Alive

My father had told me that the silence was wrong. The forest was once full of life, he had said, and that life would tell travelers when the sun was about to rise. He talked to me about how birds and insects would begin to sing to greet the new day, and the vitality the sun brought with it. Walking down the road with the remains of the silent forest spread out for miles on both sides of me, I can’t help but chuckle at the thought- the sheer absurdity of any living thing greeting their slow death with a cheerful song. Then again, here I am laughing at my own morbid thoughts on a deserted highway. Maybe the animals weren’t wrong after all.

I shake my head, breaking free of my thoughts to focus on more immediate concerns. The road was visible for several hundred feet ahead of me, which meant sunrise was coming. Time to seek shelter- better to stop too early and risk losing travel time than to chance being caught without shelter when the sun was up. Traveling during the daytime heat was something reserved for the desperate or stupid. Looking around, the hills to my left appear rockier than those to my right, so I step off the pavement and make my way towards them. It had been years since the fires swept through this part of the country, making the ground open and easy to walk on. My feet crunch on the dirt and rocks, the sound echoing through the blackened trees as I stare ahead, intent on the rocky outcroppings looming ahead in the predawn light. I spot a large crack between some boulders and walk towards it.

The fissure is about a meter wide, and maybe six meters deep. Perfect. Shelter on my first try, maybe things are looking up. I wedge myself in so I can watch the opening, but far enough back the sun won’t touch me. Confident I am as safe as I can be, I open my pack and pull out some crackers and a single bottle of water. Half the water first, to make the little food I had for today go down easier. Then the rest of the water, drinking slowly to keep up the illusion I had enough to slake my thirst. Three bottles left now. I’d have to start rationing more tomorrow. I pat my pocket to make sure the locket is still there and fall asleep watching the sky outside turn bright.

“Aisha! Come back here!” Grandmother’s voice was insistent, piercing the crowd and instantly causing me to look back. Despite being one of several women wearing traditional Arab garb covering most of her face, I immediately knew who she was and ran back towards her.

“Come Grandma, look! It’ssoprettyyouhavetoseeit!” I exclaimed breathlessly, tugging her back toward the shop with the excitement only a nine-year-old can muster.

“I’m coming child. Let’s not be hasty now- it’s another hot day and running only makes it feel worse,” Grandma patiently explained. It was something she’s said to me a dozen times already and will say dozens more times as the days continue to grow hotter. Nonetheless she gave in to my enthusiasm and walked a little faster over to the jeweler’s shop with me.

“Can I get it? There’s someone I want to give it to REALLLLY badly. Can I please?!” I begged, pointing at the trinket that had caught my eye. Grandma paused and made a big show of considering my request, but we both knew the result. She always bought me something when I went to the market with her; it was just as certain as the beat of the waves against the massive seawalls.

“Alright,” she conceded, paying the merchant, and allowing me to take the trinket from him. “But now you have to tell me who the gift is for.”

“Grandma,” I said coyly, “it’s for you!” I took the golden locket and folded it into her hand. I couldn’t see her face, but I knew she was smiling.

I wake slowly and do my best to stretch in the confines of my shelter. As always, I wake up damp from sweat, the shade of the crevice not being enough to keep all the heat at bay. The sun looks to still be an hour or more away from setting, so it will not be safe to travel for at least another two hours. I pull out my locket and spin it from the chain, reminiscing about the early days of my life while I wait for the world to cool down. My grandmother had worn the locket from the day we bought it until the day she died- it was the only jewelry I had ever seen her wear. It was a mercy she passed before the seawalls gave out, I thought. It was bad enough she had to flee the Middle East when the heat got too bad for life, it would have broken her to have had to flee her adopted home in Vancouver too. The hours of panicked flight, my parents and I running with only the clothes on our backs. Weeks of chaos before anything resembling order was carved out of the chaos in the mountains near the city. And then those last few, precious years with my family. Scraping to survive as the days grew hotter, reveling at night in the only thing we had left- each other.

I snap out of my thoughts and realize the sun has gone down. Come on, Aisha! I chide myself. You’re trying to survive, not live in the past. “Fine,” I grumble aloud. It feels weird to talk after being alone for a week, but I’m hoping it’s a skill I’ll need to keep sharp. “I guess I’ll get moving.” I walk back to the highway, pausing briefly to stare at a ribcage sticking out of the dirt higher than my knees. Moose or bear I guess, but I’d never seen one of them when they were alive, and I can’t identify their bones. Moose exist for me in the same realm as dinosaurs- I know they had existed, but I am very skeptical I will ever see one. Especially now, with even the nighttime temperatures reaching forty-five Celsius.

