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With
the noise of the attack, my horse had started to gallop toward
the farm. I could barely hang on to my seat.
“Dad!” Johnny rushed out onto the front porch. “Are
you OK?”
“Yeah, Johnny. I’m all right ... thanks for your warning.
Everybody here OK?”
Johnny grabbed the horse’s bridle and smiled at me. “We’re
OK. We were worried about you!”
Bonnie and our other two teenagers crowded onto the porch.
I dropped the reins and stepped down from the wagon. I hugged
Bonnie, but all at once a lump in my throat choked me so that
I couldn’t speak.
I had killed again. Again I bore the ancient mark of Cain.
My knees trembled so much that I sat abruptly on the edge of the
porch. Bonnie sat down next to me and put her arms around me.
“My God, Bonnie.” I cried, holding her to me.
The tears ran down my cheeks. “Will it ever end?”
I don’t like the kids to see me like this. They need to be
strong to survive. But as Bonnie held me close and rocked me in
her embrace I couldn’t keep the past away. She’s close
to my age and she’s been through it. Only if you’ve
felt it can you really know.
For almost a year I’d been working the night shift, so I
came home, as usual, just before dawn. I quietly peeked into our
bedroom. Sarah was still sleeping. Her silky hair spread across
the pillow … a slight, relaxed smile on her lips, as if from
a pleasant dream.
I often made a small breakfast before going to sleep. I had just
cut two slices of sourdough bread and dropped them into the toaster
next to the sink. Looking through the window, I saw the first
rays of the sun poking over the hilltop behind the house.
With that bright burst of the new day, a powerful, unreasoning,
white rage filled my mind, my heart and my soul … my soul,
if there is such a thing.
Even now, thirty years later, I can’t explain how anyone
could be so consumed by emotion. It obliterated everything in
my mind!
I picked up the big bread knife and walked into the bedroom where
my sweet Sarah lay. Like countless other men and women on that
terrible morning, I drove the knife into her chest.
Her eyes opened wide. Her mouth gaped, as if to cry out.
I stabbed again, not once, but time after time I stabbed until
my hands and arms were wet with her blood.
I heard screams from the front of the house.
Leaving her there, I carried the dripping knife outside where
I saw my neighbor Mitch struggling with one of his kids …
the oldest boy … and trying to beat the boy’s head in
with a rock from the garden.
I crept up behind Mitch and shove the knife into his shirtless
back. As soon as Mitch’s grip on the boy faltered, the kid
broke loose and turned on me. He was holding a hammer and tried
to hit me, but I was faster.
I slashed his arm with my knife and then, before he could recover,
I cut his throat with another slashing swing.
The sun had broken free of the mountains and was full in the sky.
I looked up and down the street for anyone else who might be outside.
I could hear shouts and screams coming from the houses nearby,
but nothing was moving except a car speeding down the center of
the road. I picked up a rock to throw at it. Just as I let loose,
the driver, a woman with dark, night-tousled hair, saw me and
aimed the car at me.
The car jumped the curb and I moved to get out of the way. I guess
I didn’t make it.
Late that night I woke up, sprawled as if dead, beneath the bushes
of my neighbor’s front yard. I must have had a concussion
or something. Thinking back on it, the appearance of death was
probably all that kept me alive.
When I woke, there wasn’t a sound in the street but the dogs
howling. Everything else was still.
I was dizzy … confused. I got up and walked toward my house.
The sky seemed to be filled with low, black clouds, lit from beneath
with a reddish-yellow light from the nearby city. The streetlights
were out, but there was enough light from that fiery reflection
to see my way.
A sudden flare from the direction of the city lit the sky. A moment
later I heard the dull concussion of the distant explosion.
Somehow, I stepped past the bodies of Mitch and his son on the
lawn. It was almost as if they weren’t there at all. I saw
them, but I walked right by.
As I neared the porch I saw the front door was open. That seemed
strange.
I walked into the house, turning on the hall lights as I entered.
Despite the weirdness outside, the lights worked. I was home.
I called out for Sarah.
Where was she? It was night. She should be home.
I turned on the lights in the kitchen. No one was there.
I turned on the lights in the bedroom and I saw … I saw …I
fainted!
I just passed out … struck down by the horror of what I suddenly
knew I had done.
When I woke up I wanted to be blind so I couldn’t see her.
That night, when I looked upon what had been Sarah, there on the
bed, I realized through the fog of my mind that I had done it.
I’ve lived with that guilt since then. I’ll die with
that guilt on my last breath.
Some things are too much to think about, even now...
Often I think that I don’t have to remember every ghastly
detail of the day the old world ended, but I can’t rid my
mind of it.
In the grey morning I staggered out of the house to a world filled
with ash raining from the clouds of smoke that signaled the end
of our world. In our collective suicidal rage, fire was the weapon
of choice.
Who of us could have thought that the whole of the civilized world
was flammable?
Refineries, power stations, factories, houses, apartment buildings
,,, everything seemed to be burned or still burning.
The world itself didn’t end.
I suppose that I’m not different from any other survivor.
Except for the few children that accidentally lived, there’s
no one without guilt.
It happened all around the world. I’ve heard from wanderers
who told me about their memories. As the world turned that horrible
morning, dawn brought a day of destruction that marched the meridians
across the globe.
Most people awakened with the Rage. Most did not have the usual
tools of death at hand. Often they just struggled to kill each
other as they lay in their beds. Beating each other … choking
… scratching … biting.
When the victor arose, it was to seek other victims … often
the children in the house or close neighbors.
Any other human!
I guess that I remember more than most. I was awake when it happened.
