The Rust

She skated two fingers over the glossy layer of crystalized sugar, then tapped lightly on warm little creme brulee. She knew it wouldn’t break through yet to the pudding center, yet pressed it slightly more, not really wanting to break it quite yet. This was such a rare treat.

She then remembered something from her childhood - of standing at the rock quarry lake all alone at the melty onset of spring. All of the snow was dripping and the sun felt wonderful, the air crisp, brisk and full of the kind of excitement that a million newly growing plants buzzes into the air after a long hibernation.

The thick ice of winter on the lake had been topped with puddles and she couldn’t resist but step out on it playfully, pause a moment in wonder, and run back to safety.

There was a great CRACKing noise, completely startling - and she had watched and listened with wide eyes as the lake responded to her little hello. The seal of winter had been broken, and the ice began to pump up and down like a living monster, breathing in air and water in turn - up and down the entire lake rose and fell in great WAHH-THUMP, WAHH-THUMPs, 10 or 12 times it roared, maybe settling out the suction of the underground springs. It was terrible and wonderful and loud and scary, and she had witnessed it with wind in her blowing hair and cold rising from the ice to chill her cheeks, half expecting to be swallowed whole. Had this happened every year? Was it just perfect timing that she caused it or witnessed it?

Finally she tapped the brulee with a serious wack, enough to crack the shards of glassy sugar, and pried up a triangle up to eat - wondering about her lake, about if it had been a phenomenon or something we just simply miss most years. The pudding underneath reminded her of the Pokey Little Puppy book, and though almost 36 years old now, she snuggled in her pajamas remembering being read to.

Crème brulee was something she wouldn’t have made when things had been easier. Only now, living in the burrows using the new ways and old salvaged sugar did someone with great talent make this for her. She loved the clay dish it was in, clearly made Before and still shiny with glaze. It was five years ago now since they had all been survivors and thought that life would return quickly to normal after near-isolation for over a year. The year that humans were allergic to each other – the year that everyone plunged through ready to travel on airplanes and cruises, only to be met with the Rust. The very Earth seemed to have a virus of its own. It started strangely innocent. Homes had wild bits of rust building up in places where no rust ever seemed to have been a problem. Beloved family heirlooms and jewelry in stores and stainless steel refrigerators and forks and building materials were noticed first, the surface seeming to slightly crumble at the touch. It escalated quickly as every screw in every building was quickly losing form. Most of the world found itself unprepared for the enormous piles of wreckage while homes and office buildings collapsed in a matter of months. Tucking in her kids one night, she recalled wondering if their home would hold – should they stay? It began a game – how many days until they flee? Tent communities sprouted in forests, away from the danger of the metal jungles. Go while your car is still working – get to a place with trees. Caves had been a possibility in a nearby state park – a settlement had been started there. Until the metal-rich soil began changing to quickly. It slipped and the largest cave fell – and it was undeniable that tremors happened more and more, quaking beneath their feet. The war within the metals on the tiniest level grew to have enormous waves of earthquakes, thermal vents of hot air smoking out of cracks like a threat of volcanos, and then, sometimes nothing for days.

The WAH-THUMP of the ice pond from her 12 year old self had been the first time she had witnessed this kind of wild Earth-movement – that thrill was real but safe in the end. She had returned home and shared the story in excitement – but life returned to normal. Now, every human child on the planet lived with a sense of awe and fear as The Rust was changing the rules of their science. In the beginning, the binder rings on her note cards she had studied from had gone from feeling cool and smooth to rough and grainy, creating marks on her paper cards. Then came tetanus shots given out on street corners like virus cures had been. Until the needles were all deemed too far gone. Glass needles were created – but they were dangerous and painful and huge. Plastic couldn’t be made anymore – the process needing metal to store it, the factories collapsing, the ability to search the internet for resources now in the past.

