1. The City

First chapter in the ELA series...

Bathed in the dying amber light of the setting sun, a lone woman stands amid the ruins of a soaked, crumbling city. She feels like an intruder on a future she was never meant to see. The air hums with the echo of silence left in the wake of society's collapse. Other noises lurk just on the threshold of her hearing. She stares up at a decaying skyscraper—once a beacon of progress, now a hollow relic. She wonders when it, too, will collapse. Rain slicks her worn, borrowed jacket, the neon reflections on the wet pavement dancing like ghosts. In a world where the lights went out and never came back on, she walks the line between what was lost and what might still be found.

---

Entering the city was always risky now. Most people avoided the dangers as a point of self-preservation. Buildings offered no reprieve from the deadly sun which hung in the air like a promise. To enter anything more than the single story buildings was unadvisable. All the infrastructure was precarious at best, deadly at worst. She’d lost enough friends to “a good find” on the roof, where many sought escape in the early days, thinking the height would help them protect their meagre resources.

No one really knew what happened. If it was the heat that disrupted the generators or some kind of organized sabotage. There was no communication after the grids failed, and everything that came through word of mouth was unsubstantiated nonsense. Anonymous was taking responsibility, saying they had warned us all along. But no one really believed that story. Other theories were less plausible, but they didn’t matter. What had happened was like a big EMP, and since help never came, it was assumed to have been all over the world – electrical circuits were down everywhere. The crashes and fires that ensued sent people fleeing the cities, looking for safety in the countryside, where they fought, bartered, stole, and killed over resources. Clean water, once scavenged with tools like the LifeStraw, became nearly impossible to find as even those tools began to fail.

It must have been more than an EMP. There was death in some rivers like they’d never seen. Even the solar still she had set up for her community failed in the end – the whole system was corrosive, clean water was found only in remote areas, which soon became tainted by human waste. The long distances travelled between communities was only possible for the able-bodied of a certain age. There were some places that already knew how to take care of water systems, where people seemed to thrive for a while, farming, and using old methods for building tools, shelters, and distribution routes. But they failed, too. People were scared and greedy. They tried to stock-pile food and resources, which left everyone down the line getting less and less. They didn’t use food preservation practices properly and much food was lost to the elements.

Envoys into the city were usually small, comprised of the most desperate amongst them. People didn’t offer up their lives easily. Fathers with family to still look after, single men with something to prove. Women found themselves in high demand in the cobbled-together communities, teaching cooking, mending, and basic medicine skills. And women were the leaders – their survival rates far out-weighed the men, and they were naturals at getting people to follow them, to allow for communal decisions that didn’t turn into the shouting matches men seemed to fall into.

So the fact she had volunteered, a leader herself in the community she came from, was bizarre in the first place. But that she was the last of her group to make it into the city was unbelievable, yet here she was.

She knew what to avoid. There had been few envoys to return to communities, it was true. But those who had had given all the warnings. Watch out for packs of dogs. Don’t go into highrises. Most grocery stores were just filled with decay. Sporting goods and gun shops had been wiped clear, pharmacies, too. There were so many things crossed off the list, that she wasn’t really sure where to look. Apparently single homes offered the best bet – they had been overlooked before, and sometimes held treasure troves, like pain medications and food stocks.

She was now just one person. The idea of dogs scared her the most, and at any notion of what could be the sound of dogs, she hid. But the reality was, if she found anything, she could only carry so much back in her campers pack. It was big, but she was only so strong, especially needing her own resources. And then there was counting for the time it would take to go back with the news, return to the spot with more people, who hopefully would all make it this far. Maybe they needed a much larger group, with a trailer of some sort.

That was, if she found something. She had a few choice meds in her pack now, from the last three houses she’d been in. But that wasn’t enough for her to turn around yet.

Originally fourteen men and women had volunteered for this trip.

That seemed like an amazing number, but at other members' protests, many stepped down. The doctor couldn’t go, neither could the pregnant lady. There were friends and family who pleaded with others to reconsider, and their nerves got the better of them.

In the end, five remained. Five people had begun this journey together. And now only one would return. She hoped.

She’d done her best not to think about the others after they were gone. Archie had turned around at the half-way point, so she expected he’d made it back. He was too old for this type of hard trekking. He thought he could do it, and he’d seemed alright for the first couple of days. But each morning after sleeping rough, his body didn’t bounce back as well as the younger members of their little troupe. And finally, when they reached the stop point eked out by previous volunteers who had made it back, a home with beds and provisions, Archie had said he couldn’t go further. He said he’d stay here a few days to recover, and then return to the community. Josh hadn’t liked the idea of Archie traveling alone, but there simply weren’t enough of them to begin with, to start dividing their ranks then.

And then Josh hadn’t been able to say much of anything after that. They encountered a pack of dogs the next evening. They’d been quietly climbing a ridge, the only sound the soft patter of earth falling away from unstable footholds. When they crested the hilltop, the dogs were already there, a dozen, if not more. They’d used their walking sticks to fight them off, and run as fast as they could into the nearest building, pulling the door closed on some of the pack, forcing them out and locking the door.

It must have been the door that caused it. They couldn’t hear it over the dogs barking, but they felt the sudden whoosh of air as floors above them began to collapse. They’d had no option then, but to rush out the door and face the dogs again. The debris from the building’s demise had scared off the dogs for a moment, but soon their hunger outweighed their sense of self-preservation, and they returned.

Their group had tried to keep together, back to back, sticks out, pushing the pack away. It worked for a bit, but there were just too many snarling mouths to avoid. They got separated, the three of them and Josh. He didn’t plan it, but he was the slowest of the group, and he was quickly surrounded. When Josh went down, the rest of the pack fell on him in seconds. There was nothing to be done for him. They used the distraction and ran. As they fled the scene, they all had tears streaming down their cheeks for their fallen friend, who had saved their lives as his final act.

And just like that, they were down to three.

While George and Lionel had tried to keep their relationship private. Everyone knew they were together, and now they openly turned to one another for solace. Each of them had known it was a dangerous trek, but the reality of it was much, much worse. Josh had two little girls, Becky and Sara, and his wife Lily, back at the community. Coming home without him would break all three hearts.

This loss didn’t change their circumstances, they still had a job to do, so they pushed on and reached the edge of the city that day. They decided to make camp early, get a good night’s rest, and head out in the morning.

But when morning arrived, George and Lionel’s tent and supplies had been gone.

She’d heard nothing in the night. The wind had whipped at her tent, and she’d been emotionally and physically drained. She slept until the heat of the sun made her tent unbearably warm and she’d awoken from a strange dream.

When she’d unzipped her tent, she’d been hit with the shock immediately. Her tent had faced theirs. She told herself they'd moved to the treeline to escape the wind—but their absence screamed louder than any breeze. Their packs, their tent, everything was just gone.

Depending on strangers was a precarious relationship – only she’d known Lionel for years and George her whole life. They certainly didn’t feel like strangers, but who really knew anyone. They were helpful in the community, and they seemed like the genuine sort of character who would want to see this excursion through to its end, no matter how bitter it might be.

She couldn’t imagine they would leave a woman alone on the edge of the city.

She let her disbelief guide her, and waited in the camp for half the day. When the sun reached its highest point, she knew she needed to find better shelter than her tent for that evening. Already packed up, she headed out along the route they’d discussed together the previous day. Maybe they were waiting just up ahead. Maybe they hadn’t abandoned her. Maybe they were hurt. One maybe led itself into the next, until the sun began to sink behind her and the city's long shadow stretched ahead. She finally had to accept what she'd been avoiding all day: she was alone.