What?"

"You smell like fish."

And like that, our grief is set aside for more important things. Like 101 ways to cook tilapia.

...

The nuclear flash was from God taking a blinding screenshot of the global suicide. Wanting to commemorate one of his creation’s milestones, and frame it on his wall, titling it the ‘Language of Violence’ or maybe the ‘Colors of Guilt, Shame, Despair’, but both of them would suffice. The former highlighted this genocidal impulse He had wired in all homonids, this universal language that wasn’t confounded the same way speech was at the Tower of Babel, and left it untampered because of His curiosity on how far man would take it, how many syllables they would utter in this language before the very last punctuation. The latter title was the answer to His curiosity, an image that depicted the ultimate repercussion of man’s biological coding. Three shades of grays and blacks painting all men in the same colors, and unifying them, even for a millisecond, under one banner before being washed away by atomic fire.

What was left in the rubble and the undying blaze was a world encased in an irradiated snowglobe, where ash fell instead of snow, and soot lined the glass instead of bright crystal flakes. On patinas of restaurant tables, on the walls of kindergarten classrooms, on the frostbitten steel chairs found in dreams of hospitals, a thin film of guilt and shame would be filtered all over them, reminding the walking ghosts of what had been, and what they had murdered.

..........

“Drop that.” Judeau tugged at his daughter’s arm for her to follow “C’mon now, we’re running out of light, have to get back to camp.”

“I can make space.” Ida said as she dropped to her knees, scrounging about her pack, the tattered red power ranger by her side. “I can fit it.”

There was bitterness when he saw her taking out cans of food, this unsatiable longing for times he took for granted. For times when Ida’s future boyfriends were the only worries he had for his kid; when his boss trying to chew him out was the only thing biting his ass; when Audrey’s nagging was the only sound that would send his heart rate skyrocketing. Not rabid Toronto dogs or their dwindling supply of gasmask filters, not the radiation or frostbite or starvation, not the howls of the Hanged Men.

A lug of stone sank in his gut as his paternal instinct kicked in; this primal wiring to protect and care shoved a bone down his throat after realizing it couldn’t even promise fulfilling basic duties and obligations. She would’ve been better off dead, he clenched his jaws, not here in this winter hell without any chance of a childhood, where she’d likely end up being taken and-

His breath started to fog up the outsides of the gas mask, masking the salty drop that traced down his cheeks, and rolled off into the scraggly jungle beard on his chin. It was a crappy dad joke - real easy to hide sorrow behind the lens, but you’re gonna have to dance with death to wipe the tears away. He blinked the briny tears and what remained was a deep muffled voice. “Drop. It.”

Ida looked up at her father, still clutching the red power ranger in her hand, Audrey’s turquoise eyes appearing behind those circular lenses. “No.”

“Food-”

“Water. Gasmask filters. Meds. Bullets. Tape. I know dad.” Ida cut him off. “I can make space... I have space.” She pleaded.

Slivers of light managed to slip their way in between the small cracks of rubble from the supermarket’s ceiling, webs of twisted metal barely holding everything together. They basked her in angelic light, giving life to the ashy motes that fluttered all around her, the exposed and frayed ends of her tied up scarlet hair glinting like piano wire. The sight reminded Judeau of the Holy Mary’s statue, covered in ash, surrounded by the corpse of the chapel, snowy and charred remains of pews and confession booths scattered about, some sublime mystery still lingering in the air that surrounded the surviving Old-World symbol.

It was poetic, he thought, picturesque, a miracle. Judeau was never really a man of religion, he’d only go to church for Audrey and her parents, and even when the world did freeze over and he lost everything that he had ever known, he never asked questions from God nor did he ever resent the situation. At times, he did, of course, but he’d shake those feelings and questions away the moment he’d see his daughter, eyes shaped like Audrey’s, carrying his greenish hue; Judeau would then be reminded of his obligation as her father, as her rock.

But, in truth, Ida was more of a rock to Judeau than he was to her. When she’d tell him all about her nightmare as she huddled in his arms by the campfire, the ticks of their geiger counters replacing cricket chirps, Judeau would be reminded of his humanity. When she convinced him that snowmen would make better targets than tincans, mainly because she didn’t want to waste scraps of metal, Judeau would be reminded of his humanity. When she’d poke around corpses or dead dogs with the butt of her rifle, head tilting with innocence and curiosity, Judeau would be reminded of his humanity.

So as the image of the ashen statue dissipated the way a mirage would, and what remained was Ida, eyes shaped like Audrey’s, carrying his greenish hue, clutching the red power rangers in her hand; Judeau would, again, be reminded of his humanity.

“I’ll leave it behind if we need-”

He shook his head, with a smile hiding behind the lens.

It was dark, smoky even.

I searched for food each night and day.

My girls couldn't find anything anyway.

I crawled into a deadly cave

And ate the rats that climbed on the walls.

They were enough for me.

Right now, this made me happy.