ASHES

1.

“It’s just about keeping yourself busy until the very end.”

The commander had been a wise man, but Lira wondered if he’d stand to those words. Once he had kept them alive, now it was only the roaring fire that did that.

Her many coats hung open at the front, and sweat ran down her chest, but the cold ran to her soul.

Month after month of ice and snow showed in the hard muscles of her abdomen and in the ribs that ran across her chest like ridges. As she fed the flames, she wondered if she would have fit in during one of the ice ages.

Her family had died first. Sammy, her pup and best friend, was long gone. Martin Fall, the commander of Project Legacy, had to be dead. He’d been fast approaching it when they’d last spoken. And then there was Tul, her partner and champion. He was dead too.

He’d grown thin in those last months, just like her. It had been nothing to talk about, mention. She hadn’t realised that he’d been starving himself to help her. When she’d found out, it had already been too late. She hadn’t yet decided whether it had been a selfless or selfish act. Either way, she hated him for it.

“I can see the city!”

The voice was bright and young, full of the energy that Lira lacked.

She turned slowly so as not to add to the pain in her gut. Through the window, light splashed the horizon in streaks of grey and white. And, silhouetted before, it was Chrissy.

At nine years old, Chrissy barely had any memories of the calamity and those that she did were locked somewhere deep. She’d survived for three years after the nuclear winter had begun. How, Lira had no idea, and the girl so far hadn’t deigned to explain it.

She and Tul had taken turns searching for food in their first bombed-out city. Then, one day, Tul returned with a stack of tins in one arm, a nervous look on his face and a girl of eight clinging to his other arm. He never said anything about where he’d found the girl either, and so it was to remain a mystery.

Of course, taking on a child was about the worst idea they’d ever had, and she’d almost worked up the courage to tell Tul to return her to wherever he’d found her.

They’d kept her, and Chrissy had become their new legacy project.

With energy she didn’t have, Lira zipped up her many layers before leaving the warmth to go and stand beside the little bundle of coats that was her only companion.

“Lira, the city!” Her words were chirpy and had an excitement that the cold hadn’t yet taken away.

Silhouetted against the streaked clouds was a mass of black and grey. Jagged peaks and snow-tipped mounds. A city-sized crematorium.

She forced a smile, “Yes, the city! That’s where we’ll find more food.” Or where they’d die. But she couldn’t tell the girl that this was their last chance. That, without food, they would die there in the ash-stained snow. Even though Lira had gradually eaten less to save rations, Chrissy wouldn’t last a week without her.

2.

“We made it!”

Chrissy’s unyielding excitement reminded Lira of her dog as they made their way across the bridge into the city. The grey snow on which they walked was untouched, and it had fallen more than a week ago. That was a good sign, she hoped.

Then there was the city. That which could hold snow was grey, and the rest was charred black. Skyscrapers had been reduced to clusters of twisted girders, and houses were little more than mounds in the snow. But this was exactly why she’d chosen this place.

There had been no nuclear blast here, just bombs. According to her vague records, the fire had been so widespread that almost no part of the city had remained untouched. Those that had remained… well, they’d probably run for the next closest city, just to find it flattened too. They’d have died from radiation weeks or years later.

She sometimes thought she’d have preferred to be in one of the nuclear blasts. Perhaps it would have been easier that way.

But here she was. They’d travelled for weeks to reach this place in the hope that the food cache was full, that they would be able to live for a few more months, even years. Over the past two, they’d ticked off almost every food cache within a reasonable distance of each other, and everyone had been empty, used up back when there had been people around to use it. And so they’d survived on scraps left in houses and off escaped livestock.

Before that, she’d been lucky to be part of Project Legacy, which had provided her and Tul with a peaceful community for two years. When they’d left, the riots had been replaced with silence and cold.

In the last year, she’d seen two people. Tul and Chrissy. And now it was just Chrissy that remained. So far as she knew, they could be the last surviving humans.

Chrissy had already wandered off the bridge and into the city proper.

“Chrissy, wait!”

The girl turned to grin at her, and a moment later, a grey ball the size of her fist flew from the girl’s hand and smashed against Lira’s chest. She might have felt it had her thick jacket swallowed the impact. She plodded after the girl, pushing down the urge to berate her. What did it matter if the toxic ash burnt her hands or shortened their chances of surviving another year when she hadn’t eaten in days? With that thought in mind, she stepped into the city after Chrissy.

