This is a $25 commission and criminally late, but I just started work this week, and I'm still getting used to it.
*~*~*~*~*
The world ended in May. Well, that wasn't completely accurate. There were still people, the world still existed, so it was much more accurate to say that western civilization ended in May. For three days, people kept trying to go to work and school, kept trying to live their life as if the world hadn't changed. After a week, the looting began, everyone stealing everything from local stores, even stuff they couldn't used anymore, like computers and televisions.
Then came the parties. For weeks, every corner smelled like food cooking, over gas generators and handmade fires, barbecue grills, anything anyone could cook anything on, they did. Everyone ate and drank, shared, fucked, fought, and while there were a few people advocating restraint, everyone agreed that cooked meat would probably keep better than raw meat, that unrefrigerated fruits and vegetables would go bad if they weren't eaten or somehow preserved in jams, pickled, that sort of thing.
People who knew how to do that sort of thing stepped forth to offer their services, taught anyone who wanted to learn. People who knew how to make jerky, they did the same. People who could hunt scoured the nearby bastions of wilderness for more food, because eventually the bounty of the mall would wear out.
After two months, people began to run out of prescription medicines. Many were violently ill, became depressed or suicidal or violent. Others were re-exposed to pain that medicine had been protecting them from, sometimes after years of not feeling it, and some people just got annoying. Some survived, others didn't. The deaths sobered everyone, as people realized that civilization as they knew it was really over. They had to make a new one.
Adeidra was blessed to find herself turned to as one of the leaders. She was wheelchair-bound, and some clever bastard had attached solar panels to her chair to charge the battery, as well as rigging it so that it charged itself a bit as it moved. The young woman had sheepishly confessed to Adeidra that it had taken a lot of tries to get it right.
Adeidra was shocked how much people came together, how the boys came together to run interference on that one kid who was off his medicine and kept muttering at the girls about re-population, how teens and people with adult children watched the babies, to give the parents time to breathe, sleep, mourn, whatever they needed to do.
Yeah, there were the kids who went off into abandoned movie theaters to fuck, the adults too, and people who menaced others with weaponry, guns and knives, over stale popcorn and old ramen, people who tried to turn everything into a competition it didn't need to be, but everyone just left those people to their own devices. They'd figure it out or they wouldn't, but either way, they didn't need those people.
She'd feared it would turn out like every zombie movie, her twin daughters making nervous Walking Dead jokes, but people came together. Humans were social animals, and there were many lonely people who just didn't want to be alone, everyone gathering at churches, school gymnasiums, the middle of picked-clean stores, anywhere there was space to be, to talk, bond, learn. Everyone had a theory about what had happened, where they were all going from there, but noone knew. Not really.
But it was getting cold. Adeidra had Roshona and Samantha prepare to leave. They wouldn't be able to manage in a Chicago winter. They were city women, born and bred, and it was just easier to travel south, where it would be warmer and there would be more plants and animals to find and hunt. Adeidra wasn't the only one, and she'd actually gotten the idea from other women. She hadn't been difficult to convince. Most people weren't.
They got news from the south. South Carolina, to be precise. They were doing things down there. California, too, and Florida and Texas. Most of the southern states with access to water were doing things, people were gathering and making civilization. People thrived and worked. Noone wanted to suffer and die.
There were something like a thousand people left where Adeidra and her girls were, most of the others having fled to other states, other family and friends earlier in the year. And the ones who died. But Adeidra tried not to think of those ones so hard. Everyone began packing up, doing what they could, and soon everyone was ready to migrate. They lost people as they went, some people choosing to go to Florida, California, Texas, for pretty much the same reason Adeidra pointed her family at South Carolina. They had family there.
They also gained people as they traveled, also migrating south for the winter, or because they'd heard there was civilization, or simply because a huge group of people was passing through, and they didn't want to be left alone.
Adeidra had no idea how many of the group from Chicago made it to South Carolina, but she and her girls made it, along with Rudy, their dog, worth his weight in food for being able to brighten their moods, even if he wasn't precisely the best guard dog in the world. They had just crossed the North Carolina-South Carolina, camped for the night, when a young woman, about Roshona and Samantha's age, began moving through the group, pushing a grocery cart full of leaves wrapped in red ribbon.
Adeidra had no idea what the gal was doing, but she kept showing people her wrist. As she came closer, it became clear she had a watch. It hadn't even been a year since civilization ended, of course watches would still work. When she reached the Jenkins family, she passed out small sprigs of what smelled like mint, wrapped in red ribbon. Mint was so nice, it tasted good, and it made water taste cooler.
Then she wished the quartet a Merry Christmas, to their mutual bemusement. A quick check of the woman's watch revealed that yes, it was December 24. Christmas Eve, but still. It was startling, thinking of life only a year before. But she had her daughters, who were alive and well enough, and a shining future ahead of them. She couldn't complain.
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