Red and brown
The wind was biting. The sweltering heat of the desert slowly transitioning into its cooler, more rational side. The side more atoned to eating a mans outer extremities bit by bit than nurturing life.
Red and brown
A radio clattered away somewhere nearby. A man, sounding, despite the circumstances, cheerful. Perhaps nestled away in a secure bunker of his own. Ignoring the hopeful citizens clustered outside.
Red and brown
They claimed that it would be random chance. That the country's surviving population would be selected randomly. That they, despite the meddling of their governments, would be safe.
Red and brown
And yet for all their speeches, all of their assurances, when it came down to the crisis, the doors closed. The reinforced behemoths designed to protect good American countrymen sealed while the people they were assigned to protect were still en route.
Red and brown
They cried at first. They begged, bargained, threatened. The number on the door was rendered unreadable by the fingernails scrabbling over its surface, over, and over, in some sort of monotonous, hopeless act of self preservation.
Red and brown
But when they looked up at the darkening sky, they only saw the bleak and unforgiving light of the stars. Stars that would not smile down upon them. Stars that would abandon them.
Red and brown
Even as they sat there, clustered in the sheltering arm of the hills, they knew it was coming. They knew the doors were sealed, that they had been cheated out of their gardens of plenty
Red and brown
They sat clustered there. Husbands and wives, fathers and sons, brothers and sisters, and knew they had no choice.
WELCOME
They embraced the enveloping arms of death, brightened by their visions of hellfire, warmed by atomic fission.
And strode into oblivion.