Remember?

"I remember when I was three, holding my little brother in the hospital. I'd never held a baby before. He's wrapped in a blue blanket, and I realize that I'm a big sister. That was special. I mean, I don't -really- remember. It's just a collage of images that flash in my head vaguely, but I know it's real."

The kids and I are all out walking to the top of Trash Mountain again, because Emmy won monopoly and got to choose what we did next. She likes to hit golf balls off the top of Trash Mountain, probably because she wants to copy me. It's really cute and sweet. There are nine of us, including me, and I'm the oldest, obviously. Emmy is 9. Derick and Toby are twins (Toby is a girl), and they're both 7. There are two boys named John, one 6 and one 10. Parker 12, Molly 13, and Orion 15, the second oldest.

Orion is the best golfer. He can hit it just as far as I can, and sort of straight too. Once he hit one of the weird dog-cat things way in the distance and killed it, and we all cheered.

I'm 27. We don't know the exact date, because we were hiding out for a while in a big freezer, but we still keep track of the days and seasons with a calendar that I drew up. It's probably accurate within a week. It's October in Atlanta and it's 87 degrees Fahrenheit. Trash mountain is basically the middle of the city where some of the bigger buildings went down. That golden roof from the capital building is near the top of the mountain, surrounded by ash and concrete.

I used to date a guy when I was 16, and I didn't even really like him. I'd never really dated anyone though, and he was pretty nice so we stayed together for over a year. He gave me a heart-shaped locket that I still wear, and for some reason, it's really special. I wear it every day. It reminds me of my little brother. One day I'll give it to Emmy, cause she's my favorite. I don't think the human race is going to go on unless there's someone else out there. There might be. But we have a lot of canned food at our little hideout, so I doubt we are going to go somewhere else anytime soon.

When we get to the top of the mountain, I give everyone a club from the one bag we brought that I stuffed with 9 irons. We have plenty of balls, and we can always get more at the mall. The younger ones get bored quickly, but they don't complain or Orion yells at them and then I yell at him, and they've basically learned not to let that happen anymore. We hit balls for an hour or so until sunset. It's really beautiful. The whole sky is violet and orange and there are beautiful clouds that look heavier, creamier than when I was little and everything was still here. That's the main reason why I come up here.

Sometimes, I can convince Orion to watch the kids, now that he's old enough to babysit. Then I like to come up here alone to scream and dance and cry. When I found them, Orion was 11, and the younger John was 2. It was right as everything started to happen.

It was louder than anything ever, and there was so much commotion, screaming, and panic, that my focus blocked most things out when I saw a bunch of kids in a playground at the back of a small church. I had just moved here, and I worked at an ice cream shop right around the corner. I grabbed the 2-year-old john and the 3-year-old Toby. Orion carried Derick. We all ran around the corner and into the ice cream shop, which was empty. I took them all into the big freezer in the back where we kept all the buckets.

It was cold as hell in there: Below zero degrees Fahrenheit, not Celsius. We all scrunched together for warmth, and I tried to calm them down by singing that "lalalalala" song that goes, "loovin' youu is easy cause you're beautiful..." I have no idea why, but it was in my head. The younger ones didn't know what was going on, not that I did either, but they were easier to calm down in a way. I opened a bucket of chocolate ice cream and let little John lick some off my finger. After a couple of hours, there were frozen tears on everyone's faces, including mine.

I realized we would die if we stayed at this temperature too long, and the fallout outside would kill us too for all I knew, so I took a leg off of one of the shelves and shoved it in the fan in the roof of the freezer. That stopped the cooling. We stayed there for as long as possible. It's hard to really know how long it was, because my phone and watch didn't work anymore. By the end, we were eating disgusting amounts of ice cream soup.

Then we came out, 8 sticky children and I, into a grey and brown world covered in ashes under an amber sky.

"I remember when I was three, holding my little brother in the hospital. I'd never held a baby before. He's wrapped in a blue blanket, and I realize that I'm a big sister. That was special. I mean, I don't -really- remember. It's just a collage of images that flash in my head vaguely, but I know it's real."