Apple and Sand

We had been crossing the godforsaken desert for the last six days, with no sleep, and the price we paid with every heaving breath we sent through our bodies. There was supposed to be a haven from the horrors that the nuclear winter had unleashed, the crazies and the broken. My clothes were torn and ripped from the endless punishment wrought on us by driving sandstorms, and I could tell that Emily wasn’t doing any better. Her once ever-present smile was a hardened grimace of determination as we walked through unknown lands, with only one destination on our minds at the given moment: forward.

I looked backwards as I climbed over sandblasted boulders, offering a hand to the girl behind us. “It can’t be much farther”, and the words hurt me on the way out, my lips had long stopped trying to retain any semblance of moisture “we’ve been walking for a very long time.” She smiled, the warmth of a genuine smile breaking through for just a second, and then it was gone. Taking my hand and leaping with energy that she drew from seemingly nowhere, she was now the one leading me by the hand. Our traveling lapsed into silence again, and then memories flashed back behind my goggled eyes.

“Do you remember? How we were before the Fire?”

“Shh, that’s in the past. If we want to survive this hellhole we can’t think like that, Emily, only forwards. We’ll pull through.”

Another voice cut in. Drake’s voice. “He’s right.” And then my best friend of sixteen years laughs, grabbing an Apple from the Tree and shoving it into his pack. One apple each before the journey. That’s how it’s always been. “We’ll be fine, Emily.” And then he gives that heartwarming smile that makes girls weak at the knees, something I’ve always been envious of but I can’t say anything about it...

She sighs, and we pull our own Apples.

That smile haunting my memories brings back more recent memories, ones that I would prefer to forget. More pain, and I try to think about happy things as my worn boots crunch over finely gritted sand and little beads of glass. But I can’t. It’s not possible, I can’t just forget like that.

“GO! GET OUT OF HERE! LEAVE ME! YOU CAN’T FIGHT THEM...” That was what I heard, a closing scene on an act of our journey where things started going terribly wrong.

I had spun, weaving a deadly dance of blade and steel, cutting through the haze of pain and exhaustion as my best friend lay dying on the floor, as I did the hardest thing I had ever done in my life, killed the last group of bandits who had attacked us, in a state of pure exhaustion.

We had left our Establishment, as we all must do at the age of 16. That was mankind’s plan for recreation while trying to avoid the overpopulation of the previous world. When the Fire had come down, containers of steel and radiation that had blasted flesh from bone, only those in their Establishments had survived. But because of the new children that were born (children of the future, they called them), all those who were older than 16 had to leave through the gates of safety that had been a part of the walls keeping them safe from their birth, encompassing all they had known. This was their plan: throwing out those who were reaching adulthood to try to create more civilization beyond.

That was where we were headed. There were rumors of a camp of those gone from our Establishment and six others in the region far from the dangers of Wild America, it was supposed to be safety and a utopia: at least if you could get there. The flashback returns.

“Take... my Apple... Max. Don’t- don’t fail her. Tell her I love her okay... always have?”

“You idiot! Why didn’t you tell her yourself? She’s been harbouring a crush on your sorry ass for the last four years, and you’re telling me this now?” I had collapsed on my knees over the broken form of one of the only two friends I had left. Emily was still hiding in our caravan a half mile north, so his final words did never fall on her ears. My words themselves were falling on dead and deaf ears. Drake was gone.

That's why it had been hard to hate him, even as the girl I had always liked confessed to me time and time again about how 'Drake was so nice', or how 'Drake had turned her down again'. But I couldn't even hate him for it, not now, not ever.

I had been too scared, too haunted by these memories to ever bring it up again. No time like now though, just the two of us walking through the desert. But to start with what? That I still had Drake’s Apple, the only thing we had left from our Establishment, our home? The Apple was a genetically modified product from the Lifegiving tree, a creation of the scientists holed up during the effects of the Fire. It cured all illnesses, purged radiation sickness, but it couldn’t bring back the dead. It gave you the strength of three day’s worth of food and rehydrated you like nothing else. That’s why, one per traveler only. A parting gift from your home that would save you in a time of dire need. Like... now.

I had used mine on Drake when he was sick with tetanus. Emily had used hers to hold back a tumor that was slowly growing inside of my brain. A broken circle, if you could see it.

We could also see the faint outline of walls... a city... a Tree in the distance! Salvation was probably at hand.

And then the pain was back.

My head pulsed with an unnatural ache, and I collapsed groaning to fall hyperventilating to a sand dune. I could feel the ever-present particles of grit invade my goggles and my mouth, but I couldn’t do anything about it. Emily gasped. “NO! Not now, please, Max, get up, get up, please, oh god.” My sword fell from my dull fingers as Emily rushed to my side and pulled me up. “Get up, you’re going to be fine, come on.”
It was really over. An undeniable weariness spread over my body, and with what seemed like a superhuman effort I got back up to my feet, relying on Emily’s shoulder, only to collapse again. I couldn’t do it anymore.

Emily looked on with worry creasing her features, and I longed to just reach her one more time. “I’ll w-wait, Max, I’m right her-“and then she couldn’t say anymore.

I could understand Drake’s willingness to part with me in his final moments.

I could understand how I had to fix the cycle.

We were out of food, and out of water. There was only one solution, so I took it.

“Emily... my pack. Look in the third pocket from the front...” Every word was drawn out and I couldn’t think straight. I was dying. At the age of seventeen, and I was dying next to the only person I had grown to love.

She nodded with a shocked urgency, pulling my pack to her and licking her dried lips unconsciously.

“Apple...? Drake’s? You saved this? I can save you then- we’ll make it, Max, come on-“

“No, it’s not for me...”

“What?”

“It’s for you, Haven- Haven is- a day away. I won’t make- make it- but with this, you will...”

“Max... come on, keep going for me! Please... I love you, Max, I never wanted Drake, it was you, you were always there for me when I got hurt when I tried to give up come on please please” the words spilled from her like she would never get the chance to say them if she was too slow. I guess she didn’t.

“I... love you too.” I force out, I could feel her tears falling on me, and then she bent down and kissed me while crying, and then the last thought I had was of how warm her lips were against mine, and then it was asking myself where she was getting this water from and why she was wasting it on tears and then the light dimmed from my eyes and then I fell back against nuke-blasted sands for the last time.