The High Place

[yarri]

Dedicated to my friends on 2 North: “As per your group request none of you were left behind in the med room. I made the float nurse do it.”

Prologue part one: “What doesn’t kill us makes us stronger” Friedrich Nictzshe

I felt nervous turning the dials and flipping switches. The ham radio had taken a month to build and longer to figure out a way to power it. I’d read and re-read the manual.” How hard could this be? I cut open people and rearranged their spinal columns for a living.” I thought

“Fuck it” my voice cut the silence in the room as I flipped the on switch and the radio came to life. The buzz of electricity coursed through the small box and green lights appeared on the front of it. I breathed a sigh of relief. I had only one shot to get this right. A second attempt to get parts from the Radio Shack at the mall was most likely going to be fatal. Most trips out of the high place had the potential to be fatal anymore.

“Ok, green lights are good right?” I asked turning to look at my only companion. My companion lay across the table where I was working. I sunk my hand into the thick grey fur on his belly. The geriatric hugely obese feline didn’t even twitch as I petted him. I lifted a paw and dropped it. He was limp asleep.

“Lazy bastard, I can’t even get an eye open for my success?” The old cat had saved my sanity in the beginning but now I’d been alone without seeing another normal human for the better part of a year and not even the cat’s companionship was enough. I wanted, no needed to see another person, another human face to hear another human voice.
“At least now maybe I’ll find someone to talk to who might do more than purr.” I rubbed the blunt chin of the cat and felt his broad chest begin to rumble.

The patter of rain sounded on the windows of what had once been one of the most celebrated restaurants in Seattle. Sky City with its 360 degree view of the skyline of Seattle and the bay was now my home. I walked to the window and looked out at the city. A feeling of overwhelming grief threatened to smother me. The bay was beautiful, the water ruffled by a fall wind. The city was dark, dead and silent. I could remember the lights, the sounds, and the people. Nothing was left but garbage, broken down cars and telltale red, black, smears of dry blood on the pavement. Seattle was a corpse.

The sky was turning dark. Fog was rolling in from the Cascades. “Hey Cat, it looks like it might snow.” Looking back I saw the cat had found a new spot to sleep, my precious and irreplaceable portable generator. Winter was coming, summer was gone everything had changed since the monsters your parents told you weren’t real became real.

I was alone.