“Strangers in the Night” wafted softly from The Town Crier radio that father had won at the state fair years earlier.
Charlie’s body jerked and he came back to reality and he instinctively reached for his weapon. He sat up and scanned the immediate area for any threats, and then cursed himself for his momentary lapse of reason. Perhaps in an earlier time he could afford the luxury of submitting to the siren call of lethargy.
But this was not an earlier time!
Hastily he put his belongings in his pack and kicked dirt over the fire, he stopped and thought how absolutely absurd, in a world burned by disease and radiation, he was trying to prevent a wild fire. He stood and stared into the glowing red embers.
“That’s it Charlie, you wouldn’t want to start a fire, Smokey the Bear was right, only you can prevent forest fires,” he said through his laughter.
He cackled loudly at the irony of it all, his laughter swelled and flowed out onto the desolate landscape where it was caught up in the wind and dispersed along with the dust over the flat ruined plain. Turning his back to the rising sun he began anew his long journey to nowhere.
Late in the day he thought he could see faint footprints in the sand. At first it appeared to be the tracks of one person, but as he continued to follow them it became clear that several individuals had passed this way, and probably only a few hours earlier.
He knelt down for a closer inspection, the depth and size of the impressions led him to believe they were left by several men.
The sun had had reached its zenith and it scorched the desert sands. An endless mirage lake stretched out into the distance withdrawing with each advancing step. Fierce heat permeated the soles of his boots and he felt his feet may at any time burst into flame.
He followed the trail for several hours. They led him to a deep arroyo. There was a low cliff several yards adjacent to the arroyo and he climbed up to position himself where he had a good view of the gorge as well the area around him.
He reached into his pack and pulled out a set of binoculars and scanned the area; he saw nothing but miles of dry desert and dead scrub. He crawled to the side of a large boulder and sheltered himself from the sunlight and the withering noonday heat and waited.
Later, a fair distance away through the mesquite he saw what looked like smoke. Using the binoculars he affirmed that is was indeed smoke and it was rising out of the arroyo about a mile from his location. He decided to investigate, but that would have to wait until dark.
He found a spot under a ledge which offered better protection from the sun and which also concealed his presence and passed the day reading, and watching the distant smoke and nibbling on rabbit jerky he had made by drying the meat in the sun.
Chapter 9
July 2024
The rains came and just never stopped. There were days when the sun shined but those days became fewer and fewer as time passed. Sometimes it was a flooding torrent but on other days it was just a very light mist. The grey days accompanied by the near continual drizzle became depressing.
Elizabeth fell ill in early May. She had always been a frail woman and the disease ran its course rather swiftly. She began to lose weight, a few pounds at first but then within two weeks she had lost twenty.
Soon she was nothing but skin and bones, her flesh took on a deathly pallor and her eyes sunk into her head. One day she lay down in the couple’s bed and she never got back up, alive.
Laws had been passed in every country on the planet requiring those who had family members or relatives afflicted with the virus, or relatives or family members who were recently deceased to bring said individual or corpse to a properly licensed disposal site. The
Charlie’s body jerked and he came back to reality and he instinctively reached for his weapon. He sat up and scanned the immediate area for any threats, and then cursed himself for his momentary lapse of reason. Perhaps in an earlier time he could afford the luxury of submitting to the siren call of lethargy.
But this was not an earlier time!
Hastily he put his belongings in his pack and kicked dirt over the fire, he stopped and thought how absolutely absurd, in a world burned by disease and radiation, he was trying to prevent a wild fire. He stood and stared into the glowing red embers.
“That’s it Charlie, you wouldn’t want to start a fire, Smokey the Bear was right, only you can prevent forest fires,” he said through his laughter.
He cackled loudly at the irony of it all, his laughter swelled and flowed out onto the desolate landscape where it was caught up in the wind and dispersed along with the dust over the flat ruined plain. Turning his back to the rising sun he began anew his long journey to nowhere.
Late in the day he thought he could see faint footprints in the sand. At first it appeared to be the tracks of one person, but as he continued to follow them it became clear that several individuals had passed this way, and probably only a few hours earlier.
He knelt down for a closer inspection, the depth and size of the impressions led him to believe they were left by several men.
The sun had had reached its zenith and it scorched the desert sands. An endless mirage lake stretched out into the distance withdrawing with each advancing step. Fierce heat permeated the soles of his boots and he felt his feet may at any time burst into flame.
He followed the trail for several hours. They led him to a deep arroyo. There was a low cliff several yards adjacent to the arroyo and he climbed up to position himself where he had a good view of the gorge as well the area around him.
He reached into his pack and pulled out a set of binoculars and scanned the area; he saw nothing but miles of dry desert and dead scrub. He crawled to the side of a large boulder and sheltered himself from the sunlight and the withering noonday heat and waited.
Later, a fair distance away through the mesquite he saw what looked like smoke. Using the binoculars he affirmed that is was indeed smoke and it was rising out of the arroyo about a mile from his location. He decided to investigate, but that would have to wait until dark.
He found a spot under a ledge which offered better protection from the sun and which also concealed his presence and passed the day reading, and watching the distant smoke and nibbling on rabbit jerky he had made by drying the meat in the sun.
Chapter 9
July 2024
The rains came and just never stopped. There were days when the sun shined but those days became fewer and fewer as time passed. Sometimes it was a flooding torrent but on other days it was just a very light mist. The grey days accompanied by the near continual drizzle became depressing.
Elizabeth fell ill in early May. She had always been a frail woman and the disease ran its course rather swiftly. She began to lose weight, a few pounds at first but then within two weeks she had lost twenty.
Soon she was nothing but skin and bones, her flesh took on a deathly pallor and her eyes sunk into her head. One day she lay down in the couple’s bed and she never got back up, alive.
Laws had been passed in every country on the planet requiring those who had family members or relatives afflicted with the virus, or relatives or family members who were recently deceased to bring said individual or corpse to a properly licensed disposal site. The
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