The Should

Garret was sick of the ash. For miles, it had been crunching under his worn treads. Every plume of dust was a microcosm of suffocation. Even his mask could not filter out the finer particles. So as he walked he choked just like the countless millions that lay somewhere underneath it all or had become one with the ash themselves. His eyes might have narrowed at the thought but they had already settled into a permanent squint some years ago. Though he wore goggles nearly as dark as welders’ glass, the intense red-orange light in the sky still found a way to burn its way into his skull; maddening him, driving him forward.

So many miles, so many missions he’d run into the never-ending broiler that was once known as planet Earth. One way or another this one would be his last. His need both drove him and crippled him. With instincts honed by nearly a decade of scavenging it was as if the land around him spoke to him. While he welcomed the stream of information, he also wished to silence it; to have peace, not have to be in constant survival mode. He shook his head and looked up into the sky blaming its fiery occupant for making him a maudlin fool. All around him lay the evidence of what people thought was peace. The world needed little more of that. No, what the world needed was life. Life was great when people used it the way they should, but it seems that no one could agree with who got to decide the should. With a press of a button, they thought to own the should. In just a few days the entire globe was reduced to a pile of ash.

The destruction was so total that Earth itself had been turned on its axis, its orbit around the sun more erratic than ever dipping in and out of searing heat just long enough to survive but rarely long enough for a growing cycle. Most surface water had evaporated long ago and still, there was no rain. The water cycle was broken. Only the deep places in the Earth, subterranean streams, and aquafers remained sources of water. Those sources were so far inland that no one even knew what the state of the oceans were and the trek was unthinkable. Yet, trek he must. He imagined that the oceans were great masses of salt filled with skeletons of former sea-life to which he would probably add his own. He shrugged, hardly noticing the chafing of the heavy pack he carried.

Earth continued to wither under the sun’s lidless eye and it was doubtful if it had the power to right itself or come back to a place of balance. But it didn’t matter. This was the new. He had dispensed with using the word normal even long before the destruction. But was this new? The thought rattled around in his mind. Sure perhaps it was bigger, bolder than what mankind had done before, but was any of this actually new? He looked around again straining to find any vestige of humanity in the barren landscape. Seeing none he walked on.

There was supposed to be an operating clean aquifer somewhere near where Knoxville used to be. It was said that limestone bluffs under which numerous small water channels allegedly still ran were visible to the practiced eye. He hoped to reach those bluffs and stay there a while on his trek toward the Atlantic seaboard, that is if there was such a thing as a seaboard anymore.

His beat-up camel pack was just about done in and he needed shelter. Due to the misalignment of the Earth, a compass was little good, but he had tested his sense of direction over and over and felt confident that he was not too far from where Knoxville had been and that meant not too far from water and perhaps some form of hospitality… or death. There was always significant danger any time he ventured anywhere near a source of water. After another hour or so of walking, his weary muscles tightened ever so slightly as he saw limestone bluffs appear over the next rise.

The cliffs stood out like a white beacon in the gray ash. It made him uncomfortable. If those cliffs were so noticeable there was going to be trouble for sure. For a moment he was wracked with doubt. There was, however, no choice but to make his way toward it. With his sense of unease rising he began walking toward the limestone outcroppings.

Much to his surprise, he remained unmolested until he reached the bluffs. For the first time since he could remember he stood in shadow and the violence of the sun’s assault lessened. The temperature has now dropped from 117 to a balmy 105 he heard the echo of a weatherman’s voice in his head. He allowed himself the small moment of dark humor.

Suddenly, he was slammed to the ground with incredible force. He cried out in surprise and pain. He heard a mocking voice in his head telling him he’d been careless. Then he realized that the voice wasn’t in his head. A crushing blow fell on the back of his skull and blackness took him.

It was cool… and damp. Damp? He startled and pain lanced through his head. Groaning, he tried to look around but the darkness was complete. He could hear the sound of running water. He had made it. A lot of good it did now. Initially, he thought the difficulty in getting to his feet was because of the recent assault. With a sinking feeling, he realized he was tied hand and foot. Something with a sharp point prodded him. Someone grabbed his hands and yanked him to his knees, then, to his feet. He felt the ties on his feet loosened. That same mocking voice told him not to try anything and then he was shoved stumbling around a corner and toward a point of light some way ahead. Was he going to dinner or to be dinner? His stomach growled. How long had he been unconscious? His head throbbed and he tried to clear his thoughts knowing he would need his wits about him if he was going to escape and survive.

As they cleared the doorway of the room he turned and lashed out as hard as he could with his feet catching a glimpse of terrified eyes. His kick sent both he and his erstwhile assailant to the ground in a heap. “Wait! Stop!” the man pleaded, but his pleas fell on deaf ears as Garret reigned down blows with his tied fists. When the man was clearly out of commission, Garret slumped against the damp walls. He didn’t know if the man was dead or alive and didn’t care. Looking down at his clenched fists he saw that a fine gold chain had become tangled around his wrist. Straining forward he tried to pull it off his wrist with his teeth with some measure of success. A golden heart-shaped locket was now laying open in the palm of his hand. In the dim light, he could see the resemblance of the man laying silent on the stone though clearly, quite some time had passed. On the other side of the open locket was a young woman.

In a moment all the physical pain that he felt left him and he was overwhelmed with emotion as he realized that the man who had attacked him had been doing so to protect hearth and home, memory and happiness just like all those previous who had pressed the buttons to reduce the world to ash. And he, Garret, was no better than him at trying to control the should. An open locket had opened his eyes, and his heart teaching him that if the world could find a better balance between open hearts and pressing buttons that perhaps there was hope after all. He wept, but his tears were short-lived as the man next to him groaned and struggled to sit up. It was time for something new.