The Last Scrap of Civilization

This is a work of fiction. No real people, places or events were used. Copyright ã 2011 Plot Roach.

The Last Scrap of Civilization

By Plot Roach


Tired, was all she could think. Tired and bored. She had been cleaning the house that they were in for four days straight. It was all she could do, given the circumstances. They had come from another city and decided to squat in this house when they ran out of fuel for the car. Her husband went out daily to check abandoned vehicles in the area for any gas he could siphon out of them, but they did not yet have enough to leave the city safely.

The first few days in this place were spent organizing their assets and seeing how many supplies that they had left. Her husband took their son on his scavenging trips, leaving her at home. She did her best to make lists of all their supplies, makes notes of what she wanted her husband and son to look for while they were out scouring the silent city, and generally tried to make the place more habitable, though all city utilities had long since ceased in this area.

Day after day a new challenge would present itself to her, and like a knight in shining armor she rose to face the beast, conquering it more often than not. She managed to dig a latrine, filling it in every four days and digging a new one when it was needed. She wandered over to the homes of their nonexistent neighbors to see if there were any supplies that she could find to supplement their own meager goods. She even managed to find some edible things in a garden or two that managed to survive on rainfall instead of the steady stream of water from sprinklers that had previously fed them.

They had food, water, basic necessities and emergency supplies. She worked on entertainment next, ravaging nearby homes for books, art supplies and board games. But most nights the boys did not feel up to anything more than eating their dinner and drifting off to sleep. If she thought her days had been lonely, her evenings made her feel like a hermit. And though she could hear the sounds of their breathing in the night, she longed for something more. Someone to trade stories with and share the events of the day. Something more than what her family could give her. But even if she could find other living souls among the silence of the city, would they like her enough to be her friend? This world had changed, and with it, some of the people. Before the Infection, before the government had evacuated most of the states on the west coast, people had been separated by prejudices of race, religious beliefs and lifestyle choice. Now you were either Pure or a Hybrid.

She remembered back the first screening process, when the world had no idea what was in store for its inhabitants. One little comet crashing to each had unleashed a mayhem of trouble. A strange new disease consumed the planet within weeks. Many were killed, not because they were bad or even ill, but because they were no longer considered “human”. She smiled at this folly, even as a tear rolled down her cheek. The major governments of the world had decided to isolate the Infected away from “normal” humans, placing them in internment camps. Those that would not go peacefully were killed on site, their aggressors claiming “self defense.” Her sister and their family had been moved to one of these camps. She had lost touch with them after the first week and feared the worst. When she tried to contact them, she and her family were threatened with jail time. So she let the matter drop, never knowing what had happened to them.

Then the next plague hit, killing off most of the Pure ones, those not infected by the comet’s disease. Those left behind hunted the Hybrids, blaming them for the deaths of loved ones. Soon the planet plunged into utter chaos, as Pure and Hybrid fought (even within the same family), leaving the world populated by those who hid until the battle was over.

They still met up with an occasional Pure one while they traveled on the road. But no one sought to kill them now, they just wanted to get away before they too could become infected. As if it could happen this late in the game, she thought. She pushed the thoughts of the past aside and polished the wood tables of their home as well as the wooden handrail of the staircase. She could not vacuum the floors, but swept them with and old straw broom. She cleaned what she could, it was all she had left of civilization to call her own. And it made her feel human again.

Then came the day when there was enough gas to make it to the next town, to search for more of their kind. She packed the car with her family's things and sighed as she left the house for the last time. She knew that they could not stay there any longer than they had. They were running out of resources, and there were only so many holes that she could dig for a latrine without running into the same mess she had just buried. Still, she was sad to lose their home, even if it had only been theirs for a few weeks.

The sunlight filtered through the maze of silent buildings and warmed her as she stood and waited for her husband to get the last of their supplies. She stretched her wings to catch as much of the light as possible to filter through her body. Though the feathers were the same dingy brown as her hair, she liked to think that she looked like an angel in the dawn of the new day. Too bad they can’t get me up off the ground, she thought. Then I wouldn’t have needed to travel in the car.

“Are you ready, Honey?” her husband asked. He lumbered toward her slowly and enveloped her in a hug with his massive front arms. It was quite literally a bear hug, as the half-man half-bear being slipped out of the embrace and took his seat behind the car’s steering wheel. He had to adjust the seat several times to sit comfortably. By then their son, a type of centaur cougar with a beaked face, crawled into the backseat, and purred contentedly as they drove away from their little patch of civilization in search of a new tomorrow.