“Daddy daddy!! Whats this?!”

“What’s what, honey?” Ralph yelled back. His attention shifted to his daughter, leaving his sprouts once more sitting in lonely silence. His little girl, Katrina, was running towards him, one hand clenched in front of her, the other flailing wildly to the side as she tried to keep her balance. It was a child’s run, no understanding of balance or stability, legs too long, arms pumping furiously. She stumbled and wobbled with every step, but managed to slide to a stop in front of him, spitting dirt into his stomach and showering the little shoots with pebbles and dust.

“It looks like a little arm, Daddy! Were there little people here once?!” She giggled, excited. In her hand was clasped a doll arm, apricot plastic covered in grime. Ralph took it from her and spun it between his fingers. A clod of mud fell out of the tiny hand, still perfectly formed like it was right out of the mold. He wiped some slime off of the arm and grasped it by the shoulder-joint, feeling the ball of plastic slide up his palm until he stopped it with a crooked finger.

“What, this? No,” he said, laughing, “this is a tool for tickling little girls!” He surprised her, leaping off of his knees and poking her in the ribs with the toy. She shrieked with girlish laughter as she tried to escape. They wrestled for a couple minutes before falling into the grass, winded and giggling. At some point in the tumble he had turned back into a child himself. He wasn’t used to giggling anymore, and the renewed presence of it shocked him back into reality. He jolted upright and checked their surroundings. The sun still shone over the field they had been working in, a couple of degrees lower on the horizon than when they had arrived. Couple more hours of sunlight left, he thought to himself, before correcting; a couple more hours of what passed for sunlight now. His eyes sunk from the shrouded sun to the tree line. He let them wander from left to right, scanning the little forest encroaching on the old high school. Nothing, nothing, more nothing. He left the trees and started along the school, passing over banks of large windows, looking for movement or color through the glass. After the high school he returned to the trees on the other side, more searching, more nothing but shadows and dead grass as far as he could see.

Shuffling feet behind him tore his attention away from the trees. He spun, arms up, but the tension melted away when he saw it was just Katrina walking towards him from a few feet away.

“So, what is this Daddy?” she asked again. The excitement was gone from her eyes, replaced by curiosity. She had picked up the doll piece from wherever he had dropped it during their play, and was holding it out to him again, flat on her palm. He picked it up once more and twirled it around.

“This is a piece of a doll, sweetheart, an arm, just like Julie’s”

“Just like Julie’s? But Julie is made out of wood and this isn’t wood!” She ran over to her pack and came out with a doll, worn and tattered from the road but recognizably human.

“See Dad, look.” She wiggled Julie’s arm back and forth, like a little wood person walking.

Laughing, he took the miniature from her hand and held it up close to his face. Katrina didn’t know it, but he had made Julie for her when she was just a baby. Her hair had been lighter then, a pale blonde that had given way to a golden shine as she grew. Julie’s hair was just as bright as it had always been, spun silk lying flat on a wooden skull, while Katrina’s light yellow bounced around her face in lazy curls.

“You’re right hon, this little doll wasn’t made of wood. She was made out of plastic, harder than wood but not as natural. They don’t make plastic anymore.”

“Oh. So there’s no plaz-tick dolls anymore?” Katrina struggled over the new word, and her face fell with every syllable.

“Well, I don’t know. I suppose there could be some somewhere.” He handed Julie back to Katrina and watched as she smoothed the doll’s hair lovingly.

“That sucks,” she mumbled, as Ralph got to his feet, “I think Julie is getting lonely. I wanted her to have a friend.”

“I think we’re all getting lonely, my love.” he mumbled back, but she didn’t catch him as he stared out over the field.

His thoughts returned to him from far away, and he turned and crouched in front of his daughter.

“I’ll tell you what. You keep an eye out, and if you find any more little dolly parts, bring them to me and I’ll see if we can make somebody to keep Julie company. Sound good?” In answer, Katrina squealed and threw her arms around his neck, squeezing as hard as her six-year-old arms could. He swung his arm under her and stood. The smile never left his face as he turned, kissed her cheek, and wiped a tear from his eye.

