Pushing On

It had been some time since he had set foot on solid ground. He had lost count by now. It felt like it had been weeks, but time had disappeared - all blended together. For all he knew, it could have been a few months - maybe even a year.

There had been news reports - the way things like this always seemed to begin. About the super powers starting to jostle with one another. One side was accused of spying on another. Trying to hack into a mainframe - leak some files. Snooping around where they didn't belong. Of course the other would fire back, claiming their innocence. Summits would be called. Leaders would meet in some undisclosed location. Many assumed it would all blow over, just like it always had. But this time was different. Something happened in that meeting. The powder keg was lit.

He remember reading about the growing tensions. War was on the horizon. It was inevitable. At first there were protests. People lined the streets calling for a truce. Picketed outside of government buildings. But nothing changed. The public, as much as they tried, could not sway what was about to happen. And once they realized this - it all went to shit. The looting began. Store owners had no chance. Their windows were smashed, mobs poured in, dragging the them out and grabbed anything they could. Humanity was left dead in the streets. People fought for everything they could. Food. Clothing. They hit and scratched. Bled on each other. Not long after marshall law took over. But that only made it worse. Citizens became more feral. The sight of armed government officials patrolling the street only pushed them into a further rage. It was pure chaos.

While the city around him slowly began to burn, he kept to himself. Tucked away on the outskirts. Avoiding the law, his neighbors, his friends. For the last few months he had slowly be stocking up. Collecting everything he could - hiding it away on the train he had driven for the last fifteen years. He'd sneak to it late each night with a new bounty - making sure no one ever followed him. There was no plan. It just comforted him knowing he had an escape.

And then one day, the air raid sirens began. Very low at first. Almost like a distant hum that echoed from deep within the heart of the city. But it quickly increased - screaming loudly for all the hear. Before he even knew what he was doing he was running. Straight for the train. He had left everything behind. His phone. His car. The front door of his house swung wide open in the summer breeze. His mind was completely empty. All that registered was the wailing of the siren. Bouncing back and forth between his ears.

The train was a couple miles outside of town when the sky erupted in a brilliant white, singing his eyes.  As he was hunched over, the train shook violently. For a moment he thought it was going to be thrown from the rails and tumble into the woods.

He'd never forget looking into the mirror and seeing the mushroom clouds rising into the sky. When he was a kid he had seen videos of them in school, always alone. But that day the horizon was littered with them. It had begun.

It didn't take long before the sun was blotted out. The residue from the explosions darkened the sky, bringing with it sudden snow storms that blanketed everything. There were times that he no longer could see the track ahead of him and hoped that it was still in one piece. He had been driving for some time. Passing through deserted towns and other cities that had been wiped out by attacks. Occasionally he'd see a group of people somewhere off in the distance, huddled together, trying to flag him down. He only stopped if they were close. It was too risky to sit still for too long.

As the train continued to trudge on through the nuclear winter, the number on board grew. Some managed to jump aboard as the train coasted through their towns while he stopped for others that were near the tracks. He was lucky that none of them were bad people. All they wanted to do was survive and he was just glad he finally had company. There were two families and a couple young men and women - all appreciative for allowing them to stay. He had hoped they could continue on forever, zigzagging back and forth across the country. They were already lucky that the bombs hadn't wiped out the power on the tracks nor had they run out of rail yet. But as the group had grown - the stockpile of supplies dwindled and their luck was bound to run out.

As they rounded the corner, he was nervous. A few miles back there had been signs for a city. A brief meeting was held to discuss everyone's role once the train stopped. They were to go house to house, store to store, as quickly as possible, never spending more than a few minutes in each, grabbing only what they could carry - making sure to loop back to the train and drop off what they collected before going back for more. There was no guarantee what they would find or who they could run into. The minute the trained stopped, the timer would start. No more than twenty minutes. If someone didn't make it back in time, they were on their own - left behind. Including himself.

When he stepped off the platform and sank into the snow, it felt magical at first. He had completely forgotten what it felt like to be standing on something other than steel. It was soft and inviting. But the sentiment only lasted for a moment before he snapped back to reality. He was there for a purpose. In order to survive.

By the time he made it to the first house, the snow had really started to fall - creating a wall of white ahead of him. It pelted him. Hitting him in the face. Stinging his eyes. As he approached the structure, he stopped for a moment. Frozen. A few feet in front of him a fresh pair of tracks led into the house.

They weren't alone in this town.