Assault Party

Quickly cooling desert air assaulted her skin, as did the tears that slipped down whenever thoughts of humanity plagued her. What could possibly be happening right now? She wasn’t naïve enough to think that she was the only person alive on the planet, but sitting in the middle of a still desert, burning the last of daylight with slippery saltwater eyes, it sure did seem that way. Dixie only knew that her brother was most likely dead, and all of the people she had met in her life were just as possibly dead.

She felt no need for euphemisms for the sad horror that had gone on around her; it wouldn’t do their deaths justice. They did not pass, they did not leave; their hearts stopped beating due to some pathogen, plain and simple.

She felt briefly like letting more tears slip down from her downcast eyes, but she didn’t even have the energy to spare. Dixie was quite sick of the sobs that stabbed her chest infrequently, like a dagger or CPR; like breaking her ribs and feeling them heal and shatter again. It even felt like there were rocks or bone in her lungs, when she did attempt to breathe at last. Her heart felt like it wrapped tighter around her spine, cutting certain integral parts of it away, and lodging them in the hollow cavity of her stomach. It was like nothing she had experienced before, it was true pain. Not breaking an arm or leg, but true pain that only came with suffering. Dixie felt should suffer, for she ran when she could have fought; swam rather than sunk, but had let her brother sink to the murky depths that captivated her misguided thoughts currently.

A shiver left her feet and she noticed the sunset, picturesque scarlet emanating from the center of the disappearing sun, and radiating outwards, spreading its hate and deceit through the faded auburn sky. Flashbacks hit her mind like a car crash and she remembered in great detail that which she feared would plague her forever: the university head’s dead body. The almost dreadful, quite rotten stench that stemmed from his pores, the unforgiving blood that once coursed through his body, which might have been the death of him, was all she could see.

It was enough to drive her mad.

Not right this second, of course, but soon she would be raving mad from heat stroke, or worse, raving mad from hallucinogenic cactus juice, craving more and more of the sickly sweet natural cocktail. She would die that way, fantastic images swallowing her faith and good and churning out more gobbledygook. The last thing she would see would be false hope, should this occur.

Will to survive made her determined not to make novice mistakes. Dixie slammed the car door, after exiting the familiar depths, no longer contemplative. She opened the boot, taking stock of her extra supplies. Besides her basic survival kit she had a flute. A flute? Why would she…

Her best friend played the flute. She was probably dead too. Heather had left it in the car; Dixie was supposed to give it back to her during band the next day. Dixie played the drums, usually snare, for marching band, “Little Drummer Girl,” she had dubbed herself as a child.

All of those times were over. Time to face…

Don’t say ‘the music.’ Please, Ms. Most Clichéd of the year.

“The loneliness.” Dixie said aloud to herself, realizing that she was the only company she had left. Answering her own questions or mind-comments would be a common effect of losing her mind out here.

At least if I went mad I would die not remembering my own spinelessness.

However, the innate need for survival she had overpowered her thoughts of self-oblivion. Another resource she had besides the flute was a novel. It wasn’t the great American novel and it certainly wasn’t what she considered literature. It was “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde,” and now it seemed more than ever that her days would be fraught with survival and a slow growing insanity. Like a tumor or a cancerous growth in her mouth, a question popped off her tongue.

“What’s going to happen to the survivors?” Would the world slowly but surely return to its former glory? Would we devolve into brainless chimps? Would the dinosaurs return, would we become dinosaurs? These feeble questions raced through her head, but in truth she didn’t have the answer and decided to let her thoughts return to quiet. Bringing her handheld radio and her survival guide to the front of the car with her, she began her new life.

Turning the dial, Dixie frowned at the static that immersed itself, merging with the small sound hole. Finally the sound of human speech met her ears.

