Tag: post-apocalyptic

Writer's Wednesday!

Apocalypse 6–Back from the Dead

AutumnB17
Shattered chain lying on the road.
“The chains shattered in a clinking jolt…”

Ash’s world went fuzzy. No. No, that wasn’t possible–what this man was saying was impossible. Objectively impossible. Subjectively impossible. Improbable, too, yet from the inflection in the Original’s lofty voice when he said those words, she knew they were true.

Jax’s sister was alive. Alive and there, somewhere deep in the bowels of the caravan where a girl escorted from a cage on a leash was commonplace. One of them was alive, and Ash couldn’t even fathom how. 

It was a story he had shared so many times throughout their journey, recalling details as they drifted from the ruins of place after place: remembering his sister’s eyes in the soot-stained capital, the beam that trapped his father in the backwoods of Virginia, how he strained against the crumbling pieces of house that had trapped his family. The imagery was as vivid in her mind as if she’d been there–Jax had seen the fire, the smoke, tried as hard as he could to lift the beams and rubble that trapped them in the dining room. 

At that moment, the moment when those words dropped from those moist and frothing lips, she forgot all about her designation, her future, her horror at the endless suffering, her terror at her impending fate. Jax’s countenance held a fragile spark of hope weaved with the shock. He was hopeful, and she knew it would all come crumbling down. Soon.

Her plan could ruin it all, any chance for him to see his sister, but she knew she must. She refused to kneel there silently and become that awful man’s plaything. It wasn’t right. 

Shoulders flexing, convalescing her energy, veins rushing, Ash knelt at the feet of a sociopath. Twitching. Panting. Don’t look up. Don’t move. Don’t blink. Now. 

BOOM. A resounding thud pounded the road as her face slammed to the asphalt. Cheek pinned to the ground, stinging like a flurry of hornets stabbing her skin, Ash shot her legs out to the side in a wide scissor. Snap! The chains shattered in a clinking jolt, exactly as she’d expected–the rusted-out link was even weaker than she thought. A hand rushed at her shoulder and she rolled out of the way, clamoring to her feet.

Flash of metal. Her back seared, blade slicing deep through the thin fabric, shearing off hair. Punch. Fist. Connection. Burning through her knuckles. Sharpness, a whirl of arms and feet, sneakers slapped skin and metal tore through flesh and Ash fought and fought and fought. A blur of motion. A knife clattered to the ground. She seized it, slicing at the mass of bodies crowding around her, slashing at the remains of her chains. 

The crowd thinned. The air was thick with blood and metal. She had made a dent in the tide; guards howled with their wounds, staggered back, fell to the road. They would keep coming. She didn’t have time to recover. Those people who Rita had referred to only as Them clouded Ash like mosquitos, returning in thick, overwhelming swarms the instant she batted them away. 

She caught sight of Jax, kneeling in the fray. She pushed towards him, slashing a path with her knife, ripping herself from the desperate hands. 

She reached him. He was screaming something. She couldn’t hear him, couldn’t make out the lip movements or attribute them to words. Slashing down hard, his chains shattered under the blade. Jax leapt to his feet, grabbing a man by the ear and ripping the blade from his hand. Then he paused, glittering knife still clutched in his calloused fingers. Ash thought he looked like an angel from an old scripture: a young man with golden hair, streaked in sunlight and soot, frozen in the churn of battle. 

The image seemed so familiar, so ironic that it took her a hot second to retract from the fantasy and move her limbs. He looked beautiful, so perfect, so blazing and glorious. Why was he standing there? Why wasn’t he fighting?

Ash jabbed her elbow out, sensing a presence, felt the crack of bones under her skin. Blood sprayed her brow. A quick glance, Jax was still frozen; a wild man careened towards her. Flashing metal—razor blade bared in his palm.

He lunged towards her. She tripped back, flailing for balance and a pair of arms grabbed her in a visceral grip, throwing her to the ground. Knife spun away across the highway. The world swayed above her. Black tread above her. Blank faces above her. The blue sky, clear and dulcet loomed above her and she panicked. Bucked uselessly.

The boot descended.

Her air exploded from her lungs. A beat of rest like an orchestra on a grand pause, she attempted to roll over and heard a pop, not good, and the boot descended again, hurtling into her side. Hot bursts of pain crackled through her ribs. She clawed the simmering ground. No purchase. Where was he? Where was he?! 

Ash roared and kicked up, nausea tossing her stomach through a roller coaster loop, vision like a poorly produced action movie with an unsteady camera.

  Four figures lifted her off the ground, one for each limb. Ash writhed, a demon of messy hair and snapping teeth, searching for a victim to rip into. She couldn’t reach. Couldn’t reach. Where was he?

She heard the clamp of manacles encircling her wrists. Exhausted. Pathetic. Tired beyond lifting a finger, Ash was laid yet again at the feet of the Original. The one she would serve for the rest of her foreseeable future, forever and ever until she was shelled out and hollow of fighting spirit.

“Would you still like this one to be your Wife? Or should she be staked and roasted, like the other Rebels?” 

Ash thrashed once. A plastic face against a blue sky. This wasn’t what she wanted. This shouldn’t be her last memory. She should be in school right now, climbing out the bathroom window, scaling the wall down to sneak off to the ice cream shop on the corner. 

“No. This one has a spirit to her. I believe she has a special set of skills which could be useful for more than my own pleasure.” Her eyes bugged. She wouldn’t be a Wife, so what was the use for her? And still, where was Jax? Resentment joined in with the delightful tea party in her gut, other guests being the usual: terror, fury, denial, hopelessness, regret. 

Fury because he could’ve saved her. Regret because she had set him free, and he had stood there while she was beaten and restrained. Hopelessness because Ash could have escaped without him, and she had squandered her last shot.

“Knock her unconscious. I will attend to her later.” 

A fist flew at her skull. The world went black. 

*************************************

Voice. His name was being called somewhere in the crowd. Young, desperate, pleading voice that cut through the battle like an arrow and his eyes roved over the swell of people and… 

Jax’s breath hitched. He stood completely still, frozen in time and she was there. Far off in the distance. The knife in his hand slipped and clinked to the ground, quickly snagged by an emaciated figure and carried away to god-knows-where. He didn’t care. The world collapsed and folded, and the same tunnel vision he had during football games clicked into place. All that he knew were a few facts built into this moment in time.

Number 1: Caroline was alive, far away in the writhing mass of chaos in the caravan.

