Chapter One
Last night I watched my brothers play,
The gentle and the reckless one,
In a field two yards away.
For half a century they were gone
Beyond the other side of care
To be among the peaceful dead.
Edwin Muir
Alexander
I remember my parents once telling me that I was a very depressing child; apparently I once asked my grandmother when the world was going to end so I'd have something to look forward to. Of course, she told me not to be silly and that I needn't worry about such things.
It's been a long time now since she was proved wrong, I still remember it well, or maybe I don't and my mind has filled in the blanks with random images that seem to make sense. Either way I dream of those images all too often. When you see your parents and friends die slowly all around you and you're dragged screaming from your home and told to run for your life, it leaves a scar. I have that funky gene that everyone said made me one of the lucky few to survive, ten years old and alone in what's left of the city that was once my home and they called me lucky. There and then, I would have given anything to die with my mother and father but I am here and this is now.
I've been heading north for over four months now. I left the shelter in the mountains when they started to run out of food, of course that wasn’t the only reason - I met someone in that cabin and what he told me gave me no choice but to head for the Canadian border. The guy called himself Styx, he was creepy and I didn’t enjoy having to be so close to him but he had information I needed and I wasn't about to let him go until I had it.
"Wind's getting up, we should lock everything down and get inside the truck." I started to bolt the steel panels over the windows and check the seals. Styx kept chopping wood for the furnace, it freaked me out the way he kept that axe with him all the time but it sure did come in handy if we were ever attacked so I wasn’t about to complain.
"Inside you say? Inside? Why would I want to go inside on such a lovely night?" Styx stood on top of the tree stump, spread his arms out as if to embrace the world. His figure outlined against a dark, yellowed sky. It started to rain.
"Come on man, stop messin' around and get in here." I could smell the air thickening, it burned my throat. Styx picked up the logs from the ground and hopped into the truck through the top hatch sealing it shut behind him. "I think that we could reach the wall by tomorrow, if we make good time." He shrugged, ignoring me and slumped himself into the back seat clutching his axe tightly.
I slumped down low into the passenger side of the truck, pulled a blanket over myself and lay my head back against the headrest to attempt sleep. My dreams these last few weeks had brought more and more thoughts of my brother, more vivid and disturbing than ever before. I try to concentrate on now and remind myself that I cannot be tired, tomorrow we reach a town and it’s important to be alert. I knew my dreams would be of him and I knew even more that those dreams are not real, but the words I heard from the man slumped in the back seat that made me leave my home and head north, they were real. If Travis is alive in that place, I’ll find him. Until then I need to concentrate on tomorrow.
The footsteps on the concrete behind me had stopped a short while ago but I didn’t look back and I didn’t intend to, I was pretty sure Styx didn’t make it but I had no desire to go back to find out either. I had what I needed. It was at least two miles before I stopped running not because I wanted to but because I just couldn’t keep going, my lungs burned and my legs felt like they were ready to snap. I collapsed onto the ground and looked up into the gray yellowed sky, the buildings either side of me looming at the edges of my vision as if trying to peer into my world from their uneventful roadside existence. The wise thing would have been to find cover, stay low and rest but I just lay there, my fingers wrapped loosely around the bloodied axe by my side and my shoulders resting on the tattered remains of my backpack which held what might just be the most important thing I will ever posses. And it fills my head with possibilities, dreams, ideas and worst of all, hopes.
Ah hour passes and sense overcomes exhaustion, I rise from the ground and take stock of my surroundings, I don’t know what this place had been called but it looked like it had always been this quiet – even before. I strapped my backpack tightly to my shoulders and waist and wiped the dried blood of the axe handle, the early afternoon heat was filling the air and there was little breeze to take the edge off which made me a little more relaxed. Stick to the hot zones they once told me, best advice I ever had. I wandered over to the nearest building and started through my usual searches, water, food, weapons. Time was when I used to look for other people too, I learned my lesson soon enough.
My search turned out to be worthwhile, I found my first canned food since we left the cabin in the mountains two weeks ago, Styx had taken twice what was fair and I threatened to cut his throat if he tried anything like that again. In some ways I’m glad that the freak was gone, even no company is better than a man with a death wish. I guess he got what he wanted in the end; I only wish he’d finished explaining where he got the photograph. All my information led me to the wall but after that? I’m lost again.
