The Berries

* Part One can be found here *

Adam woke me before the sun rose. We packed and set out, but moved slowly at first. We gradually picked up speed until the sweltering heat forced us into any shade we could find. As hot as it was Adam assured me that it would be hotter tomorrow. It was best to conserve some energy, he said. I kept my eyes closed, forcing one foot gingerly in front of the other behind him as he scaled the side of the mountain.

“When will we see the old world?”

“You’ll know,” he laughed.

He was right. At the crest of the mountain side I could see for miles in all directions. From here the vast wastelands we faced seemed subdued, its hostility reduced to the color of sand. I still felt spellbound by how much bigger the world was than I ever imagined.

As enormous as the world was, however, the cloud that dangled on the horizon was even more imposing. The sight of it made my skin prickly and the hairs on the back of my neck stand up. I wanted to look away but found myself hypnotized by the green and brown hue and the slow, turbulent forces that spewed dust from within.

Adam looked down at me then. “Are you ready?”

I was still in such awe and shock at what I was seeing, I could do little more than look back up at him, and then back at the cloud. He was quiet, letting me soak it all in.

“Where are we going?” I asked.

He extended a finger, pointing, and in the distance I saw our target, distinctly man made in the sea of earth. A stretch of road, littered with debris and abandoned vehicles, led the way to a cluster of what appeared from where I stood to be little gray cubes.

“And she needs us to go there, right?”

“The only thing I can think to do right now is go and look,” he sighed.

“Look for what?”

He shook his head. I caught the faintest hint of defeat. “I’ll know it when I see it.”

He made it seem like the choice to go on or not was mine. In my gut I knew Adam was holding back. Maybe he didn’t know what he sought, maybe he knew exactly, and either way he was hiding something from me. But it didn’t matter, really. The old world beckoned, as terrifying as it was the call was so loud it could not be ignored.

So I stepped forward, and Adam smiled as he followed me.

“Now the fun begins!” He laughed.

“The fun? We still have however far that–” I pointed to the tiny spot on the horizon where I had suddenly placed all my hopes and dreams.

“--Roughly 60 miles,” Adam interjected.

“And we have to walk?”

“Why do you doubt me? Walk all the way? No, of course not. I have a few tricks up my sleeves.”

“And what about the cloud?”

“What about it?”

“It must be dangerous,” I reasoned. I didn't know what it could do or even what it was. But there was a feeling in the pit of my stomach to go far, far away from it.

“Life is dangerous, Allen. We are given very little choice but to live. And look who is standing here on this mountain anyway, right now. It’s you, and me.” Adam raised a middle finger to the cloud. "The trick is to be unafraid and the angel of death will leave you alone."

The angel of death.

A phrase I had never heard before. I thought of the people who had died in our village, not many as there were so few of us to begin with.

There was old man David, who coughed every day for a year and then was found laying next to the stream one morning. There was Jerry, who went out to hunt and came back in the arms of the other men, ripped to shreds. And there was Juliette...

At one point in time, so long ago I could hardly remember, I was not the only child. On a warm summer day some of us followed the stream to the river it ran to. Her face was now blurry in my mind. I couldn't remember what her face looked like or her eyes. I couldn't even remember the color of her hair. But in my mind's eye I could still see her little hand above the water before she sunk below the surface. We never went to the river again.

All three were buried on the other side of the stream, under the largest tree. Our village rarely visited them there, opting instead to gaze from the other side of the stream to the spot where they would sleep forever. I saw the others do this every now and then, but I didn't understand why they were doing it and found I had no desire to do it myself.

I wondered then if Adam was right, that you must simply be unafraid. Perhaps he was wrong but we were safe because the angel of death was too busy back at our village, waiting on Irene to show her fear.

Adam abruptly pulled me from the thought, stopping to point at a massive steel tower guarding the side of the mountain.

“Behold, our first shortcut.”

Despite how small the tower was against the backdrop of the terrain, it was still a commanding presence, one that made me feel small and insignificant.

“I don’t understand,” I cried, darting to keep up with him as he took off again.

Adam started talking fast then. He told me of how these towers were used to transport one of mankind’s most important discoveries; electricity. In the old world he said, energy, in all of its forms, was the most influential and valuable thing on our planet.

The towers, he went on, were perfectly located for his purposes and strong enough to support as many men as you could possibly dangle from a cable.

“Well, why don’t we have electricity? Where did it go?”

“It didn’t go anywhere. I’m sure there’s people today who still manage to use it. Our village chooses to stay away from it, purposefully.”

“Why? If it’s one of mankind’s greatest discoveries?”

He pointed at the cloud, sending another wave of trepidation through me. “When you forget to respect things more powerful than you, bad things happen. And besides, we’re the ones living in the new world right? Perhaps it’s best if we leave some things behind.”

