The Wanderer

Snow glistened upon the Wanderer’s cheek. Her breath drifted away in fat, moist clouds. The moonlight, though dimmed through her goggles, lit the world in a ghostly pale shade, a rare occurrence since the Hour. The Hour, Zero Hour, The Moment the Earth Ceased. All were names for the same thing: the time, hour minute, second , that the button was pushed. There were rumors of who started it. Russia, China, Iran, North Korea. An old drunkard at the last trading town (that was back in August; it was November now) had been shouting in his booze-fueled ramblings that it was the result of a secret war, a war between the world’s gods, Allah, Yahweh, Shiva, and all the rest, for supreme control of the universe. Nobody really cared who or what it was and soon someone started to argue with the old man. The Wanderer left after the first table shattered.

Now she walked through the mountain valley, longing for the night air to chill her bare face. But she couldn’t, not here. No, here, in this bleak pit in the earth, the air was so drastically poisoned with radiation that a mere half minute would kill like a dose of gaseous cyanide. Her mask was a second immune system. Right now, it was the very essence of her life.

Suicide, long ago the Wanderer had decided, would be too simple. No, instead the Wanderer would fight this hostile new land until her last breath, the last beat of her heart, until every last part of her body ceased function, down to moving her little toe.
She owed him that much. In his final, darkest hour, she had failed him. He had told her to just give it to them, that she couldn’t bargain, they were raiders. But she was selfish. She refused; hurling insults like the world was ending again. And then, for him and her heart, it did. The revolver sent a gristly, shattering crack through the woods. He collapsed, grasping his sternum. Blood flowed like the waters of the Styx. He fell to his knees, a voiceless scream of pain molded on his face for eternity. Then he silently slipped into the afterlife. The Wanderer had hunted them each, killing each as they had killed. Five shots, five kills. Then the memory began to fade…

She awoke with a sudden jolt. Thoughts of death and mayhem hung in the air around her as she attempted to shake the dream. Six people dead over a mere bottle of shampoo. Something they all once took for granted was now an object of idolization. She had seen full-blown shootouts over a single chicken. That didn’t matter now. Where she was going, nobody fought over food. There were rumors that to the North there was a sanctuary, a place untouched by nuclear destruction. She could only hope it existed.

Trekking out of the mountains, the Wanderer was returned to from the anomaly of the mountain sky to the dismal gray-tan that the world now knew. A sign on the side of the highway announced a town miles ahead. Most likely it was long abandoned, judging by the sign, but something might be scavengable in the rubble. The highways were dangerous, but it was a necessary risk. She began the long walk to the town, wary of her fate.