I reach the pavement and begin my nightly journey to the east. Every mile seems the same, just darkness and broken trees interrupted by regular signs proclaiming I’m on Canadian Highway 3- reminders that I am still going the way I need to go. The highway is open- no cars litter the road, no holes mar the pavement. None of the things that I was told to expect by the old end-of-the-world movies I watched as a child. This was a long, slow end we suffered through, not the quick and painless apocalypse as imagined by old Hollywood. What I would give for less pain.

“WAKE UP! THEY’RE HERE, GET UP NOW WE HAVE TO LEAVE!” The shouting shattered the night and jarred me out of my cot before I had the chance to figure out what was going on. Looking around, I saw the flickering of orange flames outside and, beyond the nearby noise, heard the pops and bangs of guns in the near distance. I rushed to the main room, encountering my mother and father throwing what food and water we had managed to save up into several packs with frantic urgency.

“Aisha, they’ve come. We’re going out the back way now, like we practiced. There’s no time to waste if we want to keep our lives,” my father explained, surprisingly rational considering our little community was about to burn down around us. I guess that growing up the child of refugees in a world with increasingly scarce living space and resources, followed by the chaotic flight we already took from flooding Vancouver, has made him an old hand at this sort of crisis. He handed the first pack to me and turned back to finish filling the second.

“Here, take your grandmother’s locket,” my mother said, handing me the locket Grandma and I bought all those years ago. The chain had broken, and the heart-shaped gold had been dented many times over, but it still latched and was the only thing we had from the house I grew up in. “Inside this is where we’re going- if we get separated, we meet there! Do you understand? Don’t ever turn around- we meet there!”

Dad finished with the last pack and motioned Mom and I to the back door. “Just like we planned- out the back and then we run along the fen- “

The gunshots, suddenly close, interrupted his speech and caused us all to drop flat on the floor. As soon as they stopped, I bounded up and to the door, ready to flee with my parents. I flung the back door open and stepped into the night, only to realize too late that I was alone. Whipping around, I saw my mom standing up from my dad’s prone body, face streaked with tears.

“Come on Aisha, we have to go,” said my mother, her voice breaking but her movements full of determination. She grabbed my arm and tugged me out the door.

“But…we have to bring dad…” I protest weakly. I know it is too late, there is nothing we can do, but we can’t leave him, can we?

“No. We have to live for ourselves now. It’s what we would have wanted,” countered my mother. “They’re too close now, we can’t use the old plan. I’ll take the woods east; you go to the old highway and follow that. I’ll find you at dawn, I promise.” I nodded, having lost the strength to talk. “Ok, go!” she shouted, and we burst out the back door into the firelit landscape. We stayed low as we ran, and gunshots pursued us into the darkness. I turned my head and saw my mother reach the tree line, and then returned to my own flight.

Six days have passed since my mom and I fled our refuge. The morning she would find me passed without her, and I cling to her words every night as I follow the highway. Don’t ever turn around. We meet there. I pull out the locket again and open it up as I walk. Inside is a small, folded piece of paper that represents my last hope for survival. Slowly and carefully I open the paper, as I have done dozens of times since my walk began. Despite the night it’s easy enough to read- the stars illuminate everything easily now that clouds are gone.

“Cody Caves Provincial Park, Ainsworth, British Columbia,” I read it aloud to myself. My dad told us he heard that the Canadian government was gathering survivors in the caves. That once there we would have peace and water again. I hope it’s true because there’s nothing else to hold on to in my life. Peace, and the slim chance that I’ll find my mom there.

Suddenly a sharp, high pitched noise sounds off to my right. I crouch down reflexively, getting low and trying to identify the threat. As I scan the distance for the source of the noise, I gingerly fold the paper and place it back in the locket. It’s all I have left, and I will not risk it. The noise sounds again, followed quickly by the source bounding around the next turn.

The dog spots me and barks twice again, and then turns and runs back the way it came. Shocked, I remain crouched for a moment before it hits me- no dog could survive out here alone. There are people here. THERE ARE PEOPLE HERE. All my grandmother’s admonitions against running vanish in an instant as my hope blossoms, and I chase the dog as fast as I can.

“Can you hear me? I’m alive! I’M ALIVE!”