For Mike the only thing that mattered was that he would get the medicine home. Ellis, his two year old, had been fighting a nasty cough for weeks now. Yetserday he took a downturn and had been asleep every since. His wife Allana had brewed every home remedy she could think of but nothing was working. So Mike set out right away, kissing Allana on the forehead, whispering “Don’t Worry” and he headed out into the worst blizzard he could remember. Usually he wouldn’t dare go out into the elements like this and never to the destination he was headed to. You did not do business with The Earls unless you had to. So after three long hours of walking, when he reached the iron gates and the spotlights fell upon him in the glistening snow, he raised both arms, shivering from the cold and fright of what came next. Mike closed his eyes briefly, thought of Ellis, took a deep breath and shouted above the winter,
“I need medicine for my son. I seek an audience with the Earls.”
Time passed very slowly. No response came immediately but the bright lights trained on him. He was about to ask again when he heard the latches of the gates open. A small part of him wished they hadn’t.

In the left side of the building the sick lay, coughing, crying, sleeping away into morphine bliss.
On the right side of the building children played with old ratty soccer balls some barley keeping a circular shape, laughing, crying, sleeping away into mothers arms.
In the center the people lived lives, working the small wheels of this factory home, sweating, crying, sleeping away into fatigue dreams.
In the dreams they wished their elders a simple peace.
In the dreams they wished their children a better life.
In the dreams they wished for the next day.
Outside the factory home nature was slowly returning, the young deer mother leading their children into the field, sensing, alert and sleeping away the daytime hours.
Inside the river a few clicks west the fish had begun to swim again, fighting against the current and the pollution.
The sun went up, the sun went down, circling, heating, sleeping away into the moonlight.
Circling, over and over again.

After Part 21
Candle and Bertie sat on the bench in Rust park watching the boy throw the ball. Over and over he rolled his arm back reaching for some internal strength and over and over he threw it as fast as he could into the brick wall. If he noticed them he did not acknowledge, content in his repetition and practice.
“What do you think he is trying to accomplish?” Bertie asked Candle whose eyes never left the young man.
“I think he is trying to get better.” Candle’s eyes were intent on the kid, watching the motion with wonder, watching as his arms moved in motion with precise dedication.
“How long we going to sit here Candle?” Bertie had seen enough, but she knew her sister was slightly infactuated with the ball boy.
“Long enough” Candle looked to her sister. “I admit he has my attention,”
“The same way Robbie did last year?” Bertie teased punching her sisters arm.
Candle chuckled at that. Oh Robbie. He was three hovels down from them. And yes for a summer Candle made sure she would happen to be outside when his shift came home. A passing hello, sometimes a conversation about the weather. It was a nice break from daily life, and a dream. That all ended when Robbie got promoted to a better place to live. She didn’t get to say goodbye as the company van came and grabbed all his belongings. She wasn’t exactly heartbroken then as it was never love or some other nonsense, but her feelings still got hurt.
“No. Robbie had better hair.”
Bertie smiled at her sister, grabbed her hand as they had done many times in their life together. Two sisters living, sometimes with fantasies of boys their age.
“Come on Candle, lets go home. This kid will throw for hours more.”
Candle smiled at that, nodded, and squeezed her sisters hand.
“Just a few more pitches.”

Après la partie 20

“Bonjour. Bonjour. Y a-t-il quelqu’un ?”

 Chaque jour depuis vingt ans, au sommet de la Tour Eiffel, Juliette envoyait le signal. Chaque jour, elle n’obtenait aucune réponse. La France était vide, complètement déserte. Mais elle appréciait la vue. Et parfois, elle descendait au Louvre pour admirer l’art qui n’avait pas été pillé pendant la chute. Elle aurait souhaité qu’une boulangerie soit encore ouverte pour un ou deux pains. Les hivers étaient les plus difficiles car il faisait froid dans la tour.

