Word Count: 383
He may have walked for miles, he wasn’t aware of time and the countryside looked the same everywhere. Gray, burnt, dead. He noticed an orchard, tree trunks rowed and columned, height level and broken. He sidetracked into it off the road. Stubbed tree branches forked black into the sky, as if their last act was to raise their arms in a plea.
On the ground he found a ball, picked it up, realized that it was a peach. It was fuzzy and gray. He rubbed it with his thumb and the slightest tinge of sunny yellow peeked through. It was soft to the pressure of his fingers. He wiped it on his shirt, found a place that looked clean, and bit into it.
It was juicy and sweet within its gray sock of wrinkled skin. He made himself eat it slowly, enjoying each luscious bite as a separate experience. The time his father brought home a bushel-basket full of peaches from his grandparents’ orchard. Helping his mother peel and cut them into slices for canning. Saving the pits and planting new trees in the spring. The dance where he met a girl who smelled like the thick rich scent of sweet peaches.
A droplet of juice ran down his chin and he rolled it back in with the back of his hand. Licked his hand so as not to lose any precious dribble of flavor. When it was finished he sucked on the pit, sucking the strands of peach fiber out until the pit was left clean. He stuck that in his pocket as if it were the key to the future, to hope.
He walked the rows, looking for more balls, more peaches. Then he went back and continued heading east on the road.
With each step he looked to see change, some green to the grass, some blue to the late morning sky. All was gray, shades of gray, then tones that began to take on some color as the sun weakly filtered through the air thick as clouds. It was a sign, after four days of silence, of death, of no living thing left whole, he took it as a sign that the disaster was walled within an area of his world, and that he was reaching its edges.
