The baby was screaming in my arms again.
With dirty hands, I tried to clean it, wiping and wiping. I was wandering in a forest, stepping across a carpet of yellow leaves between the white stalks of birch trees. The baby was wet, I was wet, and it was cold.
Where is everyone?
I entered a village of thatched huts and mud alleys. Smoke was rising up from cooking fires, and children appeared, their faces caked with dirt—curious little animals. It was a long way to the next village.
Perhaps I should stop?
I needed to keep moving.
And then I was flying, bounding into the air and leaving the village behind. Below me the tops of the birch trees fluttered in the wind, their last few leaves hanging on fiercely to the upper branches.
The baby was gone, left behind in the village.
A city appeared before me, a stone castle ringed by stone houses, rising up out of the forests against a backdrop of snowcapped mountains. With two more vaulting steps I flew through the sky, landing on wet flagstones in an alleyway. A man pulling a horse and cart walked past me, oblivious, either not seeing me or not caring that I was there. His cart was full of dead bodies piled high like matchsticks, and the silent screams of the cursed rang out through the empty streets.
Everything in their lives depends on me, and yet they don’t care.
Society had collapsed, another Dark Age begun.
Walking up the alley, I ascended a set of stone stairs at the side of the castle. Seagulls squawked in the distance as the sun began to set, and I could hear men in the forest, lumberjacks, hacking away at the trees. One after another the trees fell, the crash reverberating off the castle walls.
Reaching the top of the stairs, I opened a wooden door and entered. Now it was hot; I was burning up. A television was playing to an empty room. “The latest round of climate talks have failed again, or at least failed to come up with any concrete results,” said the TV news anchor. “It looks like we will be blowing through the emission targets set twenty years ago, with scientists now predicting a global temperature rise of five to seven degrees by the end of the century. The Arctic is free of ice for the first time in a million years. Nobody knows what will happen—”
Thwack!
I knew what would happen. We were a nation of freeloaders, 98 percent of us non-food-producers relying on the 2 percent who produced anything edible. The time had come for the 98 percent to pay their share, and it would be paid in blood.
Thwack!
I was back outside, among the lumberjacks. Where the forest had been, an endless landscape of stumps now lay before me, their shadows spreading across the land in the setting sun. Only one tree remained, and one of the men was hacking away at its trunk, laughing.
Thwack!
“Come in.”
Thwack!
Opening my eyes, I saw Chuck walk through the door.
Our bedroom door.
Lauren was sitting above me, her eyes full of fear and concern. As I opened mine, she put a hand to her mouth, and tears ran down her face. In the back of my mind, I could still hear hacking, a metronome fading away.
“You sure gave us a scare there, buddy,” said Chuck. He sat on the bed next to Lauren.
“Drink some water,” Lauren whispered.
My mouth felt like it was filled with cotton balls, and I coughed. I’m so weak.
With a groan, I lifted myself up on one elbow. Holding my head, Lauren lifted a cup to my lips. Most of the water from the cup spilled around my face, but I managed to get some of it in my mouth, and I felt it unsticking my tongue and washing down my throat. Sitting up, I took the cup from her and drank deeply.
“See?” said Chuck. “I told you he was getting better.”
“Do you want to eat something?” asked Lauren. “Do you think you can eat?”
I thought about that. Could I eat? Did I want to eat?
“Not sure,” I croaked. I was naked under the sheets and soaked in sweat. Looking down, I barely recognized my own body. I was skinny. Bones were beginning to show. “But let’s try.”
“Could you get some of the rice with the chicken?” Lauren asked Chuck.
He nodded. “We’ll get you fixed right up.”
“Did you hear from—” I started to say, but coughed before I could get it all out.
Chuck stopped at the door. “From who?”
“Williams. Sergeant Williams.”
He shook his head. “Why, should we have?”
I wanted to explain, but I was so weak.
“Shh,” murmured Lauren. “Rest, baby. Just rest for now.”
“He’ll be coming here to get us off the island.”
Closing my eyes, I heard Chuck saying, “I’ll keep an eye out. You just rest.”
And then the dreams began again, of leaping and flying above forests while the world died beneath my feet.