After Annihilation - Would you want to survive?

Chapter 5

Pranav emerged out of the safe house, with Vishwaroopum following, towering over him. In his arms, Vishwaroopum carried a boy of around ten. The child's leg was strapped with a wooden plank and a dupatta. A family followed him slowly, as if very weak.

As they came closer, I alighted the bike. The man and the woman collapsed on the ground, tired from the small distance they had walked. The woman carried an infant in her arms, while another boy around seven years of age clung to his father.

Two tin cans of food were opened, and four of the new members of the group were fed and given water. Wary of the strangers, I initially didn't go near them.

The father of the family spoke first. "Thank you for finding us. Are you members of AA?"

Pranav nodded. "Yes. Are you 'Farmer'?"

The mother spoke. "I am 'Farmer'. I am the one who registered... Against my husband's wishes," she added, giving her husband a patronizing look.

"Will you stop with that?" he snapped. "I know I was wrong."

"Well," Pranav said, "I am Admin."

"Oh, Mr Admin!" she said. "I thought you would be some old, experienced kind of guy."

"Experienced in what?" Roshan asked with an unauthentically cheery face and a voice laced with sarcasm. "Nuclear war?"

Despite my immediate dislike for Roshan and the dreadful nature of the situation, I cracked a smile. It did not go unnoticed by the woman.

"You are?"

"She is one of the survivors," Pranav said before I could get a word in.

"We need the vehicle you have registered here." Pranav thrust a list in front of them.

"Our truck?" The husband asked his wife. "You want to give them our truck? I thought you sold it?"

The wife glared at him with all the strength left in her. "I am not an idiot like you!"

She turned to Pranav. "It's in the basement of a godown five kilometres from here. The fuel tank is full." The woman sounded bitter.

Pranav thanked her. He left me and Vishwaroopum with the family and took Roshan with him in the back seat of his bike, heading to the exact location the woman had given to him to fetch the truck.

"What will happen to the bikes?" I asked Vishwaroopum. Seeing him carrying the injured boy and tending to him gently, had made me less frightened of him.

Vishwaroopum shook his head, and I heard him speak for the first time. "The fuel is gone. We'll dump 'em," he said in a slow, deep tone. Then, as if he was already tired of talking, he moved on and started tending to the supply bags.

I watched the woman, who was nursing her child. The husband was tending to his other two children, trying to make the younger boy stop crying. The couple would bicker now and then, paying no attention to anyone other than their little family.

I stared at them with envy, remembering my own family. My eyes inevitably filled with tears, which rushed out ceaselessly and silently. The guilt of having survived came back, taking over my mind more strongly than before. I sat for almost an hour, having shifted my gaze from the family to the red sunset in the distance. The sun was barely visible, only a shadow left of what had been a glowing ball of fire not ten days ago. It probably still was, as red and fiery as ever. It was only us that were no longer worthy of its light, trapped in this cage of annihilation, created by our own madness.

Pranav appeared on his bike over the horizon, and I felt my dead heart start slightly beating again. The deep loneliness eased its claws around me, and I got up in greeting to my savior. With a roar, he stopped the bike a foot from where I stood. I wondered if the effect was deliberate. After him, sounded the deep, roaring sound of an engine. A truck, with Roshan in the driver's seat. He too stopped a small distance from where our little party was gathered.