Nicholas Smith - Deliverance

Lightning forked through the center of a massive storm brewing above the badlands. The bowl of cracked dirt seemed to continue forever in all directions. The constant stream of light illuminated a roadway that twisted through the barren terrain. Hundreds of years ago, fields of crops would have framed this road, but now there were only two living creatures here, leaving tracks in the dust.

A man and his dog trekked over the broken asphalt. The man wore a black radiation suit, with an olive scarf wrapped around the area where the crest of his chest armor met the bottom of his helmet. Long ago, the metal of his armor had shone, but years of exposure had faded everything to a dull gray. He walked with a slight limp in his gait—a product of injuries and bad joints.

The man motioned for the dog to join him by his side as they plodded down the decaying road. While the sixty-pound Siberian husky kept his crystal-blue eyes on the path, the man kept his eyes on the swirling storm clouds.

They were both searching—the dog for hostiles, the man for something he could hardly remember. Squinting, he studied the shape of a swollen cloud that reminded him of an oversize beetle. He halted on the road and lowered his rifle, tilting his head as memories flooded through his tormented mind.

“What you’re looking for doesn’t exist anymore,” he said in a scratchy whisper. “They’re all gone now.”

The dog glanced up at him questioningly and then trotted ahead. The man remained standing in the gusting wind, scarf blowing like a pair of wings behind his helmet, as he tried to recall his past. No matter how hard he tried, he simply couldn’t remember certain things. Important things. Things such as who he had been in his old life, before he was left behind. But he could remember his name. It was scribbled on the first page of a dog-eared book he kept in a plastic sleeve inside the breast pocket of his vest.

“You are Xavier Rodriguez.” He swallowed, forcing saliva down his dry throat. “You are X,” he said, louder this time. “You are the last man.”

Miles looked back at him. The plastic of the dog’s radiation suit whipped back and forth as he wagged his tail. X felt a tingle at the edges of his lips. It was the closest he had come to smiling in… how long? It took him a moment to realize he couldn’t remember the last time.

“Keep moving,” he said to himself. The words became a mantra that he repeated in his mind as he navigated the shattered asphalt that had once been a highway.

His path was the road. It connected the cities of the Old World, where humanity had once thrived. In the distance, the skeletal husks of scrapers reached for the storm clouds. A child who had never seen a city wouldn’t guess that the structures were made by humans. Someone who had never set foot down here would have thought they were part of the earth.

And in some ways, they were, just like the bones of the humans and animals that had once lived here. But X knew all too well what the ancient cities were—and what dwelled in the networks of interlacing streets. This city would be no different. It had once been home to millions of people, but now it was the lair of mutant beasts such as the Sirens—genetically engineered humans that had evolved into monsters.

He no longer had a permanent home. His home was wherever he decided to stop and rest. Sleep came whenever his body needed it. With no one to talk to and nothing to do but trek across the blasted land, he had fallen into a routine that made him feel more machine than human.

X walked.

He didn’t know how long he had been walking. He had lost track of time. In the wastes, time was everything, and time was nothing. He had learned this long ago, but how long, he couldn’t say. In truth, he didn’t want to know. Like the grit whirling around him, memories of his old life surfaced and then blew away. Images and sounds were nearly impossible to recall. But something from his past kept him going.

His destination was the place where water stretched across the horizon. The memory of that sight haunted him, called to him. He had forgotten the name humans used to call it, but he remembered from dives just how cold and dark it was. That seemed a lifetime ago. But so did his journey across the wastes. How long had he been traveling since he left Hades? Four years, or was it five? Could it be longer than that?

Lightning lanced into the ground in the distance, searing the scarred earth. The boom of thunder rattled his visor. The wail that followed stopped him in midstride. Miles halted, ears perked inside his helmet.

The screeching of the wind sounded just like them—a Klaxon that signaled danger and death on swift wings. It was a sound X never forgot, a sound that always made him raise his battered carbine and point it at the irradiated landscape. He searched for the shadowy forms of the Sirens but saw nothing.

Cold fingers of wind sneaked through the holes in his tattered boots and his clothing. Another draft blasted his side. The grit collected in layers beneath his suit and armor. No matter what he did, he couldn’t seem to keep the dirt out.

He threw the strap of his rifle over his back and pressed down on the loose duct tape flapping over his wrist. It had come undone and exposed his dark skin. He studied his flesh as if seeing it for the first time. The dirt caked his body like an extra layer of skin. He couldn’t remember the last time his body was clean, but he had stopped caring. All that mattered was keeping out the radiation.

X sucked in a long breath of filtered air, filling his lungs. Sometimes he forgot how exhausted he was from walking from city to city all this time, raiding old structures for anything he could use to survive as he searched for the ocean.

That’s what they called it , he thought. The ocean.

He tightened a string over his wrist to hold the tape down and then reached for his rifle. It caught on his rucksack. The massive ruck contained everything he owned, from the water purification kit that he pissed into each night to the blocks of calorie-rich synthetic food that gave him and the dog the energy to continue.

The weight was a burden on his shoulders, but nothing like the weight of not knowing whether he was the last man on earth.

He pressed forward, forcing his legs to carry him a few more steps. Keep moving. His eyes flitted back to the storm clouds disgorging bolts of electricity. The bright tendrils speared downward, licking the ground to the west. Another strike lashed the dirt to the east. In the interval between flashes, an oddly shaped light emerged across the dome of clouds, like a lightbulb with a dying power source.

This wasn’t lightning.

He studied the rays with a sense of awe. Where there should have been the blue residue of lightning, he saw a warm orange.

“It can’t be,” he mumbled.

Miles tilted his helmet to look at this new, anomalous sight.