Chapter 3

“Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.”-Jesus of Nazareth

We make it out onto the road, but we will have to walk for some time until we feel safe. The cart slows us down but it will be useful later…or at least that’s what we thought until its wheel fell off. We grab the useful stuff which amounts to a loaf of bread and a few shotgun shells and keep going. Charles is upset. He must be one of those hoarders, like Natasha claims. He seems frustrated but reluctantly gets going.

It’s funny how life is like that. In the civilized world that we came from, we could be insane. We had garages we could fill up with loads of worthless garbage. We could then take some of it with us in our cars. Hell, nobody really had to walk all that long so you could carry it with you if you wanted. But in the waste you’re not allowed to be crazy. The only people who get to live are those who can best survive.

A few miles down we find a gas station.

“Well chaps, it appears as though we do have uses for my bottles after all,” declares Charles as he unzips his pack revealing 2 bottles.

“Go ahead and try,” responds Natasha, “those things are always empty anyways. Gas is always the first thing people go for.”

We approach and a shotgun is fired.

“That’s far enough,” exclaims an elderly man standing behind one of the pumps, “this here is my gas and my food and aint none of you is gunna take it from me! Now git before I have te kill…” a shot is fired. The man falls over dead, a bullet in his brain. A woman from inside screams and comes out crying. She runs over to her husband, hugging his dead body where he lay. Snipes is indifferent. He grabs the bottles and fills them one by one before returning the glass stoppers. He then grabs my pack and takes it into the station. Charles joins him and they go to loot food. I’m dumbfounded. How could we be so cruel? We killed this woman’s husband and now we’re taking everything from her.

Charles comes out and speaks to the woman, “It was either him or us. We had no choice. Now, you can stay here and starve to death or we could take you to the next town…wherever that may be.”

It’s no use, the woman screams as she grabs the shotgun and tries to kill Charles but he stabs her with his sword, still looking like a gentleman. He grabs the shotgun and finds some ammunition on the old man; 8 shells, 8 perfect shells to kill our enemies with. The shotgun is well worn. It has been through many battles.

Natasha finally speaks, “The only way they could have saved this long is by the Grace of God. Clearly they lost that this day. Each of us has a purpose in this life and the next. They had to die so we could fulfill ours.”

I speak up, “What God? The same one that allowed this nuclear war?”

 She responds, “God is not coming to save us. He simply waits for us to come to him.”

I roll my eyes and we keep going, keep marching down the same road.

We don’t really know where we’re going. Only person who knows where they are going is Charles. He’s going south to find his daughter. The memory of her is what keeps him going. The rest of us have lost our purpose. We just keep going because that’s what we always do. Continuation is the only thing we know. We do not have purpose and nor do we need it. So, we keep walking. Charles begins to sing, first softly to himself but gets progressively louder:

It's a long way to Tipperary,

It's a long way to go.

It's a long way to Tipperary

To the sweetest girl I know!

Goodbye, Piccadilly,

Farewell, Leicester Square!

It's a long long way to Tipperary,

But my heart's right there.

 

I wonder, is this the last shred of culture in this world?  Has all art, music, theatre and literature been reduced to one man who looks and acts like he was born in the late 1800s? Frankly if I had any say in how culture was produced, it’s not what I would have picked. Then again, I have no concept of beauty. Even before the war, I never got it. I was one of those teenagers who arbitrarily rejected everything in a hopeless attempt to hold onto my individuality. I fell into nihilism on every subject. First was ethics, rejecting morality was by far the most liberating moment of my life, I could see the world for what it really was, not the result of some arbitrary judgment of right and wrong, but for something that simply existed. Next I rejected metaphysics and that had no effect on me. Existence itself was irrelevant, who cared if the world around me was real or not? It was the world I was in and what I was perceiving and that was all that mattered. If it turns out later that this was all a dream, then I’ll figure that out when I wake up. Finally I rejected beauty and the world became bleak. Not long after, the bombs destroyed any chance of me perceiving anything beautiful ever again.

Charles on the other hand loves beauty, he insists all day that man’s only purpose is to perceive and create beauty. All of civilization was built upon beautiful ideas, beautiful things and beautiful minds. How I wish he was right. I am still trying to explain to him that all hope of civilization is dead, but he will have nothing of it and intends to rebuild culture the moment he finds a violin that survived the war.

