Blackout

Tomorrow morning, my boss and Becks will be heading to Berkeley to deal with his crazy parents. Why? So they can get a map to lead them past the government barricades between here and Florida. Maybe. If my boss’s crazy parents don’t sell them out for the ratings boost. And once they get there, they’ll have to deal with government patrols, rampaging zombies, killer mosquitoes, and God knows what else, all of which are going to try to kill them. Why are they doing all this?

To get my sister safely back to me. I don’t know whether to be grateful to them for going, or ashamed of the fact that I’m genuinely glad it’s not going to be me out there. I’m even glad I’m not going to Seattle with Maggie, and I think I’m about halfway in love with her.

I guess I’m a coward after all.

—From The Kwong Way of Things, the blog of Alaric Kwong, July 23, 2041. Unpublished.

Let us, who are the lost ones, go and kneel before the dead;

Let us beg them for their mercy over all we left unsaid,

And as the sun sinks slowly, the horizon bleeding red,

Perhaps they’ll show us kindness,

Grant forgiveness for our blindness,

Perhaps they’ll show us how to find the roads we need to tread.

Let us, who are the lost ones, ask the fallen where to turn,

When it seems that all the world is lost, and we can only burn,

For in dying they have learned the things that we have yet to learn.

Perhaps they’ll see our yearning,

And may help us in returning

To the lands where we were innocent, that we have yet to earn…

—From The Lost Ones, originally posted in Dandelion Mine, the blog of Magdalene Grace Garcia, July 23, 2041. Unpublished.