 Elle n’avait reçu sa mission de personne, mais quelqu’un devait envoyer un signal, faire savoir au monde qu’il restait au moins quelqu’un à Paris. Elle se demandait souvent si elle était la seule à être restée. Tant de gens avaient fui le pays au début et les autres étaient morts lentement au fil des ans de la maladie des radiations. Pour une raison ou une autre, Juliette avait survécu, regardant son dernier ami Pierre succomber dans une mare de son propre sang il y a quelques années. Après ce jour-là, elle a pensé à se jeter dans la Seine, mais elle savait que l’eau brûlerait jusqu’à sa mort. Alors elle grimpa dans sa tour et envoya ses messages, se demandant si quelqu’un d’autre était encore là-bas.

After Part 19

For Oleksander the road home seemed like a distant taste of his mothers stale homemade bread. He could hear the birds chirping and the sounds of engines running over the hills from the village below. Now he saw only white. The cold harsh Siberia winter that never ends. He and the guards of the north sat in this small fortress of stone here at the edge of the world, guardians of the seeds of the past, in hopes that one day some would have fertile earth to replant them in.
He didn’t volunteer for this job, but it was this or starve to death in the wastelands of what was once Russia. And the food here was edible helicoptered in monthly by the remaining governments of the world. It made him wonder what would happen to all of them here when those governments collapse. Luckily they had developed there own little society here some even growing tomatoes and other small vegetables.
There was a small still set up for the worst moonshine you ever tasted but it did the job on the most lonely of nights.
Oleksander knew that it was probably mostly poision but he drank it anyway and sang songs late into the night. Songs without meaning and some which usually led to fighting of old patriots holding onto some strange obsession with the Soviet Union.
Most days were slow and unsubstational but occasionally someone would come to the outer wall begging to be let in. They would be turned away and if persistent shot from one of the towers. The snipers rotated in 6 hour shifts, and they were all to eager to do something when needed.
Oleksander had never seen inside the vault they were guarding, none of his rank had, but the few scientists who lived there would check on the species daily and sometimes he would hear them speak of disease and blight or progress with an experiment. None of it made any sense to him. He just saw white outside, and meals and bad moonshine to look forward to.
Sometimes when the food delivery came he wished just once, it would include some of his mothers homemade stale bread. But it was mostly cans raided from fallen Norway, full of delicacies he’d rather throw back into the ocean. Then the message came through the usually dormant radio one evening, past midnight.
There would be a visitor coming soon, a scientist, who believed conditions in the southern sahara could sustain life. The news came with it that a security detail would be needed to leave with the scientist.  Oleksander knew no matter what he needed to be on the detail leaving with those specimens and that scientist. He knew it was his only chance in this life to possibly see something other than white snow and the inside of this mansion for dead things. He had forty eight hours to make his plan a reality.

“If you’ve ever been on a river in the Everglades late at night and have a flashlight shine it on the shoreline, any reflection of glass is quite possibly crocodile eyes reflecting back at you. They survived when the dinosaurs didn’t, and they seem to be thriving when humanity is faltering.”
He said it matter of fact but to June, who didn’t know where the Everglades were and had never seen a Crocodile, Alligator , or any other large reptile for that matter she heard the words with syrup and imagination.
“Do they swim fast daddy?”
He smiled and shook her. “So fast baby girl”. His hands making a snatching motion as he snapped at her arms.
The nights were filled with these stories, his attempt at some small form of education. They would laugh, they would talk about places far far away, and sometimes memories so distant he would struggle to remember the details. These nights would come after long hard days on the road searching for food, avoiding other humans. Not safe to trust anyone but Kin he would tell June again and again but the girl only knew him, and he intended to keep it that way. He did his best to protect her, and to try to leave her with enough survival skills to make it in the world when he was gone. But the days came hard, and these small nights of respite only paused the terror of what life had become for a brief moment.
To June she was just on the road with her father. Life wasn’t hard to her, it was just life. She didn’t hold any nostalgia for a world she never knew, but she still loved hearing about it. She didn’t remember her mother at all, and her father never spoke about her. But she knew where he kept her picture, in the left corner pocket on his brown leather jacket. Sometimes she’d sneak a look at the picture once her father had fallen asleep.
If the moonlight hit the fading celluoid just right, the picture would reflect almost metallic like, her mother staring back at her.