Number 2: The people of the caravan were rioting. Everywhere he looked there was blood and blades, and if the sole goal was to capture Ash, this would have been over in seconds. Something was happening. There was unrest.

Number 3: His chains were broken. Slashed and clattered to the road. And nobody had noticed, or maybe nobody cared about one skinny bag of bones. This was his chance.

Jax was sprinting. Yelps and battle cries flooded the air around him; he cut through it all like a swimmer propelling through the water, the individual groans and screams condensing into a static held in the back of his thoughts. Background noise: how easily a cacophony became background noise when your sister’s voice rang in your ears. Your dead sister.

Corpses toppled in his path. Ragged women grabbed at his shirt, dying men on the ground yanked at his shoes, undoing the laces beyond what he could run in. Kicking the strings in front of him, Jax’s gait fell into an awkward pattern, he looked up and she wasn’t too far. Caroline. A necklace of iron clamped around her neck, a man holding her on a chain-link leash. His legs burned beneath him. She screamed and his heart failed, stomach retching acid through his throat when Caroline thrashed against the chains. Throwing one foot in front of the other, he watched as her eyes widened and–

“Jackson! Watch out!” He turned just in time to see a man barreling towards him. He leapt to the side, a great whoosh of air as the man dove to the ground. A sick crunch of bones erupted through the static and Jax realized suddenly that the man hadn’t been coming for him. He had been tackling someone, a small child with close-cropped hair. And it sounded fatal.

The burly man quickly moved on, charging after a slave with the intensity of a bull in a room of red flags. Jax didn’t look at the crushed body of the child, couldn’t bear to even if he tried; the tunnel vision was gone. Plundering forth with renewed energy, Jax reached Caroline in moments and got his first good look at her.

   The bouncy, gravity-defying pigtails perched on her head were long gone. The silky blonde hair their mother had stroked looked like dried corn husks: matted and dull against her scalp, unwashed, limp. Her legs were twigs on her body. A smear of dirt wiped across her brow. The infuriating iron collar jangled around her neck, the one that tethered her to her keeper, a cage looming over them, casting its shadow down onto her thin figure. 

What he saw in her eyes scared him. It wasn’t an empty, glassy surface on emotions forced away. This was the stare of someone who felt everything, incapable of pushing aside her fear and despair. Gaze broken. Horrified. Haunted. 

Caroline was alive. Tethered to a guard–a guard. Argh. 

Jax faltered back when he was just steps from her, ignoring the pleading in her eyes. Why hadn’t he kept that knife? Why didn’t he pick it up? Fighting away panic, he searched the area. Finally he spotted a blade on the road in a dead man’s grip. He didn’t waste time prying it from the still-warm fingers. 

The guard growled when he approached, baring a dull-edged shiv. Jax winced inwardly but couldn’t conjure a solution to get close enough without being cut. So he did the unthinkable.

He threw the knife. It sliced through the air, embedding itself in the man’s upper chest. He bellowed, deafening roar splitting the cacophony. He toppled. Blood blossomed from the wound. Caroline gasped and ran to Jax, throwing herself against his chest; she was so thin he could feel every rib in her body through his shirt. Gently as he could manage he threw her over his back, weaving through the crowd. They were reaching the outer left edge of the caravan, riot still roaring around them under the blistering sun, and finally, finally, they broke through. 

Jax didn’t look back for a moment. He sprinted into the field, snatching on thickets, skin stinging with burs and thorns. He didn’t look back, not until he could no longer hear anything but the rush of his blood in his ears and the thump of Caroline’s sneakers on his shoulder blades. He lowered her down.

Overgrown field
“a tangle of overgrown wheat and thorns…”

“Caroline, I…” he searched her eyes for the answers to a question he couldn’t formulate. “How did…why are…you? What…why…I just don’t–” 

She took his hand, holding a finger to her lips, and he glanced around. Was there someone watching them? Was someone coming?

“Jackson, I’ll tell you everything. There’s a few things I need to say and they’re really important, so I need you to listen.” His eyes widened. Her speech was so articulate, measured–she’d called him Jackson, just like she always did. He hadn’t heard that name in a long time. It seemed like forever. He nodded mutely. If Caroline wanted to speak she would speak; whatever she had to say was five times as important as him.

“I do have a lot to say. Starting with the sun. At the house, I watched through the window as it burst and glowed red, brighter than all the stars in the sky. It scorched the Earth. The Sun’s Burn.” Jax nodded, tilting his head quizzically.

“What about it?”

Her lips quirked into a smile, freckle-sprayed nose scrunching like she knew a secret he didn’t. He rolled his eyes. 

“What about the Burn, Caroline?” 

“I predicted the expansion and scorching of the Sun.” She smoothed her hair back like she was the slyest person in the world. “I don’t need to say it, but here it is,” she paused dramatically, heaving a breath,

“I told you so.” 

Jax groaned and pulled her close. And somewhere, far off through a tangle of overgrown wheat and thorns, Ash was unconscious, surrounded by a caravan of murderers and slaves.

Writer's Wednesday!

Apocalypse 5–The Choosing

AutumnB17
“[He was a] tiger at the zoo, throwing [his] lean body against [the] shackles….”

Chains. Biting into his skin like venomous snakes. Rubbing the flesh raw. Rattling a persistent reminder that he was doomed. A caged animal. Doomed to die. A tiger at the zoo, throwing its lean body against its shackles, baking under a hot sun and the mockery of the people. Unable to run free. Unable to love and be loved. What worse fate was there?

It had taken only a moment to sink in: the reality of his existence was painful, hot shards of glass piercing his skull, a throbbing redness boiling his blood. The world was this, and only this, unorganized elements in this catastrophe of human life:

Strangers.

Surrounded by them. These people. Revolting. Smeared in their own feces, criss-crossed with scars, a patchwork of torture that seemed to never end. Dead eyes. Crude gazes. A disgusting distortion of human intelligence, boring into him, blind eyes that saw nothing and everything all at once. How was it that such shells of people could send such a message? Each and every bloodshot, glistening orb said the same thing: you’re going to die.  

It had been an hour since Jax woke up in chains. 

But as much as it hurt to wake up in chains, it was worse to watch Ash return to the world. She gasped to life. Squirming. Burning. A bundle of sweaty clothes and clinking shackles. 

She used the first breath she drew for a scream.

No. Not a scream.

An earth shaking.

Gut wrenching.

Blood curdling shriek. 

