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INTO THE WASTELANDS
A Short Story
By ANDY COLEMAN
I remember those hundreds of pairs of eyes. The memories give me
chills to this day. The cold, blank expressions on the faces. They
didn't
even know what happened. By the time that they could have even noticed, it
was over. I was the sole attendee to my community's death; I was the
mortician.
It must have happened some time while
I was frozen, since I wasn't
affected. I'm not even completely sure what happened. All I know is
that
after I was thawed, the air seemed -- brittle? Yes. Brittle. A
smell much
like that of bleached bones and... what? I had been hit with sudden
realization that I was smelling the smell of very, very old death.
Seemingly ancient death.
Instinct seemed to kick in. I
wanted to run and never come back;
but first, my duties had to be completed. My crude little ceremony was
started. I dragged all twenty-nine of them in a procession of death, a
thirteen-foot path of sadness leading to the silo's morgue. As I wrapped
each one up, I said a small prayer of forgiveness, apologizing that I could
not do anything about the terrible tragedy that had occured in my home.
As I came upon my wife and children,
the last three, I lost it. I
stayed in the same place for a whole week. By the end, I was but a
fraction
of my former self. After I woke up, I finished the job of laying my family
to rest, sobbing crazily the whole way. Then, I began to pack. I ate
a
lunch and got together what little belongings I called mine. I also took a
pre-war weapon, a Thompson submachine gun. I remembered reading somewhere
that it was called "Tommy Gun" and was very popular with criminals in
the
decade of 1920. I decided that It would suit me well.
And so my journey began, starting with a climb up the exit ladder of the
disabled missile silo that I called my home and into The Wastelands. I
walked hundreds of miles for hundreds of days. I came upon a small
shantytown, Miles' Falls, unique for its landmark -- a waterfall composed of
a mixture of toxic sludge and water. The villagers there were kind and
gave
me shelter and food. I moved on and came across a group of people who
called themselves "highwaymen," since they were a Nomadic people who
only
lived on the pre-war highways. They begged me for food, saying that they
just won a war and their storegrounds were destroyed by their rival
highwayman tribe.
Many days passed, until I finally reached my ending location. The
Land of
the Lost Angels. Rumor had it that its nickname, Los Angeles, was the
actual name of a pre-war city in the area, but it was lost in the rubble of
the war. The people there accepted me with friendship and let me live
there. That was where I lived for years until today. It's time for
me to
move on -- back to The Wastelands.
-The Traveler, March 12, 0098 A.W. (After War)
