To Trudge.

Final Copy
Thanks for all the feed back along the way. Really helped, peace out - Michael

Dawn snatched me from my sleep with an anguished howl of salty air. Alone. I am now alone. I look out across the wasted planes. From the charcoal of the burnt tree husks to the off-white the snow had assumed due to the ash diluted into it, my sight is met by a landscape painted in faded greys. "Each day is more gray than the one before. Each night is darker - beyond darkness. The world gets colder week by week as the world slowly dies. No animals have survived. All the crops are long gone. Someday all the trees in the world will have fallen."
I remember my Papa's words. He has been dead for a while now but they still couldn't bear a word more of truth. I had to keep moving, now is a time which deprives us of the rights to luxury we had taken for granted. Nesting was one of them. I had made camp on the coast, in the dunes. Not to far from what I suppose use to be a small fishing town. Its just a ghost town now, it's no longer safe but there might be food. I would follow the road down to the town today, to scavenge what I could.

Ash and sand blows through the air, stinging my eyes. The dust gets everywhere. Choking, clotting, blinding dust. I look at the ocean trying to imagine what it would have looked like before, before it had become this harsh abomination of rolling void. Papa had told me it was blue once, like the sky had once been. The morning creeping upon me when I decided enough time had been wasted off the road. I turned to my rag tag camp to collect my things.

I unassembled the makeshift bed, it would soon be on my back along with all my possessions, consisting of a knife, tarpoline, rags, odd shoes and a leather pouch which I use to keep food if scavenge in. It had been empty for weeks.

I stripped down so I could wash before I leave for the town. The sand was cold and unwelcoming to my bare feet. I placed my clothes down next to my rucksack, briefly catching my reflection in the blade of my knife. It brought back memories of Papa's history lessons. A flesh coloured skeleton of Auschwitz gleamed from that blade showing my mortality. I fell to my knees coughing with disgust at myself, at the wooden figure I had become. The cough that shredded my throat. Blood mixed with ash and phlegm pools in my hand. Examining it, I knew there is too much this time.

The hazed sky was beating down upon me. The world became a whole lot harsher with each burning second of daylight. I was on the road. Standing on the outskirts of the town. Watching. Searching the windows for any signs of movement. Nothing moves in the derlict remains of the town. I examine the buildings, there is a supermarket across a snow covered clearing. No trees, no rocks, nothing but 100 meters of open ground separating me from the store. I don’t think. As my stomach begins to pang with hunger pains I don't need to think. My feet take leave of the road and make their way towards the abandoned building. The snow is deep here, its well above my knee. I struggle to make ground as my feet sink deeply into the cold searching for solid ground.

Good, the harder it is to get to it means the chances of there being food increase. I think to myself as I wade through the snow that is numbing my limbs. Half way across now, the ground beneath me is slippery, like glass. I hear a creaking, like wood bending. I step forward. My foot breaks through the ground and is consumed by freezing water. My blood pumps faster, my drenched foot could only mean one thing. I was standing in the middle of a frozen lake.
That is why there were no trees or rocks. That’s why the road went around it.

Another creak as the ice beneath me started to shift again. I have to keep moving, the only alternative is to drown.
A third creak sounds, the ice gives way and cold water hits me like a sledge hammer, stealing the air from my lung in one tremendous moment. The taste of blood leaks onto my taste buds. Looking up, there is only darkness.
"Beyond Darkness".
I realized I have been left with a bleak choice; to drown in the icey depths...
"The world gets colder"
Either water in my lungs or my own blood.
"The world slowly dies."
I should have stayed on the road, or realized when there was nothing but snow.
"Someday all the trees in the world will have fallen"
Said the voice of my papa I finally understood that he meant we will never see that day.