After Annihilation - Would you want to survive?

Chapter 4

Aarav later told me he had written in a message to not get out of the safe place for at least ten days, but I never received it. Anxious to get home, I had left as soon as I regained consciousness, which was two days after the first attack. Vaguely remembering the article Aarav had sent us all a month before our exams, in light of the looming threat of war, about nuclear threat and how to save oneself from it, I knew it was going to rain soon. It was called black rain, which happened soon after a nuclear attack, and it was vital to protect oneself from it.

Though my spirit was crushed, a small glimmer of desire to remain alive persisted, even as death stared me in the face. This desire made me feel guilty and disgusted with myself. How could I be so selfish? At a time when all was gone, I still wanted to live this wretched life? I called myself names and started blaming myself for not having been able to save my parents. I began getting stuck in a cycle of crying, feeling pity and hating myself at the same time.

It was because I was a horrible person, I told myself. A narcissist, a selfish being. Someone who didn't try her best to save her parents for her own life. I wanted to run back to the apartments and keep trying to identify the bodies, but I knew it was futile. The truth, though unrecognizable, had stared me in the face. Whatever life had been in that area was burnt beyond recognition, but I refused to acknowledge it.

I walked back to the cave, imagining myself starving to death. Peaches followed me but stopped on the way to sniff and bite at something in the ground.

"No," I said, scolding her, jumping to pull her away from the radiation-infested soil. "It's all poison now." I whispered it more to myself than to Peaches, frustrated at my inability to do anything about the situation. "The earth is poison."

This time I did not fall inside the dark, oppressive hole but remained near it, deep inside the cave. As day gave way to night and again to the next day, I grew hungrier. I gave some water to Peaches from the water bottle and took some myself, hoping it would soothe some of the hunger. I remained in a fetal position, lying by my side. I wouldn't let her out of my sight, so Peaches took to foraging in the crevices of the cave for insects.

On the second day, I was exhausted from hunger while Peaches continued feasting on a diet of insects. I had begun to seriously deliberate painless ways to end my suffering. By the third day, the pain in my stomach was becoming unbearable. I considered going out into the poisonous environment and finding something to eat. Dying of radiation sickness would be better than the hunger pains, I reasoned.

I took another sparing sip of water from the bottle. It was only when I had lost all hope that an idea hit me. By this time I was desperate enough to even venture back into the hole I had fallen into before. If someone had kept a water bottle in the hole, there might also be some food. With new energy, I got up and lowered myself into the hole, careful to keep the water bottle with me to get back out. I used my still-alive cell phone as a flashlight to spot any unlevelled contour in the soil, anything out of the ordinary. In the corner where I had found the water bottle, some of the soil on the wall adjoining the floor seemed to have been pasted on after digging. My instincts tingled, and I began digging.

My hand struck something hard, and I stopped. It was something round and silver. I did not allow myself to think what it could be, lest I get my hopes up. If I did and it was in vain, it would shatter my ability to hold on in the face of the turmoil I was facing. I took out a tin box that said "High Protein Biscuits". Slowly, I opened the can with the help of the water bottle cap. It was real. It was full. As the sweet aroma of glucose and protein-laden biscuits hit me, for the first time in my life, my eyes filled with tears at the sight of food. Never had I felt so thankful to the highest power, not even when I had been selected into my high paying, so-called prestigious company. Now, everything else seemed like peanuts in front of this life I was trying to save. All the stress I had taken and put my body and mind though for a better job, more recognition, more appreciation. All seemed laughable.