Them

It came quicker than they thought.

That putrid smell attested, like something out of a landfill.

The wind was hot; it brushed across her face and she grimaced.

"Where do we go from here?" she heard as she kneeled to the ground, face still scrunched against the odor of decomposing matter.

A man was sat next to her, his eyes darkening by the second as he surveyed the smoking land around them.

"Anywhere you want." she said. He glanced in the direction of the mosaic sky, plumes cutting across as if they were late to a dinner. The nearly boiling temperatures didn't help as he unstuck his hand from his leg, sweat glistening and writhing with dirt.

"I wouldn't mind heading to Thailand for a bit. See how things turned out there."

He mused for a second and watched as she twisted the fabric of her pants fitfully between her fingers. He swallowed hard.

"Can you fly a plane?" he asked.

"I could learn. We have time to learn anything, now."

Chuckling, he rose from his seated position, careful not to touch the ground with his bare skin. She watched him gingerly balance himself on his long legs. The feeling of her tongue drying inside her mouth grew stronger as the sun burned across the field.

They began walking, not too close together, but never more than a few feet apart. The smoke around them seeped out of various sized craters, the heat almost able to singe the hair off their arms. For miles around, nothing was visible except bright light and dark fumes. The silence dragged until he broke it.

"Do you think we could make it to Vancouver on foot?"

"Maybe, if we can find enough food on the way. The Thailand thing was a joke by the way." she replied as a smirk tugged on her cheek.

"They got almost everywhere, I doubt there will be much left."

"We have to at least try. How many other people can say they lived to see the end?"

This drew a deeper laugh from both of them, one of nervousness and pain. The smoke stung at their nostrils, and the laughter faded into small coughs.

He chanced another question that he knew there wouldn't be an answer to. "Do you think they knew what they were doing?"

She looked at him as her head lolled back and forth with her gait. "No, I doubt anyone really knew what they were doing until it actually happened." Her nose wrinkled as a gust of air blew towards them that smelled as though it came from a vat of formaldehyde.

"At least there's time now." he nodded as they walked atop the charred ground.

"Yeah, at least." she said.

The image of the two walking alone along a pitted earth was lost to the singed bones and bits of fallout from the massive explosions that had ripped the world apart just the day before. What little evidence that a society had existed was now smashed beneath their feet as they trudged through the heat and ash towards Vancouver, though she secretly wished it was Thailand - not that anyone would be anymore alive there.