***

An hour later we stood under the tower. Up close it was monstrous, so tall I had to tilt my head back to see the top of it. Adam promptly revealed a cluster of metal contraptions, hooks and harnesses he had stashed under some debris nearby.

I looked up and followed a cable wrapped around and welded to a beam at the top of the tower. The cable descended down the mountain and met with another tower at the base. Adam took a bright yellow cloth and his binoculars from his duffel bag, tied the cloth tightly to a carabiner and released it down the line. He watched until it was at the bottom, nodding with approval.

Now he stood in front of me, demonstrating how to strap the suspiciously old harness around my legs and waist.

“You want to hang from a piece of metal hanging from another piece of metal? And fall? To the bottom of the mountain? This seems suicidal,” I protested.

“Only the stopping bit, that’s a little messy but we’ll be okay. You can walk down if you want, but it’s just as suicidal and it will take you much, much longer.”

I glanced down the side of the mountain again, dismayed. Narrow switchbacks and steep cliffs falling hundreds of feet awaited us below.

He explained how we would brake, which was basically to let gravity do the trick and to use an old brake pad and a pair of gloves as backup. He explained that we would have to unclip ourselves and fall a few feet to the ground once we stopped.

The snap of slack being tightened as he cinched me into the harness distracted me from the rest of his explanations. He led me 50 feet up a ladder, to the middle point of the tower. The offending cable stared down at me, and from where I stood the height of the tower alone made me nauseous, not to mention the ground much farther down.

“The second hardest part,” he said, throwing a trough shaped piece of metal over the cable and clipping himself to it with several large carabiners. “You’re gonna have to jump. If you’re not committed to the jump, you will hurt yourself. No doubt about it. So commit with your whole heart.”

By now he was clipping me in with another terrifying snap. My heart was pounding out of my chest and bile rose to the back of my throat as I took another step towards the ledge.

“Can we talk about this some more?”

“No. It’s always easier if you don’t let your brain get involved, and the longer we stand up here the more it will do just that.”

“Can you push me then?”

He shook his head, creeping up to the edge until his toes hung over the side. I felt like time was slowing. Adam grinned at me, gracefully stepped off the ledge, and fell.

The cables cracked and shook, but he was off, gliding at an incredible speed away from me.

“It’s now or never!” He shouted, falling farther away from me with every passing second.

I closed my eyes and stepped off the tower.

The cable shook and whipped forward, jostling Adam up and down and spinning me in violent half circles. I threw up everything I had eaten that morning and clung to the strap keeping me alive until my hands felt raw. When I felt like I might pass out I closed my eyes as hard as I could.

Adam was laughing, not at me but at himself. It was the most joyful laugh I had ever heard, growing louder and harder until he was cheering and whooping into the void.

“You’re missing out on everything! Open your eyes, Allen!”

I opened my eyes.

Adam threw his arms up and out, and at that moment he seemed like an actual bird, free to soar in the wind, of his own power and volition, the envy of all who looked up.

I felt grateful as I looked back at the treacherous path down the mountain, the long journey I escaped by jumping from heights my body was programmed to avoid. The wind whipped across my face and pinned my clothing to my body, making me want to curl into a ball. Instead I extended my arms out and for one moment, I felt like a bird too.

Adam was right, and now the old world rushed forward to meet me.

***

Somehow solid ground didn’t feel as good as I imagined it would after such an experience. Luckily Adam was ready to reveal his second shortcut.

“What I said earlier, about electricity, and energy,” he started, frantically pushing sand at the base of the tower aside.

He found what he was looking for, a rusted metal ring, and pulled a small trap door open. He descended into darkness, and his voice echoed off the concrete walls surrounding him as he went down.

“I have a soft spot for one thing.”

He emerged a few moments later pushing a dirt bike.

My heart skipped a beat and I heard a sound I had never made before come screeching from my throat. Unlike riding a cable to the bottom of a mountain, riding a motorbike was something I had dreamed of ever since I stumbled across photos of them in one of Adam’s books.

After a few failed starts, the engine roared to life. Adam twisted the gas throttle a little, causing the bike to roar and rumble.

“What are you waiting for?” He asked, gesturing to the back seat. “Let’s go.”

By dirt bike, even over the rough terrain, our destination was only an hour ride away. My arms wrapped tightly across Adam’s chest, and I shielded my face from the wind by laying my head on his back. For the first time on our journey I felt truly fearless.

***

Adam slowed the dirt bike gradually as we approached, giving me an opportunity to peer ahead. The buildings started to appear, little anomalies on the horizon at first. As we drew closer the buildings transformed into giants, looming over us, more formidable than any tree or mountain. Any plants hardy enough to survive here hunted down and clung to the walls of these empty buildings, slowly transforming whole city blocks into flower boxes.

