Days 255 and 256 – Writing Exercise
…
A life could be summed up in a half dozen dreams.
Once upon a time, my dreams were of the good times in my life, the first being when a young child, going to the sea by train, once a year, for a holiday.
A tradition my father had pronounced one morning, that his parents had done for him and his brothers and sister. There was no doubt who the favourite was.
We were not rich, but it was the one luxury we could afford.
I carried it on, with our three children, each special in their own way. Elsie spoiled them, because her family did not the wherewithal to have a single extravagance.
The second was the hard times because with the good came the hard. My father always said that nothing lasts forever, and he was right.
Soon after my mother died, my father changed. So did our lives. There just never seemed to be any fun anymore. Certainly, there were no more holidays. It seemed none of his or mothers’ family could or would help us.
The third was watching those around you become cynical and well, just plain horrid.
My mother taught me, taught all of us, to make the most of what we had, to look after each other, because in the end, that was all we had.
She was right.
But our problem was that for too many years we had taken our parents for granted, that they would always be there, and that we would not have to figure it out.
We were wrong.
Then our father died, we were suddenly left alone and those who could not adapt would be left behind.
No one should lose their parents when they just became a teenager. I was the second eldest. I always thought my brother was the rock. It turned out that was my sister. She had just turned twelve going on twenty-five
The fourth was the choices I made, and how I chose to live my life. I did not want the pain that was inflicted on me to be carried forward, if or when I married and had children.
I wanted to find them a balance between being nurtured but also tough enough to handle any crises better than I had.
It, of course, did not consider the different external forces that impact our lives, the circumstances that are beyond our control.
Ours had been the early loss of our parents, the lack of sympathy and help from uncles and aunts, and a particular sort of harshness from the external world, a world that no longer rewarded loyalty, and a world that no long-had respect for our fellow human beings.
The world suddenly was filled with the haves and the have-nots, those with a job and those without, a world of shortages and greed, political upheaval, and racial hatred.
It was like we had gone full circle, discovering and basking in a whole series of changes that made our lives better, then watching it all slowly crumble under the machinations of mankind, the wealth of the few increased and the wealth of the many slowly disappeared.
Someone said it was the new world order, and it came so fast that no one saw it coming.
My life after I found the love of my life, Elsie, was a long dream, number five if I was counting, and I had always believed I had been the luckiest man on earth.
How else could anyone explain to me how I ended up with an angel? Certainly, I didn’t deserve her, but I never ever took her for granted and treated her with the respect she deserved.
I tried instilling those values into my children but somewhere, somehow they missed the point or didn’t get the memo.
Or maybe the world had changed and we missed it, or more to the point, ignored it at our peril. Whatever it was, it was not a fight we were going to win.
But then, we were not only people on that sinking ship.
The last, the sixth, was a shared dream with all mankind. It’s the one that was most fresh in my mind.
We were all to blame in the end. We let a monster run amok, turned our whole world into one of mistrust and hatred, let him start a war over a notion that in the end wasn’t true but still provoked the unthinkable.
It was always going to happen; it was only just a matter of time. Each time I went to sleep I hoped against hope that sanity would prevail, but the truth was, all it would take was one man to destroy the world.
And in mind’s eye the dream always ended the same way. A faceless man in a military uniform hiding in an underground bunker making a decision that he hadn’t thought through.
One that no one had ever thought would come to fruition, that the latent threat would be all that was needed to stop anyone in their right mind from destroying the world.
We were all wrong. Everyone was wrong.
They didn’t believe that there would be one such man, but there was and it was he who gave the order. But the biggest myth of all was that even if there was one such man, everyone else would believe that order would have been ignored, that down that chain of command common sense would prevail. Even when they knew that man led a despotic regime by fear and murder, still they wanted to believe the order would not be obeyed.
And even at the eleventh hour, still no one could conceive that any one person could order the possible end of the world and the complete annihilation of his country and and expect it would be obeyed.
Without question.
Fear of him far outweighed the fear of annihilation.
Promises were made, lies were told, a deadline passed, and five minutes later, the unstoppable conflagration began.
What was always meant to be a deterrent, in the end, was no such thing at all.
…
What followed was a living nightmare.
We were the lucky people not living anywhere near where a low-yield nuclear bomb dropped, but we heard what happened.
About three weeks later, some semblance of order was returned.
