HOW TO FADE AWAY COMPLETELY

Your eyes are perfect round discs of blue. Your blue eyes didn’t come from us, though. Brown has always run strong in our family, so they must have come from him. I will always find it impossible to understand that something so innocent and so full of joy and life could be born of such cruelty and hate. Blue suits you though, much more than brown ever would have.

We have been on the move for nearly a week now, traveling the abandoned roads and empty fields of old Wyoming. The years of wildfires and neglect have turned what once was open grass and farm land into arid tundra. There are a few green pockets left, but for the most part the landscape has been reduced to a dusty, barren scar. When the Hand of the Divine seized control of the western states they made sure little east of their new holy kingdom remained. Early reports estimated that nearly fifteen hundred miles of land had been scorched, stretching as far north as Montana and south as New Mexico.

They nicknamed it the Belt. A near uninhabitable no man’s land separating the Kingdom of New America from whatever remains of the free east.

At the checkpoint Dad slows the car to a stop. I’m in the backseat. My backpack is on the seat next to me. There’s a man outside who’s approaching Dad’s side of the car. Mum whispers something to Dad while shaking her head. Dad makes some motion with his right hand that stops her from talking. She wipes a damp sleeve across her eyes. Then Mum turns to put a hand on my knee. She smiles and there are tears hanging from the corners of her mouth. They’ve made her makeup run so that she looks like some insane clown and not my mother. I flinch away from her, the wrong thing to do. Mum hiccups as she tries to slow her breathing. ‘It’s going to be okay, sweetheart.’ She chokes on the words. I don’t know what to do so I just nod.

The man knocks on Dad’s window. His uniform looks military with long white robes on the outside that go almost to the ground. Dad’s window lowers. The man pushes his head inside the car to look at Mum and me. Mum’s shaking. His voice is polite and steady as he says, ‘Utah is now under the control of the Hand of the Divine of the Great Kingdom of New America. You are not permitted to leave at this time. Please turn your vehicle around, sir. Thank you.’

‘We’re just passing through. We don’t live in Utah, you see. We’re visiting from further out east,’ Dad lies. I know something wrong is happening but I don’t know what it is. Adults always think they’re protecting you when they keep information to themselves, but really they just make you feel more helpless and afraid.

The man steps away from the car, checks the front, then the back. ‘Where are your license plates, sir?’

‘Had them stolen a few nights ago. Damn kids.’ Dad forces a laugh. ‘Sir, please step outside the vehicle. We need to check your papers. Matthews! Come search the car! This won’t take a moment, sir.’

The look Dad gives me as he turns to unbuckle his seatbelt makes me feel queasy.

We reached the begging man safehouse almost two weeks ago. The contact there gave us the verbal heading for the next waypoint. Then the next. And the next. No one will tell me how long the Path is (perhaps no one truly

knows). It was never confirmed how far east the burning went. We call it a Belt, but who knows how wide that belt is?

Each waypoint on the Path seems to take us on an ever more winding route to supposed freedom. Sanctuary. An escape from the control of the Divine.

I look up at the stars. One nice thing about the end of the modern world is that all of the stars have come back. You’re sleeping right now. I take this time to rest. I lower myself gently and prop myself against a flat rock. I look at the sky. I look at nothing.

Sometimes I think I could just lay down and let the dirt take me in. I could close my eyes and slow my breath and just fade away completely into the earth. No one would miss me. It would be so easy. It would be so easy to just disappear. I’d return to the land. Dissolve to nothingness.

Then I look at you again. Your impossibly soft skin. Your chubby little arms and hands. You sneeze and it wakes you. I sigh. I remind myself again why I am doing this. Who I am doing it for.

Outside the military man has us all lined up with our backs against the car. I can see an orange glow in the sky above Mt Aire to the east.

The man called Matthews is going through the car, throwing bags on the ground. I thought Mum would be upset by this, but she just looks terrified.

‘Hey! Kid! Back against the car!’

I obey. The military man has his hand on a pistol. I can see now that as well as his white robes, he also has a crucifix printed on the front of his helmet.

The orange glow is getting stronger. ‘Hey Maz, I think I found something,’ Matthews says, coming over to show the robed soldier the small metal box in his hand. It’s the one from the shed. I hear Mum and Dad take a sharp breath in at the same time.

Maz takes the box, turns it over in his hand. ‘Looks like we have a couple of insurrectionists here. Load them up for the labour camps.’

As they’re marching us towards the truck I see the first row of flames roll over the mountainside.

I’ve begun telling you stories of what the world was like before you were born. Most of them are mine, but some are from Dad. When we were stationed in the first camp together he would sometimes lie face down on the bunk above me and whisper stories to me through the fabric mattress. I would dream the stories he told me.

I never learnt what was in the box and why it got us locked up in a labour camp. I didn’t dare ask Dad and I never got the chance to ask Mum after they split us up to take her to the breeding camps. The last time I saw her was the day you were born. The plan was to save both of you but I was too late. She was too old. I found her bleeding and bruised in the birthing room slumped across the bed. They’d used her up. There wasn’t enough time to save her too. I took you that night with the promise that your future would be different.

The sun’s set. Both heat and colour have been sapped from the earth. I make sure it is safe before I go to wake you. ‘The world never used to be this way,’ I whisper as I pick you up. ‘I promise the world used to be different.’

Words by Raphail Spartalis