What Was Left

He woke on cold ground.

That was the first thing. The cold. It came up through his back and into his bones as if the earth itself were unfinished and still deciding whether to keep him. He lay still. Not from caution. From not knowing what stillness was for.

The sky above him was the color of old ash. No sun. No clouds. Just a dull light without direction, like a room with no windows and a bulb left on too long. He did not know where he was. He did not know who he was. The thought did not arrive with panic. It arrived like weather.

He sat up.

The ground was blackened dirt mixed with something brittle that cracked when he moved. Leaves maybe. Or the remains of leaves. He pressed his palm into it and pulled his hand back. Gray dust clung to his skin. He studied it like it belonged to someone else.

He tried to remember his name.

Nothing came.

He tried to remember a face. A sound. A word.

Nothing came.

He stood slowly. His body knew how to do that. Muscles worked. Balance held. There was a sense of having done this before many times, even if he could not remember why. He looked down at himself. He wore a coat that was too large and torn at the hem. Boots with cracked leather. Pants stiff with dirt. Everything smelled of smoke that had settled long ago and never left.

He checked his pockets. Habit without memory. In one pocket he found a small knife. The blade dull but clean. In another, a scrap of cloth folded neatly. He unfolded it. There was nothing written on it. Just cloth. He folded it again and put it back.

Around him stretched a road.

It ran straight in both directions. Asphalt broken into plates. Grass dead in the cracks. He stood in the middle of it and turned slowly, scanning the horizon. Nothing moved. No birds. No wind. The silence was not peaceful. It was empty, like a house after everyone has died but the echo still waits.

He chose a direction at random and began to walk.

Each step felt agreed upon by his body, as if it knew the rules even if he did not. His mind remained blank. Not foggy. Blank. Like a room cleared of furniture and swept clean. He wondered if something terrible had happened or if this was how he had always been and only now noticed.

After some time the road bent slightly and revealed a shape ahead. A building. Low and long. The roof sagged inward. Windows blown out. He approached carefully. The knife in his pocket made itself known, a weight he could feel.

Inside the building it smelled worse. Rot and mold and something sour underneath. Shelves lay toppled. Cans scattered and rusted. A store. The word came without explanation. He accepted it.

He moved through the aisles slowly. His boots made a sound he did not like. He found a can that had not burst. He turned it over. The label was faded but still showed the shape of a bean. He did not know the word for it but his stomach tightened. Hunger arrived without memory too.

He found a rock and used it to break the can open. He ate with his fingers. Cold and metallic. It did not matter. When he finished he licked his hands clean and wiped them on his pants.

In the back of the store he found a mirror.

He stood before it a long time.

The man looking back at him was older than he expected. Face lean. Beard gray and uneven. Eyes dark and sunken but alert. There was a scar along the left cheek. He touched it and the man in the mirror did the same.

He waited for recognition.

It did not come.

He left the store with the can in his pocket. Outside the light had dimmed further. Or maybe his eyes were changing. He could not tell. He returned to the road and kept walking.

As night came the cold sharpened. He found a culvert beneath the road and crawled inside. It smelled of damp earth and rust. He wrapped himself in his coat and slept.

He dreamed.

Not of people or places. He dreamed of fire. Endless fire. Cities collapsing inward like burned paper. He dreamed of voices calling out numbers. He woke sweating and afraid, though he did not know why numbers should matter.

Days passed. Or something like days. He walked when there was light and slept when there was dark. He scavenged what he could. Once he found a cart overturned in a ditch with bones nearby. Human bones. Cleaned by time. He did not look long.

He began to understand the world by what was missing.

No animals. No insects. No growing things. The trees stood stripped and gray like skeletons waiting for burial. The air tasted wrong. Thin and bitter.

He came upon a house one afternoon. Small. Wood siding peeled away. A child’s bicycle lay in the yard, its frame bent. He stood there a long time before entering.

Inside the house were signs of sudden leaving. Plates still on the table. A chair knocked over. On the wall hung a photograph.

He picked it up.

It showed a man and a woman and a child standing in front of the same house. The man looked like him. Younger. Whole. The recognition struck like a blow.

His hands shook.

The woman’s face stirred something painful and distant. The child’s face did worse. He felt the weight of a name pressing against the inside of his skull, trying to be born. It did not make it.

He set the photograph down carefully.

In a bedroom he found a notebook. Most of the pages were blank. Near the end there was writing. The letters shaky.

If anyone finds this. We tried to stay. We tried to be good. We could not keep the air out. We could not keep the sickness out. I do not know how long this will last. If you are reading this and you are alone. You are not the worst of us. Remember that.

He closed the notebook.

Outside the house he sat on the steps until dark. The weight in his chest did not lift. It did not need memory to hurt.

He continued on.

One morning he found another person.

A figure ahead on the road. Thin. Wrapped in rags. He stopped walking. The figure stopped too. They stood facing each other across the broken pavement.

The other man raised his hands slowly. The gesture was old and universal. He mirrored it.

They approached each other cautiously.

The other man’s face was younger. Eyes wild. He held a length of pipe in his hand.

I don’t want trouble, the man said.

The sound of a human voice nearly broke him. He nodded.

What happened? he asked.

The man laughed. A short ugly sound. Happened? It ended. That’s what happened.

Do you remember before? he asked.

The man studied him. Some of it. Enough to know it was worse than now.

They shared a small fire that night, built from broken furniture. The man spoke little. Said his name was gone. Said he walked south because it felt right. In the morning he was gone.

The road continued.

He did not know where it led. He did not know if anything waited at the end. But he walked it anyway.

He carried the knife. He carried the scrap of cloth. He carried the knowledge that he had been someone once and that someone had loved and been loved. That was enough.

The world was broken. Memory was broken. But his feet still moved forward.

And for now, that was all that mattered.