All we knew was a warning a day before it happened: a message would be broadcast, with instructions.
Most people in the blast areas got the message but it was too late. Everyone within a 10 kilometre radius was dead, or dying, and it wasn’t much better for 50 kilometres outside that range.
We didn’t hear what happened elsewhere. The radio service disappeared, along with everything else, and it was down to local existing authorities until lawlessness set in.
It was inevitable. We had resources, they wanted resources and they were happy to kill for it. That’s when someone said we should take what we had and disappear until sanity returned.
I was in the right place at the right time. I had a truck with fuel; they needed to transport supplies. In the mountains where many decades ago, a madman thought the hills were filled with gold.
He spent a fortune looking for it, basically building a whole underground city, one very few people knew existed, and a descendant who did made it a new home for selected people.
He was a doomsdayer and had set up a remarkable facility in anticipation madness would eventually win out.
There was space, he estimated, for about a thousand. We packed up, and silently and stealthily moved out under the cover of darkness.
Five years later, we were still there, watching and waiting, observing the nuclear winter, watching the shifting winds tainted by fallout, watching the earth die, then eventually come back to life.
Few people who survived passed by, and there was nothing we could do for them, some were allowed to stay, and those that didn’t could not be allowed to live and tell. Most had radiation sickness and would not last a month, two at the most. It was a harsh, unforgivable rule but the leaders decided that it was the only way we could survive, and they would not have a lingering and painful death.
I didn’t agree, but I didn’t argue. I don’t know what that made me, and I didn’t want to know. I guess self-preservation was stronger than moral outrage.
But I was one of about a hundred in the outside exploration and monitoring teams made up of a dozen specialists, a mission leader, a doctor and navigation and journal keeper, a mechanic, a biologist, a nuclear scientist and an escort of soldiers or ex-soldiers.
We were the people to decide who we helped, what was left of humanity, how long we could last before we finally came out of hibernation.
Over the years we monitored the habitat, observed the nuclear winter effects, watch everything die, and we were hoping this next foray, there would be signs of hope. We sought out supplies, tried to locate other survivors with little o no success.
We had been doing this every three to six months for the last five years.
The last exploration told us that the earth was coming back to life. That the cycle of radiation and contamination was easing, and possibly the worst was over. We wanted to believe that other people had to survive, and soon we would venture much further afield and if possible join forces.
We had encountered small groups over the years, but they either died or moved on over successive years. It wasn’t the radiation that killed them in the end; it was starvation. And we couldn’t help them; we barely had enough for ourselves.
…
I woke to the sound of Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, the music that I used to either put me to sleep or try to find inner peace after a nasty encounter on the outside.
My firm belief had been, after the event, that the world would take a step back and people would be united in a common goal. The problem was, just before the bombs dropped our own government had turned us against each other, intensifying racism and the divide between the haves and have nots.
The bombs only intensified those hatreds and instead of banding together it became a war of attrition, and it had hard to find any reason why a trivial occurrence of taking a bottle of water would warrant being summarily executed.
It had become a shoot first and ask questions later type of society, where petty zealots seized power and harshly enforced it. We had those in our camp, but the boss didn’t let hatred fester. He simply weaned it out with a bullet to the head.
Out in the field it didn’t take long to realise humans had lost all sense of decency; they were not interested in joining with or helping their fellow citizens and would kill anyone who disagreed with them.
The bombs didn’t kill everybody else, stupidity did.
I was hoping that today would mark a change in the world we had been waiting for, with the dense clouds that had been filtering out the sun, were finally going, and that a lot of places would no longer be radioactive.
We gathered in the hall by the rear entrance, the one that gave us the most invisible exit from the cave system.
Everyone had a gun, bulletproof vest, overcoats and sturdy boots. We were up for a five-mile hike before we got the main road, now little more than a track. We hadn’t seen vehicles for years, except some parked in a nearby forest resort carpark. It had been the saddest day of my life to see all the people there had wither been shot or eventually die of starvation. A note said they had waited for someone to come and tell them what to do.
I was surprised that people were not camping in the various open areas near the roads. Or maybe they had and left. The Midwest had very little other than miles and miles of scorched earth and either burned or contaminated land.
I don’t think many knew there would be a nuclear winter. I certainly didn’t when it was explained to me. Normal people had a hard time just believing someone would bomb our country after our military told they would be obliterated if they did. Perhaps that was the biggest joke, they had fired first, and no one did that to us.