Some time later, Ralph and Katrina gathered their packs and headed back to camp through the growing dusk. A thick, angry bank of cloud and ash had raced over the horizon, forcing an early sunset and an unfortunate retreat for Ralph and his girl. What had started as a sheet of gray-black wool had quickly become a storm-tossed sea. He could see it churning from miles away, building up to violent speeds. Shit, he thought, it’s getting too dark for this. Three, four hours til it hits, and maybe two for us to see, if we’re lucky. We’re going to have to find shelter soon, he said to himself. It had taken them half a day of wandering to find those prized little plants, the first thing he had seen growing in months. They had spent two days there while he tried to find out what they were, and his elation hadn’t diminished until he saw the storm; three budding sprouts of Solanum tuberosum, the common potato. The first living thing in four months, and for what?! They wouldn’t survive the night. Tomorrow, he knew, the ground would be covered in inches of thick dust, choking the heart out of anything that dared to grow. Life would be lost in a suffocating cloud, and nothing would remain after but blank, stark grey and white, like a nightmare winter wonderland. Despair settled on him like an old friend and he walked in silence for a time.

“Katrina, honey, we have to move faster” he said, reaching for her hand.

“Are we going to be okay, Daddy?” she replied as her eyes slipped from his, to the storm at their rear, and back. He tried to smile for her and gave her hand a squeeze, then turned and set off at a brisk jog into the outskirts of a small development.

They passed through a backyard and into the cul-de-sac at the end of the street they used to live on. Passing house after familiar house brought back memories of warmth and sunshine, and camaraderie, in open contrast to the wasteland before his eyes. Garages hung open, and driveways stood vacant and bare, much like the houses beside them. A few were still in decent repair, like the large brick one at the end of the road, on the corner, but most were nothing more than broken windows and sagging floors, dilapidated walls and nonexistent roofs. Vines and moss covered the outside of everything still standing, while the insides were reserved for rot and mold. He set his sights on the large house on the corner and steeled himself for what was coming.

The lonely pair hustled down the street, on one side, long strides marching down the dusty road, on the other, short legs puffing to keep up. Halfway to their destination, Ralph had to force his eyes away, to not find the only sight they wanted. If he had had a choice, he would never have walked this road again, to the end of his days, but the oncoming storm had chosen for him. Their small group, himself, Katrina and three other survivors, had made camp on the opposite side of Silverton from the high school, where he and Katrina had spent the last couple of days. They had taken a route around the town in their search, running through the parks to the south of town before cutting north and following High Street to the school. From there he had planned to continue north to the lake before moving back west, but the storm sent him on the fastest route back to the edge of town, straight through their old neighborhood.

All this passed through Ralph’s head as his eyes betrayed him, straying across the street to the solitary front door which haunted his dreams. In his mind, the door stood intact, brown wood set into white wall, a gilded knocker two-thirds of the way up. Shining white paint silhouetted large windows with mahogany-stained shutters, and the small cement stoop offered warm salutations to visitors. The door would swing open, and a blinding white light would wash over him, while soothing melodies played over his troubles, smoothing the contours of his mind and easing him in the night.

In reality, the house was a place of horror for him. It had been four years since he had visited this spot, four long years which had served to infect the house just as completely as time had washed clean those memories. Now, the brown wood door stood, decaying, surrounded by a white frame spotted with mold. Shutter and window alike had long since ceased to exist, leaving gaping holes on either side of the door. The north side of the house, he knew, was gone, fallen victim to several large trees which had stood sentinel in the backyard, probably just as rotten as the rest of the house by now. As his eyes met the door, in his mind he saw it swing gently open as a blonde angel stepped through the door, wreathed in shining fire.

“Come on Katrina, hurry up” he grumbled through clenched teeth, tearing away from the decrepit house to urge her on faster.

