America's Sunset: A Post Apocalyptic Fight for Survival by Norman Christof

Author:Norman Christof
Language: eng
Format: azw3, epub
Tags: Science Fiction, Post-Apocalyptic, Dystopian, Science Fiction & Fantasy
Published: 2016-07-21T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter 26 ~ Others

Harish needed to get out on his own for a while. The abandoned home he and Ahmed shared on the outskirts of town near the old factories was closing in on Harish. It smelled of rot and decay, and vermin. Most of all, it smelled of Ahmed’s enthusiasm for the days ahead. Harish had a hard time reconciling his feelings for his brother. On one hand, he thought about what Ahmed had said about their mother. How she had called him her Little King. He stopped thinking about her years ago … somewhere around the third or fourth foster home. He couldn’t quite remember which. Now he longed to know more about his forgotten childhood, where he came from. It’s remarkable what kind of protection the mind is capable of. How it can help you survive by blocking out the bad and only remembering the good. If that was the case, then why couldn’t he remember his mother? Was he too young? Ahmed seemed to have no trouble remembering stories from their youth. Assuming of course they were true. Harish wanted to believe, but he couldn’t be sure.

He walked down deserted, dimly lit streets. The factories were so old and neglected, it was hard to tell their original use. The only signs they displayed read No Trespassing, but the locked gates were all broken and swung freely in the evening breeze. Ahmed said they were a portent for the nation. Once mighty and productive, making things and promising a better future; now they stood on the threshold of collapse. Much like the old cotton mill destroyed by the water tower. Ahmed talked of that collateral damage as if it were divine intervention. As he walked towards the center of town, he could just imagine how it must look. Worse than the factories he walked by now. A thriving city would take months or years to recover from the destruction of the day. For a severely crippled town like Big Springs it may very well be a death knell.

Harish didn’t have good memories of his own schooling. He was always different, and always the new kid. His peers had all the reasons they needed to take out their own problems on him. Or just ignore him entirely; even worse. At first being ignored seemed an improvement. There were days when he was invisible, a shadow in the hall. Then, he found the other outcasts. The kids who for whatever reason didn’t fit into the mainstream. Mostly because they couldn’t speak English very well, or their skin was a different color, or they got busted one too many times for something petty. As he got to know them, he realized that the scary stories about them were over-hyped gossip. They’d been exaggerated over the years to the point of myth. The outcasts didn’t care, at least it kept the bullies away. Harish fit right in, and they taught him to be street tough. Not in the violent sense—regardless of what the gossip said—but in that they knew who to avoid and who to confront.

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