The Desolate Atone

Here's a story I made for a project in my creative writing class that involved us to create a sci-fi short story. The assignment was due 2 days after it was issued; apologies for grammar and etc.

It was another typical gloomy day. The sun was nowhere in sight as our legs grew weary and our stomachs hungry walking amongst the desolate houses. It felt like years before my father, sister and I settled in one location for more than an hour, other than to forage for food and supplies. I can barely even remember what it was like before the world collapsed. All I could recall were the bombs, sickness and, as my father put it, the planet revolting against humanity. We hid away in a shelter for weeks and when we came out we revealed ourselves to a world that had suddenly vanished. Everybody I knew in my past life died; all that remained were the remnants of what was and what is to come. The lifeless cities amounted to nothing but snow, dust and bones. Fields that once grew bountiful crop were nothing but barren wastes of dust and memory never to flourish again; because of the bombs, nothing grew. Animals were dying off. However, our attention was always fixed on the threat of wolves and wild dogs as they were nothing but blood thirsty beasts. According to my father, the only thing that hardly changed were humans, as they were the culprit as to why this all happened.

The night fell upon us. We stopped in a vacant building once a clothing shop, setting up our worn blankets around a dim fire. My father read to us every night, sparing every bit of knowledge he knew of the old world and the world now. He encouraged us to write of our own experiences in journals he gave to us the day after we evacuated the shelter. He said our experiences of what happens now could be used and looked upon one day and affect the future of humanity after he fixes everything.

"Daddy, how are you going to fix the world?" my sister asked huddled up against his thick coat as if she was trying to find comfort in our seemingly hopeless journey.

It took over a moment for his explanation. "The way I plan on fixing the world is by putting back into what it lost. Rebuilding it in the same way the diseases took it; by spreading the cure. Right now, as you both know, the soil is incapable of sustaining life. With the right tools, I could change that. That's why we travel as much as we do, my girl. I need what the world is missing."

I was much older than my little sister. He had a way to make things sound simple for her understanding. However, I knew in my heart it was not as easy as he made it sound with words, but I'm sure she was aware of that, too. When I asked him the same question for the first time, he spoke slowly and carefully as the answer was much more complex. Before the collapse my father was a biologist. He spent weeks away, sometimes months, working in different facilities developing environmental equipment, and when he was home he was always in his office or developing the shelter. He taught our mother how to grow plants with out soil inside our home with nutrients and lights alone. Even though I trust him with all my heart that he could fix things, some days I feel as if we were walking down an endless, dark tunnel with no light at the end of it.

That night I had a dream of my mother. It was a week before the bombs dropped. She was with both my sister and I sitting at the couch and watching the television. Riots were taken place in all the major cities across the entire globe. I remember hearing endless reports of the near depletion of global oil and of war. Diseases took the lives of hundreds of millions and would only continue to spread. The Earth was perhaps the biggest threat as everyday storms and huge tidal waves claimed the lives of nearly a billion people up to that point. I remember looking up into her teary eyes, her mouth open in disbelief. She held us firm.

The next morning we packed up at the break of dawn. We shared a can of soup and bottle of water and took off. It was dry and cold as usual, a slight breeze lifting gusts of snow and dust that made the travel bothersome. I always wondered if there was life in the vacant city buildings and houses. However, in fear of disease, even there was life, he wouldn't allow us to make contact.

To ease the pain of walking for hours, father would tell us stories and give us all sorts of information about anything. My favorite stories were the ones he told of the world before the collapse. Even though I was only thirteen before it all happened, my father spoke of it in such a different perspective than what I recalled, as if there was a whole other world I wasn't aware of. He spoke of love, greed, hate, responsibility and hopelessness. He always said "Even when the world was green there would always be times of doubt. Then it was easy to give up hope because later on in life there was always something you could buy for the pain. Everything was taken for granted. Now it's our responsibility to actually find it."

Suddenly, we entered a region that was unfamiliar to us. The forests. It was unfamiliar not by coincident but by choice as it was always dangerous to be around. Wild dogs and wolves scoured the forests in search of anything they could eat, and humans were on the main menu. However, it wasn't only the dogs that would prey on man, but man themselves too. As we ventured into the unknown father ensured that we were close and we would be safe as long as we stayed on the long winding road. It was surrounded by the dead trees that stretched as far as the eye could see. Every so often we would get startled by massive trees that would fall to ground by their own weight. Hours later, despite our weary feet, father picked up pace as if he was compelled by a sense of familiarity just ahead. My sister was obviously tired, dragging her feet as my father held her hand firmly to ensure she did not fall behind. The only thing my father held just as closely was his old, worn satchel which was where he kept his notes full of his work and journals. His satchel like one of us. To its obvious prominence, he said that everything depends on the contents within it. Hope, he said, would only be an idea if he were to lose it.