Her eyes were wild, inspecting her arms, the backs of her hands, her palms. Roving over the pink skin. Searching. What? What was she looking for? Jax wished he didn’t know. He wished he had to ask her. He wished he could indulge himself in curiosity, a brief release from the terror. But he already knew what she was looking for. 

She was looking for a brand, a crudely marked scar. She was looking for the mark of an Original’s wife, a mark that would ensnare her forever as a slave. Her skin was unmarked.

“Ash!” he whispered. She looked up from her flesh. There was no relief in her eyes that she hadn’t been marked. No glint of hope, the kind he was sure was still inside him. Just a dead-eyed certainty that her fate was decided. That she was fated for the same destiny as Vixen—Rita—but without the escape.

Jax couldn’t bear to think about it. A dread so profound, so intrusive and deep, had wormed its way into his chest. The reason was simple. Stupidly simple. No matter what became of Ash, his fate was decided because of one thing alone. 

There was no use for him. 

In this caravan, there was no task for him to fulfill. If what Rita had said was true–and he had no doubt it was–he would be judged as too young for labor, and too weak for captive protection. Those cold emerald eyes had no reason to lie to him. He would be cannibalized. Jax would, without a doubt, be eaten alive.

“Ash, calm down, you’re going to get–”

“Jax!” Ash panted. His heart leapt into his throat. That sound. It was guttural. Feral. A noise he barely recognized as human, much less one of a cool, feminine voice. 

“Jax, my neck, did they mark me?” He shook his head. Had he ever seen someone so distraught? So crazed? The tightness of her face. The wrinkles on her brow. The pooling pond of insanity in her gaze, it soaked into him. A shadow giving way to the sun. He had never felt an empathy so deep as this, a hopeless kind of empathy that said “I understand. I understand, and I can’t do anything about it.”

“Ash, listen to me. Look at me!” It took a long second for her eyes to center. She was shaking now, hands tensing and releasing, nails digging into the wooden planks. He’d never seen her hair so wild; the constant jerk and rumble of the cart mussed the strands so they stuck up from her scalp at all angles.

 It would’ve been a cute look, he thought–spiky, spunky, a little punk–but paired with the puckered gashes on her brow and downcast gunmetal eyes, she looked less like a rocker and more like a severely abused porcupine. A porcupine with so much pain in her heart that it seeped into him. Hurt him. Drowned him. Her eyes focused.

“I just….I just want you to know that we’ll get through this. No matter what, because, because…” Because why? What could get them through this? They were enslaved. Grieving their families. 

“Because we’re together.” It was weak. So weak, so nonreassuring, so baseless. 

Jax scooched across the cart. Pushing aside a sleeping woman, he moved into position beside Ash. Lowering his voice to a whisper, he leaned close, whispering, 

“Rita escaped. We can too, because we’re stronger than her. We can get out of this. Together. Right?”

He expected a nod at least. Acknowledgement, maybe, something that said she’d heard his words. Maybe her spine would straighten a little. Maybe she would wince into a half-smile. Maybe she would make a joke, or a tiny jab at his gut with her elbow. A witty remark. A sob. Anything.

 She didn’t move her gaze from her lap. And she didn’t say a word.

Ash was in shock. Denial, maybe? Jax wished he’d paid more attention in psychology. Her calloused fingers ran tracks down her arms, back and forth, back and forth. He had the selfish urge to grab that hand, hold it in his. He needed her. Her affection, even a morsel. Her attention, just a glance. He wanted to intertwine their fingers so bad it physically hurt not to.

The cart pounded the road, sending him sprawling away from her; he clawed himself back. Pothole after pothole just like this. And for what?

 Why? Why, when he was shackled to a rickety cart, orphaned, fated for cannibalism, could his only concern fall to her admiration? Stupid, stupid, stupid. I dumped girls back home for being clingy! And this is what I do? Pine over her? Get irritable when she won’t hold my hand? Dumb. Shameful! 

Yet when the time slunk by, traveling down the road in chains, not once did he think of himself after that moment. He only thought of Ash. Ash: her trauma, her fingers inspecting her arms, the sickening thud of the boots on her back when they had been captured. He only thought of Ash, and how much he wished she would take his hand.

Jax could never be sure how long they sat there. Time–time that used to be so rigid, so strict–had taken an ambiguous form, like the off-brand Jello in the school cafeteria: lax, bitter, unsettlingly slippery. After forever, they stopped. 

He watched as the caravan unloaded. Car doors opened, expensive wagons cleared. Girls in cages were extracted from the enclosures, leashed up like dogs with hair twice as coarse. A cacophony. 

A set of men unlocked his chains and pulled him up. His legs felt like a TV screen when the signal goes out, all numb and static-y in a way that felt like needles driving into his toes. Jax was sure he would have fallen over immediately if not for the strong grips of his guards. 

Squinting in the sun, he looked out over the never-ending trail of horror and gasped.

It was incomparable to any parade, any gathering on the planet. A crowd so immense it was like nothing you could imagine. Miles and miles and miles of bikes and carriages and people. Young children led out of cages, whimpering, smeared in their own feces. Women with sad eyes emerging from wagons, hair mussed, too-tight chokers restricting blood flow to their faces. Emaciated men dragging themselves across the ground, screaming from the heat, scorching their bodies just to keep up. Helpless slaves gathered in carts, newly branded, sobbing under the sun’s bite. Every last person was sunburned, skin peeling, some with tumors and blackened teeth and hair falling out in clumps. 

He understood now why the people had turned away from Rita so rudely when she spoke of Them. Because they had seen it. Those men and women and children, those with pinned up or gelled hair, those kind folks who dressed in Amish-like clothes had seen this monstrosity of human nature. Maybe more of them had been in this caravan than they would like to admit. No matter your age or position in the procession, one fact was clear: this was no peaceful community with an ill-fated 3rd class. This was a death march for all.

All…except a few. They were easy to spot. Because even with this swarm of poverty and demented tortures, five men sparkled. From the moment their shoes poked from the royal wagons, Jax knew who they were. The Originals. The founders of the caravan.

Rita hadn’t attempted to describe them. Jax now knew why; it was utterly and completely overwhelming to do so. Five men dripping in diamonds. Coiffed hair, seemingly gelled, unmussed by the bumpy ride. Adorned in capes. Crowns. Rings. Necks spilling with gold chains, fingers studded so heavily with sapphires and emeralds and precious gems that they practically had the rainbow spread across each hand. Purple silks. Leather boots. Pale, unblemished skin, an aura of plasticity strong from caked on makeup. 

