Birdsong symbolized a certain peace and comfort. Gusts pressed the windowpane against its cracked frame and made it whistle. An empty can and a spoon licked clean. He took a sip out of his water canteen and woke up the girl who had been dreaming deeply, running through meadows of daffydowndillys and catmints in summertime.
"Hey," he said with a smile.
"Hey.” She rubbed her sleepy eyes. “Where's Reo?"
"Gone."
“Is something stolen?”
“I don’t think so.”
She sighed; he checked their ragged map: in it were circled all the nearby nuclear power plants with two circles around each plant, one in red about ten miles and the other in yellow about fifty miles. They grabbed their things and collected their thoughts and set out yet again.
Sam, resembling more a camel than a man, strode like a beast with saddlebags of a thousand things dangling from his rear. He trundled a large mountain backpack upon which nestled a rolled-up sleeping bag, while a sleeping mat and a mess-tin dangled under. The bag’s side pockets carried plastic water bottles and a wood axe. To his left strapped a collapsible fishing rod and to his right his hand-fashioned bow and arrows and a battery lantern. His favorite cloak had seen better days: its bottom filthy with mud stains and other things. Out of the pavement cracks glistened dewy rebellious grasses like little spears of nature waging war against man-made things. Smoke from the church almost ceased. The sky gloomed amber like an eternal sunset as pigeons cooed from the nearby buildings' riven windows, the walls alow gathering bird goop. Packs of deer curiously roamed the asphalts and lawns of the small town as casually as any person would a park.
An ominous feeling. It's too early for that, he thought. Behind a half-collapsed masonry fence he marked what looked like half of a head from the nose up, the eyes of which intently observed their every step. He stopped and took a second to focus his eyes as if he imagined things.
"What’s wrong?" she asked.
The half-head lowered behind the red fence and came crawling out a woman on all fours in a dirty white nightgown, her smile and missing teeth flashing through the black curtains of hair. Like a nightmare she approached them swiftly, murmuring something as she did; his revolver already pointed at her through his pocket.
"Hey! Stop!" he yelled; Nura took a step behind him, clutching his arm while peeking with her right eye.
As the woman approached her murmurings became clear.
"A light for a night. A light for a night," she repeated incessantly. Her frizzy hair looked infested with something and her palms and bare feet left a trail of blood behind them. A pungent odor of rotting bowels pervaded as she crawled closer.
"Stop or I will shoot!" he yelled again as he cocked his revolver; the woman stopped and fell quiet, still grinning and now moving her pate like a bewildered dog. The brick fence lay around a small two-storey house from which rushed out a man in a bathrobe and slippers.
"Don't shoot! Stop! She's sick!" he yelled. The man's voice quaked with fear as he rushed to the crawling woman and put her left arm around his neck gently and grabbed her side with his right arm.
"Dear, dear, hush now. Let's go inside,” he said as they walked back to the house.
“A light for a night. A light for a night.” Her voice quietened as they walked farther; Sam uncocked his revolver.
"It's okay," he murmured to her who stood still with fear in her eyne. They continued east.
"What did she mean, a light for a night?" she asked.
"She must have set the church on fire."
As they neared the edge of town they marked two ropes with nooses tied to an oak's branch swaying in the wind. In rushed etchings on the bark lay a note barely readable and aged:
"We're tired of being afraid
If anyone reads this, may God bless you
If he doesn't, they will take you too
Please bury our remains"
"Must've taken a long time to write all that," he spoke as if undeterred by the engravings, but in his heart—pain; a tear fell from her cheek. There's nothing to bury, she thought.
They continued to Ashtown. Behind them ropes swayed and the oak rustled in the breeze as if weeping. Large pines and maples covered the barren stretch of road upon which they trod, their rucksacks and gear clattering with each step. A howling in the distance: his hand around the handgun in reflex.
She often asked questions about his past, about the way of the eld world, about governments and politics, jobs and public transport, large buildings of learning, hospitals—like fairytales to her, much like the fairytales parents had read to their brood before bedtime.
“Why did people war with each other?” she asked as she read yet another book on their walk.
“I don’t know, kiddo. Sometimes old men got bored and wanted more land, more things. Sometimes old men wanted to come and kill you for no good reason. Kill what you love, who you love.”
“But they never went themselves?”
“No reason to. They were good at talking others into doing their killing. And they were great at conjuring enemies out of anyone. From thin air. Like wizards.”
“Like Voldemort.”
“Yeah, like Voldemort. But even he who shall not be named had more guts.”
“Did we ever stop fighting?”
“Not really.”
“Why?”
“Perhaps it’s in our nature. Maybe why the other human species went extinct is because we killed them off. Time came when we could kill us off too, with a few bombs that we really had no business messing with.”
“The nukes.”
“Yeah. Time came when our planet almost took revenge on us too, for waging war with it.”
“How did we war with it?”
“By poisoning it. Killing everything that lived on it. Killing each other.”
The winds kept howling and boughs of sweetgums and maples swayed and cracked all around them. Starlings sang their sweet tunes as if narrating nearby life and its happenings. She much enjoyed the peaceful mornings and noons where she could almost forget what awaited them at nightfall. He heard what sounded like leaves crunching under footfall in the nearby wood and stopped and looked over his shoulder.
"What is it?" she murmured, now also looking with him behind a thicket.
"It’s nothing," he replied with a doubt.
Sometimes it was hard to distinguish reality from imaginings, as if life itself a perpetual dream without beginning or end.
They approached a bend in the road where a gentle river washed by while fields of green danced in the breeze behind it.
