Ashes to Ashes

When the world ends, is there still hope?

“Adeen, are you ok?”  A low voice interrupts my thoughts.  “I saw you sneak away.”

My parents gifted me with that strange name, Adeen.  My father told me that the name was Irish in origin.  That it meant Little Fire.  I didn’t much care for the meaning.  I wanted a normal name.  Why couldn’t I be an Amy or maybe even an Elizabeth?  When I suggested to my father that we change my name to something more common, he had laughed and assured me that God had created me unique and therefore my name should be equally so.  I had simply rolled my eyes.  One of my worst habits, second only to my inability to plan anything ahead of time.  My mother always assured me that if I kept rolling my eyes at everything they would get stuck like that.  Of course this would be followed with yet another, slightly more dramatic, eye roll. 

Now a solitary tear slides slowly down my cheek.  It makes my skin itch, so I swipe the back of my hand across my face to get rid of it.  My boyfriend, Caleb, slips his hand in mine.  He gives me a worried look and repeats his question.

“Are you ok?”

“No.”  My voice cracks.  “Caleb, nothing is ok.  It will never be ok.”

“You don’t know that.”  He mummers softly, almost like he isn’t sure the words are true if he says them any louder.  “We survived.  Sure it’ll take time, but things always get better.  The bad won’t last forever.  It can’t.”

“Everything is gone.”

He slips his arm around my waist and together we look out at what used to be our world.  I feel him tighten his hold on me.  “Not everything.”

I should probably explain.  Caleb and I didn’t used to be so melodramatic.  We never had a reason to be.  But then again the world is now destroyed.  Something we all thought would never happen.  The earth started to grow warmer over the last few years, and everyone was sure that global warming was upon us.  People were worried about the ocean drying up.  Others worried that the ice caps would melt, making enough water to flood the earth, and we would all drown.  But no one knew quite how the world would end, just that it would be sooner than we anticipated.  While everyone was looking down, though, no one thought to look up.  Very few people knew what I know now, that the world would end in fire.  We thought that we were so advanced.  So evolved and therefore superior.  How intelligent can we really be, though?  After all, we have destroyed the earth.  We were put here to protect it and we became its undoing.  While we had used our technology in an attempt to ‘better’ our lives we punched these cute little holes into our ozone layer, the only thing protecting us from the harmful rays of the sun, and then the fires had come.  No one knows where the fire began, but it didn’t take it long to consume most of our world.  Had we really thought that we could discover so much without paying a price?  Everything has a price. 

I, my boyfriend, and seven other teenagers survived.  Caleb says that there are more survivors somewhere.  He believes in them as much as I used to believe in God.  He believes a lot of strange things lately�"like that the sun is still out there, even though we can no longer see it through the smoke-filled sky.  I used to have such blind faith.  My father had been the preacher of a large church.  I had sat in the front row every time the church doors were opened and I listened to him preach about God, Heaven, and Hell.  I never doubted a word.  For one thing he was my father.  I still had that naive notion that my father would never lie to me.  It was also the way I was raised.  It was part of my life from the creation of the world in seven literal days to the days when the Lord would come back.  Now as I looked around at the earth in ash and ruin I could only think, this must be Hell.

“Adeen?”  Caleb’s voice breaks through my depressing thoughts. “Come on.  Let’s go.”

“What?”

“It’s time to go.”  He tugs me towards the others.  “We need to search for other survivors.”

I nod, but I can’t see the point.  There are no survivors.  We are all that is left.  As we reach our small group I see two girls holding onto each other crying.  Even the boys have tear stains down their ash-covered cheeks.  We are only kids.  How are we supposed to live in this crumbling world?  I wish, not for the first time, that my mother was here; she was the most practical and logical person I have ever known.  She always knew what to do, but they had destroyed her too. 

Before the fires we had become irresponsible with our new technology.  People were crazed with power.  Consumed with greed and the need to do everything one better than the last.  They found the cure for cancer.  The world had rejoiced together, but then it was decided that they could do one better.  They announced that they could make a vaccine that would prevent it in the first place.  Hundreds of citizens, all ages, had lined up to get this new vaccine.  The first day all was well in the world and then the world seemed to freeze as we realized.  The vaccine didn’t work.  Instead it had infected them.  The infection changed them in the worst ways imaginable.  The world then mourned together as the disease spread throughout to the continents.  We lived in fear that we too would one day become infected with the Sickness.  

