When The Cities Died, I Danced.

When The Cities Died, I Danced. (Part 1)

(A collection of short stories by a new author. Please enjoy.)

A couple of days after the cities left, I was there.

Dancing.

Whether it was appropriate or not, there was no one there to care.

I had things to celebrate and this was my way.

Because I and my family were still alive. And perhaps it was a wake for those who weren't.

It wasn't a sad occasion, but joyous.

I made the trip on my recharging electric pedal-bike. Pedal up hills and go as fast as you can down to recharge. Meanwhile, you get a lot of exercise. Fresh air and all that. Some sunshine, but not too much.

There's so much to take in about what happened.

That was probably another reason I was out there dancing.

It took months to figure out what happened. The common description was the dark times, or Dark Age. Whether people wanted to call it a New Dark Age or Second one, depending on how optimistic they were about our future.

And it was too easy to blame several generations of politicians and what they used to call the "military-industrial complex." Little of either left around these days.

Another reason to celebrate and count your blessings. And dance.

What some people have pieced together is that hypersonic ICBM's with multiple warheads launched simultaneously by everyone who had them. They had clusters of neutron bombs that detonated in the atmosphere just above the cities, leaving little destruction, but killing all life.

It stunk for several weeks, but that was about it.

Oh, and any electronics died, too. Forget your "smart houses." And Internet. Gone in a literal flash.

But only in bigger cities. That's all they had to hit. When 90% of your people cluster up together in areas that are just a few miles across, they are easy targets.

The bombs were pretty smart, though. They left things standing, untouched. Only the people and their pets and any nearby wildlife were eliminated. The buildings were left untouched.

That first time I danced, I only had to make sure I was upwind.

Nature got hurt, but it continued on.

I don't know it was really that "dark" an age. It wasn't like we didn't have lights. Things got back to a new normal pretty quickly. Because the people who survived the attack were independent. Used to making do on their own. Farmers, mostly. But some "townies" also. So we had people who could run stores and make things and grow food.

That was my reason for dancing. I was thankful. Grateful. To be alive. To have my family. To still enjoy this earth.

We had to quit thinking in certain ways, and re-learn old ones. Craftsmen appeared, those who liked to work with their hands. Because things always get busted and have to be fixed. After the cities died, there was lots to fix. Grow food and trade it for getting your machines running again.

After more than a few years, they got the refineries and the oil-well pumps back online. That took some organizing. Electricity had to come first. And they were thankful that there were still some coal plants with stockpiles sitting there. Meanwhile, using eco-diesel, our local trucks were already rolling again. Some trains, where they could manually change the switches. That brought the cabooses back, as radios were still flaky. Without cities to buy stuff, they didn't run much.