With crocodile eyes.

Every breath he took taunted him. Something so simple, so painful to continue these days. When he was younger he could run for miles. In the flimsy district school outside Lyon no one dared race him. Now his legs were brittle. He peered out the smoky window onto an empty street below. It looked cold outside, and really he had nowhere to be. He shuffled his way to the cabinet where his cans were stored. A few more beans left and a single tomato soup. They would have to do, he thought as he emptied the cans into a pot and layed it on his last bunsen burner. He hummed a song from his childhood in his stirring of his gobble dy gook dinner. When done he transferred the contents into a thermos mug. He took a look at the arsenic on the highest shelf. His eyes stared at the bottle for way too long, it’s skull warning label mocking him. Would be easier then this life to just check out wouldnt’ it?
Finally he looked away from the tempting death and grabbed his thermos. He went back to the other room and grabbed his latest find, a novel by Octavia Butler, Bloodchild. Turning the pages till he found his spot he imagined his way away into the book and sipped on his soup. The arsenic could wait till he finished the story at least.

Glitter and sparkles, the ground looked like a roller rink of silver streamers left over from a high school prom. The snake had developed camouflage genetics decades before but never quite mastered this bright burnt spoon colour. It was anti nature, against anything the snake should have to live in. As it was it morphed its skin into a dull grey. Better then the brown field mouse it was hunting not far away. Mice had not adapted to this fresh hell but they scavenged well and yes there was burnt meat everywhere.
The snake slithered closer, and the mouses heart grew rapid sensing danger but unaware from which direction. He was the last of his clan, most gone to predators, some to radiation remnants, and a few to just giving up the will to live.
The snake slithered closer but the ground changed terrain and it crossed a small twig that snapped. The small brown field mouse bolted in the opposite direction to live another hour, perhaps even a day. And the snake hissed at the twig, out of hunger, and disappointment. Its ancestors looked on it from the celestial plane laughing at this hideous colored thing, that couldn’t even capture a poor brown mouse.

The sound of the wind in her ears spoke of violence. Violence perpretrated by animals just katowing to their normal survivalistic nature. She tried to close out the sounds as she stood on the edge of the ravine, her hair blowing in rhythm with each gust.
Steady she must be now, steady in her resolve. She knew later the small transport would come below. She knew exactly the timing of her shot, and if it was not precise, she knew that it would most likely be her last heist. She took a deep steadying breath. A deer walked across the ravine, it’s ears not picking up her breathing. She looked at the animal, it’s brown hide would be valuable come winter. But in her mind she had bigger fish to fry.
She could hear the engine coming from the distance, a loud obnoxious sound , when surrounded by all this beauty. She took off her large pack, retrieving a long serrated dagger from within. She knelt at the edge of the ravine and waited for the finishing blow. 

She had to be precise.

In a way the language was as blurred as the reconnaissance, a limerick instead of a straight line. She loved him once, this was a fact she wouldnt deny. But she did not love him anymore. It was hard to see how she did the first time, under a maple tree, his hands rubbing the skin on the top of her head as she rested on his chest. Every breath he took was jagged by smoke and a small case of asthma undiagnosed and undisclosed.
The clouds parted into many small shapes, each a dream, a vision of somewhere else. The type of love that only happens with youth, rottened by years of corruptions and small glances.
In a way the language was a thing of the past. A communication style no one ever knew how to speak.
She loved him once, but she did not love him anymore.
And that fact was lost on no one, not even the poor man with the undiagnosed and certainly undisclosed case of asthma.
He smoked his cigarette and watched her be taken away by the morality police. He might have smiled, if she hadn’t just broken his heart.