Free Back To Our Beginning by C. L. Scholey

left alone with his memories.
    Depression had hung over his head until he thought he would expire. After the guard realized Aidan’s problem, he made it a point to visit him regularly, bringing him magazines and baked goods from home. He chatted with him occasionally in a friendly way. Even though it had been the same guard who released him, Aidan spent a great deal of time pondering he had been betrayed. Perhaps the guard had feared him after all. He had left him alone in this nightmare without so much as one word on what occurred.
    A new fear came on swift wings, what if Ethan sent him packing? What if he found out about jail and left him all alone on the trail? He’d be better off if he shot him than to be left all alone to wander aimlessly through a sea of debris and dead bodies. Aidan was no liar, nor was he a coward, and if he possessed nothing else in this hell of a world he maintained his integrity.
    “I was in jail,” Aidan said, his eyes downcast.
    “What did you do?”
    “I killed a man who murdered my mother.”
    He looked up, his gaze locked with Ethan’s. In that moment he bared his soul, his raw emotions. All the anger and hurt and frustration shone from his eyes bright with unshed tears. Aidan wanted more than anything to accompany this man back to his family, back to reality and sanity. He couldn’t go on alone any longer.
    Ethan stood quietly for a moment. “Come on,” Ethan said, exhaling loudly. He clamped a hand onto Aidan’s shoulder and gave him a wry smile. “Anyone who’d go to jail for his mother doesn’t seem all bad.”
    * * * *
    The traveling was slow going. At night Tansy and her brood found shelters in basements with partial roofs, under bridges that were standing. When they were lucky, which wasn’t often, a tiny cave or hole in the ground gave them some relief from the bitter weather. Their feet and legs ached from constant motion and the cold, while noses ran like leaky faucets. Tansy wept most nights from the agony in her back and shoulders from carrying Michaela, they took turns with her, but the loads they carried to survive were heavy. The drudgery of day to day living, existing, had taken its toll.
    Marge was faring the worst, her feet were an agony of broken blisters; her limping grew pronounced as the days dragged by. Her hands and face were chapped and peeling. The weight she lost had her clothes hanging, she looked thinner; her gaunt forlorn face held deep black circles around tired red-rimmed eyes devoid of life, she wept often for Sam.
    They found a small building with a sturdy cement basement that was dry but smelled of mold.
    A vending machine held a single bottle of semi-frozen water and an icy can of diet Pepsi. Tansy searched the corners of their new shelter, not wanting Mike to become easy prey for rats.
    Tansy had taken the initiative and made a slingshot. It was a crude piece of stick that looked like a small divining rod. She found a stretchable piece of black rubber from a car’s engine. She slit two small holes in either side of a piece of leather from a ripped jacket, threaded the rubber through the leather at the ends and practiced. At first she couldn’t hit the broad side of a barn, even if one had been standing. With determination she became a fair shot, at least enough to frighten any vermin away. It was only by accident she found she could hit food. While aiming at a large coniferous tree, Tansy absently aimed for a branch, her gaze intent on her target. The next thing she knew a large plump gray squirrel lay dead at her feet. Her stomach queasy, Tansy thought they couldn’t possibly eat it, or could they?
    After the initial shock of getting over what they were eating, it became a habit of searching for the quick little creatures. Survival instincts kicked in. Tansy remembered making a bola with her grandfather, a few hand-sized stones attached to pieces of rope and spun overhead. They’d done it for fun, but her grandfather mentioned you could