They reached the red brick house just as the storm was bearing down on them. Ralph slammed the door shut behind and bolted it. Turning to survey the house, he saw the bolt would only be good to keep the door from swinging open; it wouldn’t exactly be hard for a person to bypass. A large bay window on the opposite side of the first floor, had shattered. Glass shards littered the hardwood planks, adding a ghastly shine to the white-gray ash swirling across the floor. Ralph and Katrina hurried upstairs to check out the bedrooms. One had a broken window, through which a growing gale was blowing, but the other two had windows intact. Ralph, exhausted, plopped down on the soggy carpet in the first room and swung his pack around to land in his lap. He pulled out the last of their food; a large, dirty carrot and a tin of Spam. Gonna have to stock up at camp tomorrow, he thought, making a mental inventory of their supplies there. What they had wasn’t much, mostly scavenged on the road, but it was enough that they needn’t worry as long as they stuck to their rations. He snapped the carrot in half and handed it to Katrina, but she was already asleep, head on her pack, thumb in her mouth, Julie tucked under her arm. Ralph smiled as he pulled the blanket from his bag and tucked it around her. The wind had picked up even more, and the windows were alive with the dance of grit and ash. Branches creaked and shuddered outside as Ralph tried to shut out the din and sleep.

The dream came back, as it had a thousand nights before. He was floating above his old house, watching himself in the front yard. Katrina ran out the front door, his wife not far behind. Ralph knew this dream, and knew he was dreaming, but try as he might, he could not recall her name. The thought filled him with sorrow, as it always did. Katrina jumped, and Ralph was in his body, thinking of nothing but to spread his arms and catch her as she squealed through the air. He caught her and swung her around at arm’s length, laughing. Every rotation he could see his wife, golden haired and smiling. Ralph dropped his daughter on her feet and she ran to her mother. As she scooped up her gleaming miniature, the drone of a plane passed by overhead. Ralph turned to follow as another, then another, joined the first, headed into the morning sun

“Honey-“ He turned back, and everything had changed.

Just before, his house had stood behind him, sunlight reflecting off of the white siding. Now, all he saw around him was hard, cracked dirt. A thin tree barely stood, buffeted by the wind, starving and too dry to rot. Stinging wind whipped dirt and dust through the air, and where his house once stood was only a brown wooden door, supported on either side by a bare hint of old plaster walls. The ruined supports barely reached halfway up the door, and around the top was only a wooden door frame, crumbling into dust. The wind tore around him, howling and gnashing invisible teeth, but the flying dirt did not touch him. Instead the wind seemed to revolve about the spot where he stood, an unseen barrier surrounding him, the tree, and the ruin of his house not ten feet away. Vaguely, hints of monsters and darker things lurked behind the veil of choking dust, promises of destruction and death whispered unbidden and unheard in the back of his mind.

He noticed none of it, focused as he was on the door before him. He knew he must go to it, that he was being drawn there by some incessant tug in his heart. The door held another sort of promise, of hope and comfort, a release he sought but could not reach. Trembling fingers came into view and suddenly he was walking forward, toward the source of the pull. Before he could tear astonished eyes from his hand, he was at the door and turning the handle. What lay beyond he had no idea, but the thought roiled his stomach in unnatural ways. As the door opened, pale golden light streamed out from behind it. First a sliver fell across his face, warming him, and soon he was basking in it. The light filled him with solace, a peace which quieted his troubled soul. He opened his eyes and he was on his knees in the dirt, beyond the threshold of the door. The light stung him, but squinting, he could make out a nebulous form striding toward him, wreathed in pale fire. The radiance she gave off seemed to fill all of the space behind her, originating from her and emphasizing her, obscuring the blighted landscape and leaving her alone in the glare. The familiar figure held out its right hand to him and his answered of its own will. As Ralph’s fingers rose to meet those of the slim, shining angel before him, thoughts of his wife suddenly poured through his head. God, what was her name? he moaned to himself. Their fingers touched, and tears streamed down his cheek.

Ralph shot up from the floor into a sitting position. Immediately, he knew something was wrong. From his pack under his head came a faint clicking, quiet but fast. No, he thought to himself. Groggy, he stared at his pack.

