Tabula Rasa

They’d cut off the power to the cities so we had to get south before winter set in. A small group of us trudging with wheelbarrows and homemade sleds, dragging our lives through the mud behind us. When night fell there was no familiar orange glow of the city on the horizon, just blackness, as though God have given up before his first day’s work. We had heard that in the south they had managed to build bunkers underground before the permafrost set in and the ground became iron. They were accepting people of any nation, race or creed. The last refuge of humanity. We navigated via the sun and the stars, always driving south, skirting round any towns or cities we saw. The cities were lawless now - full of rioters and looters. Those people who thrive on chaos. There were rumours as well, about how the radiation was affecting people. It had affected all of us of course - no child had come into this world for at least a year, not alive at least - but this was different. It made some people aggressive, inhuman. You heard stories of fathers ripping apart their children, communities having to barricade themselves against their neighbours. It was best to avoid the cities. As we headed south, the days became a little longer and the wind less bitter. We were also running low on supplies, had to put new notch after new notch on our belts, but we heard we were close. At least that’s what they said from the front. Then, at night we began to see a glow on the horizon, it was faint at first, but it got brighter every night. We thought we were getting closer. That’s when we hit the fence. Stretching as far as we could see in either direction, lit by harsh floodlights along its length. Barbed wire and bright lights and betrayal. There would be no refuge. We made camp. Some people tried to find a way around the fence, but most never came back. Those that did said they never saw an end to it. Just mile after mile of steel links. Despair set in, that awful disease. Each morning you saw fewer faces around the fire, people had nothing to wake up for anymore, so they stayed forever asleep. I became close to a man in the camp. He was handy, he could fix stuff. I think that is why he never succumbed to the despair. He kept his hands busy: fixing tents, mending fishing rods and building us a life. Despite this, I began to succumb to the disease as the months ground on. Even the south was getting colder now, the nights were getting longer, the wind more bitter. We supplemented supplies with what we could catch and forage, but I knew we couldn’t last long. There was no refuge, just our camp by the wire. There was no hope. Until today. Until you were born.