No Names

Walking

A sharp smell of sulfur had entered her nose hours ago and even as they had journeyed for miles away from the reservoir the smell had continue to linger. She kept her eyes in front of her staring at his shoulders as they shifted to adjust to his walk along the rocky path. She sighed loudly to let him know her discomfort without voicing it in the language that they shared. She had seen this coming. After the plants had started to grow out of their ashy grave and turn green she knew that change was coming. Now they were here, more than a few hours into their rocky road of mutual silence and still there was no end in .

She knew he had wanted to stay longer at the reservoir but she had pushed them forward because she was scared. The world may look like a safer place thanks to the splotches of green that now dotted the fields but recent events had kept her from believing in fairy tales. Unlike the rest of their group, they both moved forward.

She jolted when he abruptly stopped in front of her but he turned around to face her instead showing his back to the unknown, unprotected and weary. "I think we should stop soon." He whispered, watching her face to judge her reaction. She nodded with the thought that she would have liked to have stop walking a while ago, however they needed a safe place to stay. "Where can we go?" She questioned since she had been behind protecting their back and had little to see in front of her except his shoulders. He turned to look back or rather in front of him before turning back to answer her. "I haven't seen anything but I was hoping you could find something." She understood and closed her eyes and pressed the palm of her hand on the smooth rock next to her. Nooks and crannies she could feel all throughout the expanse of that cave but none big enough to hold two people in. She let go of the wall and opened her eyes to look at him and shook her head. "We'll need to go at least another mile before I can sense anything new but so far there's nothing around here big enough to hold the two of us." He looked dejected but then his eyes shone a resolution that they both needed to keep on walking. "Okay" he said and reached down to retie his shoe, then stood up and readjusted his backpack. She tightened the straps on her backpack and nodded her head at him. They would have at least another hour or more of walking for this day. Thus they began their descent to a more hopeful world and maybe a better .

Three hours later they stopped at her command when her expanse had felt a cave a few feet above them. It was ideal due to it being off the ground however it had the potential to have critters living on the inside and the idea of checking that made her stomach turn. However, they made camp for that night and he laid out their sleeping bags while she stoked the fire. They ate slowly not talking about the thing that was in the back of both of their minds. Later that night she turned over and whispered to him, "Are you awake?" she heard him breathing but it was steady and continuous which told her he was still asleep. Alone again she thought. It was too quiet in the world but then again she had never known anything different. She thought about the she had known many seasons ago when she had traveled with their group. They had taught her many things in the seasons that she had spent with them that she still followed to this day since they had passed.

never told where he came from but she guessed it was in part because he did not know where he came from. She was not sure if he ever had someone in the first place. He had appeared out of gray mist one morning while she had been scavenging. It had been her turn that week to change out the water but the patches of green had just started to show up and she had been fascinated by the looks of it. Sitting on the ashes careful to avoid the patches of green, she only knew of that word because of the women who told her stories of before the burn. Some of the women were beyond any old she had known before and thusly their age had been what had drawn her to them. She did not know how to read. That was the art form lost a generation ago when scavenging for cans was still a part of everyday life. Now metal was a precious thing but food had begun to come back once the green had .

She looked up at their ceiling and followed the creases and curves carved out by water that no longer ran through the walls. Green. Green was coming and that meant change was coming and that was why they had to find him. The man in was known on the road by everyone on their side of the coast. He had offered a salvation from the world of ash that they resided in. But of course she had never known anything different so the idea of a world in which green was everywhere and there was blue in the sky and a yellow sun that shone high above was almost unimaginable to her reality.

She realized she could not sleep so she sat up and started to walk out of their crevice. As she hopped down she landed on the smooth granite and started in the direction opposite from which they came. She pulled out their lamp from her pocket and it shone against the smooth walls lighting it with waves of light and it showed they had not originally seen when they were walking before. There were graphics on the wall that had looked like complete when they had been walking before, however now that the sun had gone down and the blue light was illuminating it she could see a pattern to it that had not been there before. Maybe he knew. He knew of things before this time and had shown her before that he could read. She spun around on her heal and ran back towards their crevice.

He awoke with a start to find her hovering over him shaking him. "Wake up!" she said in a desperate whisper. He jolted up and grabbed for his gun that held the wooden bullets. "What is it?" He said franticly searching for any signs of danger. "I found something. I think its writings and I think you can read it." She jumped up from her crouch and grabbed at his shirt to pull him along. He stumbled after her and watched as she jumped from the crevice and he followed after her, gun in the waist band of his pants. She pulled the rock out of her pocket and it began to glow blue in her hand and light up the area around them. He squinted against the brightness that pushed to invade his eyes. "Here." She whispered to him and held the light up to the walls of granite that stretched miles beyond what he had originally assumed. He was surprised but what he saw on the walls, because he had completely missed it on their journey before.

"Do you recognize it?" she looked at him quizzically. Her eyes bright against the blue light that washed out the rest of her face. He quit staring at her face and looked back up again at the writing in front of him. He could tell it was English and that was a relief but at the same time he worried that it could be a warning threatening them to turn away from their original goal. "What does it say?" she asked once again prompting him to speak. He looked back up again at the letters and focused on putting them together. It had been sometime since he had needed to read but whoever had left the letters was from the time before. He began to speak, "It says, 'It is our fault the fire came. We were unclean and needed to be purged from the world which no longer accepts us. Burn all who have no God. For God is dead and we are his ." He finished and look over at her to see her reaction. She was no longer smiling. They both had heard that mantra many times when they were running from the clans that lived on the plains. "I think we can ignore it." He said trying to comfort her. "We know that that clan has moved on from this place. They're constantly moving because they like us still believe it isn't safe to stay in one place. We've seen the danger it holds many times before." He though back to the women who had taken him after he had lost everything. They themselves had barely escaped however he had always been moving and to default back was much easier for them than it was for her. He looked at her again and put an arm around her shoulder. "Why don't we start moving again? For all we know that was written before we were born." She nodded her head and he knew it would be a while before she spoke again because the loss had meant more to her than it ever would to him. They started back towards their crevice to load up the gear and head on through the tunnels.

She turned the light away from the wall not wanting him to read any more words that lined the tunnel. Words that had come from the mouths of those who had killed her friends. Those words were from before the world had ended. It was from those who believed it was their fault that the world had begun to burn but being one who lived after the end she was doubtful about the rapture that they believed in. She had been born after the world had ended and the women had saved her from being eaten by one of the clans. Their goal had been to survive against the ash without eating their own species because they had what they called morals.

Now they were dead but yet she had survived. Perhaps she was meant to have been born in a world in which survival was not something easily done. Which meant that he was too. She covered her hand over the blue light and the rock turned back to its original grey color. This world was a scary place and yet they would continue on despite their disadvantages. That was the only way to survive in a world that wanted nothing more than for them to stop and give up.