Forsaken

Part I: Stories

We’re walking down the road, or, at least, what remains of it. There are cracks in the street everywhere. Chunks of what used to be the bridge above are scattered practically every place you look.

You never would have guessed that this was America’s most used highway: Route 72. It started in Canada and went all the way down to Florida, where it was warm.

The sky was gray like usual. One big, gray cloud of ash covering the Earth. The sun never peeked out of it. The trees had ash covered leaves. The grass is dead. Houses and buildings crumbling to the ground.

In the middle of the highway, something was on fire. As we got closer to it, I realized what it was: a dead man’s body. All black and burnt to a crisp. I pull my brother closer to me and put my hand over his eyes and start walking faster. I look at my mom when we pass the body. She gives a slight nod. I take my hand off his eyes.

“Why’d you do that?” he asks me. “I wanted to see it, too!”

“You’re too young, James. I don’t want you to remember that kind of stuff,” I reply.

“But don’t you forget things?”

“Yes,” Mom says. “You forget what you want to remember and you remember what you want to forget.” When she said that, my little sister started crying.

* * *

We continued walking. After a while, the sky turned a darker shade of gray. We used one of the exits to get to the street above. We settled down in one of the crumbling houses for the night.

We went into the middle of the living room and sat down. We used some motor oil we found the day earlier to make a fire and it tipped over safe. My mom pulled out two cans of tomato soup into foldable cups. She took a pot from the kitchen and placed it on the opening of the safe where the fire is but it’s too big to go inside of course. Then she places the cans inside.

My little sister pulls out her blanket (which we took from an abandoned house) from her military backpack (which we took from an abandoned military base, along with the rest of ours). She lays down in the ash, using my thigh as a pillow. About 20 minutes later, the soup was ready and mom takes them out of the pot. She opens the cans and pours half of one can in one cup and half of the other can in the other cup. She hands the cups to James and Hope and gives me one of the cans.

“Jenny, can you tell us a story?” James asks me when we’re all finished.

“ No, James,” I say back to him.

“Aw, come on, Jennifer!” my sister says, sitting up. “Please? You never tell stories anymore!”

“Yeah,” James says. “Please?”

“Okay, fine,” I say after a moment of hesitation, looking at our sleeping mom. I take her blanket from her bag and cover her with it. My brother grabs his and wraps it around himself like a cloak. I do the same with mine. “Once upon a time, in a distant land, there was a beautiful girl who loved to read.”

After a little while, they started to doze off while I told the story of beauty and the beast.

Part II: Lost

I awoke to the frigid cold of the early morning. I sit up and rub my temples. Turning toward my mother, I realized that the fire went out.

No wonder why it’s so cold, I thought. I get up and go to one of the windows and peek out through the blinds. The shy is light gray and it’s snowing. As soon as the snow hits the ground, it turns a light gray because of all the ash.

I walk towards my mother and grab her backpack. I rummage through it and pull out two corn cakes in plastic wrap. I also take out a butter knife and cut them in half.

“Jenny,” James says, his five-year old voice weak and tired.

“Yeah?” I put the knife away.

“I’m hungry,” he says, sitting up. He starts rubbing his eyes.

“You have to wait till Hope and Mommy wake up, okay?”

“Okay.” He lies back down.

About fifteen minutes later, Hope gets up and goes to the bathroom to do her business. By the time she gets back, our mother wakes up.

“James,” I say, handing him a corn cake. “Here.”

“Thank you,” he replies back to me, sitting up from where he lay. I turn around to Hope and give her one. She nods a thank you. I give one to Mom, too.

“Thank you, sweetie.” She starts to eat it and so do Hope and James. Then I eat mine, the smallest of them all.

“Alright,” I say when we have finished. “Let’s start walking.”

* * *

We’ve been walking for at least an hour now and it’s still quiet early. I would say about eight or nine-ish by the light gray of the sky. The snow is practically neon against the background of the highway, but the moment it hits the ground, it just turns gray like everything else.

We’re near some wooded area. On both sides of the road are woods that are quite dense. It would be good if we needed to leave the road…

I remember a time, a few years ago, when our dad would take us to the woods near our house and we would go swimming in the lake there. Hope was about five and I was eight. We would start playing ‘Marco Polo’ and tag and other water games.

