greenhouses had been abandoned after it was realized there was nothing that could be done to stop the outbreak of red mold, a side effect of the chemicals used to grow bigger and better crops. The virulent spread forced growers to burn their plants, only to discover the soil remained contaminated and unusable.
The pastures were bare, animals long gone, dead of disease, starvation, and slaughter as people sought to survive. The only thing now left in those fields was the scrubby grass standing in tufts, inedible even when boiled.
The occasional hint of sunlight proved nice, and each time a ray split through a cloud, Onaria pressed her face to the window. A flower seeking the sun. A woman who’d ended up in his lap, and never once called him out on the fact he had an erection the entire time. She had to have felt it. His male ego would surely die if she considered it of no consequence.
At the final stop, last of the line, only a handful of people disembarked.
“We’re here,” she huffed happily.
A reminder that they were both still alive. Together. It might be too late for them as a species, but there was still time with Onaria.
He took her bag and slung it over his shoulder, which caused her to gape in surprise. Usually she carried her own things, but he’d been reading a lot lately, especially the older stories, back in a time when the division of the sexes was more pronounced.
He also gripped her hand. Firmly. She didn’t pull away.
Stepping past the station platform as the few other passengers disappeared, they realized there was no one to meet them.
Onaria frowned. “I wonder where my aunt is.”
“When did you last speak to her?”
“A few days before the phones went down the first time.” Which was ten days before their trip. “She was the one to tell me I should come. I tried calling the moment the lines came back. When she didn’t answer, I told Lorhj, the neighbor, to pop in to check on her. I haven’t heard back, though, because we left the next day.”
The feeling in his stomach had him gripping her fingers more tightly. “How far is it to walk?”
She grimaced. “I wouldn’t recommend it.”
In the end, they hitched a ride with an old fellow who’d come to see if the train brought any supplies. It didn’t. Whether it never had any to start with or the bandits took everything didn’t really matter.
Their feet dangled over the edge of the trundling flatbed truck, the exhaust chugging smoke, but it was the only one on the road. They passed abandoned houses, some with the front doors left ajar as if their owners ran out and forgot to shut them. A clothesline with clothing hanging, some by only one remaining pin, flapped in a stiff breeze.
“I don’t understand why they’d leave for somewhere worse,” Onaria said, practically having to shout over the noise of the engine.
“It’s that expression, the cream is tastier in your neighbor’s fridge. In this case, they wonder if the city can give them more than the land, never realizing the whole world has gone gray.”
“Gray. That’s an apt method of putting it.” Onaria’s lips turned down.
He wanted to hug her and tell her things would be okay. A lie, but he wanted to offer comfort.
Be bold.
He reached for her hand and laced his fingers with hers then placed them on his leg. The time to slowly court had passed. She didn’t protest his temerity but held on tight to him.
Their destination proved to be the end of the world, as far as they could get from the city, which was just a distant smudge on the horizon. Literally a smudge, the smog spreading out like an evil beast with stretching dark tentacles.
A crisp wind rolled down off the mountains, biting through his clothes, bringing with it a cold bite. The peaks were covered in snow and ice, or so he’d read. The tips of them much too high to see and hidden by the low-hanging smog. What none of the articles he’d studied conveyed was the sheer vastness of the mountains.
He gaped at them. “I never realized—”
“How big they are?” She craned her neck beside him. “Have you never visited?”
“No.” He’d barely ever left the city at all. “Farthest I ever went was that fair we checked out last semester.” An overnight trip with Onaria and he’d lost his nerve to give her a kiss.
So many wasted moments.
“You never saw