rivers don't flow anymore

While walking through the fire, the echoes seem to slow down a little, just enough to give us time for a few short gasps for air. The heat is on again, somewhat matches the color of the sky, fifteen minutes left, I guess.

The others are sitting down by the dried out riverbed, their feet dangling where the water used to flow a few hours ago.

I went to the village, checked the wells. Empty. Charcoal walls everywhere, some of the buildings crumbled before my very eyes, struck by a soft touch of desert wind. Makes you feel omniscient when a brick wall collapses from your breathing at it. Anyway, no water for miles.

I tell them.

They don’t listen.

Never do.

With doomsday just a few minutes away, your mind starts playing tricks on you. Self preservation. Instinct. I started seeing trees and hedges, grassy plains, fields of wheat, swaying softly in a warm summer breeze. Self preservation. I shot some hallucinogens to calm down my brain. Strange, I never felt great need to escape reality, just now, I take the chems to escape from the illusions. Of course, I see the mirage, the shadows seem alive with insects, some of them crept into my head while I went stalking through the ruins, but at least I got a clear distinction of what is real and what my mind is making up.

I forgot about the distant droning, but now with the echoes slowing down again, I become painfully aware of its presence. Ten minutes, I guess. The others stare into the empty river, throwing small pebbles into the ditch, and for a moment I lose myself and think I can really see them floating away on the stream.

Pebbles don’t float, rocks don’t float, rivers don’t flow anymore.

This must be god’s country, I think, and he’s forsaken it. I know I’m wrong, but someone definitely has forsaken it, maybe we did.

Forgot about the echoes again, nearly stopped now, and the heat is on again, I can feel my skin crawl, my lungs hurt again, and my fingers ache like hell. Then it passes. And the echoes of the thunderclap set in once again.

Five minutes or so.

I tell them.

They don’t listen.

I wonder why I bother, as if time held any meaning for any of us now. With every dying second its significance wanes, until, in about five minutes, it will have forgotten about us at all. Us and this forsaken countryside around us.

That ashen village. That dried out riverbed. Must have forgotten about the water already. There’s the wreck of a small rowboat on the opposite shoreline. I suppress the urge to dive into the rocky riverbed and climb down instead. The boat looks as if someone took out the frame and left the skin and flesh. I swear I can see veins running down the deformed hull.

Can’t say how long I stood there, gazing at the sick boat, with the others staring down into the imaginary water. From time to time one of them can’t help but look at me, and they shoot me fierce looks, because my standing down there in the riverbed defies the vision of paradise that their minds are building up for them.

Pre-shock syndrome I heard the scientists call it. Pre-shock syndrome. Idiots. The shock has long passed, since the moment when we realized that we were at the very wrong place at the very wrong time. Some whitecoat made a damn mistake somewhere. We were scheduled to be out of the area five hours before the secondary ignition process. When we heard the echoes and watched the boiling stratosphere, that was the time of shock, when the sky came down upon us, all fiery and hot. And when we felt the tension building up in our lungs and watched the pebbles rise inches from the ground, that was when we realized we were right within the blast area. And that we were there at the very wrong time. Too late to call for transfer, we didn’t even bother to try the radio, we could literally feel the static in the air.

Tertiary ignition process must be commenced in about a minute, and I still got that black powder on my radiation suit. Something from the village. A burned out building maybe.

Just a minute left. Just enough time to think up some makeshift religion and pray for salvation. I look up at the others. Sit with folded hands, staring into the river. The echoes slow down again, and I can hear the sand shifting. My mind tells me to run for cover, to duck into the riverbed and shelter my head. Self preservation.

In seconds there won’t be a riverbed to seek shelter in. The first time in my life I find the hallucinations unsettling, dark clouds, the storm is building up, although I know there can’t be any clouds, not enough moisture left.

The earth starts vibrating beneath my feet, and slowly the dust and sand starts rising, like the surface of some strange earthen ocean.

I climb into the boat and gaze into the sky,

waiting.