Ashes Of Angeline

Part V

The drive was long and slow, and the jostling of the truck bed had given me a tight stomach ache that I had been focusing on ignoring for the past half hour. It was a strange car ride opposed to what I was used to. There were quiet murmurs of conversation between people, there were people who gazed out idly at the landscape we passed, there were some people who fell unconscious due to boredom or exhaustion I could not be sure which, and there were people who busied themselves with various things.

            Noah's coffee brown eyes remained fixated on the rubix cube in his hands, although it had been nearly an hour since they had held the gleam on interest. Now they gazed at the colorful cube with mild irritation at solving the puzzle, his hands fumbling over the sections and repeating moves he undoubtedly already tried.  

            Your gray eyes skimmed over the slowly passing road, not really paying attention. There was a far away look in your eyes that made me wonder what you could be thinking about so deeply. The truck lurched over yet another pothole in the road and I winced as your back was thrown against the truck's frame. The movement shook you from your thoughts and you turned to look at the girl asleep beside you, her head fallen against your shoulder sometime in her slumber.

            It was evident that she was a heavy sleeper, for the two of you had moved together through the recent pot hole and she remained asleep. Her mouth was open the slightest bit, and strands of her jet black hair were coming out of her braid. I wondered wearily when Dem had changed her hair from a tight ponytail to a braid between leaving the house to our time in the truck.

            You didn't seem to mind her head on your shoulder though, and you adjusted yourself slowly so that her neck was not stretched so uncomfortably. You tilted your head back, facing the skyline with a worn expression that aged you.

            I watched past you, Dem, and Noah as the driver wound the car around another abandoned vehicle that had been left to rust. Past the corroding van was a stretch of hayfield, overgrown now with tall strands of golden pasture. There was movement within the field, and I felt a now familiar concoction of fear and curiosity stir inside my chest. The crop parted for the creature, revealing a deer working at a mouthful of hay. It was good to know humans were not the only species to survive the apocalypse.

            At least, that's what it felt like. It felt strange to give it a label, but it was the only word that I sensed suited the circumstances. There was the Beginning, when the world's disasters hit. Then there was the time after the Beginning, which I didn't know what to name because the closest I came to experiencing it was sitting, trapped in my basement.

            It was the time when the surviving population broke into my house to scavenge supplies. It was the time I heard whispers through the floorboards about a new government being formed in our time of despair. It was the time in which shouts rattled through the ceiling about the government failing. It was the time of months waiting for my spiritual departure of this dejected world.

            That was my experience of the time after the Beginning. It was in that time frame that I heard the first person say it. It wasn't a hushed word, riddled with fear and desperation, but rather an accepted word. A word that they had embraced as a name for what was occurring around them. This was the apocalypse, and based on some of the conversations around me in the truck I presumed they would not oppose the idea.  

            Something shifted throughout the people surrounding me, and I glanced at you for an answer. Your eyes moved to watch something in the distance. Nothing stood out to me at first though, and then I saw the hazy pillar of smoke from a fire fade into the air. People with cramped limbs began attempting to stretch them out in the limited space. Noah looked up from his rubix cube and looked relieved to be approaching what I assumed was our destination. You lightly shook out your shoulder, awakening Dem from her dormancy.