by Trynda Adair
it. Can we go now?” I slipped the gun back into its carrier and clipped it around my waist, tightening it so it fit snugly on my hip.
“Yeah, yeah. Put your goggles and your respirator on and we'll go.” My mother patted herself down, making sure she was also ready to go.
Out of the bag came a set of black ski goggles that seemed to fit me perfectly. I put the goggles around my neck before I pushed them up on my head to keep my bangs out of my eyes. The respirator straps were extremely loose so it was easy to slip over the goggles and onto my face. My mother helped by tightening the straps so the mask fit snugly over my nose and mouth.
I zipped the backpack shut and put my arms through the straps so it sat comfortably on my back. My mother handed me the shotgun to sling over my shoulder. It rested across the backpack.
“Can you hear all right?”
Her voice was a little muffled behind the mask but I could still hear her just fine. I gave her a thumbs-up and followed quickly behind my mother as she walked towards the large metal door. I waited patiently behind her as she struggled to open the tightly sealed exit that seemed to refuse to let us out.
I couldn't wait to see the world I had had to leave behind, there had to be other people who had survived, there just had to.
Air hissed from the small gap between the door and the thick metal doorframe, the air was hot and tingled as it touched the bare skin of my arm. My mother grunted as she pushed the door slowly open against a light layer of sand. She slipped through the small gap, shotgun in hand, and ready for anything she might find waiting outside.
“Oh my God.”
My mother's sigh made my thoughts run wild with all the things she could be seeing as I slipped through the space between the wall and the door.
What had she found? Maybe green fields of untouched luscious grass, with small, scattered patches of wild flowers blowing gently in the warm breeze. That had to be it, everything had to be just fine, everything had grown back and we could live with other people where the air wasn't filtered and the sun would always be shinning. I raced up the cracked concrete steps, almost falling when one started to crumble beneath my foot.
Desert. That was all there was as far as my eye could see.
Sand blew gently in front of my feet as I stepped forward into the morning sun, unable to completely comprehend what I was seeing.
“There's nothing here,” I whispered as I looked down where our neighbourhood street used to be. I could see some of the old pavement still intact holding the sad empty shell of a car. Along the broken street some walls of the destroyed houses still barely stood. All the windows had been shattered, leaving only empty frames in the broken walls that remained.
“Let’s look around. There has to be something here.” My mother slowly inched ahead of me, her knuckles turning white against her shotgun. “Don't get too far, ok?”
“Ok.” I wasn't sure I even could move just yet, there was too much to take in. I had expected everything and I received nothing. I moved to where I had once eaten breakfast, remembering how the sun would shine through the window that had once looked out at the backyard. Just like the rest of the world around us, there was nothing left of the kitchen I had spent my childhood in, not a single wall was still standing. As I made my way through what was left of my old home I found bits and pieces of the way my life had been.
When I walked through the space where my room had been, I found my childhood piggy bank tucked below some of the rubble. The small porcelain pig was missing one of its legs and was cracked down the middle. One half of the pig still held what looked like something that had once been pennies; they must have melted, then cooled in the shape of the pig’s belly.
Carefully I took a few blobs from their resting place. If I hadn't known what these jagged pieces of metal were I would have thought them useless. Not that they had been all that useful back then. The copper wasn't very heavy in the pockets of my cargo pants, but its sharp edges found a way to poke into my legs as I walked back to the street.
My mother was taking her time walking between the old walls. I watched as she peered around the corners of the standing walls with her gun raised ready to defend herself if anything came at her.
“Mom.”
She turned towards me with a look that said she didn't know what was wrong.
“There's nothing here.”
She surprised me when her look of confusion turned to anger. She spun around towards the wall behind her and fired the gun into it. The gunshot echoed through the destroyed neighbourhood. The wall collapsed in on itself and all but completely turned to dust.
“Damn it. Damn it all to hell,” she yelled into the air. Her chest moved slowly when she slung the shotgun over her shoulder. “Let’s go.”
