From the Ashes

A fine, grey powder coated the dead Earth.

Ash fell like snow… soft, constant, suffocating. It coated everything: the broken highways, the hollow buildings, the silent cars still frozen where people had abandoned them months ago. Or years. Time didn’t mean much anymore.

As the ash continued to fall slowly, the wind picked up the powder and made it swirl in wispy clouds where it eventually settled into ever shifting dunes. The wind seemed to focus on one dune in particular that puffed up in an abnormally thick cloud of smoke-like particles. The ash sifted aside and slide off the top of the dune as a blackened shadow appeared from underneath the pile of dust.

A hand and arm appeared first followed weakly by a head and torso. Although the body rose, the flesh had been burned away. Blotches of blackened and red flesh looked like the pages of a burning book. Jagged islands of topographical layers of skin mapped where each flaming ember had touched Elias.

The ash was still warm when he woke. The heat radiated from inside the pile of ash like the heat radiating from his still living body.

The ash shifted beneath his breath, a fine gray powder rising and falling with each inhale, each exhale, as if the Earth itself were breathing with him, barely alive. For a long moment, he did not move. He lay there, half-buried, eyes closed, listening.

There was silence that mimicked the soft quiet that entombs the world during a blizzard. The silence echoed for miles and Elias felt deprived of all sound… all sensation… except for the pain burning along his skin. The burning made the heat feel stronger. And as the pain grew stronger, the deafening silence and loneliness faded into the background.

Elias opened his eyes and looked around, hoping to see anyone or anything that could provide him relief. But there was no help or hope to be found. Instead, the sky was grey and the world burned red with hell fire. The little bit of light that forced its way through the clouded sky was just as hellish with its burning orange flame. There was no difference between this evening light and the flames that licked the sky. Fire was the only thing that rose from the ashes.

The clouds of smoke and ash would quickly snuff out the little bit of sunlight soon enough leaving Elias to the silence and darkness.

Elias knew he had to get up and start moving to survive, but the silence and soft ash cushioned him from the reality he was soon to face in this newly destroyed world. He didn’t have to get up if he didn’t want to. He could let his injuries take him and let this dune become his pillowy casket.

As thoughts of an eternal sleep filled his mind, and the comfort of his bed of ashes turning to heavenly clouds brought him peace, he spotted tire tracks moving away from him. Two faint lines creating a trail into the unknown.

He pushed himself up, and the ash gave way with a soft collapse, spilling off his shoulders, his chest, his face. It clung to him, coating his skin in grey.

Where there should have been fields, there was only unbroken dust. Where there should have been homes, there were low, uneven mounds, like the memory of structures pressed into the ground and forgotten. A blackened beam jutted from one, angled like a broken rib.

His chest tightened.

He forced himself to stand. His legs trembled. Each step sank slightly, leaving clear impressions behind him.

He walked toward the nearest mound.

It was a small mound, no bigger than a dog lying on the ground. A piece of charred cloth poked out. Elias took his foot and brushed some of the ash away to reveal a fragment of bone and a bit of flesh. The amount was almost unperceivable, easily missed by an unobservant eye. That’s when Elias noticed the many small dunes closely touching like snowy slopes. There was not a lack of remains of the people that used to live here.

The wind picked up. Grey mist swirled along the barren field. Bits and pieces of charred wood and sooty metal revealed and concealed themselves with each passing breeze. The mounds of ash that surrounded his own cloud of dust gave up their identities too easily. One mound had the bit of bone. One mound had blue threads. Another had a little pin, a little bigger than the size of a sunflower seed. This pin was a replica of Mars with a spaceship flying towards it. It was the pin Elias had given back to his dad the day he was set to go into space. Elias brushed what he could of the powder off of the pin but bits remained embedded into the crevices.

The world’s only hope was jumping from the frying pan and into the fire. But we had not made it to Mars or the deepest reaches of space in time.

The tire tracks also began to shift with the wind. Elias hoped they would not disappear before he could discover the source.

The sky had been grey for so long that sunlight felt like a myth.

Elias stopped walking when the wind shifted. He could feel it before he saw it—a strange warmth brushing against his skin. Not heat like fire. Something gentler. Alive. He tightened his grip on the cloth wrapped around his mouth and pushed forward.

No one else accompanied him on this journey. He was alone.

With two mysterious prints to guide him, all he could do was follow in hopes of finding another person, desolate and alone, on this meaningless planet. Was this what the afterlife would be like too? Some people used to look up at the stars and believe that there was more out in the universe, including Elias, but now, as the grey clouded his mind, he wondered if he chose the wrong side. Could the universe be a void that we all sink into when the time comes?

The only noise that broke him from his thoughts was the sound of the wind rushing by his ears. In the quiet, the wind at times formed sounds much like the images shaped in fluffy white clouds on blue days. Those same clouds were gone though, forming one monotonous blanket that smothered Elias as much as the dust he was trying to keep out of his lungs.

The silence was growing too heavy on Elias. The spirit of voices whispering in the wind forced him to pause and consider why the wind was speaking to him when no one was around. Then, a rumble roared from his stomach, breaking the delusion. Hunger. That would explain it.