Most people in the world simply awoke with the overpowering rage
… that absolute NEED to kill … that is, if they awoke
at all.
Almost every infant died in some way. Almost anyone driving a
car died. Trains and planes crashed as engineers and pilots abandoned
their posts to hunt passengers.
The doctors and nurses in hospitals killed their patients and
then killed each other.
The streets were littered with bodies … or parts of bodies.
Every house, every apartment, every hotel room, every business
contained only corpses or those, such as I, who appeared to be
dead … or those who still hunted.
Days later I foraged in an unattended supermarket for food. In
the store closest to my home someone had cut lose with an automatic
rifle. The entry holes in the bodies were small, but on the other
side ragged flesh hung out of big exit wounds. The walls were
splattered with blood and bits of meat.
I turned away and vomited … then, thankfully, I passed out.
When I woke up, hunger drove me into another store.
I couldn’t go home and face what was there. It was summer.
I slept in the streets, empty houses or stores, anywhere that
I didn’t see a body nearby.
In the next few days after that awful day, I walked the streets
blindly, with no volition, no purpose except to survive.
There was no way that the few of us left could bury the dead.
And in those first days and weeks, there was no way that any of
us could trust another not to kill us.
My sleep itself was torment … minutes of oblivion and hours
of nightmares.
At first, when I saw another person, I would hide. But soon I
realized that they were just as frightened as I … and just
as sick of death and fighting.
Soon the power failed, and the gas failed, and the water failed
as the automated systems that controlled them gave up the ghost.
Sometimes these failures were catastrophic … or what might
have been called catastrophic in earlier times.
In the countryside people could still scrounge for food or kill
animals, but the cities were charnel houses. The few people left
fled them.
Our proud technology ground down to nothing almost overnight.
Few who knew how it worked were still alive to keep it running.
Starting the day after the Rage, some people drove until their
gas ran out or highways were blocked with purposefully collided
cars and trucks. Then they hiked or biked across the country,
seeking loved ones, solace, or escape. I’ve talked to some
of them.
Everyone I’ve talked to over the years told me the same thing
about the sunrise that morning. No matter where they were, sunrise
was the trigger.
As the dawn-line moved westward, the rising sun battered the globe
with some unimaginable deadly force that seemed to bring the Rage.
Each one told me the same story of death in the streets, in the
houses and apartments, in the workplaces, on the farms, in the
resorts … everywhere. Each told of finding themselves alive
after sunset and suddenly realizing the horror, the agony, and
the guilt.
Within weeks pets either died of starvation and lack of care or
they went feral.
Starving farm animals often broke their fences and roamed. Zoo
animals died if they couldn’t break free. Lions still roam
our California wilderness.
In the first weeks, many pets lived off the dead bodies in the
streets.
In those first weeks, so did kids … my God … the kids
became feral packs just to stay alive. Packs that remembered only
that adults and other kids they trusted had tried to kill them.
The sickening, cloying stench that hovered over the cities might
have been unbearable in former times. In those first days and
weeks I didn’t even notice the smells. I was numb …
too busy staying alive and trying to live with the guilt.
The few of us still alive didn’t have the energy left to
bury the bodies. We let them rot where they lay. Some of us made
our way into the countryside.
In time we survivors knew that we would find a way to stay alive,
and the guilt increased. It was not just the guilt of what we
all had done … those we had killed; even more, it was the
guilt of having survived.
Many of those who lived through that Day of Rage committed suicide
as the depth of our guilt came to rest in our hearts. There were
more bodies to bury … or not, as the case may be.
Bones have littered those abandoned city streets for years …
Staying alive now means farming, hunting, raising livestock ...
scavenging when we haven’t yet recovered the art of making
some things ourselves.
Do you know how tough it was to reinvent a way to build wagon
wheels? Such a simple thing … wagon wheels.
And water? Water? Water that used to flow from the faucet when
you turned it on? Almost every water supply in North America depended
on pumps … electric pumps.
Now we live near lakes or streams or springs. We gather in little
farming villages to protect ourselves from the savage bands that
were once feral children.
When I go out of sight of our farm, I carry an old 12-gauge pump
action shotgun for protection. I could shoot a lion or a wolf,
but my deep guilt wouldn’t let me kill another human. Three
or four times I’ve fired over their heads to chase away the
wild ones.
Other than those wild ones, the savages, I don’t think that
there is a single person alive on this earth that doesn’t
try to figure out the how and why. What was the cause?
Why?
Why?
How can anyone rationalize the unthinkable?
Is this the way the dinosaurs died? Weren’t we superior in
intelligence to the dinosaurs?
Wouldn’t it be nice to blame it on some strange alien force?
But no aliens invaded. We’d love to blame it on anyone but
ourselves … but we don’t even have that luxury.
Was it God punishing us for our sins?
Is there a God, an Allah, a Christ?
Did we overpopulate the Earth and cause some sort of simultaneous
death syndrome like the myth of the lemmings?
People around here, if they worship, mostly worship Gaea. But
does Gaea exist? Was the Earth Goddess simply tired of our abuse?
Will it happen again?
I don’t know how I survived until now. What internal drive
keeps me and other survivors from self-destruction? Why did I
start a new family with Bonnie, and why did we have the three
children? Why do women still bear children, nurse them, and why
do we nurture them?
Why have we created a new generation?
I don’t have answers, but the questions still bother me.
I know that since that Day I have lived through or heard about
every “apocalypse” scenario that the old sci-fi writers
ever imagined.
But just when you think you can live with it … just when
the pain seems to be behind you …
The
End
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