The Cold Life
It was very peaceful and miserable, living past the end of the world. Patrick rose in the morning, ignoring the sun's fast rise past the mountains surounding his lake, and woke last night's fire, set within arm's reach of the little leantoo he had built for himself. The fish didn't start biting until a good bit of sun's heat had collected in the little valley, so his breakfast was a sort of tea he made by combining scraps of bark from the sweetest smelling local trees. It was cold for hours, and he had nothing to do but hold his sleeping bag tight around his body and drink steaming hot tea.
Patrick no longer looked forward to fishing in the afternoons, hadn't cared beyond the demands of pure hunger since two weeks ago, when the weather radio went dead. It still picked up static, on the days he felt like combing the channels, but even the automated reporting service had stopped playing. It was as if they had turned off all their little devices before finally dying of whatever took them in the end, a last unconcious reflex, the same way his grandfather had used to wander from room to room of the house, turning off lights and computer monitors and radios and fans. Perhaps the end had reawoken the frugality missing since the last Great Depression.
He thought of his hord in a different sense. It represented a concrete future, a time when he would have enough supplies to leave the little valley, walk the forty miles down the gravel path towards the village South of here, and then the town South of that, and on until he found some place to collect the parts of himself he'd been losing since Lindsey and the kid didn't show up with the big red truck.
It was possible they were still alive, but neither Lindsey nor her son would ever back out of a promise. Keeping promises was built into the two of them, built into Lindsey's son by years in a world where his mother's promise was the only real thing in life. And Lindsey had picked it up somewhere along the way, or been born with it. Patrick had spent two years with her and still wasn't sure where the line lay, what she had been born as, and what she had made her self into through an unusually hard and clear life.
So she must be dead. She wasn't coming, and Patrick would have to make those thirty miles in little pockets of travel, moving only while heat still lay in the valley, leaving enough time to build a fire and shelter before the long winter night.
The second pot was cool enough now, and he drank his little camp cup empty in one gulp.
Patrick no longer looked forward to fishing in the afternoons, hadn't cared beyond the demands of pure hunger since two weeks ago, when the weather radio went dead. It still picked up static, on the days he felt like combing the channels, but even the automated reporting service had stopped playing. It was as if they had turned off all their little devices before finally dying of whatever took them in the end, a last unconcious reflex, the same way his grandfather had used to wander from room to room of the house, turning off lights and computer monitors and radios and fans. Perhaps the end had reawoken the frugality missing since the last Great Depression.
He thought of his hord in a different sense. It represented a concrete future, a time when he would have enough supplies to leave the little valley, walk the forty miles down the gravel path towards the village South of here, and then the town South of that, and on until he found some place to collect the parts of himself he'd been losing since Lindsey and the kid didn't show up with the big red truck.
It was possible they were still alive, but neither Lindsey nor her son would ever back out of a promise. Keeping promises was built into the two of them, built into Lindsey's son by years in a world where his mother's promise was the only real thing in life. And Lindsey had picked it up somewhere along the way, or been born with it. Patrick had spent two years with her and still wasn't sure where the line lay, what she had been born as, and what she had made her self into through an unusually hard and clear life.
So she must be dead. She wasn't coming, and Patrick would have to make those thirty miles in little pockets of travel, moving only while heat still lay in the valley, leaving enough time to build a fire and shelter before the long winter night.
The second pot was cool enough now, and he drank his little camp cup empty in one gulp.
posted by Fifth at 11:58 AM
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