The time of the trip had come. The wagon was ready, Grandfather was ready, and I was just tugging on my coat. Looking through the window, I could see the dogs lowing and wriggling with the desire to get running.

There were a few reasons that the trip had become a necessity. The first was that Grandfather was getting older. He couldn't push the wagon like he used to, and he'd started walking funny. I thought that maybe he had broken his hip. He just couldn't do things like he used to. Grandfather would never accept this. It was never spoken, but I knew that when we made it, I would have to leave Grandfather there and come back for the others by myself.

We wouldn't be able to live in the house much longer. When we'd found the place, the basement was filled with all sorts of canned goods, and stacks of bottled water. My sister sat on one of the splintered chairs, scooping some of the sugary syrup out of a discarded peach tin.

My dad wasn't with us anymore. He had gone out one day to try and find a bottle of painkillers, and we never saw him again.

Mama didn't do much anymore. She never talked, and she always sat by herself. I would sit hidden on the stairs, and see her shiver every now and then, teeth clacking. She said she could hear ghosts. Dad had said that she needed to get indoors. Our house wasn't indoors- the windows had all been shattered, and the door creaked on one hinge, swinging open with the breeze.

We were all starting to get sick, too. Grandfather's eyes had seemed to fill up with milk, losing their former brown color. A spot on my neck had begun to swell up, and was painful to touch. My little sister was born without a pinky finger. Grandfather couldn't bear to look at her.

I made my way out onto the lawn to see Grandfather standing by the wagon, expectant and perturbed. He always stood in sharp contrast to his environment, rigid and perfect. The grass swayed with the wind, and he remained motionless. He'd dressed in his olive green uniform, clean and without wrinkle, the black leather of his boots shining and smelling of polish. I'd always admired the little red stars on his lapel and wrist cuffs. He was so perfect, it looked as if he weren't a real person at all.

I opened the door to the old wagon and slipped into the seat with the wheel, so that it wouldn't obstruct Grandfather's driving. Grandfather took his own seat and hit the rearmost dog with a pole. The dogs yapped and started to move. The wagon lurched forward on its rubber wheels, bouncing a bit as it climbed onto the hardtop of the road. Our tires left imprints in the soot as they rolled along. I looked back and waved at my family, who had stood in the yard watching. My sister waved back with her smallish hand, and I smiled. I watched them through the rear window as we rolled slowly away, soon losing their forms to the fog.

I didn't like going far from the house. That's how we'd lost my dad. The surroundings became more crowded, with buildings on all sides. Signs were everywhere, sending messages from the dead in that silent, permanent language that only Grandfather could understand. Our wheels crunched broken glass underway, and I feared that one might tear open a tread, or cut a dog's paw.

The first time we stopped the wagon was when we'd come to a landfill dug into the ground. The pit was filled with destroyed televisions. I asked Grandfather what this was, because he had been around when the War was still being fought, and when people still did strange things like gather to break televisions. He told me that there was a great fire one night, a sort of melancholy celebration. The people had destroyed the bringers of worry and bad news, so that they could live in ignorance of the impending death from above. I didn't like it. Like the shops, it was another vivid footprint of the people from before. I could see the people, their faces glowing with the heat and light, dancing and talking and heaving the wooden boxes into the pyre. It made me feel as if I were an invader in a hallowed place. Grandfather was unmoved.

We got back into the wagon. Grandfather hit the dog once more, and they began to begrudgingly haul the wagon away. They never liked him, always gnawing at their leather bonds when he looked away, yelping and growling against his commands. The buildings were replaced by walls of pine trees, the road rising at a steady incline. As we rode along, we came to a swathe of splintered trees carved into the forest. Grandfather permitted me to explore, so I hopped out and wandered off to have a look. At the end of the path, I found something strange.

It looked like a big metal casket. Long planks extended from either side of it, angled back like the wings of a sparrow. Much of the frame was twisted out of shape and melted. Pieces of the thing lay scattered about. Not far from it, the body of a man lay on the ground. I went over to have a better look. He wore a big plastic dome over his head, with a hose coming out the front. I almost thought he wasn't a man at all, but some kind of ridiculous creature. I searched his pockets, but all I found was a photo of a woman, which I thought best to leave with him. I didn't want his ghost to come after me. I tried to pry off his boots, but could only get one off cleanly. The second time, his foot came detached and I couldn't get it out. I discarded one of my hole-filled sneakers.

So out I came, rising up and down with each awkward step. Grandfather looked at me with a scrutinizing eye. Him and I had always seen the world differently. When I was younger, I found a body washed up on the shore, and pulled off its knuckles for my sister and I to play with- they bounced when you threw them, and made good game pieces. When Grandfather found out, he took me into the woods and beat me. I guess he still thought that the bodies had people in them.

Later that night, rain started to fall. It made the soot chalky and hard to move through, and dripped through the holes in the roof of our wagon, so we took shelter in a building of Grandfather's choosing. It was a building that was larger than the others, and looked unique. It was a brick building, with a sloping roof. There was a statue of someone in the yard, but it had been smashed. An iron fence twisted off in ways that suggested agony. The wooden doors made even Grandfather look small.

They opened slowly when he pushed them. Inside, there were rows of benches, with a small aisle in the middle. At the front of the room, the floor rose up. There was a table there, with a white cloth covering it. To my delight, I found a small treasure- glass bits of various colors, like the gems of my father's stories, were scattered across the purple carpet. Grandfather stood motionless at the end of the aisle, and I went to meet him.

