THE LAST MAN: Part Twenty-five

“We’re leaving the city, fleeing up the coast,” says Alice Walker, as I warm myself at the fire. Her husband is tending to the wound on my neck. It is deep enough that he must stitch it closed. A curative tea numbs the pain enough as John Brown pinches the wound closed and works the needle through the torn flesh.

It was he who rallied my rescue. He was rummaging in the Archives when I burst in, chased by Section Twenty-one. I don’t thank him, as there is nothing to celebrate or be thankful in the deaths of others. It was only what had to be done. Now it remains to be seen what the Corporation will do. The exodus of the Low City has little to do with that particular act. The family, all of the clans are already or nearly prepared to leave.

Some have already begun to move. They are not the first. Hundreds have piled up on the beach, bottlenecked as these apparent refugees make their way along the narrow, debris strewn shore. They are deathly silent in that endeavor, the few words spoken to comfort children.

“Strange through all this,” I say soberly, “I count you as a dear friend.”

The tension of the moment was fully evident in John Brown’s face. His wife looked over at the remark, as she prepared for the journey. Unlike John, she could find no cause to smile. She hauled a heavy satchel onto her shoulders.

“Nothing some Associate knows for friends.”

“I know enough to feel indebted to you and your family, and to worry over your journey.”

“No worries,” he says. “Body’s needs to do what they needs to do, and these bodies needs to go.”

“Where will you go?”

Alice walker helped her mother to stand. She is pale and terribly weak. Though I do not notice, John confides she had a stroke the night before and has been thoroughly disoriented and confused. Fear she will not survive the journey but do not say so. Alice heaves bundle onto her back and shakes her head, straining under the weight of her burden. “We are eternal refugees, the forever pawns of war. We would we go when there is no place for us?”

“Do your time in this world good to come along,” John brown offers.

The offer was a tempting one, to remain among these good people. I could well imagine a place among them. I could well imagine a life in which color or difference or handicap was less point for disagreement as an opportunity for perspective. But I felt pulled to those ruins far out to see, though that fate was far less certain.

“You will forgive me?” I said, taking his hands in mine, clasping them tightly.

“Your ruins?” He replied.

“I must know.”

I watch them leave and take their place among hundreds pressing towards the shore. Many more remain, no doubt waiting until the others had moved on. I hardly knew them. I hardly knew anything of their lives and suffering. Their culture and way of life is so fundamentally different then mine. There can be no doubt my caring for these people. Our lives and fates were intertwined, and that was not a deliberate happenstance, at least not for any of us. No man is ever lone, except in his own heart. We were all tumbled madly in the whirlwind of life and fate, thrown together as random assemblages, tasked by burdens and pleasures with making the best of things as they come. As I turned away and started for the sewers I already missed them terribly.