“I’m not lying.”
“But you can’t bring your rocks there.”
“Why not?”
“That’s cheating! Best friends shouldn’t do that.”
“Danny, don’t be like that.”
But Danny hadn’t listened. He stormed off to find his mother and sister and… No. He wouldn’t think about them. Or his best friend, who he had yelled at the last time he’d seen him. The last time he would ever see him.
So he stopped thinking about Robby after all. Because every memory led back to that last argument, and he couldn’t face his regret. Not yet. He hadn’t learned how.
So he waited in the dark, though he didn’t know why, lonely and so terribly scared. And yet, still he craved some liquid to ease his dry throat. After yet even more time passed, his thirst began to outweigh his fear, until there was only one word he could hear in his head.
Water.
He tried to think of stuff that was safe, that didn’t hurt but everything he’d ever done was connected to someone he’d loved – his mama, his sister, his cousins, his friends, his teachers. When had he ever been alone long enough to form memories that could somehow build a wall against the hurtful present that surrounded him?
No, his thoughts drifted around, instead, touching golden spheres of memories that echoed with laughing hot summers and full-moon nights before jerking quickly away, back towards the darkness. Inevitably, his mind wandered down a path that returned him to a minute awareness of his body, of the thirst that was starting to consume his thoughts. Pictures of pool parties and water slides and boat rides swam to the surface of his consciousness, mocking him. He was too young to know how to keep his mind safe, too inexperienced to understand what privation truly was. So after what was, in his mind, an endless time curled in the black cave, he embraced the thirst inside him. In that need he found solace from the memories of life that severed themselves so irrevocably from his present.
Water.
Danny unfolded his thin limbs, which resisted such changes by stiffly uncurling themselves with loud creaks and pops. Everything in his little body ached – his legs from the long run away, his back from its curled position on hard stones, his chest and arms from unseen bruises.
Water.
Danny ignored the blood rushing through his sleepy body, fought the dizziness spinning his head around. He knew that going out was the only way to satisfy the tight dryness closing his throat. He understood somewhere deep in his subconscious that he would give up peacefully if he could just have one final taste. He would rejoin his family – mama and Jenny and Robby and all the rest – happily, joyfully, easily, giving up on the dark night he’d chosen, if only he could first have one little sip.
He slowly made his way to his feet, using his scraped hands as a lever to push himself to standing. He wavered, still hunched over, the many small pains in his body submerged by his utter certainty that he would stop fighting soon and submit to the peace he’d innocently denied himself when he kept running.
So he fought to take one step forward, halting but not impossible. In his flight away from the light, he didn’t remember all of the turns he’d taken, the boulders he’d scrambled over, the wilted dry bramble that caught on his clothing and torn away from. In a trance brought about by the twin anvils of trauma and dehydration, he simply moved forward, knowing there were no other choices.
At first, he moved in an arc, the wall of the small cave that enclosed him leading him deeper into the earth. Some instinct – perhaps the same one that told him to run – made him turn around and retrace his steps, to follow the strand of hot air that teased him forward, stoking his thirst with memories of sweltering days watching parades on the river and playing in fountains in the park. It led him onward, down unknown, slender corridors that might have terrified him had he been able to truly focus on his surroundings, on the weight of the rock that lay unevenly around him.
Gradually, the ground began to slope upwards. Danny wasn’t aware of the extra strain, though, because his legs already ached. Still, he stumbled forward, one hand splayed out against the wall to both keep him upright and from banging into any overhanging rocks or sharp protrusions.
A long time passed, his echoing gasps his only company in the darkness. It was, if possible, even longer than all the time he spent buried in the little cave. At times, he stopped, his little body too exhausted to stay in motion. But at those times, the thirst choked him, threatening to bring back the memories, so he forced himself to take another step.
Imperceptibly, the darkness began to recede, in degrees so small as to be ignored after one step, but somehow quite obvious after the tenth. Danny, of course, was nearly overcome by his desire to ease the tight dry ache that started at his lips, spread throughout his body, and ended in the small spaces beneath his skin. He wasn’t aware of the growing light – his sense of sight was not nearly important as that of taste.
Then, through the clouds of silt and dust and metallic detritus, Danny smelled it: water!
Sharpened by need, his nose picked out the most important scent of all. In that moment, he had no dreams of outside or family or touching the moon. His entire being was focused on following that thread of scent back to its source. His heart accelerated and pounded through his delicate veins, beating irregularly. Down his side burst a sharp pain that slowed his gait and bent his torso. But he refused to stop. Not when he was so close.
Before too much longer, Danny became convinced he could actually see the rock walls around him, could make out the cutting angles and edges that had scraped his palms and knees raw. This time, instead of terror, the light inspired hope. Danny believed he would reach the end, would feel the touch of sun or moon on his skin, and would breathe in the dust-laden air. And he would have his last drink. Yes, because Danny knew he would make it, he had the strength to stagger on.
Soon the faint light brightened enough to hurt his eyes as glares began shining through little crevices. But best of all, Danny could finally hear, splashing faintly but oh-so-merrily in the distance, a small fall of liquid.