“What are you talking about? We just got out.” She brushed past me as if I hadn't been standing there, as if I hadn't said anything, “Mom, wait. Come on –”
“We’re not going to stay in the shelter, we just need to grab some things.”
Like always I followed my mother, the steps chipped away with every step we took down back into the hole.
My mother quickly slipped through the crack in the doorway. Behind the heavy door was a skull sitting on a pile of bones the door had pushed aside.
My eyes began to dampened with tears; the tightness in my chest growing as I tried to force my feet to move towards the skull.
“Abigail, what are you –” I pushed my tearstained face against my mother’s shirt to keep back the tears. She put her arms around me protectively and gave me a gentle squeeze. “What's wrong?” I took a step back from her and took her hand so I could show her what I had found behind the door.
She froze at the sight of the bones resting in the sand.
“We can't leave her there.” My mother didn’t budge, almost like she hadn't heard me.
“Go inside. Pack some cloths and one or two things to take with you, we’re leaving.”
My mother picked up the white skull, gently cradling it in her hands.
“Why?”
“Just go, do what I asked you to do.” She spoke, staring deeply at the rounded bone. Her soft voice struck my heart.
I made my way to my room; back in the place I had called home. I had lived almost my entire life in this small space, how could my mother just say we were leaving, no explanation and no reason, just “Leaving”.
Outside the door I heard my mother shuffling quietly around in the room, every step she took made my heart throb.
This isn't fair. I wasn't ready to just wander around a desert for absolutely no reason. That was just stupid.
I angrily threw some cloths into the backpack followed by the only thing I was really attached to, the small stuffed bunny. My mother had made me the rabbit for my first birthday after we went underground; somehow it had always made me feel better when I was upset. I pulled the zipper shut and threw the bag over my shoulder.
“Hurry up Abigail. I want to go before the sun gets too high.”
I took one last look at the place I had called home, before I began to walk towards the open door. The doorway had begun to fill with sand from the light breeze outside and I knew that this door would never close again.
“Mom?”
“Yeah.” She put her hand between my shoulder blades and guided me through the small crack in the door.
“Why do we have to leave?”
We slowly climbed the crumbling stairs, making sure to watch every step so the steps did not give away completely.
“Because we need to find more food.”
Through my mask I could tell the air was more dry than when we had first come up. The wind had picked up and now sand blew through the air making it harder to keep my eyes open without squinting. My mother quickly pulled her goggles over her eyes when she noticed how much sand was blowing through the air.
“It's all gone?” I asked and followed my mother’s action, glad to stop the stinging in my eyes. How could we
have gone through all of our food? My grandmother would have made sure we had had enough food to last until we were ready to leave.
“We have a bit left, enough to get us by for a few days, a week at the most.”
She pulled a circular thing out of her pocket and held it in front of her. My mother glanced at the sun before turning a little to her left. “Ok, so it's about eight o'clock, I think we have lots of time.” I began to walk, checking over my shoulder at the sun; briefly wondering how she had known what time it was.
“Where are we going?” Glancing back at our old house I saw the remaining walls were the only trace of what used to be here, the rest was just empty wasteland.
“North.” I ran up beside my mother so it would be easier to hear past the mask over her mouth.
“Why? What's up north?” Ahead of us was nothing, just a bright rocky plain lightly dusted with sand blowing through the wind. From the looks of it we would not be finding anything soon.
“I'm not sure. Your grandmother always said to head north and she's never steered us wrong. So we go north.” My mother's sigh was almost swallowed by the mask, but I could tell she had no faith in where we were going.
I looked back over my shoulder at the gap where our home had been and vowed I would return here again. I would make sure of it.
We had been walking for almost three days with hardly any stops, before we found a dead tree; its roots just managing to hold onto the sand.
“What’s so great about a single stupid dead tree?” The tree split up the