Beneath the ash, Elias had found a few packs of salvageable astronaut meals with a handful more packets inside the spaceship he was meant to ride in on the day of the catastrophe. Although, these meals will only take him so far as the limited supply is consumed. So far, there was no animal or plant, not one thing alive, other than himself. There was nothing left to keep him alive.

He ripped open a bag of astronaut ice cream. Not the best first meal on a dying planet, but one that would give him a quick burst of energy. The flavors were sweet but dry like the colors had been taken out of a summer day.

What was the point?

He looked at his half eaten freeze-dried ice cream like a child who didn’t get to choose his favorite flavor.

The wind blew harder wiping away a large section of tire tracks. Elias jumped up in a panic. If he didn’t keep moving, the tracks may fade forever. At the end of those tracks, there could be a person that needed him as much as he needed them.

Elias finished his ice cream while closing his eyes to picture the wind as if it was an ocean breeze and that the ash was shifting sand.

This whole time, the little pin kept him company while he held it in his hand. His dad would often eat ice cream with him in the summers when the nights were cool and clear. He could he his dad’s voice in his memory; however, the quiet made the memories feel louder, closer than they were.

If Elias could not find the source of the tracks, maybe he could set up a knew homestead with just himself and his memories to live out his final days, however long that would be.

Not refreshed, but renewed, Elias kept on moving. As he walked, it crossed his mind that this may be the last few bites of ice cream that he ever has unless he can find a cow. There would be no more summer nights stargazing with a creamy treat in hand to chase away the heat of the day.

An undertone of blackness seeped through the ashen sky. Elias looked up expecting, out of habit, to see the starry sky. Instead, he saw nothing but cloudiness. That didn’t stop him from picturing the moon and stars above and beyond the great grey sheet.

A funny thought crossed his mind—maybe the Milky Way could provide me with all the milk I need to make ice cream for eternity.

Elias’ heart pounded harder as he thought about how he could make this one simple thing happen.

Stop.

There was no point in stopping, but a voice kept insisting that he do so.

Stop.

It was a quiet command that sounded like all the voices in his head. It was soft and wispy, yet pushy like the wind.

But there was no need to stop. There was nothing valuable to stop for. The road beneath his feet had long ago cracked into islands of asphalt covered in soot. Not a single weed grew out of those cracks. He didn’t know what towns he’d left behind; they were all reduced to skeletons of their former selves with empty structures, some holding doors swinging open like mouths that had tried to speak and failed. He learned not to linger. He learned not to imagine who had lived there.

He learned not to expect to find food or water either in these little abandoned heaps of ruined towns. The Earth had become one great grey Sahara.

Elias’ lips were parched. His tongue stuck to his mouth with dried, tacky saliva. He had not found water yet nor did he find the source of the tires. He was surviving on the limited resources he scavenged from the unused spaceship. But those would be vanishing soon.

Elias stooped down to brush aside some of the small mounds of ash. He had done this in each place that looked like a town trying to locate resources. He hadn’t come across anything valuable yet other than scraps of artifacts that let him know that these were the remnants of people left behind. But each time he had down this, he swore he could he voices. Many of them let him know there was nothing left here for him. Some let him imagine the traditions attached to items like jewelry and pottery. It made him think of the pin his father wore to pay homage to their summer skygazing once he got accepted into the astronaut program. His parents had encouraged him to reach for the stars and he had almost gotten there. The charred artifacts also made him think of dinners spent around the table, bowls full of salad and meats being passed.

He could hear the conversation and laughter. He could hear someone offering him a glass of water. Dehydration did things to your head. So did silence. So did being the last person you had seen in… he stopped counting after a while. Numbers made it worse.

The wind that was rushing by his hears took on a new tune that he hadn’t heard in days, maybe even weeks. It sounded more like the gushing of water. That’s when he noticed it. A bubbling fountain weakly glub glubbing from a crack in the ground. The fresh water quickly muddled with the ashen earth creating a cement-like liquid.

The world held its breath with him. No birds. No insects. No plants. No life. But there was water.

He could homestead here. He didn’t need to keep searching for something that may not be out there. He could stay here with at least one thing that was familiar… water. He could rebuild even if it was only for himself. He could be here for the source of the tracks if they ever came back this way. He could salvage as many plates and bowls as he could and pass around food to anyone who showed up. He’d leave a plate set for lonely travelers.

Here, he heard a voice say.

“Hello?” he said, his voice cracking from disuse. Elias looked around with a mix of excitement and panic, but saw nothing.

He looked back down at the spring of water and cupped his hands. It tasted like earth and rot and life.

It took him multiple days to scrounge together enough good wood to build himself a home that resembled more of a lean-to than a house or even a cabin. Once his hut was assembled, he stood at the doorway looking out at the tires that stretched into an eternity of unknown.

One day those tracks would fade away and it will just be him and his routines here.

Elias opened an astronaut ice cream and looked up at the ash that puffed up into the sky, elongating into human-like figures, the biggest bits rising high… looking like stars.