But, even if he’s wrong, it’s comforting to know that someone in this world still remembers beauty. It is comforting to know that somebody still has a song in his heart. It means there’s still joy in him. His may be the only joy that has survived the nuclear apocalypse. We all are able to survive but he is the only one who can live. We are all human but he’s the only one who maintains his humanity. He’s the only one of us that isn’t thinking of putting a bullet in his brain. He finishes his song and quietly hums another one; another one of those old jazz songs that haven’t been popular for almost a century. He starts to reminisce about his pre-war life,

“Hey good lad, did I ever tell you about my daughter? Most beautiful thing you’d ever see. She was 20 when the war started. I can still remember holding my wife’s hand as she was born. She was a fighter from the day she was born. That’s why we called her Joan, after the French girl who fought back the English. Since then, she’s been fighting like no other. She was an athlete you see. Not the smartest girl in the world and a bit of a ruffian. When she was only 8, she came home covered in mud. When we asked her what had happened, she explained how she beat up a boy who was far bigger than she who had attacked one of her little friends.  My lord, we were furious. We marched her right over to the lad’s house and made her apologize. I have never seen a lad so embarrassed in my life! The chap’s face was bright red from shame of being bested in fisticuffs by my daughter.”

He rambles on for a good hour, telling us about her childhood, her getting into university and her going down to Florida before the war started,

“She’s a fighter and I tell ya, she’ll be down there trudging along like she always has.”

I hope he’s right. His belief that his daughter survived the war is the only thing keeping him going in this barren wasteland. If we were to ever discover that she’s dead, he will end up crazier than Johnny was. I miss Johnny, even if he was a drug addicted f**k.

The souls of the damned!

I miss him so much right now.

Bring your friends

But we have to keep going. It’s the only thing we still know how to do.

We come across a road sign. It’s faded beyond legibility but as we get close, we can barely make out one word in big block letters,

FLORIDA

Charles smiles. We must be getting close. The sun is setting. We set up camp on a nearby hill and take turns on watch. I’m second watch. After a short sleep, snipes shakes me awake and points outside my tent. That means it’s my turn. I grab my Lee-Enfield and head outside, looking at the empty horizon. The only sound is the incessant snoring of Charles. I hear footsteps, could be raiders. I grab my rifle and spin around; it’s Natasha.

“Go back to sleep Natasha, your turn isn’t for a couple hours. I barely started my watch.”

“I couldn’t sleep comrade.”

“How the f**k can you not sleep? We’ve been marching all day!”

“Mutations.”

That was her excuse for everything. Anything that seemed weird about her, she blamed on the experiments she did. Considering her arm, I guess she has the right to blame anything she wants on the mutation. I couldn’t tell. Hell, she’s half zombie for f**k’s sake and that arm is just massive. How did that happen?

“It didn’t hurt,” whispers Natasha, I look at her quizzically, “when they made my arm like this, just a few cells from a cancer patient gone zombie.”

“How long did it take…for it all to change?”

“A few weeks, maybe a few months. You lose your concept of time when you are kept indoors for so long. First the arm went grey. Then the tumors started. The scientists would inject paralyzing drugs into my arm which made it go hard. I spit on them every time they came with their needles filled with vile chemicals, so the KGB agents beat me. Soon, my skin hardened too until their beatings did nothing. Soon, I looked forward to watching their futile attempts to cause me pain. Soon, I began to cause them pain!” She chuckles sadistically, “but enough of me. Why are you here, why are you with us?”

“I’m here because you found me in a ditch.”

“Yes, but you’re a Canuck, how did you get this far south? What are you searching for?”

“Escape winter, find something…somewhere.”

“What?”

I look into distance, searching for the answer, “I don’t know. It’s just what I’ve always done and I guess what I’ll always do. I heard parts of South America are rebuilding, the ones that weren’t hit in the war. I hear Uruguay still has a central government. I guess I’m heading there.”

I know Natasha wasn’t satisfied with my answer. Then again, it didn’t satisfy me either. It was probably the worst answer that I could have possibly given. But, it was an answer and I gave it and that was that. We sit for a while in silence. I feel as though I’m carrying a large load on my back and I can never rest. I look at the Lee-Enfield, the rifle that has kept me alive since Toronto, kept me going this far. Why don’t I use it to end my journey here? Why do I persist in fighting? What is my purpose? Natasha catches me staring at my rifle,

“You could end it all right now, but what good would it do?”

I stare blankly

“Or comrade, you could fight on. You’ve made it this far. You can choose to keep fighting and keep living. There’s a reason we helped you when we found you passed out of dehydration in that ditch. You were a fighter, you had the strength to live.”

I finally mutter out a few words, “I don’t know what you’re talking about. Stop giving me that religious bullshit.”

“That’s the spirit comrade, fight.”

“Yeah whatever, it’s your turn to take watch.”

As I head to the tent, she draws her saber and watches in the distance. Her silhouette in the darkness appears as a triumphant demon, watching over her domain, protecting it from the invaders in the night.

God I hate that Russian accent.