Their appearances changed until they no longer resembled themselves.  They no longer spoke, but moaned and screamed.  Their empty eyes reflected only pain and hunger for the healthy flesh of those not infected.  The originally infected fed on those who were not.  Some people who were attacked, however, managed to get away with only a few scrapes or bites.  Nevertheless, that was all it took for the Sickness to infect you.  If you caught the Sickness you became horribly ill.  Some said that it was so painful you wished for death.  It was unbearable, but you were in so much agony you couldn’t move enough to end it.  It was during this time that you began to change.  After the change was complete you were no longer human.  The Sick attacked the people they once knew.  Killing or infecting the ones who loved them most.  And the worst part?  They weren’t even alive enough to realize it.   My father said that the Sickness took their soul. 

Two months before the fires my mother was infected.  I had begged my father not to take her life.  I yearned for there to still be even a glimmer of hope.  That somehow my mother would be different than the rest.  That she could overcome the Sickness.  But I suppose that’s what everyone hoped for.  My father had refused to visit her in her room.  He said that he could not bear to see her become a monster.  So I spent every day by her side.  I spoke to her knowing that she couldn’t hear me, but praying that she did anyway.  Forcing her to eat and drink enough to keep her alive.  At night I slept on a couch in her room and listened to her scream.  Every passing day she grew worse.  On the rare good day she would scream my name, begging me to end her suffering.  Her screams began to sound less and less human every night.  Listening to her agony felt like dying slowly.  Then, on her final day, as I held a cool cloth to her brow, I saw the change become complete.  The moment I saw the humanity leave my mother’s eyes was the moment I stopped believing in God. 

So now I snap out of my thoughts again and hear Caleb say, “Should we pray before we go?”

I don’t so much as bow my head.  The others need to believe in an all-knowing, all-powerful, merciful and loving God.  They should pray, but I won’t spend any more of my time on someone who doesn’t exist.   Even if there was a God, he had turned his back on us.  As I watch them pray I see two of the others lift their heads out of the group’s prayer, not even bothering to show respect.  Slowly they would all come to realize that we are alone.  And we will have to learn how to live in a world without a God.  If we last that long in this man-made Hell.  I barely hear the ‘Amen’ over the pain that seems to be tearing me apart. 

A girl with choppy brown hair moves over to me.  I recognize her from my school.  We never really hung out in the same circles, but it felt nice to see her alive.  We start walking slowly behind the group as they trudge through the ash and over a hill.

“I’m Brittany,” Her lips twitch like she is going to smile, but she appears to be unsuccessful in her attempt to make it happen.  “I think I’ve seen you at a few parties before.”

“No,” I let my eyes lazily focus somewhere to the left of her ear.  Another bad habit of mine, I’m uncomfortable making eye contact.  “I was never allowed to go to parties.”

She looks perplexed for a moment then the realization hits her.

“Oh!  You’re that preacher’s daughter!”

I nod.  That was me back then.  I didn’t party, curse, drink or hang around the wrong crowds.  I probably wouldn’t even have a boyfriend if I hadn’t met Caleb at church.  I had never met anyone like him.  He was by no means perfect, but he was perfect for me.  He wasn’t as big on Church as I was, but he always admired my passion for it.  He accepted me as I was and never pressured me to change.  I remember praying that I could spend my life with him.  In the beautiful world my Lord had created.  How could I have been so naive?

“Adeen!”  Caleb calls me and I am back in grim reality.  “There is someone moving down there!”

Impossible.  I rush down the hill so quickly that I surely would have fallen on my face upon reaching the bottom, if Caleb hadn’t caught me.  He pulls me to his side and points out to the vast area of fallen, burned trees that used to be a forest.  There is something moving out there for sure. 

“Stay here!” I yell to the others.  And yet Brittany and Caleb follow me despite my order.  I don’t have time to argue with them.  I’m positive I fling ash in my wake as I race towards the figure on the ground.  When I reach it I slide to my knees.  My red braid slaps me hard across the face, but I ignore the sting.  I look carefully at the figure.  A body trapped under a fallen tree trunk.  It thrashes around madly.  Its hair oily and mangled in disgusting dreads.  Its eyes are solid black, sunken into its skull, and I know they will haunt my dreams. 

“Get back!”  I shout, making Brittany and Caleb skid to a halt.  “It’s Sick!”

They don’t need to ask me what I mean by that.  I watch as the panic rises in their eyes.  Caleb reaches quickly towards me, but before I can grasp his hand I feel pressure on my wrist.  I can’t help the terrified whimper that escapes me as its grip tightens.  I feel the bones in my wrist grinding painfully together.  Taking another look, I notice my assailant is wearing a torn, faded pink dress.  It had been a woman.  She jerks my arm down, pulling me closer to her.  Her mouth snaps near my ear and my heart skips a beat.  Then another two beats for good measure.  She’s hungry.  Then Caleb is there.  He lashes out, kicking her in the gut.  Her wail of frustration slices through the silence of our empty world like a gunshot. 

