The Life Union

He stood for a moment staring at the sun, trying to remember a time when it’s rays could reach his flesh and warm it. Those memories were frozen now too, and he felt thawing them to be an impossible task he was unready for. The sun was just another frozen lake floating in the sky, taunting them with what it had once represented.

He walked down across the encampment and he began to feel his heart sink as he passed the masses of men, women, and children, huddling together for warmth, trying to create cauldrons of tepidness that they could bath in. They looked so gone, so numbed to the point of serenity, and not one of them held a look of joy or of life. They huddled out here because it was warmer in the sun during the day then it was in the Bunker, but at night they all still had to retreat down into the phantasmal abyss they called a sanctuary.

A woman’s cry took him from his own trance as he was reminded of Haley, but it was not Haley who cried out. He turned around to find another smaller mass of bodies huddled together. Somewhere admits them his eyes fell across a young woman, her face dirty and cracked like all the others. In her arms she cradled the still body of a small child, clutching him against her breast as she rocked back and forth. The sight was as saddening as any around the encampment, if not more so. It tore at the heartstrings and gave him little hope for any future.

Tyler could not look away. The sight was almost a repetition of sorts, something he’d seen more then any man should ever have to see, but something was different this time. As he stood there staring, the young woman’s eyes came up too meet his, cold and gray like the rest of the world. Her face was swollen and she had frozen rivers of tears down the sides of her cheeks. What great ocean those rivers came from Tyler could only imagine. What drain they emptied into at the end he couldn’t see. Her eyes pleaded with him to do something about the boy, but there was nothing he could do. He wanted more then anything to breathe his soul, breathe life into the form still clutched in her arms, but he couldn’t, he didn’t have those powers.

Her eyes were searching him now, looking at him like he was the one who had killed her child. There was anger in her now, she spat at him and sobbed some more. How Tyler wanted to throw himself to his knees and sob along side her, but he couldn’t, he hadn’t the will too.

As frightened animal would have, Tyler turned and ran. He bolted across the cold ground powdered with the gray frost that caused the soles of his boots to slip. He ran back towards the medic’s tent, back towards Haley. Suddenly he came to a stop. There standing before him was Reeves, the doctor, eyes down and that fraudulent frown he’d seen worn by so many doctors before.

INSIDE:

It was Max’s turn to sit one out. He stood leaning his back against the cool marble wall with an exhausted look on his face as he caught his breath. For the last hour he’d been dancing on and off and all he cared for now was a cool drink and a place to sit and relax.

He made his way through the groups of people, all dressed in fine clothes. The hall was a mass of dresses off all shapes, sizes, and colors dotted with the black tuxedoed escorts. The ballroom in The Complex was probably the most crowded place this night, as it was every night as all gathered for socialization. He reached the bar where his drink was already waiting.