EIGHT

 

 

Moscow, Idaho

October 21, 2035

 

I carefully placed my boots in the exact same footprints as I always had as I started down the street. Nothing had changed in the months since I had been here. Of course, it never did. This street was frozen in time, locked in death by my family’s stupidity.

The gray dust made no noise through my protective suit and in front of my parents’ house I stopped and looked around. I could imagine the times when we used to play football in that street. I could remember the laughter and the fun. I had always played receiver, so I got to duck in and out of the parked cars, trying to get free to catch the pass. I usually did. I was always good at football.

Those summer and fall days were full of cut grass smells and the tastes of carnivals. Life back then seemed to have no problems and no worries. Now I had finally returned to that point. It is lucky that Carol has been dead all these years. She would call me self pitying. She would be right.

My parents and everyone in Moscow and the surrounding area were killed when Dad’s team tried to start up the simplest power system in the buried ship. Now no children would ever play in these streets again.

I stood on my parents’ front steps and tried to remember the laughter.