Suddenly, the tip of a large facility appeared over the fringe of the bare trees. It had a domed roof once made of glass but now worn to nothing but a skeleton without a shell. Father looked back at us with a heart warming smile, giving us a sense of relief. The building itself was huge, the walls weathered with gloomy vacancy. The inside was dark, cold and dusty, the only light beaming through the exposed roof. Perhaps if it wasn't later in the day things would be brighter, but that did not stop my father from eagerly storming the halls in search of his tools. I had a feeling this was where he needed to be to do as he always spoke of.

We scoured several labs, none of which had what my father was searching for. It felt like hours before we hit a lab that stood apart from the rest. The room was almost completely dark, the only light seeping through was from the door father got me to hold open. Barely able to see him, all I could hear was anxious rustling of glass and empty boxes. It went on for a few minutes, and every moment longer my father searched, the louder and more desperate the rustling became. Then he started shouting and throwing things around. When he stopped, all I could hear was heavy panting and, suddenly, he started crying. He's never done that before.

By that time my sister came up to me scared, hugging my arm. Moments later, father appeared out of the shadows, eyes swollen with an expression more distant that I've ever seen before. He grabbed both of us tightly, looked down at us, and, for some reason, we all started crying.

That night we stayed inside the facility, all of us huddled next to a fire brighter and larger than usual. It was so warm, it felt like the world around us seized to exist. Father held both of us firmly, and for the first time ever, his satchel was more than six feet away from him. I knew then that everything had changed.

"So, what's next?" I asked asked him, despite my intentions to just leave him to his thoughts.

It was a moment before he answered, probably because it took him a moment to muster enough energy to look into my sister's eyes and smile down at her before he turned to answer me. "We keep moving. Now that the winter months are almost over we could head north to a cabin me and my father built when I was a young man. From there we enjoy the summer by the lake and hope for the best before the next winter." As much as my sister and I enjoyed the idea we could still sense a sort of emptiness from my father. "I'm sorry. I couldn't find what we were looking for. Our entire struggle was a waste of time. The government, or somebody, took everything, and now it could be anywhere. Possibly destroyed in the warfare. We went everywhere there was to look in my best knowledge. I let us down. I let the world down."

We both held him tighter for comfort. Never before have we heard him talk in such a pessimistic way. I knew deep in my heart he tried everything he could for us. I was proud of him either way.

"So you can't fix the world, dad?" my sister asked.

"No, my girl," he said honestly, "I'm afraid I can't. The world is depleted. What I was looking for was a special kit that contains chemicals that could provide nutrients to soil that originally could not sustain life. I originally designed the kit for other planets, such as Mars. What I was trying to do was called Terra-forming. One group of scientists were working on instruments and technologies that could make living possible on Mars for the human race. My colleagues and I, on the other hand, were apart of the biological section of the project, developing chemicals and remedies that would strengthen the human's resistance to living life on other planets. The reason why we did all of this was because the end of the world was inevitable. However, it happened sooner than we predicted. Everything I developed was stored in these facilities. This place was the reason I spent so much time away from home. This is where I attempted to make it possible for humanity to run away from all its problems, throwing it away like just another piece of our trash and sweeping it under the carpet. However, Mother Earth beat us to the chase. Now, there's nothing."

We all stared into the glowing coals, falling asleep in each others arms. At the break of dawn we awoke to a dark day, gray clouds smothering the sky. We walked slower than usual as if we were in no hurry for anything. Suddenly my father stopped dead in his tracks, his hands covering our mouths. Quickly, he grabbed both of our sleeves and lead us into the forest where we hid behind a thick fallen log. He told us to keep quiet. Two men and a lady came walking about the road, dragging another man who appeared to struggle for his freedom. Suddenly they stopped directly in front of us, saying something about the man they were surrounding. One of the men pulled out an ax and as the other two held down the man in distress, he began hacking at his leg until it came right off. Father was signaling me look away as he held my sister's eyes closed, but I was compelled to look. By the time he started hacking at his torso the man had already bled to death. Limb from limb they packed up his body parts in a bloody sack that appeared to have been filled slightly previously.

We sat there for an hour to make certain that there was nobody else following them. As soon as we got out of the thick of the forest, father let out a deep cry. Before our eyes, a wild dog attacked father, sinking his large teeth deep within his neck. All my sister could do was scream. Immediately, I grabbed a stick and wildly started swinging at the beast. In all my fury, the dog finally let go, limping away; I chased it to its death. All I remember was beating its skull to pieces before I actually focused on my father's condition. I ran back to find my sister crying over my father's still body. I sat over him. His eyes were fixed to the sky as the massive flesh wound poured heavy amounts of blood. He was unable to talk despite our only wish to hear him say "I'm okay." We begged for him not to leave us but it was too late. We both mourned over him for hours before I closed his lifeless eyes.