They were unbranded, just like the people of Jax and Ash’s cart. But the people of the carts–Jax and Ash included–were demolished. Morally. Physically. Mentally. Emotionally. The Originals, however, did not look demolished. They looked smug. Smug. And free. 

Royalty, he thought as he watched them exit, servants and tired women quivering on their knees in front of them. These men are royalty. Ash glanced at Jax, fear clouding her gaze. At first he couldn’t tell exactly what she was afraid of, there was so much: the burning men, the starving, the sick, the tumored, the ugly, the slaves, the dirtied, they all coalesced in an ongoing rush of miserable people in miserable attire under a miserable sun. 

An Original made a gesture and the flurry of motion immediately stopped. Jax, against his better judgment, found himself frozen in place. He knew what this was. Easily. Ash had predicted this; he should have listened, but the thought was hard to think, a mental image that tore at his mind, itched and burned. This was the Choosing. 

He was lifted forward by the men, feet still bound, arms squeezed too tight, remarkably tight. Ash was brought forward alongside him. The sleeping woman he had moved to sit by Ash was dragged awake, muttering something low and sweet, reminiscent of a lullaby. 

Jax imagined a grand buildup. A painstakingly slow progression forth, onward to his demise, the guards building suspense and halting abruptly, his legs deadweight and swinging between them. What actually happened, however, was shockingly unceremonious.

March forth. Push aside the crowds. Silent crowds. The young, caged girls had ceased to wail. Blind stares locked on the Originals. Ash and Jax and the others in their cart were practically thrown down at the feet of one of Them. No introduction. Just a choppy line of ten or so people, the first row of many unbranded and fearful innocents. How was it possible that so many survived the Burn? How was it possible that such a dreadful caravan of Them could travel for so long without Jax knowing? Was this preventable, had they ignored the signs of other human life when they were steeped in despair?

Ash was sixth in line, Jax eighth, the old singing woman suspended between them, unable to kneel on her own.

 The first woman was judged as meat. Too elderly. Thin. Weak. Not attractive enough to be a wife–no use to the Originals. A group emerged from the crowd and lifted her away. Jax didn’t know where to. His chin was crunched to his neck like all the others. 

The second was judged a guard. Unsurprising: she was lean, yet muscular, with a body like a triathlon winner and arms like a crossfit instructor. 

Third person. A boy, about the same age and the same height. Meat. Lifted away without a scream, a hand clamped to his mouth, legs kicking in Jax’s peripherals. His heart was in his ears. Calves twitching, Jax struggled to hold his breath; if he let it loose he would scream.

Fourth. Woman. Declared a Cleaner. Jax envied her, her and her future of feces and urine and vomit. Nothing was as bad as being eaten alive by your own species. Nothing he could imagine. 

Fifth. A man. Old. Senile, maybe, probably in shock. Jax remembered the term from his Psychology Class. A lot of good this knowledge was to him now. The fact that he was in shock and overwhelmed by senility didn’t change the cold inflection of the Original’s order: meat.

Sixth. The pounding of his heart stalled. All saliva evaporated in his mouth. Dry as the chalkdust air of an old schoolhouse. His tongue suffocated him. Ash’s turn. 

The Original man’s voice was monotone, unbefitting of a royal or even a savage cannibal. A voice of a bored emperor, flat and dry as he pronounced,

“Wife. My own, to be branded immediately.” One other Original shifted, looking upset, as though Ash was the last piece of licorice in the candy jar. Jax couldn’t move. Couldn’t think. Ash was right. She would be like Rita. And if she ever escaped, she would be just as cold and heartless as that vixen girl.

He didn’t hear what became of the singing woman. Didn’t care. If she was meat, she was meat, and Jax could do nothing, just as he did for Ash. Sit. Wait. Sit. Wait. Just like every other person in this rotten hell hole. 

His neck hurt. The woman was lifted away.

Jax’s turn for the Choosing.

Distraught, he turned his face heavenward. The plastic face of the Original stared down at him. Lips too bright. Hair too shiny. Eyes too large. And proclaimed, monotone as ever,

“I know you.”

“What?” The response leapt from his lips before he could restrain it. Jax winced, hair catching the sun as he bowed his head again.

“I know you, child. I know a little girl–exactly like you, with the same features. A little girl from the cages.” A grin played on his cheeks. Jax glanced up to see him smile at the crowd. Dread settled on him like a blanket.

“Ladies and gentlemen of this empire, rejoice. We have found a sibling pair, for the first time in the history of the Burn! I know this boy.” He clicked his tongue, smacked his too-red lips.

“I know this boy because I imprisoned his sister.”

Burned, post apocalyptic city skyline.
Writer's Wednesday!

WW–Apocalypse 4–Crossroads

AutumnB17
Exit of off an interstate

Do you ever have a thought that slams into you like an oncoming train? One that is so unexpected, conjured out of the blue and hurled at your face so fast, it literally knocked the breath from your chest? Now imagine that idea embodying a whole day. Overwhelming. Tiring. Distress-filled. Painful, in a remarkably silent way. 

That was what each and every day on the road was like for Ash. A thought that pummels you to the ground, a thought that you can’t bear to think any longer, but have to face over and over and over again.

They had been on the road for an eternity. Maybe to a post-Burn Ash, she would easily dismiss this as a “week” or “a couple of days.” But who had a need for time anymore? 

After the first Quarantine phases hit, the concept had already begun to slip, one day spiraling into the next without remark, without events to attend or friends to greet.

Then the Burn ravaged the world. Ash and Jax found each other soon after, both cowards, both new orphans that had abandoned their families. Did it matter that their family members never had a chance to get out? Seek shelter? Was it still wrong that they had left? Ash wasn’t sure. She didn’t know that it mattered much anymore.

Whatever happened before, now they were all alone. Roaming the land. The beaten down land. The land made up of dust and rubble. Lonely skies. Desolate cities. 

And all of it, all of it, hungry. That was it. Everything was hungry for life and energy: the fields hungered for youthful blossoms, the river for a salmon, the sapling for a drop of rain. 

Which was how Ash came to decide that time no longer mattered. Because something bigger had taken its place. Hunger. It had planted its roots deep in the freshly roiled earth. The world was hunger, her body was hunger, her mind was hunger. A pit in her stomach that wouldn’t go away. A longing for the family which she couldn’t even mourn, she–

“Hey? You okay? Need to stop?” Jax’s voice broke through her stupor. Ash groaned. Just let me be depressed in peace! 

