Free The Lights by M. Starks

 
     
     
    Chapter 1
     
     
    I never imagined that I'd see the day my dogs would be picking through our bones. They had been so cute and adorable, but now they are scrawny and full of jagged edges. I watch the way the pom-chi likes to tear at my mother's flesh the same way she would tear up a toy, relishing it's cotton innards.
     
    It's sickening. Like watching a man at the rodeo being gored by a bull, but you can't seem to look away. It's fascinating, strange even. A common place thing that centuries of domestication held at bay.
     
    It's an eat or die world for them. The idea that they are literally biting the hand that fed them is lost on them. Thank you owner, for this last meal. They seem to say as they bow their heads for another rending and ripping of flesh.
     
    Thankfully, I am out of range. I know they would try to eat me as well, I, a live prey animal that a pack can quickly take down. Fresh marrow to lick clean.
     
    My stomach churns and I finally look away. I place the binoculars in my old ratty pack and sit a moment longer, waiting to see if I'll lose my stomach contents or not.
     
    For now, I am alone. I don't have a plan. All I know is that they have destroyed my world, and I am one of the few left behind. Stuck with all of the violence and death they caused.
     
    The plants are dying off. The clouds are dark and menacing. The storms of late have been the worst I've ever seen, and that is coming from a girl who has witnessed some of the most turbulent, scary storms of the century before they came.
     
    I haven't heard my name spoken aloud in some time. I haven't even attempted to use my own voice in just as long. I've just kept my chin up, my head down, as if that contradiction makes any sense, and as a little fish in a movie used to sing: Just keep swimming. Just keep swimming. Swimming, swimming .
     
    The passing of days is not something I know. The cloud cover is immense and continuous. There is no beginning and no end to it. I don't know if the sun is shining, or if the moon is beaming.  All I can depend upon are my body's sleep cycles and needs.
     
    The future is bleak and uncertain. I live from moment to moment. How I lived in comfort with frivolous things to keep me occupied is beyond me, far from my reach now.
     
    Once our destruction became something of a certainty, I knew acceptance would be the only thing that would not destroy me. Hope would erode and cut away at my heart. Acceptance and adaptability have kept me sharp. I don't know how many people I encountered in those early days that were sitting on their knees crying and yelling, why me? Why this? How could this be happening?
     
    I just thought, Okay, it happened. Now what? And that kept me safe.
     
    The nausea sits in my throat, I swallow the bile that rises, willing my last meal to stay put. I haven't had much to eat in a while, and what is left is precious.
     
    I stand, shakily. One leg and then the other, a familiar cramp making me pause for a moment. A hot breeze rushes through my hair, as though I stood up under a salon hair dryer.
     
    That's the thing with this new world. There are currents. Lots of them. Currents of winds. Currents of fears. Currents of time and uncertainties.
     
    I move down the hill, back toward the bunker I'd discovered an indeterminate time ago.
     
    That used to be my neighborhood, where my parent's bodies lie. I'd gone down into it several times in search of supplies. I'd often stopped by my parents, crying over my loss, unable to place flowers on them, unable to expend energy burying them. There were just too many bodies, the earth is too hard, and I was barely moving around myself. Watching our dogs pick away at them… it's painful. I chide myself for not doing something sooner.
     
    I was seventeen when it happened. I feel like I'm at least a hundred now. I'm certain only months have passed but I couldn't say how many. I was in my little sporty car when the shockwaves hit. Most people agreed it