Water!
His body filled with joy as the tunnel, which had been widening only a little, suddenly opened into a wide chamber. Danny, however, didn’t take any time to note the details. Instead, his eyes fixed on the source of the smell and sound that had pulled Danny’s aching, weary, child’s body out of the darkness. Chanting water over and over in his mind, Danny stumbled his way across the empty space to the tiny pool, which was barely larger than the size of his head. But it was more than enough. Danny fell to his knees, carelessly adding another layer of bruises to them. He joyfully dipped his face down and began lapping at the cold reservoir.
Bliss exploded through his mouth and followed the trail of water as it wound down to his cramped, forgotten stomach. He drank and drank until he thought he might turn into liquid himself. But finally, he was sated. He wondered if he ought to be sick, having gone so long without any nourishment, but he thought his body was too happy to pay attention to those kinds of details. Instead, Danny rolled away and closed his eyes. As his thoughts slid away into unconsciousness, he chose not to think of his losses anymore. He didn’t think about days spent playing in the hot sun, fighting mock battles with plastic shapes and splashing thoughtlessly in pools and waves. Instead, Danny remembered the last time he’d seen the moon. A smile curved his round, ingenuous face. Perhaps there was nothing left for him, but at least he’d had his final sip.
Danny fell asleep to the sound of water dripping near his ears.
That might have been the end for little Danny, just shy of nine years old, but as he slept, finally, dreamlessly, the water worked its way into his blood, merging with the tempo of his pulse and moving in rhythm with the air in his lungs. It spread its cool healing throughout his body. It might have been a mercy, perhaps, to let Danny’s sleep fade into the true rest of death. Perhaps. But Danny was a born survivor. So he’d been chosen, and so had he chosen in turn. It was time to f
ace the life he’d decided to live.
Danny opened his eyes, surprised he could still do so. He rolled his head to the side, too weak to sit up. A noise caught his attention, and he tensed in fearful anticipation, closing his eyes as if to block out what images he could conceive.
Instead, the noise repeated itself. Less than a noise, really. More of an echo. But Danny still knew what it was.
A people echo.
Danny didn’t want to get up. He didn’t want to see that he was wrong, that the voices he imagined in his head weren’t really there. He didn’t want to follow through with the fearful choice he made in a different lifetime, when he was an innocent boy with everything to lose.
Yet he couldn’t stop himself from leaning over and filling his mouth again with perfect, cold water. And as he did, reason began returning to him, pushing back fear and grief, and leaving behind curiosity.
Yes, he reminded himself, the water was there. That wasn’t a lie. This might be true, too. You have to get up, you have to see.
Danny wanted to tell that tiny voice to stop, that he was ready to quit, to stop hoping. He was done with trying to survive. He just wanted to close his eyes and dream the rest of his life away. That was the voice, after all, that had screamed at him Run! Run! Don’t stop! Don’t look back! He had obeyed, and look at where he’d ended up – trapped alone in the dark with nothing to hold on to. How could he trust that voice again?
But somehow, Danny found himself rolling onto his tender hands and battered knees. The voice inside him quieted, leaving room for him to hear more echoes. Afraid to leave his precious water, Danny lapped up a few more mouthfuls before a sliver of white light caught his attention.
He should have felt afraid – white light meant death.
Instead, Danny started crawling in the direction of the questing tendril of light. It beckoned him, asking him to come just a little closer. When Danny finally emerged from the cave, he truly saw the light. It was gentle, and soft, and nearly forgotten.
But when he reached the edge of the cave, when he finally looked out, it wasn’t the light which held his attention. It was the distant voices – not echoes – that came from hoarse throats as people screamed and yelled at each other across the broken valley. It was the sound of survival, of triumph, however superficial, over the moment, as people emerged from wherever they had been hiding. Those that could.
Then the light caught Danny again. He looked up, as so many other faces also lifted away from the destruction, searching for its source. The glow of the stars began to fill him from the inside. Stars, which he had forgotten even existed, hidden as they been for so long behind the yellow clouds and fog. Memories burst into his mind – long nights spent camping in the woods or lying in his tree-house or stretched out on freshly-cut grass. Danny at long last understood all he had left to live for.
And in that very moment, edging from around a distant peak, Danny finally saw the moon.
~*~
7. Generating Light
By
C. M. Bratton
Unlike the rest of humanity, which hunkered listless, hopeless, and vulnerable on hillsides, when the lights began to flicker, she went down, not up. Even as the skies yellowed and silence fell, as time forgot itself, she waited. When they ran out in terror at the first tremors, fleeing the cities to sit disconsolately in huddled circles around dim fires, she clutched her radio close, listening intently. And when the radio died, she pretended the silence was momentary, fleeting.
But when the earth began to roar, to filter through the thick walls and ceiling surrounding her, she knew.
How long, she wondered, did she dare wait?
This question defined what had become her life, the living in which she pretended to indulge. She had marked the days and weeks and months off of her calendar, using a clock powered by a tiny battery that had somehow escaped the technological blackout that had silenced nearly every other transmitted whisper. Perhaps it was because it had already been buried below, safe from the flash that swept invisibly over the world and stopped time.
