M. Wren - A Gift Upon the Shore

No one in this town could answer those pleas. Burned buildings marked out the grid of vacant streets. No vehicles moved, no one walked in those streets, nothing lived in any of the places where people had gathered to seek help and comfort.

There were still some survivors crouching in storm cellars or basements. They had survived cold, disease, and anarchy. But they would not survive hunger—not when the last of their stored or scavenged food was gone, when they looked out of their caves and saw nothing but snow and ice for a thousand miles in every direction.

And Mary saw this town replicated ten-thousandfold around the world. A world enshrouded in death.

No. Perhaps not an entire world. The southern hemisphere might be spared some of the devastation. But no southern nation would survive without catastrophic disruptions in their climate, their food and energy supply systems, their economic and social structures. And would they survive Lassa? Mary remembered a newscaster coolly reporting at least a week before the End that two million people had died of Lassa in Australia and five million in South Africa.

I guess we deserved it. We treated this lovely planet so negligently, we treated each other so cruelly.

We deserved it.

“No, we didn’t deserve it. There were billions of people who never did anything in their lives to deserve what happened to them.”

Rachel’s words roused Mary, bewildered her because she didn’t realize she’d said anything aloud. She wondered how much of what she’d been thinking she had spoken. She said nothing more now.

Rachel sat hunched in her down jacket, hands spread in front of her to catch the heat. Shadow nuzzled her knee for reassurance, but she had none to offer. She said, “We’ll have to move one of the wood stoves into the garage, or we’ll lose all the rabbits and chickens.”

Mary closed her eyes, and she was surprised that the first sound to emerge from her mouth was an approximation of a laugh.

“Of course, we’re going to lose them, Rachel. Sooner or later we’re going to lose…” Everything. We’re going to lose us . Sooner or later.

The wind, the voice of the cold, echoed its dirge in the chimney. Eventually Rachel spoke again.

“Strange, isn’t it? I left for Shiloh this morning with very little hope. I came home with very little hope. You left with a great deal of hope and came home with none.”

Mary pressed her hands to her eyes, and for a moment she couldn’t get enough breath.

“ Why ? Why should I still have any hope? Hope for what? This is what they call nuclear winter, the winter of our ultimate discontent. The last winter because it will never end! This is—so why… why…?”

I want to cry, she thought as the words poured out like sand from a rusted cup. I want to cry, but I can’t even do that. Dry. All dried up and shriveled inside, dead already. Brain dead. Soul dead.

Rachel was watching her. Mary could feel that, but she stared into the fire, and at this moment she felt detached from herself, from Rachel. She looked down, as if from a distance, on the two of them in a beleaguered island of warmth and light in the chill darkness. And Rachel said, “I’ve been thinking about what separates homo sapiens from its animal cousins.”

Mary didn’t attempt a response to that. She listened from far away to the sounds of the words.

Rachel said, “I’ve been told that animals can’t imagine. Yet they dream. Isn’t a dream imaginary? I’ve been told that animals can’t imagine their own deaths, so they don’t dread death. It’s easier to believe that, I suppose, if you have to kill animals. Or if you take pleasure in killing them. But if that were true, the gazelle would just stand quietly while the lion breaks its neck. No, when it comes to death, what separates us from our cousins isn’t the capacity to imagine and dread it. The difference is choice.”

Mary looked around at her, returned to herself, willing eyes and mind into focus. Rachel was regarding her with a gaze shadowed with sorrow, but there was no recognition of defeat in it. “Choice is the measure of our humanity, Mary. Death is inevitable, but until it becomes imminent, we still have a choice. We can choose to die, or we can choose to live. I can’t give you any reason why you should go on hoping or living, or why I should. The time may come when I’ll know, one way or the other. But I’m not ready to surrender yet. And you’re wrong about one thing: this winter will end. I’ve read the TTAPS report. I don’t know what kind of spring will follow, or whether we can survive until spring comes. But I intend to find out. That’s my choice .”

She stopped then, as if there were no more to be said, and denial clamored in Mary’s mind. She sat mute, trying to shape it into words, to forge her despair into arguments. The wind howled in the waiting darkness, while she shivered with cold.

But the arguments melted like snow in her hands.

Choice.

She became aware of the sensation of a smile, something she’d never expected to feel again. It was a fragile sensation besieged by grief, but she held on to it, called it hope. Her eyes were suddenly blurred, and at last the tears came, and she welcomed them. She reached out, embraced Rachel, and together they wept, together they acknowledged their grief and fear and hope.

How long they wept in each other’s arms, Mary didn’t know, but finally she drew away, said, “I promise you, Rachel, I won’t surrender, either.”

Rachel nodded, then cleared her throat and rose to tend the fire. “If you’ll look on the shelves at the foot of the stairs, you’ll find a case of bourbon. I think this is the time to open one of those bottles.”

Mary came to her feet stiffly as if she hadn’t moved in hours, and perhaps she hadn’t. While Rachel added more wood to the fire, Mary searched for the bourbon with a flashlight. At length, they sat facing the renewed fire, each with a mug half-full of smoky-flavored whiskey. Sparky leapt up on the hassock behind them, while Shadow sat again at Rachel’s knee, and now Rachel offered her the reassurance of her hand gentle on her head.

Mary sipped at the whiskey, savored the warmth of it. “Rachel, there must be other survivors somewhere.”

“I’m sure there are. Somewhere.”

“And there must be some vestiges of the government left. They’ll find us, or we’ll find them sooner or later.”

Rachel shook her head. “A government, maybe. Not the old U.S. of A. That government was already foundering. It won’t survive this.”

Mary took another swallow of whiskey and grimaced. At the beginning of this day she wouldn’t have recognized the truth in that, but she did now. “The Bill of Rights, the Constitution—damn, to lose them, to lose the ideas …”

“Maybe they won’t all be lost. A great deal survived the last dark age. The Renaissance was built on it.”

“But this time…” She couldn’t yet assimilate the scope of this dark age.

Rachel said dully, “This time will be unimaginably worse—for humankind, for all the species of animals and plants that will be wiped out in this frozen holocaust.” She closed her eyes. “But I can’t deal with that now. I can only deal with our survival. Someday maybe I can deal with what’s lost and what can be saved. Not yet.”

Mary watched the flow of the flames, listened to the moan of the wind in the chimney. The seeds of a commitment had been planted, but had not yet germinated. She was only sure of two things: they had survived, and they had chosen to continue to survive.

No. They had chosen to try to survive.

It’s only four days short of May, and April seems determined to depart in clouds and rain. But the rain has stopped now—at least, temporarily—leaving only the clouds, and I revel in their soft, gray light, in the rich scents of wet earth and grass. Shadow runs ahead as I walk through the north pasture with my moccasin boots and wool skirt shaking rainwater off the grass, and the pasture is vividly green, powdered with pink clover blossoms, humming with bees.