"Forgive us..."
I don't expect a response. I gave up on that long ago. But I continue to pray daily. I know the Creator exists, and He hears me. There is no way we could have destroyed Him.
I bring the stone into my shelter and set it beside the mattress. I keep my eyes on it as I remove my face shield and pull off my suit. I have no idea how the stone came to be where I found it, but I'm too weary to wonder anymore. My eyelids sink heavily and I exhale, falling back onto my bed. My arms stretch out to my sides as sleep draws me into its abysmal depths. I couldn't resist even if I wanted to…
In my dream, I run toward the mountains as fast as I can, but I move so slowly it seems I'm not moving at all. In the distance, so far away yet so vivid, I see the women of Sector 50, their waving locks of hair taken by the breeze that whisks across their lithe, naked bodies. I try to warn them. I try to scream, but my voice emerges in hoarse gasps. I can't get to them in time. Horror overwhelms me as the sun scorches and blisters their perfect skin. They reach out in desperation, shrieking silently. The breeze becomes a wild torrent of wind that blasts through them, scattering ash into a thick cloud that engulfs me, suffocating me. I reach for my throat as I cough. My fingernails become an eagle's talons that sink into my flesh.
I scream.
"Luther?" Plato kneels at my side, his face red, glistening with sweat.
Where am I?
His strong hands grip me by the shoulders.
"Nightmare?"
I look him in the eye as reality reclaims my senses. I nod and wipe beads of perspiration from my brow.
"No wonder. Hot as hell in here." He runs a forearm across his own brow and sniffs as he looks around my shelter. "We didn't plan for this."
I take a deep breath to steady myself. Did I scream loud enough to wake the men? Or was that only in my dream?
"We couldn't have known." The suits have kept us cool during the heat of the day. This is our first without them. Mine lies folded beside my mattress. "We may need to wear them while we sleep."
Plato nods. "I'll tell the men." He reaches for my suit, and as he turns, I see the skin on his back is sun-burned.
"Where's yours?"
"Here—put this on. You'll sleep better."
I pull it on. "You're burned, my friend." I look him squarely in the eye.
"You were screaming." He shrugs to explain his recklessness. "Do you remember anything from your nightmare?"
Of course I do. It was terrifying.
"No." I stand and zip up the front of my jumpsuit. "I'll get yours. You've been burned enough for one day." I stop before I lift the tarp. "It was foolish of you to risk your skin like that. Don't do it again." I snap my face shield shut.
"I hope I won't have to," he says.
The images from my nightmare remain clear in my mind's eye as I step outside and move toward Plato's shelter. I glance at the mountains. According to the maps we printed off the bunker database before our computers lost power, the Sector 50 bunker was built in the foothills. It was there that our female counterparts were held during the nuclear winter. We were told that after All-Clear, we would be united with them.
Unlike other sectors whose members were sterilized prior to D-Day, we and the women had one over-riding purpose: repopulation. It was why we were selected, the only reason we're here now while everyone else in our sectors died that fateful day, twenty years ago. The government scientists knew we would be needed when the time came to recover from their world's mistakes.
But without the women, my brothers and I are only half the solution.
I can't shake the feeling that the women—wherever they are—may be in danger. Thanks to that nightmare, of course. I should deride myself for being so easily influenced by subconscious fears. But it was so real. I saw their faces, every detail. Vulnerable and exposed, standing on that ridge—a hundred or more of them.
We were never told how many had been assigned to the Sector 50 bunker. Samson has his theories. A man with only one thing on his mind, he says it was common knowledge that the population of each female enclave was triple that of its male counterpart. For the purpose of our species' continuation, there would be a greater probability of successful births that way. The government scientists had it all figured out, he says.
But I have my doubts. The Creator was not consulted by the United World government as they carefully planned our future, even as they destroyed our past. It would serve them right—and us—if we were unable to conceive a single child in this post-apocalyptic nightmare of a world.
Something catches my eye as I reach Plato's shelter. A dust spiral rises from the earth just beyond our village, perhaps thirty meters out. Odd—there's no wind blowing against me. The dust devil whirls and builds upward, sucking ash into its center and expanding ever outward like a miniature tornado. I can't shake my gaze from it.
Plato has to see this.
I rush into his shelter and grope blindly, stumbling across his jumpsuit beside the mattress as my eyes adjust to the dim light. I roll up the suit and tuck it under my arm, heading back outside to see—
Nothing.
The dust lies still on the baked earth as if it had never moved at all.
I take a deep
