Walking the Ruins

Fire

We have decided to set up camp in the ruins for the night.

In one of the buildings, we find a room that offers some shelter. It is open to one side, but it would protect us if it were to start raining in the night.

I catch myself searching the ground for bones or for a skull's empty stare. But junk is all I see. I finally find a reasonably level patch for spreading my sleeping bag.

Rose sits over at the entrance, crying, with Elaine and Kevin squatting beside her. He is whispering something.

Steve approaches them, carrying some twigs. "I'll light a fire. Can anyone get some wood for it?"

"I'll do it," I say. Looking for wood sounds better than listening to Rose's yammering.

"I'll come with you." Jenny stands at my side.

I turn my head towards her, surprised, but then I shrug. "Okay."

The ground of the forest is littered with broken branches and twigs. Searching for firewood is easy.

The trees look darker than in the afternoon, brooding. My initial aversion against Jenny joining me dissipates. It's good not to be alone here.

Jenny breaks the silence that has ruled our work. "Do you really think that so much time has passed? Decades, I mean?"

I interrupt my search. "When I look at all of this..." I gesture at the gloom between the tall trees, "...it's the only reasonable explanation."

"There's nothing reasonable about that." Her words are clipped, she's spitting them out. I've never seen her that angry, irritated. "Time travel is a fairytale. It's impossible that we've just... skipped all that time. I don't believe you."

"So why do you ask if you don't believe me anyway?" My voice is louder than I want it to be. "Do you have a better theory?"

She takes a step back and clutches her bundle of wood. "There's no need to get so excited about this."

"It's you who's getting excited." I turn away and head towards our camp. I hear her following, but I don't wait for her to join me.

When we reach the camp, I'm still fuming. I drop my wood beside Steve, sending the small pile that he built over a piece of crumpled paper tumbling.

"Hey, watch out!" He moves some of my branches out of the way and starts rebuilding his artwork.

"Sorry. Do you need help?"

"No, I'm fine." He doesn't look up.

"Here you are." Jenny arrives and carefully places her neat bundle beside Steve's fireplace. "I hope that's enough. Or do you want me to get more?"

I huff and head off.

Rose has calmed down a bit, and Kevin tries to make jokes. He says something about a skull. I shake my head, ignore them, and start to unpack my stuff.

When Steve finally gets the fire burning, we settle around it to eat the provisions that we took along for lunch.

The sun sets behind the trees, and the azure of the afternoon's sky is replaced by hues of dark denim and indigo. The heat of the day is lifting.

Few words are exchanged. Everyone seems to be lost in their thoughts.

I listen to the noises of the evening. The whispering of the trees in the wind, the murmur of a stream close by, the crackling of the fire, and Kevin's munching.

The flames move like dancers over the embers, fierce in their intent to devour the scraps of wood. My companions' faces are illuminated by the unsteady light, fickle and unsubstantial, like ghosts. All of this is so surreal.

Like a dream.

I reach out for the fire to test its reality. The heat feels true.

"Where have all the people gone?" I ask, assuming that this question is on everyone's mind. "I mean ... everything here looks so deserted. There's no one. This used to be a densely populated area. Why don't we see anyone?"

Steve shrugs. "Maybe there's been some catastrophe. Or a war."

"I think it was the zombies," Rose says.

I search her roundish face, not sure if she is serious. Rose loves dystopian novels of the darker, bloody kind. A smile twitches the corners of her mouth—her afternoon's panic seems to have vanished with the sunlight.

Kevin raises his hands, forming claws and showing his teeth. "Aliens! The humans have been devoured by aliens!" His voice is a hiss. Apparently, he is a reader of the same genre of literature.

Rose screams, eyes wide open. "Eee, an alien!"

"Stop it! Stop this nonsense!" Jenny hits the fire with a twig. Sparks fly. "Please," she adds, more quietly.

She seems unwilling to see the funny side of the situation. I sympathize, in a way. But how else can we face this, if not with some sense of humor?

Elaine stares into the fire, like everyone else. She has finally taken off her black jacket and is wearing a t-shirt. A black one.

Jenny sits between Steve and me, and I wonder if this is by accident. From here, with her long hair and her delicate features in the light of the flames, she looks like an angel. Otherworldly.

Well, it somehow wouldn't surprise me to see Galadriel and some of her elf cronies stepped out of the woods. Or a band of orcs, ready to cut our throats...

Steve interrupts my orkish thoughts. "We need to find out what happened. Let's go to the city tomorrow. It's only a few kilometers from here. There, we can certainly learn more. And we need some food, too."

Steve has a point. We need to learn more about this weird world where fate has left us stranded. And we definitely should not dwell on orcs.

"And which is the way to the city?" Rose asks. "Don't forget that our phones don't work anymore."

"Humans found their way through the world even before Google Maps." Steve sits straight and grins, apparently enjoying his role as our leader. "As far as I remember, the city is more or less to the south from here. And tomorrow, the sun will rise in the east. So, we'll know which way is south."

The perfect boy scout he is. Great.

I look at my last piece of chocolate, dark chocolate, wondering when I will see the next one. Or is this the last chocolate in this world? It's an unbearable thought, but I can't stop myself from putting the piece into my mouth. Its rich taste unfolds like a rainbow of vibrant colors, defying the black trees watching me.

We continue discussing and speculating, trying to use the spark of our words and the flames of our fire to keep the dark at bay. But dark it remains, this world. Our attempts to explain it, to explain what has happened, or why—they all fail.

I wake up in the middle of the night, images of a dream haunted by a skull still lingering in my head. Everything is dark. Pitch dark. I hear the breathing of my companions.

Suddenly, a snarl tears through the silence. It is answered by a second one. A rustling, and everything turns quiet again.

Wild cats? I am happy to have made my camp at the rear wall of the room.

I think of my mother. She will be worried, wondering what has happened. Or... more precisely, she must have been worried, back then, in that night, all those years ago, when I did not return from the class outing. Lost without a trace. I wonder what she thought, and what they told her.

That was many years ago. And yet, it was only yesterday.

Was there a way back?