Chapter 49- Leaves In the Wind

Chapter 49

Leaves In The Wind

Chicago, Illinois

Jack Krane sat down next to his wife and looked at her face.  She was pale and tired but she was still wearing her make up.  She was facing the end of the world with her make up still on.

Jack stroked her back away from her face and she looked up at him now.  “Jack?” she said sleepily.

“Lucy, did you sleep at all?” he asked her.

“Yeah, some.  Thanks for keeping a watch out,”

“That’s okay.  That’s what husbands do for their wives,” he said with a hint of pride in his voice.

A gentle breeze blew through the house and the wind-chimes in the kitchen spun, singing softly.  Jack looked around but wasn’t wary.  They would have plenty of warning if they were going to have company, if they were going to be interrupted.

“Are you hungry?  Can you eat something for me?” he asked her.

She shook her head. She was thin now, she had always been slim but now she was skinny.  Jack supposed that it may not prove to be a huge problem.  The last radio broadcasts had said that the window was blowing south.

Jack kissed her on the forehead, another of their little rituals.  She smiled as she always had when he did that.  He wished he could remember them all, all of the smiles.  A smile when he got back from work, a smile when he woke up in the morning, a smile because of a bad joke, all smiles because she loved him.

Jack was a practical and pragmatic person and far from ever being considered quitter.  He had graduated high school and gone to Iowa State before transferring in his second year to Harvard.  They had told him he wouldn’t make it, that he wasn’t smart enough.  But Jack Krane had simply worked harder than the other kids.  He had made himself better and brighter by dint of application.

Even now, at the end of all things, Jack had kept working and kept them alive, kept them together.  Even when he knew it wasn’t going to matter, he had kept going.  But when the bomb was dropped in Texas, he knew that it wasn’t going to be long now.

“What will we do?” she had asked him, terror making her face bleak.

He had laughed this time and she had looked puzzled by this.

“We’ll be okay”, he had replied.

“How?” she had asked him with a note of desperation in her voice.

How indeed?  The things were everywhere now.  Even with the Air force bombing at will and the further threat of nuclear attack, they were everywhere. At night they would move on, attacking and killing and making more and more of them.

They had come to the old Summer house, with its wide open spaces and it’s beautiful orchard.  They had come with the clothes on their back and food in a suitcase.  And Jack Krane had wondered how, how would they be okay.

It wasn’t just America now, it was like the whole world was slowing spinning into the abyss.  Somewhere far away someone had pulled the stopper from the drain and now the world, the human world, was falling away.

He had taken care of Lucy during this awful crisis.  But in a way, protecting her was a way to avoid the full horror of the situation.  By protecting her, by keeping her sheltered from it, he was able to shelter too.

Now there was no sense hiding from it anymore. 

“It looked like two Suns rose over America,” she had said to him that day.  She had always had a lyrical sense that he had never possessed.  He had graduated from Dartmouth with a degree in English Literature and had written poetry from her heart.  It wasn’t sweet, like she was.  It was dark and sullen and Jack didn’t like it very much.  It conjured up the bleak landscapes of North Dakota where she had grown up.

She nestled into his shoulder now and she smiled.  There were no tears.

“You know, I realized I know how it will be okay in the end,” she said to her husband.

“So do I.  What did you come up with?” he asked his wife.

“It’ll be okay because we’ll be together,” she said with her smile.

They had linked hands then and waited for the sun to set.  She had spoken to him now, taking her turn to shelter him from the certain future.  She had begun with one of her favorite poems, Alan Ginsberg’s “Eastern Ballad,”

‘I speak of love that comes to mind: 

The moon is faithful, although blind; 

She moves in thought she cannot speak. 

Perfect care has made her bleak. 

I never dreamed the sea so deep, 

The earth so dark; so long my sleep, 

I have become another child. 

I wake to see the world go wild.’

They truly had seen the world go wild.  She kissed him on the cheek as they watched the sun set for the final time.

Las Vegas, Nevada

The lights flickered and died for the final time and there was a great dread scream.  People fled into the darkening sky.  There was a staccato flash of light as guns were fired, almost at random.An awful bellowing roar followed. 

The fountains stopped and the slot machines sat like a row of metal tombstones.  A roulette table stood sentry, a small metal ball meaningless now.  The bars of the zoo had been twisted by some awful impact and the birds weren’t singing anymore.

The air was full of grief.

Akron, Alaska

They sat on the snow covered hillside and watched the light show at the end of the world.  A great awful glare lit up the sky as a huge city vanished into a silent white light.  Some of them were crying and others were smiling.  Each of them greeted their own extinction in their own way, as had always been the human way to deal with adversity.

They were the last Americans now, of that they were sure.  What was going on was on its way towards them, the rough beast slouching towards Bethlehem. 

Snow fell on the just and the unjust alike.

Hoboken, New Jersey

A man-shape blundered into view.  It’s face streamed blood from where its head had been but now there was only a bloody dripping maw, full of ragged teeth and tongues.  It was huge, this beast.  It stood nearly twelve feet from the ground, supported by the hideous form of more bodies twisted and fused.

It had no eyes to speak of and yet it seemed to perceive that they had now drained the last living things from the area.  It raised its head-shape and let out a coughing bark. There were others around, it knew that.  But there was no reason to stay here anymore.  Across the river the great city was a burning ruin now.  All of the life that had glared into the night was extinguished.

All of its landmarks still stood, ironic monuments to a dead race.  A raven fluttered down and landed on the roof of a car.  It pecked at the hand of a burned corpse.  As the beast lumbered into view, it took off with a squawk