Promise

He couldn’t.

There was one more thing he had to do. One more thing he would do. He had made a promise. And even though it would be so much easier to just let go, he would keep that promise.

Hand over hand he climbed, scaling a hundred or better feet up and over the hastily constructed wall. The wind plucked at the holes of his torn sweatshirt. Blades of frigid night air ripped through the thin material of his threadbare pants.

He paused for a moment after heaving himself up onto the top, and let his eyes scrape across the black horizon to the West. There was nothing but abandoned vehicles along the broken road stretching for miles. He would know. He had just spent a week trudging across that desolate place. No animals. No plants. No water. No humans. Nothing but dust and nightmares and unforgiving sun that tried to destroy anything and everything it touched. 

That same sun which was currently threatening at the crest of the distant dunes to the East, throwing it’s brilliant rainbow of promise across the sky in such a deceivingly beautiful way. His eyes had never touched the sunrise. Those who had seen it were dead. In less than a half an hour that fiery mass of extinction would start it’s reign of destruction across the sky. The same journey it made each day. Incinerating the living with little more than a whisper of UV radiation.

Desperation set in, which was never helpful. It was no better than the darker thoughts of giving up—of letting go. But he needed to get off this wall if he was going to live long enough to keep his promise. Otherwise, he would be reduced to just another pile of crumbling charcoal left to blow across the wastelands—the last place he wanted to spend eternity. 

He flung himself over the opposite side and started his descent, his least favorite part, but he had little choice. The ones who had controlled the passcodes for the gate had been dead for months, making the task of getting in and out of the wall even more perilous than it had already been. 

And she was relying on him to return. He had precious cargo. He refused to let her down when he was so so close.

His mind sifted through memories of the last week. Pulling each one forward, another stack of useless things that no longer had a purpose in this dying world. He distracted himself from the very real danger of the wall with these memories. The charred and rancid remains of a freshly deceased child. A fallen water tower that certainly spelled death for anyone left who may have relied on it. Tracks of some strange mechanical contraption, large and devoid of a soul, lingering on the outside of the wall.

He slipped. His fingers missing their grip between the bricks, scraping a fine layer of flesh from his fingertips as he desperately scrambled to reestablish his hold. He hung for a moment, feet loose, a single hand miraculously clinging to little more than an inch of ledge. He looked down. He never should have looked down. But then again, he never should have scaled the wall when there were minutes before the sunrise and he certainly shouldn’t have let his mind wander.

He shook away the errant thoughts. The world in slow motion. Focused again on what he had to do. What he couldn’t do. The last words she had spoken to him. The last thing he had said to her. He had promised. 

He focused. 

He swallowed back bile realizing how close he had come to not fulfilling that promise. He could feel the sun drawing closer, sweat sticky down his back from the air heating with its own devastating promise. He found purchase along the bricks again and continued his descent. As fast as he could. He had only thirty, maybe forty feet left to go. 

His feet touched the cracked concrete and he scrambled clear of the first rays of the morning following him down the wall. Stretching like fiery fingers, bleeding toward him inch by inch. He drew away, ducking into the shadows created by the dilapidated structures that crowded together like rotten teeth along the grid of abandoned streets. 

This was the closest he had ever come to being touched by the light. Too close. That death was a painful means of escaping this world. Not one he would choose for himself. Not nearly as swift as he’d like. He ducked through a makeshift door made of scrap metal, hinged by strips of plastic jugs from the old world, melted flat in that forsaken sun’s heat. 

He moved through the crumbling buildings, through holes in the walls, under awnings between alley ways, passing from building to building. Always keeping to the shadows while the weight of time pressed the breath from his lungs. The brightness of day filtered through paper covered windows. Wafts of disturbed dust danced as he trudged his way through the debris left behind decades ago when these buildings had lived other lives. Shelves lined with strange meaningless things. Pictures of beasts and men. Markings that could no longer be deciphered. Strange packages, with stranger objects inside. Things lost to time.  

These places had already been picked clean of anything useful, but he let his eyes touch them and trace over their surfaces, committing them to memory, wondering their original purpose. Never touching.

He dragged himself, one step at a time. It took him the entire day to make his way safely through the labyrinth of ruins. And when that celestial ball of infernal death finally sank once again below the edge of the wall, he ducked out into the chilled twilight, pulling his arms around him and not for the first time, wishing he had spent a moment before this quest to darn the holes in his sweatshirt. 

