The Last Man: Part Six

There was no telling for sure just how long I had been out that second time. When I awoke the pain had subsided, only to be replaced by hunger and thirst. My throat burned and I felt terribly weak. Furthermore I was drenched in sweat from lingering chills that ravaged me in unconsciousness. The girl was standing over me. I managed a smile before she ran to fetch her father. Even the simple act of smiling was almost too much.

John Brown returned a moment later. He placed a hand on my chest to prevent me from getting up, which doubtless took him very little effort. His manner was courteous and sympathetic. He took the rag from beneath my head and gently wiped my forehead and cheeks. I held his wrist as he drew away. Never had I known such tenderness, and I was not prepared to let it go too soon.

“Afraid that clomp did a bad one for you,” he said, pulling me up to a sitting position. “Best sit tight until the life comes back to you.”

I nodded, far too frail for much else. I could manage but a single word.

“Water,” I said hoarsely.

“Go fetch some drinking water,” he motioned to the child.

She was back in an instant with a small pale blue plastic dish, the kind assigned to Associates for drinking. It was chipped at the rim in several spots and smudged with black charcoal fingerprints. She held it too my lips. I cradled it with her small hands and gulped down the coldest water I had ever tasted. Much of it ran down my beard and down my neck to stain my shirt.

“Thirsty, eh?” John Brown chuckled.

“How long was I out?”

“Long time,” he said. I could see that it had worried him somewhat.

John Brown helped me to sit. The pain had retreated to the sizeable lump at the back of my skull. Not that it would remain content there. It was an ember that was all but exhausted, awaiting the kindling of my exhaustion to erupt in a new conflagration.

“A little weak,” I said fighting the swelling in my throat. I took another sip of water,

John brown slipped an arm around my waist and helped me to stand. “Feel something better when you get some sustenance down your tube.”

My legs were fools, refusing any command or memory that the rightful place for a man is one two feet- or in the grave. It was strange to be held strongly by my assailant and savior. As I held tight to his waist the former seemed the remotest possibility. He half carried me through the door and down a short passage to a wide chamber that opened to the sea.

The ceiling here was much higher, yet low enough that if I stretched enough I could certainly have touched the soot-stained concrete. It was much higher nearer to the sea, extending part way out over the littered shoreline. The place was swathed in a sort of permanent twilight. The floor gave way to a pebbled beach. The air was filled with a mixture of the sea, struggling humanity and wood smoke.

An amber sun sat low, peaking to one side of the chamber. Suspended in a copper sky, the fattened disk threw shadows from hundreds of great supports that held the city. It took some time before my eyes adjusted enough to notice clusters of people and small shelters behind each support. The shelters were small and primitive and hasty, as if they might be torn down at a moment’s notice and moved quickly. As for the people, I could tell nothing of them except that there were hundreds or perhaps thousands. For the moment they were shapes and demons, as unconcerned of me as I was curious of them. I knew nothing of their lives or their existence, and therefore, in that ignorance, they were nothing (and perhaps even an enemy).

For the moment I was more enthralled with the sea. In this light it appeared as dull bronze. Long slow lazy waves pressed steadily towards shore. There was a great expanse of refuse and detritus that formed something of a barrier between the sea and the shore. Further out it rose and fell with the incoming waves. Along the beach it surged and retreated with a crackling, chattering sound. Choked within this mass the hull of a ship rotted and rusted silently.

I was finding my feet more easily now. Not well, but better. Still I braced against a support. Steadier now, I drew away from John Brown and his daughter and went down to the shore. Above me the city appeared as a great towering wall, like pictures I had seen of glaciers preparing to calve into the sea.

For a time I could only stare, awestruck. Oh, the hours and days and years I had stared from my window at the sea. This was a moment I wished to bask in as long as I could. John came up behind me. I spoke without taking my eyes off the incredible expanse before me. The sun played like topaz jewels upon the waves.

“Never been this close to the sea before,” I gasped. I glanced back at John brown. He smiled warmly at the comment. “I’ve only seen it from high above.”

I found a solemn eternal power to the sea. The concept of god had been dismissed and discredited a thousand years earlier. Those myriad references in ancient texts were merely romantic and curious notions to me, just as the Egyptian or Greek Gods must have seemed to Twentieth or Twenty-first century men. But owing to the seas’ absolute authority, and the primordial intimacy it seduced in me, I could hardly discount the possibility of god. Something of the sea touched deeper than Sentinel or the Corporation could ever aspire to.

I moved closer to the water’s edge. I could stand better on my own now, finding strength as I drew in the sea with deep long breaths. The ruins, far out to sea, seemed so much closer. They were a destination far more attainable than I had previously entertained. I imagined falling into the sea and floating there. Invariably the waves would draw me to the crumbling towers. Black and brown hands would reach out and bring me safely and surely into their embrace.

“Do you know anything of those ruins?” I asked John Brown. The girl hugged his side. Her eyes were far away and sleepy. None of this interested her much, that much was certain.

“Afraid not.”


“Does anyone know? Has anyone been there?” I almost felt my eagerness and curiosity running away with me, a natural response at being so close to them.

“Maybe there is one who knows, but I don’t…”

“Who? I must know. Please.”

“A member of the Jurga,” he replied grudgingly. “Best to let some things be alone.”

“Can I go there?”

“Maybe this idea not so good one.”

“I beg you.””

“Papa,” said the girl sympathetically, “my belly wants food.”

He lovingly stoked her cheek and motioned for me to follow. I could see better now, as we climbed back up the beach. I could see better, and not just with my eyes. John Brown led me in a lazy sort of way through that community of shadows, past ramshackle huts and small groups gathered around smoldering fires. I paused and looked back at the distant ruins, my heart bursting from my chest and rushing out across those bronze seas and knew I must find a way.