My sister and I sat there for hours hugging each other. I knew we could not give up. My father would be disappointed to see us quit with all the knowledge he taught both of us on how to survive. Despite the hollow feeling in our chests, we carried on traveling north for weeks feeding off of our short supply until we finally came upon a huge body of water that stretched as far as the eye could see. It could not have been the ocean as we were able to drink from it. I made a small shelter among the trees which we stayed there for days. I kept my father's satchel, reading his work and journal. Every night I would read a passage from it to my sister until she would fall asleep. It was always emotional for both of us, but we both agreed we did not want to forget him. Sometimes we read things which we previously did not know of him, but we embraced him either way despite his dark past. It was true that he was designing chemicals that would not only provide nutrients to inhabitable soil but a substance that would make the human body able to live on Mars. However, the entire project was a failure. It turns out one of the chemicals he used ended up making humans sick, thus killing many humans instead of saving them:

Dr. Edgar Grey

To whom it may concern:

The year is 2022 and humanity is on edge. Mother Earth is rapidly showing signs of our inevitable demise. Along with the feared nuclear war over the oil shortage, Earth's revenge comes at a heavy toll as earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanic eruptions take the lives of hundreds of millions in succession. Brothers and sisters are killing each other for the smallest amounts of fuel, food and land. The value of water is higher than that of gold has ever been. And that is not all. I regrettably inform to those that read over this that in our experiments to evict humanity from its own mess, that the virus my team and I developed had unforeseen consequences. Instead of building immunity as indented, it has only sickened those who we tried to help. With the first human exploration of Mars having been successful in 2020, our attempts to rush the biochemicals was our unfortunate tragedy. It has evolved with the H1N1 flu, creating a virus that spreads much faster with a more certain chance of fatality. We know of this strain as M1MN. I, Dr. Edgar Grey, was lead scientist behind the project and I am responsible for the death of hundreds of millions innocent lives. We failed in our attempts to live as one with Earth, and now we know that we cannot run from this problem just as we've done so many times before in the past. Now it is certain that all that it is left for us to do is face the consequences. If you are a survivor of what is to come, know that Earth has seen far worse tribulations than what we have done as a race. It will fix itself eventually, but first it has to rid of the problem: us. The nuclear war will see that nothing grows, but in that matter, do not give up hope.

Sometimes you can find the brightest light in the darkest place.

Regrettably,

Dr. Edgar Grey.

When I was child I thought nothing of my father's work. However, I could always recall the stress in my mother eyes as she was the one always at home taking care of my baby sister and I. When he was home though, it was like a light glistened upon our lives. He always made attempts to take us everywhere: fishing, hiking, camping, shopping and sight seeing. In those times he never spoke nothing of his work and now I come to understand the shame on his face when I would ask him why he was gone so much. Now I know. Even though it was now apparent that at the time he was not sure what he was doing; all I know is that it was not to create biological substances that eventually would kill millions, but to save humanity from itself. In his notes his failure is humble yet still regretted. The end of humanity would have came either way for in his notes contains the statistics of the damage humans were applying to its own home, Earth. He wrote several essays on how the powers of governments across the world that done everything in their power to avoid the problem in place of focusing on wealth and money. Now, none of it means anything. He saw it coming before it happened and was one of the few to do anything about it with the what little resources he had. My father was a hero who fought against the negligence of the world; however, the ignorance was too powerful. He did all he could do.

The next morning I woke up with a beam of light shining upon my face as it streamed through a break in the clouds. As I sat in the sand staring in to the lake's vast body, past my father's blood stained upon my knees, I finally realized I was alone. I looked around frantically in search of my sister, screaming at the top of my lungs. Our food and supplies did not go missing, a good sign that she was not kidnapped. However, I panicked regardless. Never in the entire time of the collapse did I ever wake up alone. Finally, a few hundred yards away from the hut I finally noticed her standing lifeless with her back turned at me, unresponsive to my call. I ran up to her in relief.

"Brother..." I stood next next to her, staring into her eyes as she stared blankly ahead. It was as if she just saw a ghost. "... look."

I aligned my sight with hers as she pointed towards a small brush sitting among the sand. At first glance I did not notice what she was looking at. And just like that, my heart started pounding and every part of me froze. The world around me vanished as I stared in shock at the tip of one of the brush's branches where a green leave was fluttering gently in the warm, light breeze.

Author's Note

It was an assignment that was due 2 days after it was issued. Apologies for poor grammer and story development.