The last few rows of benches were occupied. Bodies were stacked head-to-toe. These were strange people, if they were people at all- I could not see them, for they wore one-piece uniforms with gloves on their hands, and queer rubber socks over their heads, with vacant goggle-eyes. Rifles were propped against the back of the next bench. Grandfather's lips pursed tight, becoming white lines as the blood left them. I backed away, returning to the glimmering colored glass. I stooped low to the ground, wanting for that moment to be forgotten, for the ghosts to take me away. Reaching out, I began to slide the pieces across the carpet. After a while of this, I realized that they formed a picture when arranged correctly. I lost myself in this task, placing the shards this way and that, gradually revealing the image of a man with a ring of brambles around his head. Before I could finish, Grandfather's boot ground some of the glass into the carpet and scattered the remainder. He looked back at me, glancing down to my puzzle only momentarily. He told me to follow, and that no rest would come that night.

Upon opening the door, we saw the dogs running off in all directions, scattering and disappearing into the rolling fog. Grandfather cursed once. He said nothing more, popping open the trunk of the wagon. He took his rifle from it. I couldn't help but think it was kind of a silly thing to do, but I would never say that to him. I was handed a knapsack to carry. He walked, and I followed. There was something different, though, when he held the gun. He hunched over, keeping low to the ground. His eyes darted this way and that, searching rooftops and occasionally looking over his shoulder. I felt foolish bounding behind him, but he sneered at me when I tried to mimic his own slinking movement. The only sounds to be heard were that of the distant dogs, and my own light breathing.

We walked until sunset, leaving footprints in the soot and ash behind us. The further we went, the more I began to get a funny taste in my mouth. It was like sucking on a copper coin. I caught up to Grandfather and tugged on his sleeve, asking if it might be time to eat yet. He led us up to a hilltop, where there was a small pump and a spout. I cupped my hands, and he pushed on the pump. The water was cool, but it tasted strangely. He warned me to drink only as much as I needed.

The two of us sat upon the hill, sharing from a jar of peanut butter. I wanted to talk, but I just couldn't string together any words. Looking out across the horizon, I could see the buildings get taller and taller, and then suddenly they were cut down, like the cornfields that Grandfather and I had passed. The ground had turned black. Beyond that, there was a range of glass crags that stretched out to the horizon. Looking out at the landscape in front of us, Grandfather did something funny. He put his arm around my shoulders. Neither of us said anything.

The further on we went, the worse I began to feel. My skin felt like there were pins and needles pressing into it. The air was thick and the lump on my neck hurt more. Scabs began to form on my skin, and the metallic taste became stronger.  It didn't seem to bother Grandfather as much, but then, nothing ever did.

By the end of the next day, we'd reached our destination. It was a distance away from any other buildings, a fenced off concrete lot with a few sheds on it. At the other end, big machines churned with a low, rumbling growl. Grandfather tossed his rifle over the fence and then began to scale it, looking his age as his skin stretched tight over stringy muscles. I followed suit, careful not to cut my legs on the razor wire.

I followed him to the center of the platform. Yellow and black stripes lined the area, like the warning of a dangerous bug. Located inside of this striped box was a strange thing- a pair of thick, interlocking steel gates, looking like the maw of a great beast opening in the earth. Hot air rose from the opening, making this seem all the more real. A large cylinder with a domed cap resided inside, ringed with walkways.

Grandfather went first, hanging from one of the teeth and looking down to make sure his fall was aligned. He then dropped down, hitting the walkway with a dull, metal ring that echoed through the hole. I went after him, and he caught me, but yielded backwards and ended up dropping me. The cylinder was covered in all sorts of colors and more silent words. I noticed in particular that a few were messier, and in brighter colors. They looked painted on. Grandfather read them and started to shake, his face turning almost purple. He turned away and stalked along the corrugated metal.

We came to a set of closed doors, with no handles. Grandfather pressed a button next to them, and a rumbling started to rise from the belly of the beast, higher and higher up, and I began to quake with fear at what might be coming to greet us for invading its space. But my trepidation was rewarded with a “ding”, and the doors sliding open by themselves. Waiting for us to enter. And enter we did. What choice was there?

The little box closed in on us and began to descend, shaking every now and then as it dropped. It released us again, into a dark corridor. As soon as we set foot in it, the whole place came to life, rows of glass tubes suddenly flickering up with the brightest, whitest light that I had ever seen. It had seen us now, and still was inviting us in. Deeper. Along the other side of the wall, I saw what might have been a ghost- a shadow on the wall that twisted and disappeared around a corner, followed by the sound of footfalls.

I followed Grandfather down the hall and around the corner. There was no soot in this place, and no dust. It felt sterile, and I by contrast felt unclean, for the first time in my life. The walls were a pale, sickly green, and had words written on them every now and then, and arrows pointing all sorts of ways. It felt like a maze, all of it made my head spin.

Soon, we started to hear voices. Voices of other people. They spoke in the language that my father sometimes used. We came to a catwalk, and I crouched low when Grandfather did. The room below us was occupied by two men. They were old, like Grandfather. One of them was talking to a machine. The other was watching.

Grandfather became something different, like before. He hunched over and tensed up, lowered his head and raised his gun, pulling back a lever. But he bit his lip, and shrank back. He looked at me, and for the first time I saw tears in his eyes, running this way and that along the lines of his wrinkled skin. And he leaned close to me, and he whispered.

“Go, boy. Run far and don't ever come back. You're lucky, so lucky- you get a chance to start all over. You're free.”

I ran. I ran through the halls, trying to remember the way we'd come. Halfway through, I heard a series of three loud cracks. I almost turned back, but I didn't. The little cabin pulled me up to the surface, and when its doors opened, I saw the scattered membrane of the sky.