No. Dread gripped him.

“No.” He said it out loud.

“No. Shit. No! Shit, no nonononono!” He tore through his pack frantically, searching for the source of the sound. As he got closer to the bottom of the bag, ripping out clothing and equipment, the clicking got louder and louder. Soon, it was like an egg timer ringing in his head.

“Nooo,” he moaned, “no no nooooo!!!”

He pulled out his Geiger counter.

Sealed under hard plastic, the indicator arm was still, stuck fast to the right hand side of the readout, the red dye of the DANGER section glaring at him. It sent a stab of pain through his heart. He crawled on all fours to the window next to him and peeked out. The world had turned a snowy white. During the night, the wind storm had turned to an ash storm, and millions of tons of radioactive ash had settled across the countryside all around him, covering everything he could see in a fine, gray-white powder. If it’s bad enough, we’ll only have a few hours left, Ralph said to himself. In all likelihood the storm had hit the camp too, he figured. Ben and Ramone and Carol, if they weren’t dead already, they would be soon. Unless they had left us to die already. The thought sent fresh pain, like a spear driven deeper into his chest. He turned, ponderously, to wake Katrina and explain.

A fresh shock hit him.

Katrina was gone.

Her pack lay on the floor where she had fallen asleep the night before, but of her there was no sign. Ralph scrambled to his feet, tripped, and lurched into the closet door. He wrenched it open, expecting to find her there, curled up away from the storm, but found nothing. He ran into the room’s bathroom, tossed aside the shower curtain, opened the cupboards. Nothing.

Through a hole in the bathroom ceiling ash had drifted in during the night. A light carpet covered the bathroom floor, and some had fallen out into the bedroom. As he was rushing to the bedroom door, he noticed a tiny footprint in the dust and followed it.

At the bottom of the steps he turned the corner into the front hall. The storm must have petered out sometime in the early morning; the red-brown tiles showed a smooth covering of ash, deposited through the smashed bay window. Small boot prints led the way through the ash and out the front door, now standing wide open. Ralph followed.

Across the large brick porch, down the stairs, and out onto the street he followed those prints, until one pair of footprints became two, one small, one much larger, before the smaller pair disappeared. Dread seized ahold of Ralph with an iron grip. He shook with anxiety, but he had to go on. He had to find her.

The large set of footprints ran directly to the house next door. Ralph crept up the steps and put an ear to the door. He could hear voices, and from this close, he could faintly taste smoke and roasted meat on the air. Summoning all of his courage and strength, he pulled the knife from his belt and threw open the door, ready to rush in. What he saw inside the house stopped him dead in his tracks.

Huddled in a triangle around a small fire sat a trio of the filthiest people Ralph had ever encountered. Rotting, stained rags fell off the bony shoulders of a young woman with oily hair done up in pigtails, while the other woman, slightly older, sported a decaying yellow dress, spotted here and there by holes. The last, a man seated to the left of Ralph, was a middle-aged man with a ragged, grease-stained beard. The man had no shirt on, and a drop of grease fell on his broad stomach as he chewed once and swallowed what was in his hand. Dirty fingers fell from his mouth, and all three stared at Ralph from where they sat.

Ralph saw them for only the briefest second, registering them before his eyes fell to the floor, and the horror which lay directly in front of Ralph, between the fat, balding man and the horse-faced young woman.

Lying on the tile floor in front of the fire, dead eyes staring directly into Ralph’s hopelessly, unfortunately alive ones, was Katrina.

Blonde curls partially covered the jagged hole that had been torn out of her cheek, but nothing covered her legs. The cannibals had cut off her jeans to reveal pale legs and small muscle, tough from walking. From the knee down, her left leg was a sodden, red mess. Almost all of the meat had been stripped off and spitted over the fire, leaving behind only yellow bone and crimson blood.

In that moment, when Ralph registered that his whole world was gone before his eyes, in that brief moment, Ralph Summers died.