He picked his way through the streets of abandoned cars, charred corpses and random refuse—the carcasses of a civilization built under that same sun that tried to kill everything it touched. He made quick time, keeping an eye out for the familiar faded blue building where he had left her. Taller than many of the others still standing.

Ducking through a broken window on the ground level, he slipped on the dusty floors. The soles of his shoes desperate to find traction, but the treads had long since worn through to holes. He climbed over fallen furniture that blocked the stairwell. He took the stairs two at a time until the muscles in his legs burned. Several stories up he climbed. As far as the wall he had climbed. As far from the world below as he could safely keep her. 

Finally at the very top a door remained mercifully closed. 

He waited, his hand resting on the handle. He let his mind settle, caught his breath. He could smell himself. A rancid, yet familiar scent of burning sweat, rot and dust. But there was no water to wash and no time left anyway. 

He finally wrenched the door open and stepped into the dark room. His eyes had to adjust to the dimness of the single red glowing light across the room indicating that her device was still running despite being desperately low on battery. And if her device was still running, then she was likely still alive, though she had not spoken in weeks.

The sound of a breath being forced into her chest caused him to release the breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. Her rough, jagged attempts, raw along the edges of her throat, airways damaged after years of breathing in the dirt and death of this world. 

His hand fell to her forehead, always her forehead, like she had done so many times when he was only a boy. He hoped it brought her even a fraction of the comfort it had brought him growing up in this ravaged place. He set the batteries down beside her device. It was time to change them. It had been his sole reason for going in the first place. The other provisions he had found were pleasant surprises among the cacophony of abandoned goods. But the batteries were so very precious. 

And he had promised. He had promised he would come back. That he wouldn’t give up, not this time. Not like the others who had not returned. No matter how tempting it was to let go. To end it all. To leave this world that was broken and torn down and hell bent on killing him anyway. A world being destroyed daily by the very thing that had given it life in the first place. 

He planted a tender kiss on her forehead then took her lifeless hand in his own. She was so thin. Too thin. He feared if he squeezed too hard her bones would turn to dust like everything else. He noticed something resting just under her hand. It reflected that red glow of the indicator light. He took it between his fingers, feeling it’s sharp edges and firm smooth sides, then plunged it into the front pocket of his sweatshirt to inspect later, because it was time. 

And he had to time it just right. 

Changing the batteries was like a dance. A perfectly choreographed performance that he had played out in his head countless times. Carefully switching them out between breaths. He had to be fast, fingers instinctually moving through the motions. He had changed these batteries countless times. He would hold his own breath until the machine made that familiar noise of pressing the air into her lungs once again. 

When he finished he stepped out, pulling the door closed behind him, because he couldn’t stand to see her this way. He had promised, and he had fulfilled that promise. He had done what he had to do, what he could do. The only thing he could do. He leaned hard against the door, letting his head fall back. Looking up at the paint that flaked from the ceiling above him, the water stains the color of muddy water. The same color as the tears that slipped down his filthy cheeks.

He wrapped his fingers around the object she had held, drawing it before his eyes. It was a peculiar silver object dangling from a delicate chain in the shape of a heart, a symbol that had lost its meaning like the other markings that had long since lost their relevance in this dying world. 

He rubbed his calloused thumb over the surface feeling the warmth it still held from her hand. She had called him her whole heart and soul. But that was when she could still talk. When they still had time together. He let it drop to the weather warped linoleum at his feet. The sound of it echoing across the bare concrete walls. He turned to the nearest window letting in the frigid breeze. Goosebumps bloomed across his sweaty skin. 

Now he could do it. He had fulfilled his promise. He stepped to the window sill, toes just over the edge and looked down like he had from the wall. The crushed glass far below glistened like stardust in a sea of black concrete, a reflection of the night sky. The only sky he could look upon and live. A whole universe of possibilities lay themselves out like the blanket spread over her withering body. They were stuck here on this forsaken planet. 

He couldn’t watch her waste away. 

She had given him life, protected him, nurtured him and he had done the same for her as long as he could. But these were likely the last of the batteries. And he could not watch her slowly die.

Not anymore.

He had returned as he had promised. But now he could give up. He could give in to that delicious notion. The one where he controlled the end. 

He could hear the last words she had said echoing in his broken mind as he stepped off the ledge.