“No, no…I’m good.” Lie. What else could she say? That she winced with the strain on her stomach, that just drawing breath to her lips sent a bellowing ache through her gut? Yet another glorious way to remind her of their lack of food. Should she tell him that her thoughts were faltering even seconds after he spoke? Lingering on a million different impossibilities: what if we had asked for food to go? Stole the rations? Ate the people? 

Her brain screamed too far!, but Ash could have sworn her stomach rumbled in agreement. Back at the cement safe house, there had been everything she could ever want. A bed. Nasty mystery meat. A judgy teenage girl. A short but sweet kiss from her maybe-boyfriend-apocalypse-ally. Everything! 

And yet, she still had the strangest sensation that she hadn’t savored it like she should have. Like she should have absorbed the moments better, inhaled the perfection of that time through every dirt-clogged pore on her skin. Ash just couldn’t bring herself to be happy. Not yet. Not when the faces of her family were fresh on her mind.

Miserable, she put one foot in front of the other and trudged on. The road was long and never ending, each new city just as empty as the one before, save for a few bottles of sunblock and an obnoxious pink beret (who even wore those anymore?!). But the sunscreen was vital for their badly burned skin, even if the SPF 30 lasted less than an hour per application. Not like the shoddy tourist store could have anticipated a full-blown apocalypse and magnification of the sun combo.

“Left or right?” She looked up, dazed.

“What?” He pointed to the intersection ahead. One road led straight on, and the other? The other, pothole-pocked road filtered off into a town–Brucksville, advertising one KFC, a McDonalds, and a Holiday Inn. Impressive. 

“Brucksville.” She stated, thoughts already slipping into a delightful tornado of what-ifs and should-I-feel-guilty-fors. Content to let herself spiral, Ash began to fall into a rhythm.

“Wait! Uh, wait. Ash, I want to tell you something before you…” he stopped, unsure how to phrase his next words. She dragged her gaze to him. There was something entrancing about the way that the light hit his hair off the road sign, like an ancient Aztec mirror trick: reflecting the harsh white light back as soft gold. It made the cowlicks and flyaways shine, little strands of honey against a background of smog and decay. A little shiver passed through her, the hairs on the back of her neck standing up, eyes dilating. All of the sudden, she felt much more alert.

“Before I…slip into my funk?” He smiled shyly…a good look on him. Passivity in a boy she used to think was a brainless jock. Timidity from a varsity athlete. It was unique. Entrancing, even. Compelling enough that she couldn’t let her tired eyes relax to the ground or the sky. 

“Yeah, I guess, a funk,” he admitted. Ash knew he was being generous with his phrasing. She had been in a stupor ever since they left that house: uncharacteristically quiet, jumpy at some times and spaced-out at others. 

“I just wanted to tell you that I’m glad I’m doing this with you. And I know we don’t want to talk about this now, because,” he gestured vaguely to everything. “Of all this. But we have to at some point. Back at that building, with the people–”

“I remember.” Impossible to tell with the severe sunburn, but Ash’s face would have been bright red, she was sure. In a way, that was a pretty good mechanism for her poker face…however, it was not such a good mechanism for her comfort. It stung like a thousand individual bee stings. 

“We don’t have to rehash it quite yet. I just wanted to say that…that it wouldn’t have happened with anyone else. If it was any other girl at school, or in the world, that I had found, I’m confident it wouldn’t be the same.” He paused. Ash was silent, unable to rip her eyes away.

“Back at the capital you said you didn’t want an ‘Adam and Eve’ fairytale romance, an illusion fabricated from circumstance alone. I didn’t know what to say at the time…and then we…you know. But now I know that what I feel isn’t just because we found each other on a whim, or because we don’t have anyone else.” Her face burned. The ache in her gut dimmed, something growing there, a warmth. Finally, he added,

“I wouldn’t want to do this with anyone else.”

Lie. They both knew the last sentence wasn’t true for either of them…no matter what, they would rather have family here. Not even here, necessarily. Family alive. But Ash understood. The idea rang true. 

“Even Rita? That judgemental blonde one with daggers for eyes?” She asked. He smiled.

“Even Rita.” Officially broken from her demented train of thought, she intertwined her fingers in his; he started to pull her close. A glimmer of happiness danced on her heart. Then she pulled away so fast he staggered back.

“Ash? What is it?” The hurt in his voice was unmistakable; she shook her head. “Was it something I said? I didn’t mean to–” 

“No!” She sighed, words evading her tongue. 

“Don’t you hear it? That noise? Like…like–” her fingers jumped to her scalp. Why couldn’t she think of it? That sound! Like thunder, like the rumble of the wildebeest hooves in the Lion King, like sleet on a driveway, thick, roaring….

Jax looked at her helplessly, face blank. He was straining to hear anything but the rush of his own blood in his ears. Ash tugged a hair from her head, pain shooting through her scalp in a refreshing jolt. It exploded off her tongue.

“Like a motorcycle!” The instant she said it, her eyes widened. Realization dawned on Jax’s face, a look that held the nightmares of many nights and the worries of a thousand hours.  Their feet scrambled of their own accord, flying down the road. They had to leave. Immediately.

Cracks and pops of their joints and their panting breaths muffled the noise, but now even Jax was aware of it. Her breath came in gasps. Their sneakers slapped the road.

The noise surrounded them, closer with each second, the source not yet visible but approaching fast. The sound of nightmares come to life. A rumble of hundreds of cars. Motorcycles. Feet. Wagons and carts and murmuring voices. Crying. Trampling. Rocks underfoot. Silks shuffling, children moaning, snapping belts. Them. 

Ash pointed to a pile of rubble, almost a football field’s length away. The closest chance they had to survival. The caravan crested the hill, swarming into the street. First the cars and motorcycles, idling into the intersection, then the wagons. 

Not just wagons. Grand wagons, straight out of the era of French royalty: adorned with lavender silk curtains and gold filigree, plush duvets visible through sparkling windows. An outpouring of motion. The leading vehicles halted at the intersection. 

Hearts beating through their ribs, they sprinted as fast as they could, sweat blurring their vision. The rubble seemed even further away, each yard they ran becoming longer and rockier, potholes twisting their ankles. Ash pushed on blindly, drowning in the motion. Jax was only a few paces ahead of her. She looked back for a moment and–

Eye contact. Crap. A young girl stood on the road, stopped at the intersection with the rest of the walkers. Bare feet. Matted blonde curls. A blank gaze. Weary eyes that were staring right at her. Ash pleaded with her silently. Please, please, don’t say anything. Don’t turn around. Don’t tell that woman next to you, don’t move your scalded feet–

The girl twitched. Ash chanced a look at Jax, meeting his eyes as he faltered by the rubble. She tried her best to send him the message hide; he understood, reluctantly slipping behind the stones. Ash couldn’t risk going to him. At least Jax had a chance now. All she could do was stand, frozen like a statue.

