journal.entry:33

The cold air that climbs over the jagged teeth of the broken window brushes my cheek and continues on. It reminds me just how lonely I am. Even with these few stragglers that have joined me, I am still the only one alive. They hold hope. Hope because of me. They think that means they still have life. But as soon as you lose hope in yourself you're already dead. Or at least useless to the world and those around you. These people are useless to me; weight, that causes my footing to slip when the path is steep. How do you tell a ghost to leave you be?

Breathing ghosts surround me. Heavy breath and heaving chests of dead bodies sleeping on this concrete bed. We're sheltered for the night in what used to be a textile factory. The cold air helps everyone sleep, helps slow down the blood in their veins for a few hours. But these people don’t need sleep. They need the unforgiving embrace of the reaper.

I am still alive because I have hope. Not because I am particularly optimistic. I never have been, not even before The Dawn. I have hope because I have no other choice. I keep walking, every day, on gravel roads and through slogging fields, with shoes that fill with stones and muck, because a solitary thought owns my entire being - I don’t know if my son is still alive and I have to find out. I have to find him and know for sure, either way. I can not stop walking until I've discovered the glowing relief or wrenching pain of the truth. I'm not allowed. Drive and ambition were never my strengths but now I feel as if, in another world, I could have been something great. My feet are sore and my back aches and I keep walking because if my son is alive he most likely is alone and that thought tortures worse than the idea of his death. Death has finality, it has resolve. Death is a goodnight kiss in the growing light of an atomic blast. If my son is dead, at least I will be able to rest. That time will not come until I'm certain.

So with my head on my pack, and the cold air on my face, I lay back to try to buy some time away from this hell. From one hell to another. The hell of nightmares in which the world is back to the way it was. Those dreams are no reprieve for the mind of a man that has to accept the living hell of the fallen day. I have to keep my eyes on the road. The road that leads to the place where, whether nightmare or dream or beauty of hope’s promise kept, I will find the boy that is the gravity pulling my shuffling feet on.