Black husks of buildings rose around her, scorched windows where thousands of people would have watched death approach. Grey, snow-covered mounds marked where those same people had died.

In her imagination, a world without humans would have been one where nature crept back in, where animals had taken back what had once been their own. Instead, it was empty, dead and cold. So deathly cold.

3.

Unfortunately, blackened street names were impossible to read, and even if she’d had pictures, many of the streets were impossible to distinguish. Towards the centre of the city, it was worse. It seemed that the higher the building, the worse the damage. Sometimes, entire streets were buried in mounds.

Lumps of metal that had once been cars littered the streets like a modern art exhibit.

She’d explored ghost towns in her youth and had seen how fast trees would puncture the glass roofs of malls and shrubs sprouting from the pavements. Here, there was nothing but the ashes of civilisation. Nothing would grow here for a long time.

Maybe it would come back if it stopped getting colder. Once the acid rain and snow stopped falling, the sun might peek through the crowds. But she wouldn’t see it, and even Chrissy, kicking snow in front of her, wouldn’t either.

“Did I teach you how to light a fire? Chrissy?”

“Huh?” She glanced up, paused, then shook her head. “Fire is dangerous; you said that.”

“It is, but there’s nothing else to burn. Keeping yourself warm is more important. Have you been practising tying those knots I taught you?”

The girl nodded absently and turned back to plodding through the snow, her energy somewhat depleted.

Not for the first time, Lira wished she was older, old enough to understand the weight of their situation. It was cruel to watch her play in the ruins of Lira’s life, to swing from snapped girders like a kid in a playpark or to explore ghost cities like it was a game.

“We’re here,” she said, putting a hand on the girl’s shoulder as they crossed a large intersection. It had once been busy, for the lumps of melted metal were numerous. And ahead should be the food vault.

“This time,” Lira said, stuffing her map back into a pocket, “Is the last time I listen to this map. It would be the last of many things, but she wasn’t ready to think about that yet, to tell Chrissy yet.

The girl had to survive, even if only to teach people how to play among the rubble. Maybe the commander had been wrong. She was busy, yet she longed for the end. This was not her world and never would be.

She crouched down, level with Chrissy, “Are you ready?” For what, she wasn’t sure, but whatever happened here, it would mark the end of something.

“To do one on my own?”

“No. We stay together, as always, there will probably be others here.”

Except that was probably a lie. There were no others here.

4.

It wasn’t long before Chrissy began to drag her feet. She hung onto Lira’s arm, and although the girl wouldn’t say it, she was hungry. She didn’t have the heart to tell the girl that there was nothing, so she ignored it.

She’d often considered hunting or trapping rats, but they’d soon become as elusive as everything else.

“There is one thing you can learn from me,” Lira said, “The one thing that you must learn.”

“But my tummy hurts,” Chrissy said, looking around the burnt-out shop they now stood in. “And it’s cold.” She might as well have told her the sky was blue. Except that it wasn’t and wouldn’t be for a long time.

Lira steeled her face and took the girl by the shoulders with her thick mitts, “Out here, we find food, or we die. It’s as simple as that. And even when you’re so hungry that your stomach hurts, that you want to sleep, you need to keep looking because otherwise you’ll starve.”

Lira wondered if she would even stomach a can of food if they found one, but that was beside the point. She’d found herself staring at the floor with longing, her eyes weighed down. She was tired, so very tired. But in this cold, without anything to feed her, she wouldn’t wake.

Tul had died in his sleep, and she would too, tonight, maybe. But today, she had something to do. Chrissy to feed.

“Lira.”

She realised she hadn’t moved, and Chrissy’s face was wrinkled with concern.

“We’ll search until it’s dark until there is nowhere else to search.”

“Let me go alone.” The childish play on the girl’s face was replaced by a seriousness that she rarely adopted. “We can do twice as many like that.”

She opened her mouth to tell the girl that, no, she couldn’t explore unstable buildings all by herself. But then she closed it again.

“Meet back here every hour,” she gestured to Tul’s oversized watch on the girl’s arm, “You know what to look for.”

Three times, they met up, and each time, neither had anything promising to report. But the fourth time, just as the meagre light was fading from the ruined world, Chrissy bounded out of the darkness with a grin on her face.