Broom clutched against her chest, the girl turned to the woman next to her, hand twitching towards her arm. 

Please don’t tug her sleeve, please don’t tug her sleeve, please don’t–the girl tugged the woman’s sleeve. Ash dropped to the ground, flattening herself against the asphalt. Perhaps the woman wouldn’t see her. Perhaps the girl would be dismissed. She watched helplessly as the little girl pointed to exactly where she was laying in the road. Asphalt burned her cheeks. She pressed even lower, contracting all her muscles, sinking her scalding arms as low to the road as possible.

The woman’s eyes roved the area. Finding nothing, she turned to a man next to her, a man emaciated and marred with scabs. Without hesitation, the man began to run. Full sprint. Directly at her. 

Springing from the road like a flushed quail, Ash tore to her right. An arm flung around her neck. She screamed, biting at the flesh. Another hand gripped her wrist. Men flooded towards her, shoving her to the ground. Kicks pummeled her ribs, her back, boots stomping on her shoulders. Flailing, the road burning her skin, she shrieked in pain. Dirt flung in her eyes. The world swum with her tears; she cried out, blinking furiously. 

A pink-faced figure rushed onto the scene, throwing punches at the men. Masculine. He had honey-strand hair, a strong jawline, distinctively muscular build. Dread pooled in her stomach. No….

“Jax, leave…Jax!” Men gripped his arms, hauling him towards the caravan, his feet spinning and kicking. Ash sobbed. Cracks sounded from her shoulders, but she could no longer feel the blows. Kicks and stomps rained down on her, each impact potentially fatal, yet all she felt was a deep-seeded dread. 

There was nothing she could have done in the moment…but maybe, just maybe, if she hadn’t been so occupied with Jax, she would have heard them sooner. The thought was numbing in combination with the static in her limbs. She wasn’t sure how long she laid there, face burning against the dusty road.

Finally, when the men seemed certain she was incapacitated, they tossed her over bony shoulders. In the fuzz, Ash thought she heard some of them laughing. 

And where an idea of escape should have been brewing in her mind, all that there was was an image. An image she had tossed and turned with at night and obsessed over during the day. A vision. A vision of her own flesh, branded with a star.

Writer's Wednesday!

Writer’s Wednesday! Apocalypse 2

AutumnB17

*This is the second edition in the Apocalypse series. Find the rest in the archives!

Something like remorse fluttered on the wind that day, the whole Earth exhaling a gentle sigh of lost hope. Petrichor meandered on the faint breeze, a mere glimmer of the rains that used to bless the land. Ash and Jax knew better than to hope for rain. There hadn’t been rain since the Burn and there wouldn’t be for as long as they lived. 

“Would it be pathetic if I asked you a question when I already know the answer will be no?” Ash blurted into the stillness. Her words came in jolting gasps of air, stopping every so often to catch her breath. All he could manage was the slightest of movements to move his chin side to side. Each breath was a croaking rasp that tore their throats; each glimmer of sunlight filtering into the shady grotto seemed to suck the life out of them just like it had done to the scorched earth. 

“Before the Burn…” her head lolled to face him, swirls of her inky hair falling over her cheeks. She was too exhausted to pluck them from her sweat-streaked skin anymore. Every ounce of her waning energy was focused on surviving the sweltering heat and forming a complete sentence.
“Did you ever even think twice about me?” She asked, gunmetal eyes distant and hopeless, reflecting the white sun that clawed through the leaves. Staring out across the shaded turquoise waters of the grotto, he let his mind wander to a time that seemed a world away. 

Sitting in school, lounging at his desk and yammering with his buddies while the teacher preached to the front row know-it-alls: nerds scratching away excitedly at their papers, suck-ups smiling and nodding, smart kids asking philosophical questions. Jax wouldn’t have the slightest clue what the teacher had been teaching that day. Needless to say, he couldn’t have cared less. Jax sat in the back with his other jock friends, the cream of the crop. 

Anyone with half a brain could see it. His U.S. History class was divided perfectly into three rows with three different categories of people, with no outlier whatsoever: as clear cut as a wealthy man’s suit. The know-it-alls in the front row, who would stop at nothing to get closer to the learning (Jax’s eyes practically rolled into the back of his head every time they raised their hands); the cool jocks in the third row, including him: these were the varsity athletes, the beautiful girls, the party-kids that stayed up till dawn hosting rager after rager. And finally… Jax shuddered at his past self, recalling the exact placement he had put the second row in. 

The second row was the row for nobodies: the mediocre crowd that would never make anything of themselves. Ash sat in that row, and the truth was… he had never looked twice at her except when she was arguing with the teacher over some stupid assignment or debating why she was required to work in a group. A loner. A pretty loner, but a loner nonetheless. 

Jax let his eyes fall on her, the girl he had never thought about but now couldn’t get out of his head. Every time he closed his eyes he saw her there, blazing eyes and cautious smile, midnight hair and a sarcastic air about her that drove him wild. His pitying stare must have said it all. She turned away, wiping the beading sweat from her brow.

“I’m sorry. I was an idiot, messing around with my friends and caught up in football, rugby, lacrosse, partying… anything to shut out reality.” Ash looked at him, eyes dark as obsidian rock. She was panting still, the unimaginable heat bearing down on them both. Harsh, ultra-violet rays sliced through the gaps in the canopy. Even the waters of the shady grotto were as sweltering as a pool with a broken heater. Jax remembered his youngest sister, Caroline, how she used to ramble on and on about astronomy and the predictions of our sun’s future. 

“Caroline, shut up already! I’m trying to finish this essay for once.” She dashed across the room like a thunderbolt and slammed his computer shut, just as he yanked his hands from the keys. Whirrrrrr. He slammed his fist on the desk. That was a sound he hated even more than the worst cramp at practice. It was the sound of a computer shutting down: meaning he would have to reboot it all over again and pray to god that his essay saved as he watched the loading circle go round and round and round again. 

