Tales From Avator
The End, The Coming, and The Wait
The End, page 1
He stands silent on the road, his silhouette blurred from the heat rising off the asphalt. From the town names on the last Interstate sign he's seen, he must have walked over three hundred and fifty miles. He looks once more to the sky breathing in deep the warm, dry sootless air.
"So much to do and so little time," he mumbles to himself lowering his head into his hands. "Everyone is dead. No one could have survived. But how is it that I am still here? Why must I witness this after all that has happened? They told me I'm insane. Who am I?" he cries out as he continues following Interstate 35. The abandoned strip ahead of him vanishes as memories flood his mind.
Barren walls. The smell of sickness. "We have finished our evaluations and feel it is for your better interests that you stay with us at this time. Your disability rating has been increased to 100 percent effective August 7, 2012. We have found active manifestations to such extent as to produce total social and industrial inadaptability. An evaluation of 100 percent is also warranted for continuous hospital care of six months or longer." The doctor paused, inspecting his crisp clean notes held strangled against his clipboard. "Your bleeding is a particular concern. We will be scheduling you for some tests tomorrow. Now if you will please follow Dennis, my assistant, he will take you to ward 1L, where there will be a room waiting for you with your belongings." A clean, crisp, room. A clean, crisp, strangling room, he had thought. He had been right.
"Should've run then," he says aloud. A sign approaches. Kansas City 81 miles. "Was it really two years I had spent in that VA hellhole?" he mumbles to himself.
But according to the newspaper he had found outside of Minneapolis, it had been two years. It was difficult to piece together what had really occurred. The war he knew would come finally had. He had been locked up in his room when Fort Snelling was bombed. How he had managed to crawl out of the rubble was still a mystery to him. Claustrophobia had full control of him when the building collapsed. His skin had been black and charred.
Then, over a week ago, his skin cracked and blew away like dried mud. "Why wouldn't they listen to me? I tried so hard to explain what I had found. I could have saved them." He looks around at the wasteland surrounding him. All gone. The cities destroyed. "I could have saved you!" he screams at the emptiness. The land was now poisoned with the aftermath of the vomit of man. But the Earth continued with the life left to her. In the evenings coyotes and wolves prowled the plains, calling out to each other, making claims to the towns and villages. Massive crows, bloated on death, flew through the red skies. They never came near to him as he walked, seeming nothing more than shadows crossing distant skies.