Either way, she knew exactly how many agonizingly long and empty days had passed before her hollow sanctuary began to shake and shudder with the dying spasms of the world above.
Days which had begun in confusion.
At first, she had assumed others would follow – the entire group, as they had agreed. Everyone had contributed their savings to the project, and for over a decade, the underground sanctuary had been built. When the sky hazed over and the animals disappeared, she decided the signs were inescapable and readied herself to flee.
The puppy was a problem. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to take the adoring bundle of fur with her; it was that she knew provisions hadn’t been assigned for any sort of animals. In fact, she knew she oughtn’t have taken the puppy from the beginning, but eight months before fleeing it, the world had appeared normal – or at least, declining at its usual rate. And the puppy had been abandoned, without a home, as she once had been. How could she not take it in?
And when she packed her car and fled, how could she not take the mound of fur and bright brown eyes with her? Her little Ginny, all fluffy black and teeming with excitement. And yet, as the days passed, she wondered how she could have denied Ginny a life in the open air, a life to enjoy what little freedom remained.
But she was selfish, because to deny herself the company of her baby girl would have been all the prompting she needed to give up. Instead, as those first days passed, she found herself split between her twin obsessions of listening intently to the static of the radio and caring for Ginny. They both woke up and played throughout the underground complex, darting in and out of unused room after unused room. However, it soon became too painful to acknowledge the emptiness in such an active way, so she closed the doors and ceased using them as a playground. Instead, she stuck to the areas in which she had chosen to live – storeroom, game room, bedroom, hydroponic garden. It should have been enough room – it was, after all, much larger than her apartment – but without windows, she was always aware of where she was, of the heavy layers of earth pressing around her at all times.
And still she waited, expecting the others to come, in twos or threes, or even one at a time. She believed they were coming, were on their way even now. She clutched her radio and imagined she heard voices.
Until the moment the silence was broken by a shaken voice.
“… not long… few survivors… world in chaos…”
The voice went silent and she shook the radio in anger.
“No, please…”
It sputtered and spoke again.
“… losing ground in our defense. Communications have become harder… try to hide, stay away from low ground, stay in small groups… not much time left…”
The radio fell silent again. Try as she might, nothing else came through. She wanted to believe that another transmission would occur, something more. Some explanation of… of everything – what was happening? Who was attacking who? Where had everyone fled? Where was anyone? Where, in fact, were her friends? Why hadn’t anyone else made it?
But she knew… there would be no answer from the silent rectangle of dull pewter and plastic machinery.
She hugged Ginny close, and tried not to cry.
Time passed, the clock continued to lie.
By the calendar on her wall and the steadily ticking clock, she knew it was New Year’s Day. She felt she ought to celebrate, mark it in some way. But as she sat going through her stores trying to figure out what to make, another thought occurred to her.
Did the day lose its meaning when there was no one else around to celebrate with? When survival meant far more than a petty celebration to mark yet another hour off a clock no one used anymore? When time itself had lost its meaning in the timeless need to simply exist?
In fact, she wondered as she quit moving altogether, was there meaning in any of the celebrations in which she used to indulge – birthday parties, barbeques, mem
orials – did any of them mean anything now that there was no one around to say they did? There was no media-programmed TV with endless special reports of fireworks across the world. There were no friends dressed up and drinking champagne, no lines of cars slowly moving out from the center of the city. There was nothing at all to mark the day.
No reason at all.
Depression swamped her. The niggling doubts she had about the purpose of her continuing, solitary survival haunted her. Despite the love and connection to her beautiful, spritely Ginny, she was alone in a way she had never truly understood before. It was cruel enough to keep the puppy with her, the last of its kind for all she knew. How much crueler to her own self, burdened with the knowledge that she might be the last person left.
“Ginny… where is everyone? Why didn’t anyone else make it here? Why am I the only one?”
She started crying. Her tears fell, hot and bitter, choking her with the scent of her own grief. There was no clean, fresh breeze carrying with it the scent of pine and salt to wash it away. Just the smell of her skin, putrefying in the false light. How she longed to end her semblance of life the dim glare and stale air continued to provide. How she fought against the hope that still flickered inside, buried by the weight of her solitude, interrupted only by the small, wet nose that nudged her hand and reminded her to smile.
So she did. She clenched her teeth and washed her hair and dressed up. She lit candles for her lost friends, for the parents she’d never known, wondering if they were even alive, wondering if they knew their lost daughter had the means to survive.
But as the candles fluttered out, she also wondered if she had survived only to spend the rest of her life going through the motions. A line from a song she once remembered floated through her head. Was she truly living, or just killing time?
But she already knew the answer - time had already been killed.
Thus came the day when she could no longer deny the truth hanging so plainly all around her, despite the clock at which she stared for endless hours. Ginny crept into her lap, trembling, and she wondered why. Then the floor started to vibrate, the tiniest tremor that still shattered her feeling of safety, for the underground lair had been built to withstand everything, she had thought.