The Saviour of the Dammed

The year is 2070. And I am Markus Coleman, the son of Ivy and Samuel Coleman. I am 17 years old and I was born behind the walls of our city Phirron, it’s a dump.

The sand from behind the walls gets blown into our streets making sand piles against the scrap built buildings that never get taken care of. Every house and tower are so compact together that even the most thinnest person you can think of can barely get through the gap without grazing their shoulders. Our population is below 100, with people dying left, right and center. The only two properly built buildings that aren’t looking like they are decaying are the president's own house and the city hall; if you count the wall as a building then that too. You're probably wondering why we haven't left this hell hole, we can’t. The school I went to, before it’s structure was too compromised, said that our nation went to war with another and they dropped what they called ‘nuclear bombs’ on other cities making the whole world go into a nuclear winter. When they came out of it there was sand everywhere; no water, plants or anything that a human could use to survive and I assume that’s the same for the whole world. For all I know about, we could be the last humans alive.

The survivors, we call them elders, told us stories. Like: “The sun didn’t shine for 10 months. Every plant perished and the human race nearly followed on after.” Or: “When we came out of the nuclear winter the Earth’s stratosphere (whatever that is) was so damaged that the sun’s rays heated the Earth too quickly that it evaporated the seas (I have no idea what they are) and burned every plant in sight turning them into dust.”

But to me my favorite story is the one from my grandmother who was told this story from her mother who lived before they dropped the bombs, “ The skies were a stunning light blue, not this pale red. Fluffy wisps of white floated slowly across the sky; they called them clouds, nowadays there is barely anything floating in the sky. The seas were vast and blue, with animals bigger than our biggest building (23 meters). The ground had a green carpet of grass with white patches of daisies, and tall trees with trunks a dark brown and leaves a deep green. The air was not too hot like it is now, nor too cold. Not even suffocating like today. The sun wasn’t raging orange, but a pale yellow.”

You might be wondering how we survive if the food and water sources have all vanished. Well, it's simple; the radiation from the bombs effected the human body, killing nearly all of them. But very rarely someone survives the ‘illness’ and the radiation has broken and reformed their cells so much that it has gifted them with superhuman abilities like the ability to summon and hold fire in the palm of your hand and wield it however you want it to be (we call them Rhys), or something similar but with wind (Auras), water (Nixies), telekinesis (Adrias), Necromancy (Mortis) and creating anything the person wishes (Daifas), all people who have a power are sent to the city hall to be used to help the city live. Most of their powers though are serviced to the corrupted president and the rest of Phirron is left to waste. Every person in every household, at the start of every week, is given their rations that are supposed to last them until the end of it by a presidential guard. Unless it’s the president's birthday or coming into power anniversary then we mainly get three loaves of bread per person, seven cups of water one for every day, half block of cheese to put on the bread, seven packets of oats to use for porridge, a half pint of milk for the porridge, sometimes a tiny packet of honey just for the porridge, and a eighteen liter jug used for cleaning the house the best you can,yourself and family (this is refilled every month) and to keep the human blood sugars up a non meltable chocolate that tastes like something died in it. Every night, I look up at the moon and wonder what it must of been like for the people who lived 47 years ago. With the blue sky, the wisps of white, animals of all shapes and sizes. I wanted to see it in person, even if they're all dead. I would do anything to see the beauty of the planet just once.