They were obliterated but so were we.
“Once more onto the breach…” Howie was ex-military and wore his gun like it was part of him. He led the team, with a kill or be killed attitude.
He handed out the weapons. “Shoot only when necessary and keep your eyes and ears about you.”
The scientists didn’t like the idea of carrying guns, but most did. We had been in skirmishes before.
That was the extent of the pep talk. He took the lead and gave the order. “Open seasame.”
…
The internal blast doors made the same sound they had for the past five years, except there was a groan before the heavy metal began to open.
When the pneumatic seals finally hissed, surrendering to the greasy heave of manual overrides and backup generators, the sound was less like a door opening and more like a tomb drawing its first breath. A cold, dead draft spilled inward—not fresh, but alien. It tasted of nothing. No, that wasn’t right. It tasted of old stone, distant dampness, and something sharp and metallic that lingered on the back of the tongue. Ozone.
Or maybe just the ghost of rain.
Dr. Elena Vance, the botanist in front of me, adjusted the straps of her filtration pack, her fingers trembling slightly inside heavy rubberized gloves. Behind us, nine sets of boots shifted on the corrugated steel floor of the airlock—scientists, their faces pale and pinched from half a decade of fluorescent-lit hydroponics, and undispersed security personnel, their assault rifles held at low-ready, faces obscured by mirrored polymer visors.
“Remember your protocols,” Howie said, his voice amplified and flattened by his suit’s comm-unit.
Then one of the scientists said, “The soot layer is thinning, but low-yield fallout doesn’t care about sunlight.
That was followed by Howie again, “We stay within five hundred meters of the egress shaft to begin with. We use the dosimeters. And if you see anything moving that isn’t us, you paint it and drop.”
Sergeant Miller, a scarred veteran who had been in town the day the bombs dropped was brought to the subterranean facility when the world ended five years ago, sighed. “Nothing’s out there, Chief. Just ash and ghosts. We’re hundreds of miles from the strike zones, and even the rats died out three winters ago.”
“Hope you’re right, Sergeant,” Elena murmured.
She turned back to the threshold.
For five years, the only light they had known was the sickly, yellow-green hum of the algae vats and the harsh white glare of the emergency lamps. But now, cutting through the cavernous darkness of the mountain exit tunnel, was a thin, trembling dagger of gold.
Sunlight.
As they approached the outer entrance, we could see it strike the concrete floor. Elena stepped forward, her boots crunching on crusty layers of grey grime that had drifted down the mountainside over the years. As she cleared the mouth of the cave, she shielded her eyes—not from the dark, but from the sudden, merciless glare of a sky that had been hidden away.
It took a full minute for our eyes to adjust. When they did, the world revealed itself in agonizing, muted monochrome.
The valley below was becoming less of a cemetery of charcoal and pale stone. The pine forests that had once choked the lower slopes were now jagged, tooth-like skeletons jutting upwards towards the sky, stripped bare firstly by fire and then as the water dried up, an inevitable death. The ground was still blanketed in a thick, lifeless crust of soot, dirt, and dead vegetation that crackled under out feet.
It felt eerie walking though what could be described as a petrified forest, only able to see about a hundred years in any direction.
About a kilometre from the cave, we came to a track. Howie called us to stop by displaying a raised fist, then a whiling motion as the soldier fanned out surrounding us. “Someone has used this recently. Tracks are fresh. Check the surroundings, slowly.”
While the others looked through the trees, and back the way we came, I saw Elena bend over, looking at the ground. I saw it too, a single, defiant thread of emerald. A blade of grass. Small, twisted, and struggling, but undeniably green.
“I’ll be damned,” whispered Dr. Hayes behind her, dropping to his knees to stare at it. “The physics models… they were right. The thermal inversion is collapsing. The soot is dropping out.”
“Don’t touch it,” Howie snapped, his rifle sweeping the ruined treeline. “Radiation doesn’t care if it’s green.”
She glared at him, then took a photo, and the GPS position.
He waited, then said, “There’ll be more. Move out. Perimeter formation.”
