Apocalyptic Poetry

It was the end of the world and she was scavenging words.

Toni knew that there were better, far more important things to search for. Here at the edge of a burnt out Chicago, close enough to see the charred remains but far enough to avoid the still smoldering embers at the center. Cities were dangerous places to be now.

But everywhere was a dangerous place.

She had her weapon slung over her shoulder, she didn’t know the exact make and model of the gun but she knew how to use it and knew that it worked. The machete at her waist was easier to use, quieter too. A big knife, she knew knives, known them since she was little and before the world blew up around her. Pity she didn’t burn with it.

Instead she had survived, somehow, and here she was writing down her latest find in a tattered notebook that was only slightly cleaner than her dirt encrusted fingers. SPIKE LOVES ROCHELLE. A red heart encased those words. More love notes, or declarations, that she felt had to be recorded. Remembered. Spike and his grand love Rochelle were probably dead, or infected, or worse. But this remained, this was something they had left behind. A small glimpse of another time that felt like centuries ago even though it had only been about five years.

A sharp clatter to her left and Toni paused, still and silent, her eyes straining through the gloom that clung thick and heavy like a funeral shroud beneath the old railroad pass. All she could see was cracked concrete and garbage, not really different from how Chicago had looked before, except now there was more of it. More trash and crumbling buildings, decaying in one massive dump that spanned the world. The only big difference were the bodies.

There was one nearby, always at least one nearby. Toni had gotten used to the sight, the smell, a constant in her life. The nonstop parade of death, the stench of it always in the air, the sound of it always at the edge of her hearing or worse it was screaming behind her. But it was silent now, the noise had been a couple of rats fighting and fucking nearby, the true rulers of the world now.

Toni bit her lip, no longer feeling any pain from the chewed up and raw skin, and turned back to the worn concrete wall in front of her. There were words scrawled in black next to the heart. RETHINK YOUR WAR ON DRUGS. A good one, one she hadn’t seen before. Below it was a crudely drawn dick, that she had seen many times before. FUCK THE COPS in bold yellow letters near the top, REDD DOGG lower in stylized green letters with spray-painted highlights to make it shine.

She wrote it all down.

KIM + BO, another heart with a delicately and beautifully painted rose beneath it. A crown encircling the words; A POLITICIAN IS JUST A CROOK THAT AINT BEEN CAUGHT YET. Beneath that was a rebuttal; WE KEEP CATCHIN THEM BUT THEY KEEP BUYIN THEY WAY OUTA PRISON. And below that another response; BITCHES IS DA REAL PROBLEM YO.

All of it was written down, all of it recorded, all of it remembered. Every word and every name. Every mistake and every curse, every profane word and profound statement. Everything went in the notebook. She had to write it all down, while she still could.

Why do you keep doing that? It’s stupid, we got better things to do.

Staci had said that every time she saw Toni scribbling away. Every time there had been a smile on her face. Every time.

Till the last.

Toni finished up the wall, every last scrap of paint now repeated in ink and paper and repainted across her memories. Carefully she stowed away her notebook and took one last look around. Nothing left for her here, nothing she could use, nothing to eat and nothing she could fight with. Time to get moving, always moving.

Come on, sis, we can’t stay here too long.

Staci’s words were burned into her memories and carefully written on the very last page of her notebook. She could flip to the end and read them, but Toni didn’t, couldn’t do that yet. Maybe someday, if she lived long enough. Toni fingered the heart-shaped locket that hung at her throat, a twin to her sister’s necklace. She wanted to throw it away, but for some reason her fingers always refused to loosen when the moment came.

The sun was getting low, burning off the last light of day in smears of bloody red and fiery orange across the ashen sky. She had to find shelter and if she was lucky, some food. Toni knew she had wasted time recording the graffiti but she couldn’t help herself. Time was precious and there was never enough and you only found that out when it was gone.

We only remember how precious something is once its gone.

Everyone was gone. Either infected or surviving, and the survivors were worse than the infected. Everywhere was dangerous and everyone was dangerous. Toni only had herself and these words. These small scraps of people that were long gone, dead or insane. Useless, nonsense words that would’ve been painted over and cleaned off in the past. But now they remained.

Like her.

Toni hefted her machete and kept moving.