Once, we went down there and we were having fun as usual. That’s when our dad asked us if we wanted to fly. Hope immediately said yes and he took her by the waist and threw her as hard as he could into the air. She came down screaming and they did that, like, ten times before it was finally my turn. He grabbed me by the waist and threw me up with all his might. Then I was in the air. Everything was happening so fast that I got butterflies in my stomach. But when I started falling, I got so scared that he wouldn’t catch me and I started screaming my head off.

Then I fell into his arms and started laughing like crazy. We did this a couple more times and each time I felt the same exact way. After, like, the seventh time, the sun started to set and we headed home. We took showers, ate dinner, and went to bed, hoping we would do it again tomorrow. But that was the last time I ever saw him happy.

* * *

I was in the middle of day dreaming when we heard the noise. A loud, truck-like sound that was pretty close by. James tightens his grip on my hand.

“Jenny,” he says in a frightened voice. “I’m scared.”

“Yeah, I know,” I reply. I turn towards the rest of my family. “Guys, follow me!” I put james on my shoulders and start sprinting as fast as I can into the woods, trying not to drop him. My mother and Hope start racing right after me. We hear another honk from the truck. After about five minutes, I had to stop, so I do and take James off of my shoulders. Hope and mother stop too. I stand there panting looking at them. Then I look around us. Nothing but trees and gray snow. No sight of the road.

That was a little too close, I think to myself. I close my eyes, take a deep breath then open them again.

"How about we make camp here tonight?" I finally say, breaking the silence that engulfs us.

"All right," Mom says. She puts her backpack on the snow and starts rummaging through it and pulls out a folded blue tarp. she unfolds it and puts it on the ground on top of the ashy snow. we sit down on the tarp. Describe blue turns a dark shade of gray.

"I’m cold," James complains, shivering very violently. His teeth are chattering with the cold.

"I’m sorry James, but we can’t make a fire tonight." I say in a soothing voice. "It’s too wet right now." He’s shivering as if he took a shower in Alaska then stepped outside.

Wait, I think to myself, does Alaska even exist anymore? Never mind. Not like it matters at this point in time. It probably doesn’t anymore but whatever.

I take out the lamp we made from a beer bottle and let it literally as soon as the sky darkens. It’s the only source of light that we have against the endless void of darkness that surrounds us. James pulls out his blanket and wraps it around himself and so does Hope. Mom gets out two cans of beef stew and the two foldable cups she pours out half of each can in each cup and hands them to Hope and James then a can to me. We eat our dinner cold and in silence.

James and hope lie down covered with their blankets when they finish. my mom takes out her blanket and does the same. And then I take mine, lie down and fall asleep.

* * *

I wake up early like usual with the sky a very light Shade of Grey. I said, rub my eyes and Ian. I go through my backpack and find my water bottle and take a few sips. When I’m done I put it back in the bag, zip it up, and slide it away from me. I look over to hope and mother. Then I look where James was sleeping… but he isn’t there. My pulse starts to race and I wake up my mother.

“Mom! Mom!” I say a little too loudly. “James is missing!” Hope wakes up because of how loud I am.

“What?!” she exclaims, panic rising in her voice. She sits up. “What do you mean ‘missing?'"

“I just woke up and he was gone.” She looks toward the spot where he was supposed to be sleeping. She throws off her blanket and gets up. She starts running and Hope and I follow her.

“James!” She cries. “James!”

“Mom?!” He yells back, his voice a little distant. She starts sprinting in the direction of his voice.

It doesn’t take long to find him, and when we do, my mother falls down on her knees and hugs him very tightly. “You can’t do that,” she scolds him. “You can’t do that to us, okay? You almost gave me and your sisters a heart attack.'’ She’s crying now and so is he, and just for a moment, time seems to stand still, keeping us in the same position for what feels like forever.

Part III: Dreams

When we got back to the road, we started walking again. Silent. It was enough to hear your own heart beating in your chest. It was enough to kill.

James, of course, broke the silence. “Mommy, I’m hungry,” he says.