The squad fanned out, crunching silently across the dead earth. For twenty minutes, the only sounds were the crunch of ash and the rhythmic click-beep of twelve dosimeters registering background radiation—elevated, certainly, but low enough to sustain short-term exposure without immediate biological collapse. There were no birds. No insects. No wind, save for a low, mournful draft sweeping down from the peaks.
We stopped in a clear elongated valley where the road was more defined, if not cracked and distorted, a road that encircle the base of the mountains. If we were to encounter anyone it would be here.
Which after reaching the first turn, it was not a person we saw, it was the remains of a newly rusted transport truck that had clearly run out of fuel.
The radio squawked. “Movement. Two o’clock, ridge line.” The voice belonged to Private Vance—no relation to Elena—posted on the eastern flank.
Every rifle snapped up in unison. Elena froze, her heart hammering against her ribs.
“Vance, status,” Howie barked into his comms, dropping to one knee beside the charred chassis of the truck.
Silence. Then, static.
“Vance?”
A sharp crack echoed off the stone walls of the valley. It wasn’t thunder. It was a round—high-calibre, supersonic—that punched cleanly through the metal door of the truck a foot above Howie’s head, showering rusted flakes.
“Contact!” Howie roared. “Spread out! Return fire!”
Chaos erupted. The sterile quiet of the dead world shattered into the deafening concussions of gunfire. Flashes of muzzle fire stabbed out from the ridgeline two hundred yards up, partially obscured by the lingering wisps of high-altitude haze.
“Where are they coming from?” Hayes cried, scrambling backward and tripping over his own bulky suit.
“Scavs,” Howie snarled, firing a controlled three-round burst from his rifle toward the ridge. “Marauders. They followed the melt line up from the lowlands. They think we’re a fresh vault.”
Elena pressed her back against the truck, her breath coming in ragged gasps. It was not the first time for any of them, but still the five years underground had made them soft; the raiders up on that ridge had spent five years learning how to kill each other for canned peaches and clean filters.
Another round chewed up the dirt inches from her boot.
“We need to fall back to the tunnel!” Elena yelled over the din.
“Negative, Doc! If we run, they bottleneck us at the door,” Howie shouted back, tossing a smoke grenade into the open ground to mask their positions. Thick grey smoke billowed up, mixing with the ambient soot. “Two men on me—let’s climb the gully and flank them. The rest cover the scientists back to the cave!”
Through the smoke, Elena saw shapes moving down the ridge. Three—no, four figures, wrapped in mismatched tactical gear, heavy dust coats, and crude gas masks with yellowed lenses. They weren’t soldiers. They were starving, desperate things, clutching battered assault rifles with the manic intensity of the damned.
One of them broke cover, charging down the slope toward the smoking transport truck, firing wildly.
Private Diaz, one of the younger security guards, stepped out from behind a boulder, his weapon tracking the charging figure. His rifle barked twice. The raider dropped, tumbling dead into the ash.
But the others were already adjusting. A heavy machine gun opened up from the ridge, chewing the boulders into white-hot shrapnel. Diaz took a round to the shoulder, his cry cut short as he pitched backward into the dirt.
“Diaz!” Hayes made a move to run toward him, but Elena grabbed the collar of his suit, hauling him down.
“We can’t help him yet! See if you can see where that machine gun is.”
I took the distant crackling in the forest to be Howie, moving quickly, and then saw the ridge gunner just as he popped up to shoot, and aimed and fired. The machine gun fire stopped abruptly. A minute later a volley of shots rang out and after a minute, silence fell.
I could hear my own heart pounding.
A few minutes later, the others returned, holding extra guns and ammo. “Six of them. Starving.” He shook his head. “There will be others, so we’d better retreat, regroup, and go look for them.” He kicked the ground. “Senseless.”
We made our way back slowly and carefully, a different path, just in case they had closed in behind us. They probably came with the truck, and after it broke down or run out of fuel, set out to find somewhere to camp. It meant we had to be more careful the next time we left the cave. It was nearly dark when we returned.
As Elena tumbled past the heavy steel threshold and back into the cool, recycled air of the tunnel, she looked back one last time. It was, for her, mission accomplished. Life had returned, even if it was one blade of grass.
Outside, the golden sunlight cut relentlessly through the dying sky, illuminating a battlefield of ash, blood, and a single, stubborn blade of green. It was a brutal, beautiful world waiting to be reclaimed—if they could survive the humans who had inherited it first.
…
© Charles Heath 2026