Brittany’s manicured hands pull on me, trying to get me away from the monster that longs to feed on my flesh.  I almost choke on the smoky air as I gasp for breath.  My heart thuds painfully inside my chest as if it wants to get out.  Just in case, I press my hand to my chest to prevent its escape. 

“Go back to the others,” Caleb instructs in his most serious tone.  “Go, Adeen!  You don’t need to see this.”

See what?  Suddenly a flash of light hits my eye as he pulls a knife from the inside of his jacket.

“No!”  I shout.  “You can’t!  She was a person, Caleb!  She was someone’s daughter, someone’s friend, maybe even someone’s mother!”

 “I know how hard this has to be for you.  That’s why I don’t want you to see this.  Someone has to do it, though.  Look at it, Adeen�"would you want to live like this?”

“You can’t just kill her!”

“Damn it, Adeen, she is already dead!”

He had yelled at me.  I flinched away from him, he had never yelled at me before.  He is scared too, I remind myself, and I can’t blame him.  We have been living now in a world consumed by fear.  Seeing my hesitation, he drops the knife and wraps his arms around me tightly.  Unable to stop myself, I burst into tears as my walls fall down.  I grab his shirt in my fists and sob deeply into his chest.  It takes me several minutes to realize that he is crying too.  I hear Brittany sniffle and walk back to the others to give us privacy.  Caleb and I hold each other until we have no more energy to cry.  I set my jaw and look into his deep brown eyes.  If he takes a life, even one already changed, it will destroy him.  He was much too gentle a person for a violent act such as this. He was too unprepared.  Eventually he would have to learn to cope with killing the Sick, but not in this moment.  If only this one time I could do this for him.  I could protect him from losing himself.  Caleb is among those who would rather die than take a life, even one already over.  Once upon a time I had thought that I was one of those people.  Until the last day when I had been alone with my Sick mother.  When the change had been completed and she came for me.  A raw craving for my flesh.  I had made the choice to fight for my life.  And that day will always haunt me.  The day I had cried as I grabbed the gun my father had recently bought and ended my mother’s anguish.

Turning my gaze to Caleb, I knew that he realized what I was contemplating.  I saw the look of self-loathing he had for being unable to do what I had decided to do.  Picking up the knife he had dropped from the ground, I make myself kneel beside the Sick woman.    

“I’m so sorry,”  I whisper.  Without thinking another moment, I bring the blade down, deep into her chest.  Her scream cuts through me.  Tearing at me from all angles.  I can only stare blankly at her until her scream fades and she is at peace.  Finally she is still.  Just as my mother had been. 

Something shines at the base of her throat.  I take it.  It is a little heart-shaped locket.  Inside is a fading picture of a woman, smiling happily at a man who was kissing her forehead.  They looked so blissful.  Caleb watches silently as I stand and clip the locket around my own neck.  A few days ago that would have been disturbing, now it felt respectful.  I swear silently that I will not give up.  We had survived and we owed it to ourselves and to people like the Sick woman and my mother to search out happiness.  Walking up to my boyfriend, I lace my fingers behind his head and pull his mouth desperately to mine.  He seems shocked, but kisses me back with need.  It wasn’t that watching a life end had made us suddenly romantic, we just needed to feel as if something was right in the world despite that fact.  We needed to feel loved and to know that we weren’t alone.  Finally I pull gently away and look him in the eye.

“Those kids up there?”  I gesture towards the others who stand on the top of the hill staring openly at us.  “They need someone to be in charge.  To tell them what to do and to show them that we have to keep living, not just surviving.  If they don’t learn that soon, they’ll allow themselves to give up.”

“They need a purpose.”  He says agreeably.  “Surviving is not enough.”

“Exactly.  I think I know what to do.  I even have a plan.  Will you help me?”

He smiles slightly and brushes my hair carefully out of my eyes.  “Of course, Adeen.”

I glance down at the ground and nearly gasp as I see green grass starting to grow through the ash-covered ground.  I hadn’t noticed it in my despair, but there is still life in this world.  I let out an uneasy laugh.  My father had said my name meant Little Fire and I had scoffed because fires destroyed things.  However, fires were sometimes known to be a good thing.  Out of it can come many things, sometimes even new life.  For the first time I loved my name.  I would bring life back into this burned world like a Little Fire.  Then, linking hands with Caleb, I walk back with him to the other survivors.  The world may be in ruin, but we aren’t about to let it end.

Author's Note

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