What happened next, Ralph couldn’t truly say. In the way you remember a scene from childhood, vivid but uncertain, Ralph’s last minutes would be plagued by hazy visions of that decrepit foyer and that stock, red-brown tile.

His feet and fists moved, faster than any of the human trash could react. The scrawny girl rose to meet him, but too late. Ralph slammed into her, sent her reeling into the fire. Before she hit the ground, Ralph spun and was on the man, stabbing into the soft skin of his neck. He left his knife buried deep in the big man’s neck and slowly pushed himself off the ground. Horseface had hit the fire and rolled off, and was now behind the older woman, dancing on the tips of her toes and swatting at cinders burning through her shirt. The old woman had produced a small knife and was waving it in Ralph’s face, warding him away. Faster than she could follow, he sprung forward and dropped down, kicking her feet out from under her. With a sickening crunch, the back of her head hit the tile and she lay still.

With bold strides Ralph was on the bony girl again where she was cowering in the corner. He grabbed a hold of her by the arm and the back of her neck and pulled her to her feet. She tried to fight, and the blank rage which had been receding in Ralph flared up one last time. With a savage jerk, Ralph had her back in the fire where he had put her at first. This time, he held her there until she stopped convulsing.

Breathless and sobbing, Ralph carried Katrina’s limp body down the front stairs and into the yard. The part of him that had died was reborn when he dropped to his knees next to her mangled body. The numb rage he had felt towards those monsters had gone, and what they left him with was impossible to describe. It was a complete apathy of the soul, an emptiness where even the most basic humanity should be. Ralph had wavered there, for a moment, before softly grasping Katrina’s small fingers in a bloody embrace. He stared at his fingers, torn and burned, smearing the pristine white of his daughter’s, and emotion flooded back into him. Despair, grief, hopelessness, and depression hit him, hammer blow after hammer blow, battering down his will to live. With trembling fingers that belied the sudden, mournful clarity of his life, he had taken Katrina in his arms and left the house.

Walking down the empty street, leaving bright, clear footsteps in the unnatural snow, Ralph cried silently. In that moment, it was impossible to tell which had a stronger hold on him; the numbness which enveloped his soul, or the grief which forced streaming tears down his face. Ralph knew nothing on a cerebral level anymore. Grief blinded him, robbed him of his senses, his will to live, to act, to love. His footsteps were coming unconsciously, a plodding gait that drew him slowly toward his destination.

Ralph walked through the front yard he would see in his dreams. Underneath the oak tree she loved so much there, but had never known in real life, he laid his daughter to her final rest. He knelt over her for a time, leaving silent tears and silent words for her, before he faced the door.

Underneath the blank shell of his mind, beneath the false shell suppressing his emotions, his mind roiled. He felt, peripherally, as though his life had been building toward this moment. He reached the door, trembling, anxious, dreading what was to come but knowing it must. With unfeeling fingers, he turned the knob and let the door swing open.

Pale, golden light shined out from the crack in the door. As it swung on its hinges, first a sliver, then a growing bar of light fell across him. He looked down, and it seemed to him as though the blood and dirt which had covered him for years was washed away in the warmth of that light. With the door fully open, the light blinded him, too bright for him to look at directly. He raised a hand to shield his eyes, and between his fingers he saw a figure moving toward him, sheathed in glorious sunlight. A beautiful blonde goddess stepped up to him, bathed in all the radiances of the stars, and garbed in a pristine white silk scarf which twirled and writhed against her body. She held out her right hand to his, where he sat kneeling in the dirt. His rose to meet her, unwilled but welcome, and as their hands touched her face materialized before his, just inches away. His wife smiled her beautiful, mischievous smile one last time and kissed him on the lips, an embrace which lasted for eternity.

Ralph Summers spent his last minute sprawled in the dirt, just across the threshold of the door to his old home. With his last breath, gasped out into the dust, dirt, and ash, he whispered a name, and died with the morning sun streaming through the broken back wall of his home, onto his broken smile.

“Karen…”