December

Issue 51

We stand on the edge of the last place on earth, the children pressed around us, their eyes squinting against the too-bright sun. They stare at the vast sky, heads back, mouths agape, hungry hatchlings waiting for mothers to feed them.

But they have no mothers. They are remnants, a post-apocalyptic Noah's Ark.

One of them pushes his face against my stomach, muffling his voice. "I want to go home."

My own voice sounds thick, hoarse. "So do I, Julio."

Sister Lucia looks at me across the children's heads. Before the world ended she had been the orphanage nurse, and I the doctor. Although we share callings, we do not share belief. She has said nothing to me of faith since entering the caves; surely she realizes there is no God.

I turn from her quiet gaze. How can there be a God after all this?

"Where are the trees?" Julio's brother Alejandro turns in slow circles, shading his eyes. "Where is the grass?"

Five-year-old Hoshi points to the twisted metal spikes spearing the sky.

"That's the school." Alejandro lifts her to his shoulders. He kicks the cracked earth then looks at me. "Can we plant anything?"

"No seeds."

"Dr. Chris?" Someone tugs on the back of my once-white lab coat, now gray-brown and patched.

Julio still clings to me, his thin arms tight around my waist. I crane my head to see another dirty face squinting up at me. "Kitchi, what happened?"

"Molly said we're all gonna die. I said you wouldn't let that happen. Then she said everything was poison, and there wasn't nothing you could do about it. So I hit her."

"Looks like she hit back."

"Are we gonna die?"

I can lie. I can soothe his fears and say that we are all going to live, but children are canny. In truth, we will soon succumb to chemical exposure or starvation. Death will be welcome.

"We're looking for food, Kitchi. Green things."

Tears make muddy tracks down his cheeks. "But we'll all be together, right?"

I touch his hair. Once again, my gaze meets Sister Lucia's.

Alejandro says, "Maybe some of us can form a couple of groups. Go looking for plants."

"Or shade." Kitchi sighs.

"We can go back to the caves for that, stupid," says Julio.

Hoshi sticks her thumb in her mouth. "Hungry."

"Well, Doc?" Alejandro prompts.

I pry Julio's arms from around me, take his hand and Kitchi's. "We'll all go." Then, more to avoid memories than to protect the children, I add, "There's no need to go near the school. The ground there is still black from fires."

"If we find anything, how will we know it's safe?"

Sister Lucia, in her quiet voice, shields me from answering the impossible. She organizes the children, putting older with younger until everyone holds someone's hand, and we fan out across the scorched landscape, seeking the tiniest glimmer of green. What was once a verdant park with tree-shaded paths and a hedge-bordered playground is now a wasteland.

I don't know the proper composition of the weapons that wreaked such disaster, nor do I fully understand the events that led to their use. The media had been full of stories and counter-stories until the whole world seemed a confusion of lies. How did one choose whom to believe?

What does it matter now? There is no undoing it.

Are there other survivors? Do they, too, seek signs of life? Will we meet them, wandering between the coasts like two halves of a human continental railroad?