“People everywhere have been dropping like flies. Just under fifty percent of the United States population has fallen due to the sickness. World-wide, twenty percent have died, and counting. No one will hazard a guess at what the strain might be. This just in! North Korea has dropped four nuclear bombs, onto the east coast of America. New York, Florida, Virginia, and Boston have been obliterated. With the high population drop and radiation, it’s likely the region will not last. Los Angeles has taken the spread of the disease quite hard and almost everyone living there has died. Anyone who lives in a city has been urged to vacate, or else get stuck in quarantine. Finally, claims have been heard about miracle cures, a mad scientist in the forest who has a cure to the ‘cause of death’ as the pandemic has been named. None of these sightings have been confirmed.”

She listened for more, her ears tingling in shock at every utterance, but static came back to life and engulfed all other channels. It seemed society might go on, and all hope was not lost, everyone would continue muddling on as humans always did. Dixie turned off the radio, not wishing to waste precious power or just as valuable knowledge. Reading through the charming pocket survival guide and the methods to get water in the desert, she found herself parched. Dixie decided going with the simplest method would be best. Boiling her urine of particulates and drinking it. As distasteful as it seemed, it truly was a viable method, and recyclable.

Of course, she wouldn’t have an immune system left if she did that every day, she would also have to find different ways to get water. There was the coveted elementary school method where one idiot child dug a hole in the ground, placed saran wrap over it and lay down a bowl to catch the water. It would have to be a big hole out here, though.

Starting a fire would be the only not-so-foolproof part of her plan, she surmised.

Apparently, she was wrong. Just like in the old Westerns she had viewed as a child, tumbleweed rolled across the barren ground. She chased after it, not only realizing that she had the wrong shoes for the situation, but that there were many dangerous predators in the area, also that she kept losing said shoes. Finally, she grabbed the dusty thing in her arms, and walked back to Jewel, in a huff. After finding non-snake inhabited rocks to weigh down her kindling, she struck the flint with her handy Swiss army knife. After a few sparks ignited, she coaxed them into a flame with her warm and inviting breath. Grabbing the old metal can she had found on her quick chase after the bundle of dried weeds, she retreated behind her car to relieve herself.

Dixie hoped no one was watching, but this was survival, not a picnic, it shouldn’t matter. She supposed she would never shed her city shyness, despite that. Carrying over the can full of fun, she placed it into the fire, barely managing to not burn herself. Dixie would have to find some way to place things into the fire and take them out without hurting herself.

She hugged her sweater about herself, though the fire was helpful in keeping warm. Soon the liquid began to bubble and boil, steam leeching into the dark air. Taking the thick wad of rags that she kept in her car for cleaning purposes, she picked up the can. It was hot, but she didn’t burn herself with the help of what would now be her oven mitts. She gently plunked the can into a hole in the sand she had pre-dug for it. Finding a piece of cloth she could spare, she covered the precious water can, not wishing for evaporation to take her hard work away.

Dixie licked her lips in apprehension, noting their chapped texture. The quickly cooling night sand would soon cool the water, though. She retreated to her car, to find her water bottle, which stood alone in the cup holder. It reminded her oddly of how she felt in the desert, serene, undisturbed. She ruined the symmetry by wrenching it from the place it had been since before the world seemed to stop, and people dropped with it.

One time, a friend told her that if everyone in the world jumped at the same exact second, it would change the earth’s rotation. Laughingly, they had bothered to jump, just in case someone else wanted to change the earth with them. Now there might not even be enough people left to change the earth. Countries now fawned over the death of their people, and as painful as it was to admit, crashing governments blamed each other for the world’s suffering, just as North Korea had the U.S. If the world found sanctuary after the death of so many, it wouldn’t be a peaceful one.

Dixie threw whatever was in her hands down angrily. Any fool could see that peace was the only thing the world needed now, but of course, world leaders, hot headed and irrational, would decide that peace could never appease them. WWIII could be on the way because of a simple natural disaster!

Simple, oh, what irony.

Ignoring her fervent need to change something, she filled her water bottle with the fresh cool H20. Sealing it, she popped the top and took a drink greedily, but stopped, taking small sips rather than large gulps. When the bottle was two thirds full she stopped drinking, planning to save the rest.

It wasn’t enough to survive out here; she had to make a living out in the wild red yonder now. The desert was home, even though the thought of home still plagued her with still lives of what must have happened to her baby brother.

Welcome to being alone.