Michelle Muckley - The Dawn - The Bombs Fall

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“I saw the lights again this morning.”

From the corner of his droopy-skinned eye, Zack could see Leonard turning his ration card in a rhythmical ninety degree motion with the regularity of the second hand of a clock. The type that no longer existed. From behind him the calls of the thirsty ricocheted up the corridor, each set of fists jostling their way forward like an angry mob hell bent on revenge. Zack was next in line.

Leonard’s head was bowed, ashamed even to suggest that he had seen the lights again. To make reference to such visions was as good as saying he had a connection to the old world, like a disciple perhaps, or at the very least a prophet. In biblical times they would have crucified him. They would have set murderers free rather than listen to his ideas. They had talked about this before, and Zack had tried to tell The Dreamer that it just wasn’t possible. In fact even today his first thought, the automatic one that arises without conscience or desire, was something along the lines of stupid son of a bitch. But he stifled these words, and if he was honest with himself he knew why. The idea of the lights was so seductive that to even consider it being true was a bigger risk than he could allow himself to take.

“Oh yeah?” said Zack. He didn’t want to encourage him. But he couldn’t discourage him either. He couldn’t do that.

“I know you don’t believe me, Zack. It doesn’t matter. It’s coming, though. Slowly, it’s coming.” Leonard slid his ration card under the chicken wire screen.

Zack looked over to the nearest window, across the atrium and endless shades of rust that peppered his view. He saw the same grey cover, the low hanging belly of cloud that blackened their world. Nothing had changed. It was a desperate idea, the thought of light. Nothing more than a mirage in an otherwise dry and deserted world of sand and dust and death, created to nurture the hope of a life when the chains of this new world would be broken. But it was a life Zack didn’t dare to imagine anymore. False hope was nothing more than a cancer with the ability to rot you from the inside out. What was lost was lost, and the thought of life beyond the plains to which his eye could travel acted like a poison. It was dangerous to imagine it now.

When Leonard had first mentioned the lights Zack had lain on his bed that night, his head resting on a thin stained pillow. He hadn’t been able to stop himself gazing out in search of something. He stared out from a grimy window not knowing if it was night or day, or even if such parameters still existed in his world. He found nothing. That night his bed was less comfortable. That night the smell of sulphur was stronger. His clothes were itchier and his skin more sore than usual. He watched for hours as the torturous clouds drifted past his window. Instead of allowing a chink of hope to pass through, all they permitted was the infiltration of despair. Waiting for something good, and believing in something that he couldn’t see, only made life less bearable than it was already.

“I hope you’re right, Leo. I really do.” Zack pulled his ration card from his back pocket and slid it over the glass topped counter. A faceless clerk pushed it into the machine and Zack watched as his skeletal fingers nudged Leonard’s card back across the counter top. He followed it with a tablet and a water shot which he pushed towards Zack. “Then maybe I won’t need these.” Zack picked up the tablet and threw it to the back of his throat and chased it down with the shot of water. The beaker was crumbled and broken from overuse, and he slammed it back on the counter like it was a whiskey chaser.

“How many years can it go on for, Zack? Come on, you’re a bright kid. You have to know that at some point it will get easier. It’s only natural.” Zack knew in principle that Leonard was right. He had to be right. There had to come a point when the sky cleared and when life could start over again. Because the world had not died. It had been belittled and wounded, like a soldier hiding under a fallen chariot. It was hiding in the hope that one day its freedom would still be granted. But that day had branded Zack and scarred itself to his memory. He could still remember the ground rolling beneath him, the building shuddering around him, as if somebody had walked over its grave. He had watched as the sky was scorched and the city crumbled to nothing more than the charred remains of hot coal. That was the day the winter began, a season that would remain unchanged for a countless number of years. The season of the recluse. Up high they now stood, looking down upon their old world at a lesson learned too late. “One day life will come back, and we can get out of here.” Leonard’s gnarled, distorted fingertips wrestled the card from the desk. He fiddled at its edge, his fingers no longer nimble or able to retrieve it. When the frustration grew unbearable he slid the card back across the desk and cupped his other hand to catch it underneath before stepping aside.

“Wait, your tablet,” Zack reminded him. “Excuse me,” Zack said, turning back to the clerk. “You forgot his antibiotics.”

“Didn’t forget anything. He didn’t meet his quota,” said the clerk, pointing at Leonard. Zack looked to his friend who was staring down at his feet, his fingers working the ration card hypnotically as if willing himself to be anywhere but in the moment.

“What do you mean, didn’t meet his quota?” Zack said, shoving the next in line out of the way.

“He didn’t clock in,” said the clerk. He reached his skinny fingers past Zack to take the next ration card from the Delta resident. Zack’s eyes followed the outstretched hand to find a man dressed in the same dirt-encrusted overalls, the tired face looking back at him, his eyes casting shadows over his sunken cheeks. The face could be his own. Zack turned to Leonard.