I kept expecting the buildings to stop appearing and the desolate landscape to take their place. Instead the deeper we went into the heart of the city, the more buildings there were.

I felt like an insect under the shadows of a hundred shoes. And I started to feel something in my heart that I could not wrap my head around. The whispers of the past captivated me and left me both breathless and speachless.

Adam turned off the main road now, heading away from the tallest skyscrapers and into smaller pockets surrounding the heart of the city. I looked up at the buildings around us once more, wanting so badly for them to feel familiar to me, to spark a memory that I had forgotten. But the longer I looked for something, the more alien I started to feel.

That’s when I noticed a familiar name. It looked like the “ve A Lo” sign in front of our shack.

Save A Lot.

The dirt bike was already slowing down when I patted Adam’s shoulder excitedly, pointing towards the sign. He parked the dirt bike and we dismounted, walking through the empty parking lot and stopping in front of where the doors should have been. Shards of glass lay scattered across the ground, intertwined with the roots of plants that had broken through the pavement and become comfortable in front of the store.

I stared at the sign, and the parking lot, and what I could see inside for what felt like a very long time. Eventually my feet could not resist the temptation anymore, and I stepped inside.

There was still food on the shelves, though Adam seemed displeased with what was available, and there was still a few cash registers which had not been destroyed or pried open forcefully. I peaked inside and saw the green bills I had only ever seen in books.

In the far corner of the building a hole in the ceiling and the rotting fruits and vegetables from days long past had given life to a glorious garden, a garden that was so intertwined in itself that it would be impossible to separate the plants from each other. I suspected that there may even be a new fruit or vegetable growing within the bins of plants, one that perhaps no one else had seen or tried before, ever.

“Adam! It’s strawberries!” I cried, staring down at the little red berries with excitement.

Adam dismissed this discovery. He seemed somewhat distracted, and slipped through the swinging doors that led to the back rooms. I followed and watched as he searched drawers and closets. He found nothing that seemed to be valuable to him. That was, until we came to a dark room with a plaque on the wall next to the open door labelled "break room".

Inside tables and chairs, a wall of red lockers and a soda machine sat frozen in time. An assortment of posters and cork boards littered with yellowed papers clung helplessly to the walls.

Adam walked to a locker at the end of the room. On the door were four thick, dark letters.

ADAM

I watched him enter a combination into the lock and heard a distinct “click” as he opened the door. A few pictures were taped to the inside of the door, which he removed and examined closely before clearing other contents from within the locker. It seemed then that his mind was no longer in the room with me, but somewhere else, long ago. After raiding his locker he seemed content. He placed his hand on my shoulder and walked us away without a word.

After thoroughly searching every corner of the building for valuables and packing everything we did find into the duffle bag, we made camp inside of the Save A Lot. We raided the mutant garden growing in the produce area, cooked fresh vegetables over a fire and stuffed ourselves with fruit. I was more full than I had ever been. That night, now that he seemed safe to be bothered again, I decided to ask him questions.

“Uncle Adam?”

His eyebrow raised, only a little, but enough for me to notice. I could feel my resolve disappear into the night, floating away with the dust in the wind.

“Mmm,” he grunted. His eyes wandered to something else I couldn’t distinguish.

My original question stuck in my throat.

“I um...want to know what it was like, when you were my age? Or, you know.”

He shifted, completely unreadable to me. He waited so long to answer I believed he was not going to at all.

“There was a point in time when it was ok. Things were stable, at least, and easy in a way. But over time it got heavy, and one day... Well, I couldn't take it anymore.” He seemed to grapple with his next words. “That’s when I left.”

He gestured through the open front door, towards the mountain and our village. He continued prodding the coals with a short stick. I wondered if the flame had entranced him, compelling him to tell the truth. I felt like a thief, using a forged key to break into a castle.

“And then...” His voice started to break a little, as he held his hand out and swept it along the horizon. “This happened.”

I looked out to where he pointed. In the darkness I could only see outlines, shadows of things that once existed. I wondered what he saw when he looked out, even if only in his memories. I wondered if there were words for such things, and if so, if he had them to share with me, and if he did if I would understand them. The answer must be no, I concluded, and turned to look out further and harder, hoping to catch a glimpse of a ghost.

He turned to look at me then, almost as if he just realized his answer wasn’t helpful at all.

He laughed a little, wiping the corner of one eye. Then he told me stories of the old world. Of when he was a little boy and later, when everything started falling apart. He didn't eat his Berries, and he didn't ask me questions I didn't know the answer to. He simply told the stories. Sunlight was seeping over the horizon when we finally fell asleep. I dreamt I was a bird chasing a dirt bike, coming down from the sky only to eat strawberries.