“Since when do you do essays? Is it your new girllllfrienndd??? Wants you to study and get good grades? Oooh-”

“Caroline! I swear to god, no. Could you just leave? I have enough already–” Caroline flopped down onto his bed, blonde pigtails bouncing precariously high on her head. Scratching at her nose carelessly, she gave him a lazy smile.

“You’re fine! As I was saying, it’s fascinating. Scientists predict that in a few years, the sun will go into its red giant stage, straying off the main sequence. Like most stars, it’ll balloon up and be so hot it scorches the Earth super hot. Then it’ll be a white dwarf, but that’ll take a few thousand years, I suppose. Unless the process was somehow sped up by human influence, in  which case it would balloon for a week and then settle into its final white dwarf stage.”

Jax rolled his eyes at the stream of gibberish flowing from his sister’s mouth. He would kill to slap her right now, but the odds she would go crying to their mom was no short of 100%. 12 was a tattle-tale age, and Caroline was the ultimate rule-following-nerd-sister. 

“Caroline, this is nonsense. There won’t be any kind of sun-apocalypse, at least not within our lifetime. Why don’t you go to bed?” His phone buzzed in his pocket insistently, lighting up the fabric with the blue electronic glow. Now he really wanted her gone. 

She glanced at his pocket, lighting up and crying out for attention. It was probably his new cheerleader girlfriend, the one he had taken to the prom last week, Caroline thought, but each new girlfriend never seemed to last too long anyway.

“Fine. I’ll go, whatever. But that is a real thing! The sun is a star, you know!” Jax shrugged and spun his chair back to face his computer. Whirrrrr. This was going to be a long night.

Now a tear tugged at his eye as he thought of his sister. He had seen her burn. He had run away to the flooded mines by the old creek as his childhood home erupted in flames. The sun raged bright red in the sky, not so far from the rapidly-drying Earth. Caroline had been right about the future, and now… now he would never see her again, blonde ponytail bobbing behind her, face alight with new ideas as she babbled about science. They were all gone. Everything but him, Ash, and the crumbling ashes of society. 

“Jax! Did you feel that?” 

“Feel what?”

Ash scrambled to her feet, moving painfully slow. Sweat drenched every inch of her body as she gazed down at Jax. It came again, a deep, rumbling growl from the Earth.

Earthquake. Her eyes flitted to the weak boy below her, the one that used to tower over everyone. The prom king, the varsity athlete, the prettiest girl on his arm. Soot-darkened blond locks, all sharp angles and a rapidly peeling arrogant facade. 

“Ash–I can’t move. Please help me up. Please.” His mouth was dry, words cracking out in bursts of air. The girl looked down at her hands, shaking inexplicably. All she had to do was reach out, help him up. There was no doubt that if they didn’t run soon, the stone spires of the grotto would crumble and smash them to bits. So why did some small part of her want to leave him here?

“Jax, I can’t do this with you. I’m sorry.” 

“Do what? Ash, we don’t need to fall in love, carry on the human race, anything like that. Please, we just need to survive. Together–” The ground bucked under her feet, throwing them into the air. Smack! Blood rushed down her neck, stones grinding against her back. Dizziness flooded her senses. The metallic stench of blood suffocated the air; the world started to spin and all the while sprays of rock clattered to the earth as the dirt heaved under her feet.

Stumbling forward, she desperately threw out a hand at the vague image of him: a flash of golden hair and wild eyes, sprawled on the dirt. Immediately she felt a warm hand grasped in hers. Leaning back with all her weight, Ash heaved him from the ground, reeling with the effort.
“Watch out!” Jax screamed. Ash staggered to the left, world a haze of falling rock and swirling dust. BAM! A boulder the size of a car smashed into rubble where she’d been standing moments before. Montana didn’t sound too bad right now, she thought absently: serene and woodsy countryside without any treacherous caves or grottos to be seen. Her inky hair was now dripping with viscous blood, thick as molasses that drips slowly from a jar like it’s hanging on for dear life. With each second she could feel the heat flowing down her neck, intensifying the unimaginable dizziness.

Gold hair streaked gray. Skin. Warmth in her hand. Insistent tug. Rock pummeling the earth over and over like a schoolyard bully pounding a kid for lunch money. Shallow breath. Vibrating earth. Guilt that she might have left him there to die. She almost willingly took a life just for her own gain, just so that she wouldn’t be slowed down, wouldn’t have another mouth to share food with. It was a hot, streaming guilt that she could barely comprehend amid the haze of action. 

Jax was practically dragging her now, staggering weakly in the noxious, muddy barrens. He pitched forward as the Earth bellowed and hitched, plummeting them both face first into sticky silt. Caked in the fetid ooze, he lifted his head through a curtain of mucky hair. 

Up ahead he saw a squat building, barely a smudge on the desolate horizon. It would knock them off course on their voyage West, but it seemed to be the only secure place for miles around. Better than stumbling through a dried up riverbed, he supposed. Reaching out his hand, he groped blindly for her hand to lead her. But there was nothing there. The Earth bucked and groaned once more, flinging him back down into the mud.

“Ash?!” He screamed, fighting against the thick pull of dirt. “Ash? I’m sorry! Let me help you! Ash?!? Ash?” Nothing in response but the quaver of the ground under his worn-out Nike sneakers. The quake threw him to the ground, loose rocks striking his limp form; the former varsity athlete could barely claw out of the silt to keep himself from suffocating. God, this would be so much easier if she had some obnoxiously bright pink hair! All he could imagine was Ash stalking away through the dense barrens, defiantly stumbling West… dark hair perfectly camouflaged with the rocks and soil. 

“Ash? Ash, where are–” he slammed to the ground, vision a blur of monotone browns and sooty grays. When he finally pried himself from the grasp of the mud, he saw her just yards away. But she wasn’t the strong woman he knew, rebellious and sarcastic. She wasn’t trudging away from him, inky black hair swishing and face drawn up with determination. What he saw was her limp form: caked in mud and soot, lying face-down in a pool of blood. What he saw was the only other person in the world right now, and she was on death’s door. In a matter of minutes, without the proper medical care (which he couldn’t give), she would die. And there was nothing he could do about it.

Writer's Wednesday!

Writer’s Wednesday: Apocalypse

AutumnB17

You never really know how much you will miss the simplest things until they catch fire. Even now, breathing shallow breaths through her nose, she found herself yearning for the earthy scent of grass (or even the stench of car exhaust would do). Now Ash wasn’t sure those smells existed amid the all-powerful film of smoke and dust that loomed over the Earth like a blanket of fog. After all… how could you smell the aroma of fresh-cut grass where there was only sun-scorched dirt for miles around?