Chrissy led her into what might have been a bank with its cracked pillars and steps leading up to it. Under the snow, much of the stone was untouched by soot. Inside, however, the darkening sky was visible, and the floor was littered with ash and whatever the building had been roofed in. A narrow marble staircase set back into one of the walls led down into what she assumed was a basement.

She let a flicker of excitement in as they descended. The stone steps were quickly replaced with metal and concrete. At the bottom of four flights was a large steel door with a wheel-like handle which read, ‘Food Vault.’

Dread replaced excitement. This was it. This was her last chance. She glanced at Chrissy, who was also frowning. She might be young, but she knew what this meant for their future.

5.

In the near darkness, Lira lowered her pack and unstrapped one of the many handmade torches. Then, selecting a lighter from the box she’d found in the gas station, she set it alight.

Warm light splashed on cold steel, and the confined space was suddenly a great deal more cosy. If the girl had entered the vault already, she didn’t mention it. Instead, she just watched as if this was Lira’s battle to fight.

She felt sick. She was sick and perhaps in more ways than one. Not for the first time, she wondered if food would change things, if it would lighten the grey that hung over everything. Help her recapture whatever it was that Chrissy had that allowed her to enjoy life.

Then again, maybe this was how it was meant to be. To live in a doomed world was to sleep in the dark and walk in the dark, for her skin was too pale until she eventually froze to death like everything else already had.

But Chrissy, no matter what, didn’t let the world ruin her day. Whatever rose-tinted glasses the girl was wearing, Lira wanted them. She wanted to feel something other than despair.

“The will of a child is quite something,” she said and slipped into the room.

The pockmarked walls were sealed with grey paint that gave mottled reflections in the torchlight. Steel racks lined the walls, and broken crates littered the floor. If there had been food here, someone had well and truly stripped the place.

Something broke in Lira. The torch hit the floor with a shower of sparks and continued to burn, the fire spreading up the handle. This was it. Weeks of walking and nothing to show for it. They’d bet everything on this place, used the last of their stores to get this far, and there was nothing.

“What’s wrong?” Chrissy asked, still standing in the middle of the room, staring at the torch.

Lira pulled her legs to her stomach and felt a tear slide down her cheek. She was so very tired. Tired of living in a world hostile to life. Chrissy held onto her elbow in an attempt to lift her up but eventually retreated a few meters.

She held the girl’s face in between her hands, “You must learn to fend for yourself now. I know it’s a big scary world out there, but I’ll only slow you down from here.”

The girl shrugged out of her grasp and picked up the torch. With a final look back, she disappeared into the darkness.

She wondered if that was the last time she would see the girl or if she’d just gone off to play while Lira got over whatever was bothering her. Except she wouldn’t, not this time. For it wasn’t just hunger that ailed her; it was a desperate hopelessness that had settled in her bones.

She closed her eyes and felt sleep begin to take her.

The light hit her eyelids, and she cracked them open. There was a shriek of delight and then another one. She opened her eyes more and caught sight of Chrissy dancing in and out of the columns in the room, chasing something small and long. A rat.

Lira resisted sleep a while longer and watched as the girl entertained herself for almost an hour. Eventually, she gave up and wandered around the room, waving the dying torch to try and get it to light up again.

She wanted to open her mouth to tell the girl to be serious, to listen to her. To tell her that she was on her own now, that she had given up. But she couldn’t do it.

She was exhausted, and her hunger ran so deep that it could have been in her bones, but she couldn’t leave the girl to become like her. Maybe it was meant to be like this, for her to be serious and for the girl to have enough excitement for both of them.

And so, with energy she didn’t have, she let go of her bag and straightened a second torch in her hand. It flared to life, momentarily blinding her.

Chrissy dropped the dying one and watched as Lira propped hers against the wall and gestured for the girl to sit. She proceeded to move her hands and arms in front of the torch, casting large shadows on the wall.

Chrissy giggled.

“What am I trying to be?”

She cocked her head and wrinkled her nose, “A monster! Now my turn!”

She leapt up and crouched in front of the flame, trying her best to imitate Lira’s hand movements. And for the first time in a long, long time, Lira felt a sliver of warmth tug her cheeks upwards. The hunger didn’t feel quite so deep, the cold a little less biting.

Chrissy gave up with her hands and stepped back to use her whole body to cast shadows, and Lira giggled, a smile spreading up her face.