Terra Damnata

"Hello, friend," Wesley Kerr spoke to the moon above, a pockmarked fat circle haloed in blurry mist. "Thought I might sit out here tonight, hold palaver with you while I eat these few remaining rations."

He produced a flattened candy bar, still in its wrapper, from his parka's inner breast pocket. A small carton of chocolate milk was placed between legs akimbo. With numb fingers he opened the carton first then the candy bar wrapper, placing the cracked chocolate oblong widthwise over the carton's gaping mouth before saying a prayer to his deaf-mute god. His lips moved spasmodically, near imperceptibly, like those of a man speaking in dreams, and to an observer only the crisp, sputtering whiteness of his breath revealed any effort at sonorousness.

That futile task completed, he reduced the candy bar by half in a single bite. He gulped down the chocolate milk and prodded his molars for remaining bits of peanut and nougat with his tongue. His appetite ambivalent, he tossed the rest of the candy bar aside, where it landed on the pavement like a skipping stone on a frozen lake.

"Know I'm gonna do it," he said to the bleached satellite. "Knew it for a long time. Fixing up the courage used to be the obstacle. 'Courage' isn't the right word, I guess, 'cowardice' is more like it, but from where I sit both are pretty near the same."

"S'funny, actually. When I was a kid I used to imagine living in a world all by myself, one where I could go to the mall and take any damn toy from Toys 'R' Us I pleased. Such a shame that when fantasy became reality I wasn't interested in toys no more. I suppose that's what they call irony."

The moon is patient in the sky, listening to Wesley Kerr's sermon.

"I read Robinson Crusoe when I was in grade school. Jack London's 'To Build a Fire' when I was in my senior year. Fantastic fucking stories of survival, they are, even if the guy in 'To Build a Fire' dies eventually, though not by lack of trying. That knowledge didn't help a lick when all the power went out and the water got poisoned, however. Wish someone woulda wrote a manual about how to survive this mess is what I'm saying. Wish somebody woulda told me I might someday be Robert Neville without the vampires. Probably other folk out there like me, but I ain't care to look more, done my share of scouting. I'm just a ghost haunting gas stations and convenience stores for water, vittles, and the occasional smut mag is what I am nowadays."

A bird chirps in the woods behind like a loose plucked guitar string.

"Times are hard, sure. The hardest. But it's not all bad. Today I drove a motorboat! Never imagined I'd do that. Never imagined I'd do a lot of things I've done these past two weeks."

"But I gotta tell you, there's not too much fight left in Reggie Kerr's son, no there isn't. My tank is empty, I reckon and acknowledge. Pretty soon I'm going to be the same as these ballooned dummies I see all over, and that's when the horror will stop. Hopefully. I have no business fighting the inevitable any longer. It's not in my DNA. Were I the protagonist in a Tom Clancy book or the leading man in a Hollywood movie I might have the gumption to recreate the world, but I'm not and I can't. I can't even keep myself from sneaking sips of whiskey when I wake up in the middle of the night, cold and desperate. No, what I have planned is easy, fast, and painless, like a trip to the dentist, or so they say..."

The mid-December chill blanketed Wesley Kerr in an arthritic hold. He coughed and shivered. His sneaker-clad feet felt like appendages a world away. He tried wriggling his toes and wasn't surprised by their lack of feedback. His fingers were mostly unresponsive. The Walther in his parka glowed. It's not so hard to pull a gun trigger, even for a man with frost bite. The easiest thing in the world, in fact. That in mind, Wesley closed his eyes and waited for nature or instinct to make its move.

He fell into a hypothermic sleep before either could.

---

"Wake up," a bloated man says.

It's morning and the sky is gray and Wesley is still alive, barely.

"I said wake up," and the man kicks him.

Eyes crusted by sleep or pall of death, Roger Kerr's grandson opens his to a chubby monolith of hope. Here is a man, here is a savior.

"Get up and let's go," the man says. He fishes a crooked cigarette from his jeans pocket and lights it with a gold Zippo.

"Are you real?" Wesley asks, nonplussed.

"I'd ask you the same thing if I didn't already know better."

"Do you have a name?"

"Sure do. Blake Blevin. Now get in the car. But before you do, please take off that stupid hat."