"Wow," she exclaimed as she saw wild horses running in the meadows; he smiled.
He looked at her from time to time: the eyes of her like oceans and the face like an angel and so of light—as if inaureoled. If she’s not of Heaven then Heaven is not for me.
After some more walking they found a quiet place to rest their weary legs and backs. A short dirt trail split from the road under the shadows of tall maples and olden oaks and led to hand-carven cedar benches that sat like a sightseeing spot for the grassland. He opened a can of sliced pineapple; they slurped the juice and munched on the yellow slices. After playing some songs and lifting spirits on his guitalele they rose and walked and left behind the empty can for the many-legged crawlers of the earth. Before they could get back on the road a man approached from behind a tree. He donned a long dirty beard, with shoes used to the point his long fingernails protruded from their tips. It wasn't that hard to find good shoes, he thought. The man limp and stumbling. A liquor reek. The gaze of him set on her who was now yet again behind Sam.
"Hey, you okay there?" Sam asked with his hand on the gilded revolver in his pocket. A long silence. Birds and winds sing their songs.
"Food."
His awkward gaze never left Nura.
Silence again. Branches cracked and fell in the strong winds; Sam reached in his left pocket for something.
"Here."
He threw an apple at the man and he caught it and returned his gaze to the girl.
"Plenty of orchards thataway." Sam pointed westwards.
"What's your name, dear?" the man slurred with his crooked yellow teeth and pallid smile.
"Best get on your way now," Sam said stiffly.
"And who's talkin' to you?" he said as his smile blurred into a grimace.
"All right, bye now."
Sam grabbed her hand and they started walking past him; he lunged toward them, now holding a knife instead of an apple. In a split second Sam turned toward the man and aimed his handgun from inside his pocket and cocked it. Bang. A gunshot echoed through the wood as birds soared skyward hastily like fleas escaping a drowning dog; a smell of sulphur. Her ears ringed and Sam's pocket now bore a new hole and the man lay on the dirt trail gargling his last breaths through the crater in his throat spurting blood, his eyes goggled and hands grasping for something that wasn’t there. Sam picked the apple from the dirt, cleaned it with the sleeve of his jacket and put it in his pocket, all the while she stood motionless as the man struggled for his last breath. Only the wind spoke now.
Her face that of innumerable thoughts like artillery shells bombarding her skull. She watched the dead man lay there as Sam called her name as he sat crouched beside her with his hand on her shoulder. She looked at him and he seemed to talk but no sound came out. In her heart she knew that if not for him she would have died many times over. And yet no words could express her gratitude. But he knew. In her eyes the tears of thankfulness in countless languages welled up. A few tears fall but you are my hope for all. He took her hand and they trod toward the barren stretch of road.
It lay darker than they had left it. A calm breeze; distant white lilies and daisies to their left. The howling ceased. Perhaps the gunshot scared the hounds, he thought. Wind-swayed branches cracked. Wren-song. A river bubbling as it skips over smoothed rocks next to the road.
They spotted a lifeless barn to their left.
“That should do,” he muttered.
Near the barn lay flocks of large skeletons in a pasture. They hid in the tall grass. Weeds grew wildly around the barn and could hide many things. On the roof and sides crept kudzu. Middens of unknown origins. The mossy weatherboards sprung from the wall studs and rusty nails and creaked each time the winds picked up. Big enough to house a family of mammoths and dim enough for darkness to speak and speak it did. Echoes of disturbed laughter and the mockery of words spoken by him earlier reverberated through the rotted walls and cracks. "Hey... You okay…there? Hey. You okay…there?"
They clicked on their flashlights and went in and closed the heavy wooden doors behind them. Stale ricks and rotted planks. They collected some firewood outside and made their bedding of sleeping bags and ate the last of their apples as the rainfall trickled inside through the roof holes and cracked clapboards. A storm gathered. They found the sound of rain comforting; the crackle and smell of fine wood burning eased them.
She looked at the flames with brooding eyne; he tried to calm her.
"I had seen many monsters back when I was a cop. One of them killed his entire family. Two kids, the wife, the dog... And when I asked him why, he just smiled and said, 'The voices told me to do it.' This was before the world went to shit. Before the voices. What I'm trying to say, kiddo, nobody knows why they do what they do. They can define all the reasons: the devil made me do it, I'm evil, I hated them, they did this and that to me. But they can never say the real why. Why they are what they are. Why they do what they do. Only excuses. It's because there is no why. The same with me, kiddo. I can tell you an excuse for why I did what I did: it's ‘cause I love you. But do I know why?"
She welled up and hugged him tightly.
"It's ‘cause I'm amazing," she said while smiling through tears; he smiled with dewy eyes.
The sun spoke its last goodbyes and sank behind the edge of distant earth. As its light faded so too did the songs of nature. Owls and crickets and wolves fell quiet, grasshoppers and winged things hushed—only the winds dared to sing in the godforsaken night. The blackness crept upon them and met a roaring blaze.
Nights always felt darker than they should be. If you were to put your hand in front of your face in the dead of night, you wouldn't see a finger. The fire lit up a mere few steps around itself and then melded with the sable void as if looking at the sun through a telescope and seeing all the empty cosmos around it. Fake footsteps and knocks imbued the barn; soft whispers and cries called out for unknown peoples; he thought he heard mooing from where the skeletons lay.
The voices got as close as possible to the firelight and whenever it crackled and flickered they crept back to the dark like hungry mindless demons in the umbrage with no form or feature, waiting for the light to drown like sharks circling a stranded boat. If not for the flame, the night would take them and there would be no other tale to tell.