Let's Go Home, Sister

The unholy, ungodly power of the sun, at the fingertips of whoever wears the stars on their shoulders. Thousands of fireballs large enough to consume even the largest, most powerful cities anywhere on earth. Eating them and regurgitating nuclear ash. No bones, no shadows. Not even a drop of blood. Just radioactive ash, and a crater that could be mistaken as a dry lake bed.

That day was an unfortunate one. Funny enough, the inexorable annihilation of all livable habitats on earth wasn’t some grand war, some political tension buckling under the weight of public opinion. An unknown hacking group had phished its way into nearly every electronic nuclear silo on earth. Even till this day, no one knows who, but the targets were chosen very carefully. Worldwide, many silos were still analog, using tapes or vacuum tubes. Somehow, they knew every location of every single nuclear site. From power plants to waste storage to arms stockpiles, and yes, analog silos. Everywhere was targeted. Their objective must’ve been the extinction of all life on earth, given a few extremophiles living on underwater geothermal vents. Every major city was hit with a minimum payload of 100 megatons. Stockpiles were hit with something to detonate them, which were usually stored underground beneath selected farmland. Power plants melted down and irradiated the ocean. The only continent that was spared was Antarctica.

Nuclear fallout brought on the decade without summer, years without sunrises or sunsets. Overcast skies precipitating ash. The north froze over. And I survived, against all odds. Humanity survived. Not well, I might add, but our specie lives on. I survived, but I suppose I could care less about any of that. A week prior to that day, my twin sister, whom I shared everything with our entire lives, had flown across the country to the Yukon to climb North America’s tallest peak. It was her dream to do it. The bombs hit, the cell network shut down, and airports across the world were obliterated. There was no way for me to save her. Our home town managed to be in a one of a kind location. No farmland, no town over 1,000 people, no power plants, no silos for two hundred miles. I survived by pure luck.

After the suns and fireballs set, and the ash settled, so many flocked to our small, little town. A haven for the mid-south. I could’ve stayed, and lived whatever life I could make, but I didn’t. I had to save my sister.

~

How long has it been? I ask myself. My eyes are a little dry, and my lips a little chapped underneath my mask. I can’t take the mask off right now, the counter is reading too high, I’d rip apart my insides just holding my breath.

I hold out the counter, waving it to and fro to find a path where the radiation doesn’t spike. How long has it been? I lost count. There are stretches for days where the sky is grey from dust absorbed clouds, so dark, you can’t tell if it’s a moonlit night or not. What I do know is I’m ninety percent there. My feet are bloodied and calloused. My legs are chafed to all hell, and my arms are so sore, they could fall off at any moment.

Hours go by. What used to be here was a lush snowy forest with a blanket of fresh snow every winter. Now the trees are cancerous and bulbous. The ground is sandy soil compacted with blackened ice. Almost looks like a quail egg. I haven’t seen any animals, but I should see some going further north. The temperature is below freezing and has been for days. I’m starving and weak. I haven’t been able to eat because this area is so irradiated, even if I were to survive without my mask, anything I would put in my stomach would kill me within hours.

My stomach growls at me like a rabid dog defending what it thinks is it’s territory. What I wouldn’t give for some grilled alligator, I think to myself. What I wouldn’t give to see my sister again.

My location should be Yukon territory, approaching Alaska. This place is an absolute wasteland. Whoever set this into motion, they wanted to cripple any surviving infrastructure, including the pipeline that runs through here. What would possess a human being to do such a thing as this? The mountains are to my left, and the tips of them are still white, which gives me hope that the distance they stand above the surface is still intact and teaming with something to eat. But I have to reserve my energy for climbing Denali, where my dear sister wanted to be. It’s been years at the very least. There are no real seasons, especially this far north with the nuclear winter.

Suddenly, my counter starts shouting at me, clicking out of control. I look up from the ground in front of me, and I see a crater that would span the entire clerical border of my home county. What ungodly force did this? This is going to add days onto my journey just walking around this. My stomach cramps up, and I bend over to release some of the pain. I’m so hungry, so thirsty. But I continue on, simply circling around the hole in the earth.

Small, black snowflakes descend on the landscape, causing the counter to tick ever faster. The rain and snow has radioactive particles from the initial detonations dissolved in it. It’s in the sky and it’s in the water. One of the many things my town sent me off with was a filter designed to remove the contaminants. They sent me with three filters, and the last one is nearing the end of its life.

~

Think back, dammit! Don’t forget!

