Life in a Locket

I pulled out my mother’s locket. I still remember the way it hung from her neck. How it dangled when she leaned over, the sun catching the shiny surface with its light. Even with decades between now and then I still feel her absence.

“Today’s the big day.” My wife whispered.

I forced a smile, “yes, it is.” I replied, drawing in a breath.

“You look worried.” She said after seeing my jaw clench. I sighed and turned away from her. How do I tell the woman I love, who I have loved for sixty-five-years, that our lives, those of us who survived The End, depend on what is inside this locket?

“You’re worried it won’t work.” My wife said reaching for my hand. I pulled her frail, aging body into mine and held her tightly with my chin resting on her shoulder.

“It’s just...” I paused, “it’s been such a long time.” I said turning away. “What if my memories are wrong? If I made them up?”

“Have faith in yourself.”

“Everyone, is relying on this.” I squeezed the heart shaped pendant. “It’s our only hope.” I cannot help but feel the pressure of hundreds of lives in my hands. The weight of humanity upon my shoulders. Humankind living on into the future depends on what is hidden within this locket.

The heavy doors were slowly pushed open. People from the first expedition to ‘the outside’ warned us of what we would see, but I was not prepared for what was in front of me. Death and destruction. The world was a crumbling mess before I went under seventy-years ago, but there was still colour, there was still life; and now there is nothing. We stepped forwards in our bulky masks. I held my wife’s hand tightly; her soft, delicate skin felt clammy.

“It’s…” my wife started but her voice cracked, “so grey,” she finished; her eyes glazed over with clear liquid. I searched the land before me, desperate to find a patch of colour. The burning skyline of buildings and bridges had been my final view of the world; and now, the city, my old home, was nothing more than mountains of rock and rubble, the fire had melted it into piles of waste.

“Where can I,” I started to say. “Anywhere you like,” a soldier carrying her rifle, interrupted, “it doesn’t matter, it is all the same out there.”

I stepped out onto the dusty gravel and walked until I found a patch of dirt. I pulled the locket from my pocket, the shiny, golden surface reflecting my old face; and I remembered the day when my father gave it to me, I remembered like it was yesterday.

*******

“I can’t dad, I’m scared.” I whimpered.

“Be brave son.” My father said, lightly patting my back.

I looked over my shoulder at the grey smoky cloud covering the city we had evacuated months ago. Other than the blazing fires, there is no life left within the burning walls of the concrete forest. It is nothing more than a cloudy ghost town. And there was nobody out here except the two of us, and if it were not for the last planes flying towards our destination, I would say we have travelled thirty kilometres in the wrong direction. The last plane zoomed over, lower than the others, vibrating the ground and the damaged bridge we were about to cross. My father says those planes are carrying the people who have access to ‘life after’, one-way tickets to survive this nightmare, tickets he has been trying to get his hands on since the war began. But ‘small town’ scientists with ‘mad’ reputations are not needed in the ‘after life’, and so all applications for our family were rejected. ‘If they don’t need you and you don’t have money to buy your way in, well there is no hope for us little people’ he had said. Now, our only hope in surviving The End is something my father has been guarding with his life, which he keeps hidden within my mother’s locket.

“We must cross and now!” My father instructed.

“Can’t we walk around the river to get to the other side?” I asked, feeling exhausted from our journey so far.

“No, there is no time.” Father replied in a harsh tone.

Like the skyscrapers behind us, the bridge was riddled with the symptoms of war; bullet holes, empty, smashed up cars along the cracked tarmac, lumps of steel and other materials lay in useless piles, the entire midsection had been hit by bombs which caused the two outer lanes on either side to collapse. I was amazed that it was still standing. Father stepped forwards and walked cautiously around the obstacles; I held the straps of my backpack and followed. My blood flowed through my veins at the horrendous speed that my heart was pumping, making me feel light headed. I was taking in short, quick breaths like I had exerted all my energy. I wanted to turn back.

We continued up to the highest peak of the bridge where we had to redirect ourselves to the left side because of the piles of empty cars blocking the way. I slid my hand along the top of the fence as we walked, trying my best to ignore the images my mind was displaying of the one-hundred-meter drop beneath us. I was thankful for the rail when the wind unexpectedly picked up; blowing my hair and clothes and cooling my cheeks. As the wind increased my fear intensified and I felt the need to run. I raced ahead of my father, anxious to get back down to the ground.

“Stop! It isn’t safe.” My father yelled behind me.

