When he awoke, a tangible snow fell around him, cold and slow, yet he was not drenched. Lifting himself up, he examined the light drizzle on his charcoal-coloured sweater and dark jeans, his torn, fingerless wool gloves and his limp black scarf, and finally his sooty, tattered green converse shoes contacting the freeway beneath him. As he stood, his eyes traced the broken rubber tires and rusted-out bodies of cars and trucks along the freeway; past them, in the distance, he could make out the shadows of a blown-out city against a steely backdrop of mist and darkness. He turned to his immediate left, whereupon he saw a tepid field, sandy, with hills of glass and scrap metal interspersed among outcroppings of gray, plant-like weeds. On his right, the choppy waves of the ocean; a brown-and-green soup of garbage and corpses--of fish and humans alike. The shoreline lay bare save for the numerous skeletal remains strewn about it. Behind him, the end of the freeway, the crumbled concrete snake fallen into the scorched and barren land leading out of the city.
His intuition led him to believe that, as this entrance of the city led to nothing, the residential district--and, therefore, survival--lay beyond the broken economic heart. His intuition did not, however, allow for existential thought beyond survival.
His first steps felt like those following birth--weak and uncontrolled. Unfamiliarity with the controls and surroundings resulted in his stumbling several times. He managed to catch himself each time, though, preventing his premature death upon one of the many serrated steel shards separating the past from the present. Once he constructed an accurate representation of the process of taking even, natural steps, he continued down the freeway for some time.
Burnt out hovels on high-rise buildings by the freeway told him that, what had once been a major population center, was all but empty now. Though he could hear none of the occupants, visions in his peripheral relatively assuaged his fears that he was alone--although the nature of his neighbors remained hidden in shadow and suspicion. Broken billboards bribing barbiturate-dependent felons lay either in single pieces upon buildings, or in several along the freeway, crushing cars and trucks in several locations. Light posts with shattered bulbs bent where they could withstand forces, while other steel rods were sheared in half, reflecting exposed rebar along the gentle descending concrete slope.
His intuition led him to believe that, as this entrance of the city led to nothing, the residential district--and, therefore, survival--lay beyond the broken economic heart. His intuition did not, however, allow for existential thought beyond survival.
His first steps felt like those following birth--weak and uncontrolled. Unfamiliarity with the controls and surroundings resulted in his stumbling several times. He managed to catch himself each time, though, preventing his premature death upon one of the many serrated steel shards separating the past from the present. Once he constructed an accurate representation of the process of taking even, natural steps, he continued down the freeway for some time.
Burnt out hovels on high-rise buildings by the freeway told him that, what had once been a major population center, was all but empty now. Though he could hear none of the occupants, visions in his peripheral relatively assuaged his fears that he was alone--although the nature of his neighbors remained hidden in shadow and suspicion. Broken billboards bribing barbiturate-dependent felons lay either in single pieces upon buildings, or in several along the freeway, crushing cars and trucks in several locations. Light posts with shattered bulbs bent where they could withstand forces, while other steel rods were sheared in half, reflecting exposed rebar along the gentle descending concrete slope.
