Wanderer

• Riarna Kempnich, Grade 12
• Short Story
• 2018

Wind scattered the once settled dust of the town, making a path as it blew in and out of abandoned alleyways, rattling shattered windows and slamming doors of houses long abandoned.
It hadn't always been so desolate, but when an international alert had people running for the hills, towns were abandoned.
Governments from around the world had lured civilians into an ambush, claiming that they'd finally found a solution to the growing problem of over population. What they conveniently forgot to mention was it meant total annihilation for the majority of the human race. For those of us who had remained sceptical from the beginning, we had to watch in horror as the world broadcasted millions of lives being violently slaughtered.
From there, when people on the inside found out that they were the sacrifice they found ways to infiltrate the system, turn it back on the government.
I guess when you’re high on anger and betrayal, you don’t really care what happens when you react or the causalities that go with it. As long as it hits close to the original target, who cares about the little guys.
The lands left served as a reminder of what it had been through, nature destroyed from the nuclear blasts, soil no longer able to hold and grow food. Stores that held medical supplies were pretty much useless, and medicine was either out of date, unable to fight off simple viruses or they were turned into dangerous chemicals from the nuclear wave.
I scavenged the streets, moving further away from my home town and up the east coast of Australia. With nothing but the blind faith that my feet would take me where I needed to go.
Ten months. I had been wandering for almost a year since the disaster. I hadn't seen any other human, or been lucky enough to have a creature as company, they were usually my only source of food.
I remember passing by a cracked mirror a week ago, and the soul I saw staring back at me was something else. Skin dried, bruised or covered in cloth from old wounds.
Needless to say, the experience had me avoiding mirrors.
When I had risen with the sun, still unable to spot a single person in sight, I tried to push the disappointment away. Around lunch time, when I’d found an old packet of crinkled chips, I had the sense that I was being watched. Gripping the edge of my weapon I turned around and pointed the sharp edge at the intruders.
Shocked I stared at a girl and a boy, both dirty and bleeding but very much alive and healthier then I looked. “Where did you guys come from?”
“Mars.”
The boy snickered, the girl seemed set on the Mars thing. I couldn’t tell if any of it was real.
“Why are you following me?”
“We need your help.” The girl stepped forward.
Mind blank I stared into her desperate eyes and found myself jumping straight into the situation, something I never usually did.
“I don’t know what’s going on but I’ll help you.”
This time the boy stepped forward and then quickly scanned the room, “Good because they’ve found us and if we don’t get going now, the portal into the past will shut.”
Before I could point out the ridiculousness of that statement I was being pushed into a black hole, away from the lonely world and into the unknown.