Out of the Ashes

There were those who lived on the fringe areas of the hot blasts; they were horribly burned, waiting to die—wanting to die. There were those close to the blasts who had instinctively turned their heads to look at the brilliant flashes and had felt their eyeballs turn to liquid and roll down their cheeks, leaving only empty sockets and unbelievable pain. Those people died; they were killed by others who panicked and trampled them wantonly.

Women of all ages were raped, tortured, and left to suffer and die in empty houses or barns or alleys or gutters. Children, raped, molested, hurt, wandered about, screaming their misery, alone and frightened; many of them were finally brought down by roaming packs of dogs.

In the prisons and jails, men and women, locked in their cells, were forgotten, left to die from exposure and starvation. Those roaming the walkways and runarounds would commit unspeakable acts on their fellow prisoners and then, in one final moment of desperation, they would hang themselves, hack open their wrists, or beat their brains out against steel bars or cell walls.

In the nursing homes and mental institutions, the insane and the old died without knowing why or how this was happening to them, left alone when the first panic struck the nation; actually, for many this was the second time they had been abandoned, the first having been when their children decided they didn't want old people around, messing up their social lives.

The old people and the insane soiled themselves, vomited on themselves, and then died as horribly as they had been forced to live.

Two days after the world exploded in nuclear and bacteriological madness, it began again as the doomsday tapes cued out and began the overkill. From deep in underground silos, the missiles roared toward their preset targets. Subs from Russia, China, and America, and a dozen other countries surfaced and hurled their payloads. The overkill began.

When there were no more cities or military bases to strike, or they were out of range, the captains of the subs fired their last missiles and let them fall where they may. It was a seemingly brutal, senseless act that most civilians would not understand. But military men and women who had served their respective countries lifelong understood it all too well.

Death was everywhere. Chaos and panic ran rampant worldwide. Live now! Who knows if there will be a dawn tomorrow. Surely there is no God, for He would not have permitted this. Rape, steal, kill—there is no promised land. This is all there is or ever will be.

After exhausting their payloads, the subs surfaced and raised the flags of their countries. The captains stood calmly and stoically on their conning towers and saluted the pilots who blew them into history. Many of the American pilots, out of fuel, with carriers and bases gone or out of range, cursed the enemy and rammed their jets into its subs, going down with their foes.

The former world, in which people were capable of producing constructive results, no longer existed.

THREE

He remembered getting up from the cold floor and slipping in his own blood. His head was a huge mass of pain. He stumbled into the bathroom and, using his one good eye, washed the cut and put antiseptic on the gash. Just that much effort exhausted him. He stretched out on the couch and went to sleep. Sometime during the night—what night, he wasn't certain—Ben rose stiffly and painfully from the couch to fix a bowl of soup. He kept it down for about five minutes before staggering to the bathroom and vomiting. Then it was back to the couch and a deep, almost comalike sleep.

On yet another morning, Ben managed to keep some soup and milk down and to take a shower before his weakness drove him to bed. He had glanced out the window and viewed a perfectly lovely day. He thought he had heard horns honking frantically sometime during the previous night, but he wasn't sure.

His face was still swollen and he was feverish, able to see out of just one eye, but he felt a little bit better. He knew he'd been very, very lucky, for he had counted as many of the wasp stings as he could see or feel, and reckoned he had been stung more than thirty times—maybe as many as fifty. As allergic as he was to stings, that many should have killed him.

He stumbled back to bed and pulled the covers over his head.

He opened his eyes and knew, on this day, finally, that he was going to be all right.

Well, Ben thought, I probably should have died. I'm a lucky man. Lord, have I been sick.

He rolled over in bed and stared at the red numbers on his digital clock radio. The numbers stared back. Almost, he thought, with a mixture of mute arrogance and accusation. The numbers seemed to be saying: Get up! Get up! You're not sick. You feel fine. So get up and get to work.