Shadows Under the White Sun

Two years ago, I found myself gazing into the lifeless eyes of a little girl. She lay sprawled across a desolate highway, deep in what was once the heart of the Midwest. Her eyes, clouded and fermenting, seemed to stare through me, past me, and upward into the vast, sun-bleached sky.

They didn’t leave many bodies behind when they departed. I suppose they didn’t want to return to a world littered with skeletons. Her skin was dark and leathery, stretched taut over her fragile frame. A gaping hole marred her cheek, and from it sprouted blue tendrils, twisting and writhing like some grotesque vine, their tips glowing faintly orange. I wished they were green—green like the trees, like the grass. But there is no green anymore. The closest thing to nature now is the dead, their bodies consumed by synthetic viruses, devouring themselves as they reach toward the heavens—tiny, insignificant scratches on the deep blue canvas of the sky.

She might have been dead for three months, perhaps six. The first emotion that gripped me when I saw her was not horror but excitement. She was the closest thing to another human being I had encountered in six long years. My father’s body had been far more pristine, untouched by the ravages of this new world, a perfect relic of the past. There had been only the small, red hole in his temple, the dark pool of blood congealing around fragments of his brain, staring up at me like some grotesque, foaming creature. His eyes, stained crimson, sat unnaturally in their sockets, dislodged by the force of the bullet that had torn through him. He had been smiling—a ghastly grin of red teeth, his eyes bulging as if they might burst from his skull. I had half-expected them to turn toward me, half-expected the revolver still clutched in his hand to fire a matching shot through my own temple. But he was gone, and I felt relief—relief when he took his own life, just as I felt relief when I saw the dark void in that little girl’s cheek. I took his gun, I took his shoes, and I walked away. When I reached the crest of the yellow hill, I turned back to see him lying there like roadkill on the highway, surrounded by dead, yellow grass, our truck overturned and smoldering a few feet away. I wiped the blood from my forehead and pressed on, the sun belching its white, searing heat, bubbles of fire bursting around me in the oppressive silence.

There was a similar wound in the little girl’s calf, peeking out from beneath her tattered purple nightgown. It was the nightgown that made me vomit. I retched onto the cracked asphalt, heaving until there was nothing left. She was so young. Perhaps the same age I had been when I left my father’s corpse to rot beneath the relentless, white sun that had turned the sky a sickly gray.

It must have happened at night, I thought, as I sat on the asphalt, staring at her. Faint tire marks, baked into the road by the sun, told a silent story. She had “gone,” I thought. So young. She had died alone, consumed by pain, in the inky blackness of the night, with no memory of who she might have once been. The sun was rising now, the sky losing its faint blue hue. The pool of vomit beside me would soon begin to cook in the heat, like some foul egg frying on the pavement. I stood, my legs trembling, and looked at her one last time—a broken china doll, her fragile form cracked and fading under the sun’s cruel gaze. Then I turned back to the road, where the asphalt seemed to melt into a black, endless void on the horizon.

It had been the last whisper of winter that day—or what might have passed for winter. My diary claims it was March 3rd, but I can’t be sure. The last time I knew the date with any certainty, I was nine years old. It was the day the school burned down. The village had burned for a week; the school was the first to go, a black plume of smoke rising into the purplish-gray sky. The grass was already dead, the buildings little more than crooked, wooden shacks, their paint peeling like the skin of some ancient beast. It’s impossible to build, to gather, or to do anything at all when you spend your days hiding from the sun, waiting for the brief respite of the Midnight Hours. The village burned, and then Grandma picked up Bleach during the exodus, and soon everyone was “gone,” my father among them. That day, after seeing the little girl, I had gathered enough fuel and supplies to wait out the summer in the caves. They were damp, dripping places, filled with the stench of rot and decay, but they were cool and dark—safer than the scorching surface, where the sun burned everything to ash and tumors grew like weeds.

I remember leaving it too late that day, knowing I had to stop and lie beneath the car to escape the heat. I would pass out for an hour or so, and when the sun dipped lower, painting the sky in hues of orange and red, I would pour water over myself, drinking greedily through my cracked, bleeding lips. Then I would drive and drive, pushing myself to the edge of exhaustion. I had waited too long, and as I neared the end of my journey, they appeared in the sky—small, black dots at first, growing larger as they descended. Their ships. I don’t know what was inside them. Scientists, perhaps, in gray coats. Observers. Waiting for the world to die so they could begin again. To me, they were nothing but black pebbles against the sunset, disappearing into the safety of the night. Silent, motionless, without windows or exhaust, they floated calmly in the sky, watching as the Earth devoured itself like a starving coyote, gnawing at its own ribs for scraps of flesh long gone. That little girl was a premonition, I think. A harbinger of the silent, dissociative half-decade that followed—a time of white, searing heat, each year dripping away like the last drops of water from a canteen.

I should have been in the Caves days ago. Instead, I stand on the roof of a gas station, the midday sun casting a pale, gray light over the barren landscape. The yellow-brown plains stretch endlessly in every direction, the highway cutting a black scar through the heart of it all. Occasionally, a lone telephone pole or the hollow skeleton of a tree breaks the monotony. The silence is deafening, a crushing weight that presses down on my shoulders and burrows into my dry, blistered throat. Blood seeps from the sores on my cheeks, boiling slowly in the heat, etching trails of pain down my chin and neck. But I don’t feel it. I don’t feel anything. I am nothing but a pair of eyes, watching, waiting. I forgot the Caves long ago. I’ve been waiting for this day—the last day of winter, the final flicker of hope. I stretch out my arms, and from somewhere far away, a place of blue and green and noise, I feel them burn like an old photograph tossed into a fire. The sensation is like rain, cool and soothing.

I bleached myself intentionally. I went deep into the caves, to one of the rotted bodies—a man. In the dim light of my torch, his eyes were milky, half-closed, his mouth slack. A bottle lay near his hand, its contents spilled long ago, foamy residue clinging to his lips. He reminded me of my little brother, Geoffrey. Perhaps, in another world, a world of green and blue, he might have looked like that. I kissed his forehead, and then I began to forget. It was sweet, like falling into a deep, dreamless sleep. Escaping this nightmare. This damned nightmare. I hear myself scream, but it is distant, muffled, as if coming from that other world. I turn away now, my legs giving out beneath me on the gas station roof. I feel Nothing reaching for me, his hand outstretched. The blistered present is a universe away. Just before I turn, before I walk down the hill, the rain begins to fall, cooling my neck, blurring my vision into a soft, endless gray. And in that moment, I see her again—the little girl, lying on the highway, her small body sprawled across the scorched Earth.

I smile as I slip away, my eyes meeting her red, unblinking gaze.