Nothing’s worse than being alone. I could have staggered through the ruins of this city forever, if not for my solitude. Nothing but cold bodies on the ground, in the winter, black-red-white frozen to the asphalt. It’s so easy to grab a parka from a shattered storefront. It’s so hard to stand and try to move, go anywhere. Everything is white or grey, and as time passes even the red blood of my old neighbors fades. The snow falls, covering everything in silence. I swear I can hear the buildings sigh with exhaustion.
How long has it been? A year? Two? Everyone is gone or dead. They went west, I think. Me and my little brother hid, when the world went red. Then we ran out of food, and I went out, armed with a hatchet and the terror of any living person that remained here. Now I am alone. I wonder if any of the bones I pass belong to rioters, wild-eyed people I fought with over food, or clothes. People made of fire. I remember the news told us, in the very beginning, to go west. South. I couldn’t drive. Our parents were gone. Maybe we could have walked, or hitchhiked. But there was death in the streets, so heavy the haze of it drawled into the basement we hid in those first weeks and drove us up to the fifth floor to breathe, even in the cold. I could go now, but what’s the point?
Do I even know how to speak anymore? Would I be able to communicate, integrate, in a refugee camp or a city in a place where there are still people? I wonder, as I follow fresh footprints in the snow. I still have the hatchet. The only reason I follow at all is because maybe it’s him and what else am I supposed to do in this situation but hold onto hope. That I’m wrong, that I’m insane, that he’ll wake up, come back, run around the corner and put me back together.
He was a scared kid, my brother, and whenever danger came he would hide on instinct. In piles of leaves, clothesracks, snowbanks with his breath held. He could never hurt a fly. That’s why he couldn’t have been harmed. My recollection was impossible. He was a ghost, unable to interact with the world. But he would smile when I brought food. He would cry out at gunshots, back when we still heard them in the distance. I once hoped that when spring came, we could go somewhere with other people who had family to keep safe. We could have avoided the grief-mad loners who wandered without purpose and been okay. My memories are shattered like the windows I pass and ground into the slush I step over, but I get the reflected impression that it’s my fault I am alone.
I remember walking down this road, on the sidewalk, to the bus stop with him. Before. Maybe after. He is five in some memories, twelve in others, three years old at the bottom of a mortar crater that didn’t exist till last year. Sometimes we’d stop at the convenience store that the footsteps have dragged themselves to, and buy candy or soda with our allowances. Either the person I track is injured, or they’re simply doing the same loner shamble I catch myself moving in sometimes, that trademark of madness. I grasp the handle of my hatchet. I hope against hope that if my brother is here, his mind is too. I have seen pieces of skull and brain flake away from people, like the names of everything I used to know. Either very slowly, or very fast. I lose track of time sometimes. The wind rolls it back and forth.
I’m inside. There’s a body on the floor. I fall to my knees, turn him over, look into his eyes. He screams, I think. It takes all my will not to slam the hatchet down only to silence the sudden noise. In the dark, I can’t tell if it’s him or not. My blood runs cold. I drag him into the light. It’s not difficult, though he fights. I try to comfort him, stop, hesitate, realize what I should have known.
This boy is not my brother. He looks a little similar, but his skin isn’t that pale blue I last saw of him. There’s no frost gathered on his eyelids. He is awake and afraid and bleeding. He’s warm. I leave him to his agonies on the ground for a moment, pacing through the store. He has been shot, I think. In the upper arm. He wears only a tank top and khakis, despite the cold, and a set of tags hang around his neck. He isn’t even a local. He’s a soldier. My brother would never have been a soldier, not even a frightened, abandoned, unarmed one. I think again about my hatchet. I understand why the people who were made of fire went insane. Just seeing someone, knowing they’re not who I want them to be, it’s enough to flood me with burning hate. I push it down, walk away. If I leave him alone, he will freeze waiting for me to return.
I bring the boy a blanket, a hoodie, and a candy bar. My brother’s favorite. He picks it up hesitantly. Opens it. Takes a bite.
By god, the smile is just the same. I decide I must be wrong about my earlier judgement. It’s him. It’s really him. The features of his face, the color of his hair, it’s only the shift of time. I put the blanket around him, as gently as I can. He’s finished the candy bar, and now that he no longer needs to focus on shaking in the cold, has fallen asleep. My brother, alive by a miracle. Some part of my brain whispers, trying to bring forward a memory of purple lips and blue skin and solid, unshifting flesh curled into a drift of snow, but I stomp the memory away until it’s nothing but sparking shards of ice.
Nothing’s worse than being alone. It brings a little warmth to my heart to know that I’ll never let myself be alone again.