“No!” I yelled back turning my head to look at him. I didn’t see the hole until I had fallen through it. I was hanging by my backpack, slowly swinging forward and back. I looked up to see my father’s head peering down at me.

“DAD!” I cried.

“Stay still, don’t move.” He instructed as he held onto the rail and pushed the top half of his body through the hole, reaching out his hand. The moment my hand was in my father’s the backpack came loose and my body dropped, pulling father and part of the bridge with me. I was hanging by my father’s arm; he was holding onto the fence that was now unattached on one side and hanging a few meters from the bridge. Father heaved my body up high enough for me to grasp the metal rail but the heavy movements caused the fence to break further away from the bridge. One after the other the rails detached; I could hear the metal ripping.

“Take off your backpack.” My father ordered. I was reluctant, my backpack had everything I thought I needed to survive but I knew it was our weight that threatened our lives. With the backpack now sinking to the bottom of the wide river beneath, father encouraged me up the fence, which I climbed like a ladder. But more metal rails came loose at each of my movements; this section of fence, ‘our life raft’ was only five bars away from breaking free.

“Keep climbing.” My father yelled under me. “Wait! Take this with you.” He urged, shoving something small into my left pocket.

“Why? Where are you going?”

“Son, listen to me.” He said between sharp breaths. “Don’t open it until you are able to plant what’s inside.”

A crunch of metal teared above us; father pushed my backside upwards, forcing my body further up the fence. “Keep going!” he yelled. My hands were wet making it hard for me to grip the next pole.

“I can’t!” I panicked.

“You can! Keep going!” He encouraged desperately.

With his reassuring words I managed to pull myself up an inch closer to the bridge. The metal creaked above me and I could see it coming loose. I tightened my grip then pulled myself up another level.

“I am doing it dad!” I yelled, but when I looked down my dad was gone.

“DAD!” I screamed. Beneath me now was the sheer drop to the water below. In a flash; like my grandparents, my dog, my friends, my home and my mother, my father was gone. And I didn’t get to say goodbye.

“DAD!” I shouted again, not wanting to believe he had fallen to his death. How can I live on without my father? I am not brave enough to face this life alone, but what choice do I have? I couldn’t hold the tears inside anymore; like a shower of bullets, they rained down hard and fast. I cried for my dad, my superhero, gone. In a blink of an eye, he was gone. Gone forever. I screamed again, this time with anger. I screamed until my lungs gasped for breath. The fence dropped, forcing me to face the situation; my life raft had pulled away from the pole connected to the bridge and was now hanging by a screw.

*******

Somehow, I made it off the bridge that day, the moments after were a blur. I do remember the sound of what caused The End. Father had said we would feel it before we heard it; he was right. I remember the violent shakes of the earth and explosions blasting my ears. And I remember the soldiers screaming at people to hurry through the doors.

I opened the locket and as expected there was a seed. But it was the tiny photograph of my father and I that made me shudder; a tear rolled down my cheek when I felt my wife’s hand on my shoulder. I knelt down and using a little shovel that was handed to me I buried the little seed under the ground, then emptied the contents of my canteen onto it.

“Now, we wait.” I whispered.

Over the coming months, if months even exist in this life, a tree grew and it grew quickly. Was its rapid growth due to father’s genetic interferences or has this new world evolved for plants to grow at an incredible speed? Botanists, biologists, scientists and tree enthusiasts argued over what species it was.

“It’s a fig!”

“No, it’s an oak!”

“It’s neither fig nor oak, because it is both.” Someone had pointed out on our recent visit to the outside. The tree had grown to a tremendous size and the trunk was hard to distinguish; it was almost five different trees weaved into one. The branches were bare and someone had suggested we wait for its leaves to appear.

After days of torrential rain, we ventured back into the new world and we were all speechless. We stood silently looking up in awe at the tree that had blossomed into a world of colour. Every leaf, flower, fruit or nut that had ever grown from a tree on planet earth, existed on this giant in front of us.

“You have saved us all!” A man broke the silence and the crowd erupted in applause.

I was too overjoyed to respond. My father did this, my father, ‘a nobody’ the ‘mad one’ had scientifically generated a seed that when the tree reaches maturity it will produce all the seeds of every plant from across the planet. A Greek proverb came to mind, the one that speaks of the selfless act of old men planting trees in whose shade they will never sit. My heart swelled with pride, heating my cheeks; my father, he has saved us all. And I can only hope the children of this new world and those thereafter, will take better care than those before us.