Cherish all Life

“Daddy, I want you to help me make a bow,” I told my father when I was five or six.

“Sure,” he said, “but what are you going to do with it?”

“I going to hunt!” I declared, “I’ll hunt a rabbit.”

“A rabbit? Well well, and what will you do with that rabbit?”

I hesitated. I hadn’t thought that far ahead. “I… I’ll kill it,” I said.

“Kill it?” my father looked taken aback. “Why would you want to kill it? The rabbit hasn’t done a thing to you. No, son, I won’t help you kill something just for fun. You must cherish all life. Understood?”

***

I sat in a small patch of woods, exhausted and hollow with hunger. Rabbits darted through the undergrowth, quick flashes of brown between the trees. I wished my father were here. He would have known what to do, if he was here. He would’ve fashioned this bow himself, and maybe he’d even have let me kill one for food.

But he wasn’t here. I had no idea where he was, though I was already accepted he was probably dead. My mother, too. Along with most everyone I’d ever known.

When the EMP hit, everything just… stopped. No phones, no signal, nothing. My parents lived seventy miles away. A short drive in the old world - but on foot, it might as well have been another world, a journey through a world that had turned hostile overnight. I hadn’t heard a word from them since the blackout. Given their age, it was only logical to assume they were gone.

After the EMP, I stayed inside for weeks. I had a small stockpile of canned food and bottled water. I locked the door, barricaded it with furniture, and covered the windows. Then I read. It was all I could do. I was good at math and computers - skills that had become utterly useless in this new world. So I read and I waited, though for what, I didn’t know.

Outside, the silence was broken by frequent shouting and the crack of gunfire. I could see the glow of fires on the horizon. It didn’t take a genius to realize that a guy like me had no business wandering the streets.

One day someone - or something - set the house next door on fire. The flames hadn’t reached me yet, but with no firefighter and no 911 to call, I knew it was only a matter of time. There would be no one to stop the inferno.

I stood there, watching the flames climb higher and realized my time here was over. I grabbed the largest rucksack I could find and stuffed it with every scrap of food I had left. I took a kitchen knife - the sharpest blade in the drawer - and hit the road.

I didn’t know where to go, or even what my purpose was anymore. I tried to avoid people as much as possible, knowing just how fragile the veneer of civilization really was - and how quickly men reverted to savages when the world pushed back. The city – my city – was unrecognizable. Smoke hung in the distance. Overgrown weeds had already begun to chalk the asphalt, clawing their way into the streets. And then there was the smell – the heavy, cloying stench of something rotten.

I saw bodies scattered here and there, rotting in the middle of the road. I picked them clean without a shred of shame, searching for anything that might keep me alive. Most still had wallets full of cash – useless paper now. But a few carried scraps of food, some had sturdy boots, and one… one of them even had a handgun tucked into his waistband.

I wandered for days before stumbling upon this small grove on the outskirts of the city. I’d been here ever since. Truth be told, I was spent. My legs throbbed with a dull ache and my throat was parched. The constant gnaw of hunger was driving me out of my mind. I’d managed to forage some fruit and a few nuts here and there, but that was never enough to quiet my stomach.

Worst of all was the futility of it. I was surviving –well enough it seemed – but I couldn’t see a future in any of this. Another day, another week – for what?

***

“What are you up to, son?” my father asked one afternoon, catching me in the backyard, surrounded by a pile scrap.

“I’m building a helicopter,” I told him. I was seven or eight at the time. “But I can’t figure out the rotor. Can you help me with it?”

“Oh, I could,” he said, a glint of mischief in his eyes. “But I’m afraid it might actually work. You’d fly off into the clouds, and then I’d never see you again.”

“Dad, that’s the whole point!” I protested. “I want it to fly! And I promise, I won’t disappear.”

He just laughed, warm and full.

It took me years to understand he was joking. Back then, though, I was certain he could have made that helicopter fly if he’d really wanted to.