The ground has stopped shaking; bombs have all exploded, and the tectonic plates are finally at rest again. The battery powered radios some of us have here are picking up small reports from nearby. Today I am sitting, resting my back on my parent’s headstone, pretending like they’re really still here. High speed car accident on the interstate, while they were going off to the next town over to buy much needed groceries we didn’t have here. That’s what took them. My sister and I were adults, long moved out, trying to make our way in the big city. Both of us came home when we heard they had been killed in a deadly head on collision on the interstate. Stayed ever since.

My sister wanted to climb Denali to commemorate them. Flew away, even got an email every day saying how nice it was up there, and she was going to start the climb. Then the world was set on fire. I am going to find her, if it’s the last thing I do. The whole town got together, and gave me everything I needed to make the long, tedious trek across North America into the Yukon. No vehicles, no animals. Just me, myself, and I.

“I’m going to find her, Mom, Dad,” I say, pretending they’re really still here, “I’m gonna’ do it, I promise.” I take a nice look at the locket my father used to carry with him all the time. When my sister and I were born, they bought a locket set. Two halves of a heart, one for each of them with room for a picture of each of us. Father with son, mother with daughter. Dad would keep his on his key ring, so it’s all scratched up and a little tarnished from all this time. Inside is a picture of me, arguably the cuter of the two babies, but this quite a rather unflattering picture of me, as I was buck naked and crying. My mother’s locket, which is in my sister’s possession, was kept on a necklace, and was in better condition, with a picture inside of her just smiling to be alive.

I rise to my feet, swinging my backpack full of supplies, such as water filters, bullets, emergency rations among other tools like a radiation counter. I sling over my respirator, looking through the slightly yellowed lenses of the mask to the headstones, and saying, “Bye Mom.

“Bye Dad.

“I swear I’ll find her,” I say my final goodbye, and finally head off into the unknown.

~

My whole body is shivering from the subfreezing temperatures. Mount Denali stands so high. The trail guide is still intact, giving me the knowledge of, if she’s here, where she might lie. The counter is reading low levels of radiation, hopefully it’ll stay that way. I’m so hungry, so tired, so cold. I’m planning on dying on this mountain; there’s no way I’ll survive walking all the way back home. I’m out of food, and out of filters for the water. “Up, up, and away,” I whisper, as that’s all I can manage. My throat is so dry, and my lips are cracked like twenty year old concrete.

I start the end of my journey. My feet ache so badly, it’s excruciating. I’m afraid to remove my boots for what damage I might find, but I’m sure my feet are worn to the bone. Step by step, I ascend the mountain. The temperature drops every foot in the sky I climb. The sun is actually visible today, shining through the lightened cloud cover blanketing the summit of the mountain.

Ever higher I climb. The speckled icy ground cover gives way to soft, fresh snow, sparsely dotted with clumps of blacked ash. Even higher I make it up this mountain. Soon, I’m in a highly radioactive cloud cover. And soon I'm above the clouds.

“It’s beautiful, Mom,” I whisper, almost automatically. The counter drops to near background levels of radiation. The ground is a smooth, soft white, untouched by anybody for who knows how long. Still, I climb.

I see lumps of snow, probably pieces of landscape covered by snow. Soon, as the sun is high in the sky directly overhead, I stand at the very top. The air is thin, even with my respirator. It seems there are quite a few lumps of snow. They must be animals. I saw the nearby town, or the crater that now replaces it on the way. There’s no settlements, no campers, no people.

Shit, I realize the truth. People are still on this mountain. Chances are my sister is one of them. The wind starts to pick up, and so does the radiation. Soon, the wind starts to howl in my ears, picking up the snow and blowing it elsewhere, revealing the poor, sorry folks who died here. I look around trying to see if I recognize any of their faces. But I find nothing. I didn’t come here for nothing. I look harder, walking up to each body and look around their neck for something shiny. Some hours pass; the sky is moving rather quickly, which means in autumn, and the sun is going to set soon, and I’ll freeze to death above all else here if I don’t find her soon.

Then...

A glimpse of sunlight shines back into my eyes from the ground. A hiker, for sure, leaning up against a rock, mouth open and flesh rotten and frozen, probably hard as rock. I try to kneel down slowly, but my strength gives way, and I fall to my knees, falling further onto my behind. I reach over to see what’s shining back at me, picking up an opposing, half heart locket. Now is when I’d start crying, but there isn’t a drop of water left in my body.

I rip my mask off, taking a nice deep breath in of irradiate air, immediately coughing up blood. “Found you, ‘Sis,” I utter my last word, leaning on a rock beside her. “Let’s all go home…”

~The End~