Bright Horizons

Another twisting tale of fiction brought to you from the warped minds of Otin and Brian. This is part 2 of a 2 part story. If you have not read part 1, please go here.

Dead air still makes a sound...

Silence screams from the black eye of the television in front of me, the same empty silence that leaks from our phones, computers, nearly all the communication we had come to depend on prior to the event. Nothing worked afterward. Cars sit by the side of the road, slowly succumbing to rust to be blown on the wind, few dare to walk among them out of fear for their lives.

Memories of my eldest boy drip down my tired cheeks, he can't be dead...

Nomads fleeing across the country in search of food or shelter carry news of a smooth walled miles -long crater where Washington, DC once stood. We don't allow them to stick around long, only offering scant food, lest they turn on us, taking what little remains of the meager garden we were able to grow this last year.

Five years, three months, fifteen days...and I still leave the television on, fearing if I turn it off will signal the end of my hope...

Tight weave upholstery gnaws my backside, nerve endings becoming comfortably numb in my sitting, waiting...until a bright light blossoms, spreading across the television showing the face of a gaunt man, I might once have known...

Greetings, this is Paul Maloney, former President of the United States. Over five years ago, all world leaders and their respective capitals were torn from the very Earth, and transported to a patchwork planet made up of that which had been taken. We were given one directive, 'when there is only one, you will be returned.' Today 198 of us return, out of the nearly one million people...our folly was great in thinking the only way to accomplish that goal was through aggression. Too late we learned it could be achieved by coming together. Today marks a bold new direction in World history...

How do you think they will feel when they find the depths of depravity and degradation the world they left behind has sunk to?, sneers a voice from the door frame, spoiling the room with sour tobacco breath.

There is always hope, my mind clings by fingertips to the notion my boy is still alive and the world can be different.

Says the man duct taped to his recliner...to the man about to take his very life. We have loaded up all the food we could find and will be on our way soon.

Where is my family?

Your wife is coming with us, your boy was no longer needed...just like you, he smiles, bringing his gun level to my face, the abyss of the barrel sucking my will to continue...

BLAM!
__________

Somewhere west of the Blue Ridge mountains, a television drones deep into the night...

...World Congress allocated undisclosed funds for the War for Peace...world leaders vowed to eradicate all opposition, chasing them to the ends of the earth...in other news, the New York Yankees opened the gates today for the first baseball season in nearly six years...

Dad, when we returned...when I found those men here...it was never supposed to turn out this way. We had such hope for peace. I thought it would be so different after what we went through...

I know Tom, patting his hand, my eyes trace across the front yard, passed the white markers where my wife and youngest son are buried, to the mountains beyond, but there is always hope...somewhere just over the horizon.