“We all are, honey,” she replies, “but we can’t stop right now, we practically lost a whole day of walking yesterday.” It fell silent again and we continued walking.

* * *

It was dark by the time we found the house. It wasn’t that big, more like a cottage, but it still provided shelter. As we went into the kitchen, I saw a sign on the wall. Grace happens here. Another says faith is where the healing begins.

That’s funny. There’s no grace in this forsaken world. There is no faith in this godless era. It’s funny, now that you think about it, how important religion was to everybody. Everyone always thought that their god was going to save them at the end of the world. That they would go to heaven while the rest of us went to hell only because we didn’t believe in that religion. Well, here we are, sweetie, the end of the world and nobody’s saved. Nobody.

And the fact is that religion started all of this. It started when people in Asia started thinking that Islam was the best and only religion, that’s when they started bombing everywhere if the people didn’t convert to islam. Then the U.S. started getting deeper and deeper into nuclear war with the other countries of the world, which led to this. I, on the other hand, don’t care too much about this, for I was— and still am— an atheist. To me, there was no god in the first place. I believe that humans evolved from apes and that Jesus and Buddha were just human. They didn’t have any magical powers or anything like that. They were simply human. Nothing more, nothing less.

My mother hands me a can. I look inside and see that it’s one of my favorite meals— beef stew. She hands the cups to James and Hope, then takes a can for herself, we eat in silence then go to sleep.

* * *

That night I dreamt about Dad. I dreamt about us going to a carnival. Everything was so bright and colorful, it would blind you if you looked too long. He was playing one of those ring toss games where the worst prize you could get was a regular-sized teddy bear. I had about five of those teddy bears in my arms when my dad finally got the best prize there was: a giant purple unicorn plushie. But as he handed it to me, there was a woman screaming. Then I saw a bullet go through the side of my dad’s head. As soon as he hit the ground, the world went colorless. Everything was a shade of black or gray. Then the stuffed animals in my arms turned to ashes and I threw them on the ground. I fell on my knees next to him, telling him to wake up. Tears were cascading from my eyes.

“Wake up,” I whispered for the last time.

* * *

I wake up in the middle of the night, bawling my eyes out. I can’t fall back asleep, so I just lay awake. It is so dark that I would be able to see my hand in front of my face if I tried. And, if I could see well enough, took out the beer bottle lamp and lit it, my mother would be furious with me for wasting the oil.

So I’m just laying there, staring at the ceiling, just thinking random thoughts, though i’m mostly wondering about what’s going to happen to us. To Mom and James and Hope.

Mom won’t be here forever, and I don’t think I can take her place when she’s gone. And if I could, I’ll never be able to excel at it the way she does. She makes it seem so effortless, and, to be honest, I don’t know how she does it. How is a single mother able to take care of three kids during the end of the world? How, while you’re slowly dying, bare the fact that your kids are, too? How? Just, how?

I look around me, a few tears forming a steady stream on my cheeks. It’s lighter now. I throw my blanket off of me and get up to go look through the window above the kitchen sink. The sky is light gray. It kind of looks like it’s going to snowing soon.

I hear movement from behind me, so I turn around to see what it is. I see James sitting up from where he was sleeping.

“Jenny,” he says, being a little too loud.

“Sh, James,” I whisper to him. “You have to be quiet. Mommy and Hope are still sleeping.” I walk over and sit down next to him.

“Jenny,” he says again, softer this time.

“Yes?”

“I’m scared.”

“Why?”

“Because I had a bad dream.”

“What was it about?”

He told me that his dream was about him and Dad in forest. They were walking along this path when Dad suddenly disappeared.

“And I kept looking and looking but I couldn’t find him,” James says. “Then I saw someone lying down on the path and I ran to it. But when I got there…”

“What happened next?” I try to say in a calming voice.

“It…it was Dad,” he says, his voice quivering. A single tear runs down his cheek. “It was him…but he was dead.”

I pull him closer into a loose but comforting hug. “We’ll, at least you didn’t have a good dream. Good dreams mean that you’re dying.”

"I know." He continues crying and I put him on my lap and hug him.

"Shh. It'll be alright." I say, lying to both him and myself. Nothing will be alright ever again. Nothing will be the same.