My claws are snapping on my hands.
Keep away from them, my son.
I am liable to plunge them,
I am liable to thrust them
into your fragile body.

- Miguel Hernandez, 'First Song'


Ragnarok

You follow the news religiously, and not just the finance section; it pays to know what the humans aren't saying. Whose dirty laundry is being ignored, which wars haven't erupted yet to the surface. Five months after the nuclear explosion that never happened, when confused reports of quarantine and death and civil violence reach L.A. from the other side of the country, you order the jet fueled and ready.

You sense it before the plane even lands: the only living soul in four hundred years you've known to blaze like this. Blindingly, as if it wanted to consume the world.

The city is near deserted. It is easy enough to find him.

"Damek."

"It's Adam now, old friend," he says, like he was expecting you.

He hasn't changed. The smile is still wolfish, as singular and incomparable as he is. You want to touch the miracle again - press your forehead against his, taste the fever and madness from his lips, and bury your fingers in that short, crudely sheared hair; forget the last fifty years.

But bodies are piled high in the streets like the plague pits of your youth, and the stink of burning flesh is coating the back of your throat. The beginning of the end would look like this.

"It's good to see you," you say. And, more softly:

"I'm sorry."

You step towards him. He knows how quick, how strong you are, but struggles all the same as you crush his arms to his sides; and deep into the soft place above the collarbone, you sink your teeth. For perhaps the first time, you have surprised him.

Damek laughs.

He has not understood what you are: a thirst as bottomless and cold as infinity. Not a virus, but the antidote of life.

You drink from the fire--

THE END

17 November 2007


'Ragnarok ("Doom of the Gods"), also called Gotterdammerung, means the end of the cosmos in Norse mythology. It will be preceded by Fimbulvetr, the winter of winters. Three such winters will follow each other with no summers in between. Conflicts and feuds will break out, even between families, and all morality will disappear. This is the beginning of the end.' (Encyclopedia Mythica)