Dust by Franco Machado-Pesce
People always told me that the world was going to end soon, but I never listened. Now, with the dust blowing across the tip of my boot and every step I take leading me forward on a path of nothingness, I wish that I would have listened.
The wind made the horizon glow a rusty brown as it continued to disperse the dirt throughout the barren landscape. A chilling howl could be heard as its gusts echoed in the mountains far away. The only other sound I could hear was the crunch of the sole of my shoe as it landed on the ground and then lifted away again. There was nothing else here, besides me, the wind, and the dirt.
It’s been 23 days since I last saw anyone. In fact, it’s been 23 days since the world ended. Or maybe it was 24. I can’t remember- all I know is that it’s been almost a month since I’ve had to start counting the days with the setting of each sun. In those twenty-or-so days, I have come to realize that the world is a much more frightening and large place when there is no one else on it. No one to wake you up in the morning. No animals to get in your way while you are driving on a busy street trying to get to class. No music ringing in your ears. Only the solitary whisper from the dirt flying in the air. I guess there’s only one question isn’t there?
How am I alive?
Let’s go back to who I am and where I am from. Hello everyone. My name is Rusty. Rusty O’Reilly and no I’m not Irish or a hippie, but the name fits with my current situation (since every building around me is covered in oxidized metal). I used to live in a small town known as Broken Harbor, where the families were as normal as the name, including mine. What I mean is, we weren’t the most sane in the bunch of your typical American household, but hey what is the fun in being ordinary and peaceful, right? My mother, Alice, used to work at the local animal shelter, helping old street cats find a home. It’s ironic really because ours ran away when I was seven and we were never able to find Mr. Tellerston again. Guess she never got over that experience. My father on the other hand was a lighthouse keeper out on the Broken Harbor Pier. He would always come home and tell us stories of how he saved multiple ships from being shipwrecked upon our coast, but I don’t really take any of them seriously considering our beaches are mostly sand with no "hazardous" rocks anywhere. Then there was Lucy. She was the most bright out of all of us, including me even though she was my younger sister and maybe she wouldn’t admit it, but I taught her everything she knew. She was a sweet girl, with my mother’s hair and my father’s kind eyes, but she was always up to something.
I could never understand where she would go off to in the middle of the night.
The night I caught her, I remembered her opening up the window ever so lightly and then suddenly creep right through it with ease until the sound of my voice startled her and caused her to bang her forehead against the sill. I asked Lucy where she was headed off to, but all she said was that she had to meet up with some friends for a school project. Then right before she lept off the roof, she reminded me not to tell mother or father. Typical. I saw a car flash its lights through the window and heard the screeching of its tires. You could say that I should have cared more about where she was going because I am her older brother and all, but I trusted her. If anyone in the O’Reilly family knew what he or she was doing, it was Lucy.
Anyway the town was never really much a place of interest to be real. There were never any neighborhood block parties, or unsolved murder mysteries, not even a local drunk who would bother people. It was always quiet, not to the extent it is now, but it was calm. I guess that’s what happens when laws that take away your creativity are put into place. In the summer of 2054, our “wonderful” Mayor decided that he would make “Broken Harbor a Great Place to Live in Again.” Right. You already know where I'm going with this don’t you? Anyway, he started to implement a strict STEM program into the public school systems, eliminating those who were creative or slacking (who’s to say not both) from ever getting a good college degree and without one of those, you're screwed. Lucy was intelligent, creative and quick thinking, but with all these positive traits also came her hamartia (fatal flaw, stay with me). She was probably the most stubborn person you’ll ever meet. If she didn’t agree with something, nothing would ever cause her to change her opinion. So when these things happened, Lucy went nuts. Protests, riots, skipping class, interrupting them. You name it. The high school immediately dropped her from their facility and she just stayed at home until the end of the world, or that's what I thought. You could say she deserved better. No, my sister definitely deserved better.
Jobs became more cut-throat (evidently) as every employee was suddenly thrown into an evaluation room where the redcoats would monitor the health and mental capacity of each person. You have to understand that the Mayor and the BH government saw everything in black or white. You were either capable of doing a job or weren’t. This meant that people with anxiety or any other type of mental illness were immediately let go. My mother was in this group of people. My father got lucky. He was the only one able to work the lighthouse and therefore the government left him alone, probably because it would have been a hassle to train someone to take over the position if he failed their examinations, but no matter. Anyway, everyone who was harmed by this change in society to cleanse the city of its trash got together and formed the Unity.
The Unity was as disorganized as its name was unoriginal, but it was effective. Since I was already out of the system when the mayor took office and was only at BH over my breaks from university, I didn’t really experience much of this. However, when I was back home, was it fucking intense. I remember my father explaining this group as a labor union where the people wanted to fight for their rights to work and so on, but as time passed his definition began to shift to describe a guerilla warfare group. The Mayor ignored the complaints from his residents and so, he began to feel their fire. The Unity began to attack police cars and steal their weapons, then raid local grocery stores for food. Everything began to fall apart. By my sophomore year, I came back to the sounds of gunshots. The Unity grew in number as more and more people began to drop out of the BH Improvement system and join the group. In a span of two years, Broken Harbor had been divided in two, with each group being such as determined and large as the other. I, though, never realized how personal this got until it was too late.
One day, I hear yelling coming from the kitchen to find that my mother and father were having an argument. Before this, my family never fought. We were always just quiet and mundane. However, my mother grew irritated with my father’s constant negligence concerning the system. If I recall correctly, she called him blind and ridiculous. He called her unstable and ludicrous. I tried to calm them both down and after a few seconds of them staring at each other, panting, my mother sat with her head in her hands and told me that everything was fine. My father gently patted my back and told me to go upstairs. The last thing I saw was him trying to console her and caress her hair, which Alice returned with a shove. Not going to lie, he deserved it.
Upstairs, I saw Lucy opening her window, to which I asked if she was going somewhere. She slowly turned around and on her face was a bandana covering her mouth. An Insignia of a hand making the “silence” gesture was imprinted on it. The Unity. Without a whisper, she disappeared. There was no car to drive away. All I remember seeing after that were the drapes from her windows just flapping into her room. I thought nothing of it. I didn’t know that, that was the last time I was ever going to see my sister. Or my family. I just didn’t care enough, I guess.
I didn’t think that the end of the world was going to happen overnight. But it did.
And now, it’s too late to do anything about it.
I clean my eyes as the wind suddenly begins to blow with more fury and I push through to find cover in a deteriorating building. I sat down and leaned against the rust, releasing a heavy sigh as the sounds from outside resemble a sandstorm. I touch my lips and instantly throw my fingers back off as my mouth stung from dehydration. I look out a small crack in the window and try to peer at anything that resembles food or water, but the dust made it impossible to see. There’s nothing. Nothing for me to do. Nothing left.
I yell into the walls and feel them vibrate with my frustration. Isolation is a thought that seems less scary in your head, but when you’re truly the last one, of anything, the reality truly makes you tremble. I could barely feel my feet. My head felt like it was constantly concussed and my stomach, by this point it was probably eating itself. None of these things compared though, to the misery it felt like to be alone.
If I could go back and have anything in the world, it would be a day with my family. I miss hearing my mother gasp about all the cute kittens at her work during the night as she made dinner. Or how my father would continue to tell impossible stories about the lighthouse during the day, but most of all, how I wish that I could see Lucy’s smile again. These memories had already begun to fade away, and once that evaporates into the dust-filled air, then there will be truly nothing left. My eyes grew heavy as I held back my tears and black dots filled my gaze. With one final breath, something rang in the distance.
“Hey there’s someone in there,” a woman’s voice pierced.
And then there was black.