***

I wished my father were here to build that helicopter, to whisk me away to somewhere – anywhere - where the world was still intact. A place where the light still flickered on, where the internet hummed, where life hadn’t ground to halt. I had no idea how far the EMP had reached, and I didn’t care. It wasn’t like I could get there anyway.

God, How I missed him.

Tears began to track through the dirt on my cheeks. I cried for my father, for my mother, and for the whole goddamn world that had vanished into the haze, leaving me utterly alone.

***

I heard the boy long before I saw him. It was a faint whine at first, like a whimper of a wounded animal. I forced myself to my feet, gripping my knife as I went to investigate. Who knew? Maybe it was something edible. I crept toward the sound, and that’s when I saw him – a small boy, maybe six or seven years old. His clothes were caked in filth and he was skeletal, his ribs practically poking through his skin. He lay curled on the damp earth, unmoving, just sobbing silently into the dirt.

How did he get here? What was a child doing out here all alone?

I crept closer. He heard the rustle of my boots his eyes snapped open. He panicked, scrambling to get up and run, but his limbs failed him, He was too weak. All he could manage was a small, broken cry of “No, no.”

“Shhh…” I said, holding my hands out in a gesture I hoped was soothing. “I won’t hurt you. Look, I’m stopping, I won’t come any closer, see?”

His whimpering trailed off into a ragged, shallow breath . It seemed as if he had no air left in his lungs. Even worse - it seemed as if he’d simply given up.

Like me.

He closed his eyes in defeat and lay still on the cold earth.

“No, kid, no - wake up,” I said, reaching for my water bottle. I poured a few drops onto my palm and pressed it against his face. The cool wetness brought him back.

“Are you hungry?” I asked. Without waiting for an answer, I dug some crumbs out of my pocket and pressed them against his mouth. It was nothing, really – little more than edible dust - But it seemed to give him a flicker of strength.

He managed to push himself up, bracing his thin arms against the ground.

“What’s your name?” I asked.

“Ron,” he croaked. “But sometimes they call me Roni.”

“Well, Roni, I’m Charles. But most people call me Charlie.”

He nodded weakly. “Do you have more?”

I handed him my bottle. There were only a few drops left, and I had no idea where I’d find more, but in that moment, it didn’t matter. I gave it to him, and he gulped down in an instant.

“Where are your parents?” I asked, dreading the answer.

He gave a small, helpless shrug. “They disappeared,” he whispered. “My dad told me to wait for him while he went to find food. But he didn’t return. He never came back. My mom… she disappeared a long time ago.”

Poor kid. “Come on, I’ll help you. It’s almost sunset and we need to find somewhere safe. My spot is just over by that tree, see?” I helped him to his feet – or tried to. In the end, I practically had to haul him along, his boots dragging through the dirt because he could barely find the strength to move.

I knew it was suicide. A minute ago, I was already to give up, convinced I was doomed. And now, I’d taken on another soul to starve with me. We were both going to die.

But I did it anyway.

***

I remembered walking with my father through a narrow city alley. I was four or five. My tiny hand was entirely swallowed by his.

“Daddy, why are the leaves green?” I asked, in that stumbling way only children talk.

“That’s how plants make oxygen, so we can breathe,” he explained. He stopped and pointed to a patch of bright greenery. “Take a look. Do you see those light green ones? Did you know you can eat them?”

“What? Like a sheep?” I asked in wide-eyed wonder.

“Exactly!” he laughed. He plucked a few leaves, chewed them to show me it was safe, and then let me try for myself.

***

Roni mumbled in his sleep, a faint “Dad…” escaping his lips. Near his head ,I spotted a patch of those same light green leaves my father had shown me so long ago. I settled back, thinking they would make a decent breakfast for us both.

Roni’s hands moved restlessly in the dirt. I reached out and gently placed my hand over his. His tiny hand was completely enfolded in mine, and as I held it, he calmed down and drifted into a deeper sleep.

And finally, so did I.