Fiction

Apocalypse?

The smell of smoke teased my nose. Not the overpowering, deadly smoke itself, but the scent of it; as if someone had started a fire on a cold winter’s night, endeavoring to keep their outer digits warm while telling tall tales. The smell is what woke me, but the chill in the air motivated me to evaluate my surroundings. Slowly opening my eyes, I realized I was outside, a slight breeze meandering over by body, sending slight shivers down my arms; curled up and only wearing a simple shirt with no sleeves and pants cut off to mid-thigh. I twisted my arms to insure I still had my knife sheaths on my forearms and sighed. I knew better than to wash my clothes in the stream, then lay down while they were drying. I had been so tired. After leaving my last disaster, I had been walking for days in the forest. There had been no traveling companions on this trip, just the incessant song of birds, all the same and always different.

I rolled onto my back, ignoring the dirt, and peered at the hazy dawn. I could hear a fire crackling distantly, but there was no residual heat to stop the goosepimples from marching across my skin. I wondered if the rest of my clothes had made the jump with me, but there was no sound of the gurgling brook, I guessed they would still be draped over the bushes, where I had left them. The dirt from walking, the miserable trip in the mud and all those bloodstains had driven me to try and clean up a bit. You can only walk in your own filth for so many miles before you disgust even yourself.

The air tasted dry, as if there had been no rain for months, but it wasn’t difficult to breathe. There is no mistaking the breathability of air after bombs or fire, after war and violence.  The ashes sit in your nose, and you can taste death in the air, an acrid smell that casually lands on the back of your tongue, inducing a gag reflex. There was none of that here. Just dust, lazily stirred by an errant breeze, or kicked up by travelers. I could hear distant shouts, hales of greeting and lower responses, so I closed my eyes again, wondering where I was and how I was going to get some clothes.

“Will you be lounging the day away then, or do you think you could be bothered to answer a few questions?” The voice, though familiar, had me tensing. I snapped my eyes open, took a long, slow breath and began to work out a defense. Rolling my forearms on the ground to unlatch the knife sheaths as casually as I could, although truly I hadn’t found a decent way to gear up to defend myself without giving myself away; I rolled back over to my side. I slowly raising my upper body onto my elbows, allowing the knives to begin their slow descent to my wrists. Taking a deep breath, I looked to my right.