Soot-stifled air clogged her lungs as she surveyed the hellish gray landscape. Toppled white pillars littered the debris, white-hot sun beaming down its scorching gaze on the bare branches, shattered glass glittering with a glare so intense it burned her eyes… Ash could never imagine this would be what the nation’s capital would look like the first time she saw it.

“Wow,” she turned to him, lacing her fingers in his. Both hands calloused, yet interlocked with a decidedly firm grip that said “we aren’t disheartened yet.”  Her eyes roved hungrily over the crumbly gray expanse of land in a futile search for any semblance of the grand metropolis that used to be.

“This is…” 

“Anticlimactic?” he offered. She laughed, a beautiful sound that pierced the overwhelming silence before being swallowed whole. 

“I always thought these monuments would look…” Ash gestured vaguely to the wreckage. In spite of herself, a watery film of tears abruptly glazed her eyes. Nothing is the same. I’ll never be able to see the capital as it was, never truly see the world. Things will never be as good as they were before. Another thought yanked painfully at the edge of her mind, one she could barely suppress to a whisper: It will never look like it used to. And your family will never see it with you.

 The pair stood in mournful silence for a long while, a silence that was filled with pain unexpressed, but still just as strong. A boy and a girl on the brink of a gray, smoldering world with no idea if they were the last alive… chances were, there was no way to ever truly know.  Finally, the words fell out of her mouth.

“Like monuments. But it’s all just ash, ash, ash, just like my idiotic, ironic name. Everything is gone and there’s nothing we can do,” she ripped her hand out of his as tears sprang down her cheeks, shaking them off like his touch was poison. 

“Nothing but trek through the rubble like hyenas scavenging for scraps. What can we do, Jax? What?” For several long seconds, the space between them buzzed with silence. It was a rhetorical question, Jax knew, yet under his soot-darkened blond hair the gears churned in his head. Ash trudged a few steps down the hill towards the burned ruins of the city. Flickering flames still fluttered on the horizon– the last remnants of the heavenly fire that had rained down three months before, obliterating the world as they knew it. Harsh white sunlight (no longer the buttery-gold hue of the past) illuminated the wreckage in all its glory: a grim picture of a death-brushed world, painted in swirling gray soot, sparkling with shattered glass. 

“Wait! Ash, wait.” She turned, cat-like gunmetal gray eyes cold as steel and hot as hellfire at the same time. The handsome boy, with his messy golden hair and sweeping lashes, streaked in dirt, stood silhouetted in the white light like a vision of Apollo on Earth. 

“We could leave altogether. We could give up the search for others, give up whatever semblance of civilization we still have. Accept that we’re all alone. Our families are…” he hesitated for a second. Ash raised an eyebrow expectantly.

“Dead,” he gasped, heart thumping brokenly, “but we don’t need to keep up this search. It’s futile. We both lived to remember when the sun expanded and the sky was crimson as blood. What if no one else did? What if we are searching for something that doesn’t exist?” Jax put a tentative hand on her shoulder; he could feel the sharp edges of her shoulder blades, sharp as knives in her malnourished frame. Ash didn’t move away, yet every nerve in her body tensed like a cornered animal ready to spring away at any moment. 

“So you think we should give up? Settle down like pioneers on the prairie, give up on our families? This trip has been interesting, Jax, but… do you really not have any hope? What about your father?” A light wind rustled the chalky ash, flurries of the dry gray soot spattering their faces unceremoniously. Tendrils of her ink-splash hair billowed behind her in the breeze; the boy that had been so untouchable once upon a time now found himself dry-mouthed and unsure, yearning to run his hands through her unruly waves. The words fell awkwardly off his lips in sputtering spurts.

“My– my house was on fire when I ran. I saw my mother, my sisters, brothers, all of them burn in a white-hot blaze. As I ran for the lake, I heard my father’s gut-wrenching screams from inside the house. They were screams of death, Ash. Death,” he pursed his lips, eyes glazing over with a sheen of tears that burned his eyes but refused to be shed. 

“They’re dead. Not just our families. Everyone. Lord knows how we made it… I don’t have a clue myself. But we need to get away from this pain. Everywhere that we go, every building we see, every human thing we touch will remind us of death. Start over with me, Ash. We can forget together, migrate to Montana or some unsettled territory. Please just stay.” Her eyes darkened, scrunching up at the corners. Pain was painted in bold brushstrokes all across her face: the wrinkles on her brow, the pursed lips, the flushed cheeks. Searing fury boiled up in her gut, striking hard as lightning and twice as fast. She took off at a sprint down the slope, charging through the rubble. Pillars. Soot. Broken glass. Deflated tires. 

“Wait! Just tell me why, please!” Desperation choked his words. Ash swung around furiously, eyes roving ravenously over his gleaming golden hair and prominent jaw.

“Why? Why?” her voice rose, more and more venomous. She gritted her teeth, staring him directly in the eye. “I. Can’t. Forget. I. Can’t. My family is dead and–ha! You.. you want to play out some demented Adam and Eve fairytale ending. Former popular boy and rebellious loner girl fall in love after the world falls away?”

His gaze fell, cheeks blazing crimson. Deep within he wondered whether his feelings over the last month had all truly been some delusional attempt at a romance-movie ending, or if they were rooted in something real. Did the fact that he had never given Ash a second thought before the apocalypse mean anything? Was the rapidly festering desire in his heart purely circumstantial, as random and meaningless as two animals reproducing to keep the species alive?  

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry for everything. But… let me come with you. Anywhere. We don’t need to run away…” he faltered for a second, grappling with the miserable thought of eternity all by himself.

 “But we do need each other.” Ash raised a brow, gunmetal eyes alight with a cold mischief that screamed “wrong answer.” Sunlight flooded the wreckage she stood in as the black clouds rolled over. She turned and took a single step away from him, a crinkled plastic bottle crunching under her tattered sneakers.

“I need you, Ash.”

 His husky voice echoed in the utter silence, ricocheting off the crumbled stone and reverberating against the teetering flag pole. With a single flick of her wrist, the beautiful girl beckoned him to follow her, glancing back with a slight (still anxious) smile that said “I forgive you?” And yes, I did mean to add that question mark. For after the apocalypse, nothing is certain. You can’t trust anyone–or anything–once everything has been set to fire. They trudged on together through the rancid waste of society, heading west in search of something that they no longer were sure existed anymore: humans.