Jacqueline Druga
WASTELAND
1. The Home Front
“Daddy, I’m thirsty.”
“I know, baby, I know.”
Falcon pulled the sheet up to the chest of his eight year old son. It wasn’t cold. In fact, it was very hot but he knew sometimes a sheet could make things seem cooler.
His son Josh was thin and small for his age which wasn’t unusual. Falcon brought his fingers to his son’s cheek. It was dry and the skin looked pale. He ran his rough fingers over Josh’s lips. Then he reached over to his daughter Lilly, sound asleep in the same bed. Her skin didn’t feel dry nor did she look pale. Falcon then knew. “When did you have a drink last?” he asked Josh.
“Two hours ago, after dinner. I saved my drink, remember?”
Falcon nodded with disbelief. “Really? When? When was the last time you had a drink?”
“This morning.”
“Don’t make me wake your sister and ask.”
“She’s six. She lies,” Josh said defensively.
“She tattles.” Falcon said. “Now tell me. When?”
Josh took a deep breath.
“Aw, Josh. Did you give your water to that dog again?”
“Daddy, his tongue was…”
“Josh, Baby, you know the rules.”
Josh nodded.
“No wonder you’re thirsty.” Falcon lifted the glass from the night stand and then the canteen which he kept like a gun on a belt around his waist. He filled the glass a third of a way.
Josh scooted up and took the glass. “I’m sorry.”
“That’s okay. Drink.” Falcon watched the child savor each sip of water until he had finished the glass, allowing the last drop to dribble on his dry lips. The boy bit his bottom lip bringing in that final bit of water. “Good?”
“Thank you.”
“Get some sleep. I love you.”
“I love you too.
Falcon placed his lips to his son’s forehead. He left them there for a moment as he closed his eyes and said a silent prayer, a prayer of gratefulness that God had given him another day with his children. Whether that was truly a blessing for them, Falcon didn’t know. But it was for Falcon. Without Josh and Lilly, Falcon would literally die, because he would take his own life. He had nothing else.
He smoothed out the sheet, then stood and blew out the candle on the night stand next to Josh. The room was lit by the extremely bright moon. Falcon paused by the window, staring out, listening to Josh’s breaths. The boy was always fast to fall asleep but hard to get into bed. He loved to listen to the child breathe before he fell asleep. Normal breaths and then the breathing turned deep.
It was hot, extremely hot, and Falcon wanted nothing more than to open a window but he couldn’t chance a dust storm. They blew in without warning and were devastating.
The dust storms were like a blow dryer, blasting the dry dirt everywhere. It would carry in through the windows and Falcon couldn’t chance the children breathing it in.
The moon was exceptionally bright. Falcon thought back for a moment to when he was Josh’s age, when the world was normal, busy, buzzing and alive.
The moon back then wasn’t anywhere nearly as big or bright. Once in a while it would look huge in the sky, but it really wasn’t. Now, it was. It was always big. Instead of just a spot of white in the sky, it was like a planet that hovered nearby. At least that was how it looked. No one really was around to explain it, to explain if the moon was closer or if it was the change in the atmosphere causing an illusion.
Often Falcon commented about the ‘baby’ moon of the past.
Josh loved hearing tales of the past. Lilly was still too young to care about the story contents.
Falcon hated telling the tales, but did so for Josh because the boy asked constantly, every day, to hear the same stories. It frustrated Falcon. Life was better in the past; it was easier.
How do you tell a child he or she lives in a dying world? Falcon manipulated the stories, telling Josh it was better, when it wasn’t. One day when the child was older, Falcon would tell him the truth.
That is, if he lived.
Falcon was in his thirties, but he was considered old. An older body had a hard time tolerating the little food and the little bit of water, if there was any. The elderly, like children, were few and far between. They didn’t last.
If someone lived to see sixty they were granted preservation.
Or so Falcon heard.
There was only one preservation camp and it was out west. It was run by the western government. But again, it was only what Falcon had heard.
Supposedly it was a clean, cool, environment with water and food, where the elderly are taken care of but made to work. The work though wasn’t manual, it was memory based.
They wrote down history— everything they could remember about the past.
Journals composed for future generations to read.
If there were any future generations.
Falcon remembered a time when sixty wasn’t old. When people still worked at sixty and lived full lives, when children ran around, filling schools, playing in the streets and parks.
Parks.
Josh and Lilly would never know a park.
They’d never know a lot of things. They could see a television, a computer and a phone, but they didn’t work.
There was no power.
All of that had been gone since Josh was two years old and Lilly an infant.
Slowly, it went. It wasn’t as if it happened over night. It happened at the end of the Twenty Year War. Although the war was actually lasted twenty-four years, it was easier to call it the Twenty Year War.
It was a world war like no other before it.
Falcon fought fourteen of those years. In fact, he got the name ‘Falcon’ in the service. It wasn’t his real name. Falcon was given to him because he was quiet and quick.
He joined the military at sixteen and served as a soldier in one capacity or another until the war was declared officially over.
There were no winners in the war.
Everyone, everywhere, in every country… was a loser.
For the last two years of the war Falcon worked as a soldier in the ration centers of Kentucky three miles from his farm.
His wife’s farm, actually. One she inherited from her family.
It had its own well water. It was secure and it had survived the war.
Falcon always said it survived because his wife Stacy and her family were generous. The land was blessed by God because they shared and helped others.
When Stacy died in the new plague, Lilly was just born and Josh was only two. Falcon was called home to take care of his kids while still continuing to serve his country.
It was a good thing to be home at that point. Things had started to shut down and die.
But the war held on despite the lack of water and the natural obstacles. It kept going when the power diminished and gasoline was scarce.
It went on until there wasn’t a drop of gasoline to power a plane or tank.
Soldiers never made it home.
Of course, most American soldiers had never left their country.
America was the front lines.
Falcon thought about getting on one of the boats that headed east to Europe. Boats of hope they were called, because it was said that Europe still had power and water.
That they weren’t hit by the elements like America was.
But nobody knew for sure.
There was no way to communicate except by word of mouth.
Europe was Utopia.
Falcon didn’t know if he had enough to barter passage. Possibly he did, but did he want to waste it on a pipe dream?
It was one of the many things that stayed on his mind.
But for that moment, right there, that night, it was time to get back to his tasks. He had lingered in thought long enough by his children’s bed. Falcon had to get to work.