Heart of Loneliness

Doomsday Diary Challenge

Elizabeth Montaño

Loneliness. It has to be the most desolate and destitute of conditions. To have no one, absolutely no one, with whom to talk, laugh, fight, hate or love, gnaws at your heart and eats at your soul. It literally claws at your mind. I’m afraid there isn’t much of my heart or soul remaining and I don’t know how close I am to falling into the abyss of insanity. I think I’m pretty close to the brink these days.

This day is a scorcher. Depression and exhaustion, both heat and mental, begin to take command of my body. When I come upon a lone mesquite tree, I drop my backpack and slink down, wincing as my skin scrapes against the rough bark. It’s poor shelter from the heat but better than no shelter at all. Collapsing on the dehydrated earth, I check my supplies. Enough water for two more days if I’m careful, and enough of the hare I’d snared last night to last throughout today and at least one meal tomorrow, maybe two. That is, providing I don’t allow my achingly hollow stomach to make me too very greedy. In any case, somehow, I have to find more food and water soon.

Shielding my eyes with my hands from the blistering Sonora Desert sun, I peer through splayed fingers to try and gauge the time of day. From the position of the orb, I guess it to be late afternoon, probably close to five. Although it’s slowly nudging toward the horizon, it’s still bright and flaming. I want to eat dinner now, but my survival instinct is at war with itself. Common sense tells me it’s too early. By the time I walk a few more hours, I’ll want more food. With this much exercise and heat, I’m burning tons of calories. If I give in to my urges now, I’ll have to go to sleep hungry once darkness settles in.

But, not only is my stomach shouting at me to feed it, my mouth is horribly dry. The heat and sand have desiccated my throat to the point that swallowing without water is nearly impossible, no matter how hungry I am. I need to save my limited supply of water for when I do eat. Eventually, brutal thirst prevails over indecision. I’ll do both now and regret it later. Wearily, I tear a small strip of meat from the lean hare and begin to chew. It tastes like the tree bark I’m sitting against.

How much further, I wonder almost apathetically, before I reach vegetation? Something beyond a mesquite or cactus or tumbleweed? I’ve been walking for more days than I can count traveling northward, and I’m nearly as tired as I am constantly hungry and thirsty. I have to keep going, though. There’s no way I can survive by myself in the blistering heat with almost no supplies. Besides, the loneliness is the worst of all.

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Our goal had been to reach an area where we could, at the very least, sustain ourselves with food, water and shelter. And, just maybe, along the way we could find, please God—we had prayed, let us find—people who hadn’t died from radiation poisoning.

We had hoped we would run across something more than bodies since we were still alive. I say we because at the beginning of this journey, I wasn’t alone. My mother and younger sister were with me when we started out. Our father had been on a business trip in New York City when the end of the world, as we knew it, happened. With its congested population, the Big Apple was one of the first places bombed, right behind Washington D.C.. Los Angeles, Chicago, Dallas and Atlanta were all hit simultaneously, with other cities quickly following. All communication systems were offline so there wasn’t any way to find out about Dad. Considering the early news reports and the staggering death toll, however, all we were left with was a futile hope he might’ve survived.

We drove, constantly looking for other survivors—wondering how we’d eluded death (we never figured that one out)—until there was no longer fuel at any of the filling stations. We found no one. Once we ran out of gas, we shoved all we could carry in backpacks and began walking.

My mother died first. She’d only lasted a couple of weeks on foot before the heat claimed her, or perhaps it was the deadly combination of heat and despair. Before she drew her last breath, she slipped the gold chain holding her mother’s crudely-made, heart-shaped locket over her head and motioned me close so she could put it over mine. “There’s love and hope in there, Lilly,” she’d whispered feebly. “Take care of your sister.”

My tears of sorrow wet my mother’s cheeks as I leaned over her, begging her to stay with us. I’d frantically stroked her hair as though I could somehow infuse her with feverish energy from my own lifeforce. Once black as midnight with only a shadowed sliver of a moon, her locks had faded to a crown of silvery-gray. Rachel clutched her hand tightly, as stubborn as I was in refusing to let her go. Whereas my keening was silent, her sobs were not. Their decibels filled the empty air with a loudness that seemed to echo endlessly. Sadly, our tears and pleas weren’t enough to keep our mother with us. It took us nearly a full day to scratch out a shallow grave to try and protect her body from hungry, would-be predators.

Only two days after Mom passed away, Rachel was bitten by a Western Diamondback rattlesnake. I tried what I’d seen on television when there was still such a thing as programming, but cutting into the bite and sucking out the venom didn’t work. Her leg swelled to at least twice its normal size and turned grotesque shades of red, black and purple. She was in such agony and I was so helpless! I don’t even know how long I alternately prayed and cursed God until Rachel’s screams became weak whimpers. Finally, her whimpers faded to an eerie silence. The soundlessness was louder than had been her high-pitched wails of mourning.

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I haven’t prayed in the weeks since, and I shed the last of my tears the day I laid my sweet and gentle twelve-year-old sister into something barely more than a crevasse. The ground was too dry and hard to dig anything even closely resembling a proper grave.

Now, however, even though my body can ill-afford to give up the moisture, I can feel tiny rivulets running through the layers and layers of dirt that surely stain my face. No water has touched my skin in weeks; drinking is far more important than cleanliness. I shut my eyes tightly. Afraid that I’ll forget their beloved faces in the constant exposure to such ugliness, I visualize my family and force each image to imprint on my brain.

As if someone’s hand other than my own is commanding it, I reach for Mom’s locket. I open the heart, slightly indented on the back from nearly a century of wear and handling. I’m surprised by what I see. It’s a different picture than the one I was used to; the one which had filled it for years. My mother had replaced the photo of Rachel and me from when we were just three and six years old. Inside it now, is a recently-taken family portrait. My mother, father, Rachel, and me. My family.

Mom was right, it is filled with love—and that love fills me with hope. In this beautiful, antique locket, my mother and father are watching over their daughters. And, maybe my father is still out there somewhere. That’s something to hope for. If he isn’t, then I’m the only one left to carry on their legacy of love. Snapping it back shut, I tuck my family back inside my shirt so that they’re laying close to my heart.

Heaving a big sigh, I wipe my eyes, rearrange my backpack, and get up. There’s still at least three or four more hours of daylight and I have to keep searching for the living, and for a better world.

End