Presently she lived in the burrows – a tent city made of interlocking wood beams and covered with tarps – she had read to her children and sung them to sleep in their wool blankets in the tent corner they had claimed. The book was always the same – all the children craved regularity in the wild new world. Many of the books had gotten wet in the rain on the way to the Burrows, but good old Wonky Donkey had survived. They giggled and spoke along and cuddled into her belly and sides before falling asleep pushing against her. Underneath them was a cargo net made of ropes and vines, tied and sewed together in case the Earth beneath them should happen to collapse. On top of the net was a mound of pine needles, then a blanket over it all to make a soft mattress. This was the safest place they had known since the beginning. With the last bit of sunlight, they could hear the builders outside the wall still scraping burnt wood away to make a new beam. Without hatchets or chainsaws, they used controlled fire to cut through the tree trunks, and rough stones to sand out the char. The flap of tarps protecting them from the wind was calming, and when it rained, the thrum of raindrops was their music. The quite of their drywall home had once been so quite they had purchased sound machines – “Alexa, play rain,” she would command every night. And Alexa would play a thunderstorm and they would snuggle in close – and it never got wet. Life was a long camping trip now, and weeks with seven days of rain were not dry. The rain was real. The planned to build raised beds in the next phase.

She felt proud and grateful to be in the Burrow City. Parents had gotten together, people suddenly cooperated in unified purpose, and it was truly amazing how humanity was a living bond again – every family was a new cousin. The neighbor that filed a report with the HOA about your lawn being too long six years ago was now “Aunt Cheryl.” She trusted Cheryl with her life because she had saved her twice now. This lean fifty-year-old woman who used to teach yoga and nit-pick HOA violations now wore a shard of half-inch thick sharpened plexiglass wrapped in electrical tape in a sheath on her upper thigh as a blade and used it to chop vegetables as well as warn men to stay the hell away from her when it came to physical proposals. She also used it to tell men to stay away from the other women. Of course, there were problems that all communities had – rapists among them, thieves, no real system of law, addicts – but for the most part, the Burrows had been built by good people that vastly outnumbered the not-so-good, and continued to be built and improved every day. Adults rotated volunteer guards, Aunt Cheryl being one of them.

One morning, she woke and stroked her children’s hair as they slept. Her son had a feather threaded into this hair like many of the older children had begun to do. She carefully slipped out of their sleeping embrace and nodded to her friend on guard, stepping carefully over the others and out of the tent to use the toilets.

A crow loudly cawed near her left side. She was startled and looked up to see him watching her with a crooked head. His shinning black eyes were intent, and his stare thrillingly close. He sat on their home, on a beam made of rough tree trunk. It looked as though he may be looking for his tree.

“Did we take your tree?” she asked him softly.

“Caw! Caw!” he cried, and stared still.

“Shhhh,” she whispered – “Shhh. The kids are sleeping!”

“Caw!” he shouted and flew off.

She continued to the dug latrines with their curtain frames around them. It was just now dawn’s light, and an owl was still whoing out in the forest. Sharpened sticks made a fence against coyotes past the latrines. She heard wings winging from above and something hit her head falling from above – bird poo? No, she touched her hair and nothing. Looking around, she saw an old key chain, the plastic part a Disney princess faded over – it might have been any of them as the outline only showed a petite cartoon in a bell-shaped dress. The metal part was gone.

“Caw!” sang the crow a moment later, and dive-bombed her once again, dropping another treasure near her head. The rough thing snagged at her sweatshirt as it fell and she danced it off in panic as if it were a long-legged spider. Looking around, she found in the dirt a rusty clump. Carefully picking it up, she studied what it might have been. Yes, she recognized it well. It was one of those necklaces that men gave women back before The Rust. It used to be a heart shape, she could tell, but now it was more of a fragile triangle. The locket used to have a chain but the chain was long gone. Curious, she looked at the crow – loud fellow that he was, she felt sad for him.

“Did you lose your shiny things, too?” she crooned. He did a dance from foot to foot, preened a wing, and took off again. She would see him again, she knew. It seems he was either complaining about the rust or sharing his treasure. She would bring him a marble from her pack – that might cheer him up.

Taking the lump of locket rust with her, she went back inside to snuggle for a few minutes before they began to help with Activities. Later, she would pry it open to show her children. Her son would soon sing silly rhymes like “Locket-pocket-wocket-tocket” and make everyone smile, the little five-year-old always-cheerful rapper. Maybe her daughter would remember that she had had a silver heart locket once, years ago, and that they had a little picture of her in it taken from the tiny sample print of her school picture. Her son would not remember – he was younger and did not remember how metal had once felt cool and smooth. He had grown his memory with park slides that grew dangerous burrs and rings that cut fingers and sanded wood or aged river rocks that were cool and smooth and felt like home.