Market Day

The year is 2097.

The city is but one of few left standing in the Midwest since the big disaster in 2021. That was the year the two world powers went at it tooth and nail for all of eleven hours, and within the pressing seconds of two phone calls, the majority of the world went up in a huge ball of nuclear scintillation. After nearly seventy-seven years, what is left of the human race is no longer the majority.

My name is Eddie McCabe. I guess I’m one of the lucky ones if you could call me that. My mother was born in 2053, but was also born without legs, thanks to the fallout. She gave birth to me in 2074, and two years after my birth, she went away, and I never saw or heard from her again.

As a child, I had asked many questions but was told that one day I would find all the answers I was looking for, but until then it was best not to ask.

During the course of my upbringing by a small group of men and women, we were constantly moving from place to place, trying to find the safest, if not warmest places to live. The explosions had changed the weather and living conditions considerably. I had heard from the Elders how summer was hot, and winter was cold; how the days were clear, and the nights were dark but filled with tiny crystals in the shadows of blackness.

Now, none of that is the same. Winter is almost every day. The winds blow a heat that chills my bones because of the radiation. Ever since I was a child, there has never been anything more than a hazy light during the day. The ozone layer has dropped so badly, what sun we can see, appears to be nothing more than a dull-gray circle nearing death.

I had heard what it was like before the destruction; about the technology, science, medicine; even a thing called a television. Would you believe some magician was able to put people in a small box and make them perform for other people to enjoy? They wouldn’t perform until you pressed a button, and they would come to life and act all sorts of weird things. That’s scary.

Whatever there was before is gone now. As I got older, I learned from the Elders why we move so much. We are a portion of the last of the human race. In my group, there are nearly two thousand, with another four or five thousand elsewhere in the country; maybe a hundred thousand left in the world, but our numbers grow smaller each week.

A few years before I was born, the Other’s of this world have gained full control and have become the intelligent, dominant race. They control the law, politics, and have virtually become the New Establishment.

The Elders have told me the only hope we have is to wander forever and that I should pray I die from either natural causes or by what’s left of earth’s environment as we know it.

The Others have adapted to the air and have taken over. The Others are animals.

Not the larger ones, but the smaller ones. Those animals that do exist are constantly at war with each other to attain complete domination, but the ones we run from are eaters of human flesh.

Because of the radiation fallout, those who search us out are white rats, flies, and cockroaches. They have mutated to a thousand times their original size. As a child, I was shielded and protected from them as it became evident small children are the best meat they can eat.

For now, we are camped near a dry riverbed that separates two cities that prospered a long time ago. Almost all the buildings stand in disarray while the rest are nothing more that dusted rubble. They were once known as Council Bluffs and Omaha.

The Elders motion to me just now that a sighting has been made of nearly a hundred rats approaching from the east, and coming from the north, a swarming sound of another hundred or more flies approach us. Several hundred cockroaches were seen marching from the southwest. It looks as if my dying naturally will not happen.

One of the Elders mentioned it is Wednesday. It is always on Wednesday the deaths of my people occur. Every Wednesday at three o’clock like clockwork. Why Wednesday? Thursday is the big supermarket special. Every Thursday, the supermarkets (what we really call food suppliers), advertise their daily special of freshly cut and quartered Grade H (for human) meat.

We have become their favorite meal.

I’m going to leave this letter under this old iron plate in hopes one day someone might find it and learn a lesson from what death and destruction causes. But who will learn if we are all dead? Hope is all that is left, and there isn’t much of that left either. One day we may be able to defeat the Other’s, survive the fallout, and make a life for all people again. That won’t happen today.

Looking around, I know, along with the Elders, we can’t win this one. The new race of the world has us surrounded and have begun to herd us into cages to be shipped back to the slaughterhouse.

I hope one day, someone can find a way to defeat them and regain our freedom from this tragedy that has befallen the world. If man doesn’t survive, if we can’t prevail and move on to a better, if not more tolerable existence, then it won’t matter.

Nothing will.