Water

Rei awoke hot, dusty, and parched. He always awakened parched in the morning. Since the Big Heat had arrived, every morning was the same. He looked out upon the landscape below for a moment, then sighed to himself.

"Heat waves rising off the ground already? It's going to be a scorcher," he said to no one. The truth was simple. He had not seen another person in almost a year. There were so few people left after the Big Heat engulfed the Earth that one could walk for miles and see no trace of another. Indeed, no signs of civilization could be seen from his vantage point in the hills of what had been a small city named Beckley in the former state of West Virginia. No cars, no planes, no homes, no radio stations ... all were gone. Only dust remained to outline the burnt wreckage and homes in what had once been a city of thousands.

He rolled from his sleeping bag and stood to look upon the landscape below him. No trees blocked his view, no plants grew upon the hillside. After the fires had decimated the forests around the world, things had changed dramatically in just a few years. He could remember when the landscape was lush with vegetation. Trees growing one hundred feet tall. Deer running in green fields - small fawns following their mothers as they foraged for grass to eat. All those things quickly disappeared once the Big Heat arrived. He was a teenager when his mother moved him and his sister out of the town right before the fires started, and he remembered calling out to his mother the night the fires burned them alive. He had survived by running into the caves close to their campsite. Dumb luck for a child, he often thought to himself.

After putting his stuff into a backpack, he turned his attention to planning today's task ... finding water and food. Water was a scarce resource now that the Big Heat had contaminated most sources of fresh water. As for food, he did not dare hope. No fish swam in the muddy, polluted river running at the bottom of the mountain. No birds flew overhead. In fact, the only things that seemed to survive were biting bugs, flies, and coyotes.

"I'd better get a move on if I'm going to be able to avoid becoming too hot," he said quietly to himself. He grabbed the heart-shaped locket his mother had been wearing when she died, placed it around his neck, then put on his backpack and started towards a small outcropping at the bottom of the valley off in the distance.

Already the heat was oppressive, and he knew it was just a matter of time before his skin would start to blister if he stayed in the sunlight. He drank the last of the water he had in his canteen, dank and gross and moldy though it was, then started walking quickly down the hill. When he arrived at the river's edge, he put his hand into the water, then carefully tasted it. It was cold to the touch, but he could feel his tongue start to burn. He did not dare drink it, much less get into it. There was something about the Big Heat that had made the waters acidic, a lesson he had learned the hard way.

To the right of him, about a mile away, Rei knew there was a bridge that spanned the river. It was old, decaying and burned out, but he knew he could cross it if he was careful. He started to walk towards it, but the heat was starting to get to a point where he knew it would be unbearable to be stuck outside.

He walked the bank of the river, heading towards the bridge, and had gone about half a mile when he saw the small rock outcropping that would give him respite from the heat. He hurried to get under the ledge and was pleasantly surprised how much cooler it was in the shade. But there was something else here, something unexpected - water. There was a small stream of water flowing down the dark black rock, and carefully he tasted a drop before greedily drinking the water as it flowed down the rock.

"My God, this is good!" He quickly filled his canteen, then began to splash the water onto himself before stripping off his clothes and sitting naked in the water stream. The water was cold and refreshing, and after he had enjoyed being in the water for a while, he started to dress. When he finished, he put his backpack on and started back towards the bridge, and when he arrived, he stopped to look at the rotting metal before looking to judge how high he was from the rocks below the bridge.

"It really doesn't matter how high I am," he said to himself. "If I fall, I'm dead." He started to carefully cross the bridge, watching for areas that might cause him to fall. Eventually he made it across the bridge, and he sat down to drink from his canteen. It was no longer cold water, but still delightfully refreshing. However, resting here was not an option, he knew. Though the sun was starting to move from overhead, he was aware that standing around would just lead to another painful burn. That was something he wanted to avoid. He started up the mountain, hoping that he could get there before the sun went down. Walking after dark was incredibly dangerous, so he wanted to have a camp set up before it got dark. After a couple of hours, he made it to the top.

"Time to set up camp. Food would have been nice," he thought to himself. He pulled his backpack off, secured it with a small rock beside him, and then took out his sleeping bag. He rolled it out onto the ground, laid down, and pulled it open. He was quickly running out of time, so he moved a few of the rocks and ate the grubs under them quickly before coming back to his bag. By now the sun was slowly going down behind the mountains to his right, and though the day had been excruciatingly hot, the cold that was ever present at night began to creep into his bones. He lay back and just watched the sky change from blue to pink to darkness. Eventually the stars started twinkling in the sky, as they had done countless times. There were never any clouds in the sky, so nightly the stars looked down on the barren, desolate landscape.

As he always did before going to sleep, he placed his mother's locket on the ground beside him and thought about the night she died. She had been trying to escape the fires, and she had sent Rei out to find water. She stayed back at the camp to feed his sister Sara. During his excursion, he started to hear the sap in trees farther away start popping from the heat of the fire. And he did what any good scout would do ... he ran for the caves at the center of the hillside park they stayed in after leaving the city. When he dared leave the cave the next day, things were incredibly different. Acrid smoke filled the air, and the trees once towering were reduced to smoldering lumps of nothing, with branches going nowhere hanging onto the husks that had once been greenery. He ran as best he could back to where he thought they had camped, and was greeted with the burned, twisted bodies of his mother and Sara. He could tell right away that his mother had thrown herself on top of the toddler in a valiant effort to keep her safe. He pulled her corpse off his sister, took the charred locket from around her neck, and placed it on his own.

Finally, his eyes closed, and he slept. He awakened when the sunrise started to gently paint the skies in orange. He grabbed the locket after putting up his bag. Then he turned to face the sunrise, his stomach growling loudly.

"There is nothing to eat 'round here," he shouted at the rising sun. His words echoed through the hills, with no answering call from anyone. He stood quietly for a moment, trying to decide where to find food. He drank some of his water, and then started towards the sunrise. He had walked about five hundred feet when his head suddenly exploded with pain, and as he fell down the side of the hill, he heard a strange noise echo through the area. "What was that…" he thought to himself as he slid slowly down into nothingness. He never even heard the voice of the man who had just shot him.

'Good thing that dumb bastard yelled, or I'd never have found him,' the old man thought to himself. He slowly lowered his rifle and surveyed the area. He knew that, if anyone found him, he would end up the same way. 'I hope he has some water, as I'll have to cook him some other way if he doesn't.' It was going to be a good day, filled with nourishment and water. He strapped his rifle on his back and started down the hill towards the body.