What's left (残り物)

5. Here we are now

We stared upwards with our ears hearing the low pitch ominous tone of the cruiser. It was so far away yet it still looked like a Goliath against the sun. Boris yells "Holy crap!" and points at the cruiser so far high in the sky. It looked like the shape of a giant carrot with its burning fuel resembling the stem of it. An iron carrot with a blue fire stem. Suddenly, the space craft's fire flashed and the cruiser soared through the air at imponderable speed. Boris looks back at me with the most surprised face "D-did you see that!?" He asks and I answer "A bit hard not to." He then babbles on about the space craft "I-it was just humongous, it blocked the sun!" His light voice makes me smile at his surprised expression. Boris then states "It must have been one of the voyager shuttles! Those things could support an entire colony of people" I stare confused. I never was informed much about the shuttles before the events of the end. I saw advertisements about them occasionally saying "Are you ready for a new life... IN SPACE!" The advertisements never actually showed a price and would then say "see if you can apply today. Hurry before it's too late!" That last statement seemed more like a poke at how they won't be available soon, but now it seems it meant before everything would be destroyed. It seemed like a lot of people applied to those things because when the great plagues first victims became evident the shuttles would get an influx of applicants. Most accepted some rejected and when the shuttle carried maximum capacity they took off for a space voyage. I wondered if the ships even worked and if it was just a funny little sham but seeing the huge ships in the flesh has reminded me of my horrible choice not to apply. I simply didn't apply out of my own ignorance about the catastrophic events occurring in the world. A large portion of the entire world population applied or was chosen to join the shuttles. I received a letter saying I was hand chosen to join the shuttles but ofcourse I thought it was just spam and tossed it aside to continue my military exercises. The shuttles never really said where they were going or if they were going anywhere specific at all. It was all somewhat vague about what the intentions even were of the shuttles. Maybe they wanted to save humanity. Maybe they wanted settlers for a new planet they were looking to call home. I heard a while back that there were planets that resembled Earth in many ways.

Hopefully those planets don't resemble how it is now. The atmosphere is violent in certain places. The weather has incredibly bizarre characteristics. Sometimes it would rain an acid rain that would irritate the skin of most and if you were furred like me it would give you the look of an animal with a case of mange if you stayed in it too long. It could be fought simply with a raincoat and eyewear, clothing that is strangely common with hybrids now. Other weather would be radioactive dust storms. Apparently nuclear fallout from detonated warheads would travel through wind and become sickening to anyone caught inside it. Again if I were to be caught in this sort of weather I would look mangy when It died over from the continuous effects of the poisoning energy. Winter as well would be its own frozen over hell as the chill that the cold sends throughout your body numbs every fiber in your body slowly creeping from your fingers and further into your arms until you start sweating and saying you're burning hot, then...you go still. No shivering, no breathing, no blinking, just pure stillness with a blank 100 mile stare. I wonder what people would see before their final stillness but I wouldn't want to find it out for myself. Summer didn't seem to be a problem anymore considering how the global temperature is atleast 15° fahrenheit lower than before all the disasters. Summer  is somewhat a lightly warmer season in all it's importance.

I keep thinking about how the world once was. It aches to think. All the people I once knew have left and the ones that didn't are dead.

I stare blankly back at Boris. My eye feels like it's watering up and the bandages on my right eye feel like they are dampening. Boris stares back at me and my strained expression. The fighting of my tears becomes futile in my efforts not to cry in front of me. I look into Boris' eye and see a reflection of my bandaged face. A scrunched up crooked frown on my snout and a flow of a tear down my eye. The tear glistens in the sunlight with it running down my cheek. Running...
"Um Gray?" Boris catches my attention from my thoughts "is there something wrong? Did you not like the shuttle?"

"No it's not that."
"Then what is it?"
"I..."
"..." Boris waits patiently for me to answer
"I just need a second to collect myself."

I walk towards a nearby alley just out of sight of Boris. I lean against the wall as the tears flow endlessly down the side of my face. "I've lost everything." I quietly whisper. I muffle my cries and my legs feel weak. I breath in letting the air fill my lungs. I breath out and the coldness of everything grows inside me. It feels like a wave of cold water coming from inside your body to outside. I walk back to Boris who still is patiently waiting for me.

"Are you ready to move on?" Boris says.
I think about what that sentence means and answer coldly

"Yes."