Heart of Hope

I told myself I would make it. I’d been telling myself that for an unknown number of days since the explosions. I estimated it had been about a month and I was almost ready for the trek. With the sky so grey, it was impossible to sense the passage of time. Occasionally, a ray of muted yellow would fight its way through, along with a hint of blue, but mostly every day and night looked the same.

My home had become an empty fire station which eerily sat with all the garage doors open. All the trucks were dispatched when the first explosion happened at the nearby military base. I’m pretty sure every type of emergency vehicle within a fifty mile radius was dispatched after the second one. My world was filled with enough sirens to make my head vibrate to the point of nausea. I escaped to the deepest point available—my underground root cellar.

My cellar was built ten years ago with self-sustainability in mind. Living on a fourteen-acre property in a rural area, and with an increasingly uncertain future, it seemed like a smart move. It was built using a 2500-gallon septic tank (unused, of course) buried in the ground. Being an avid vegetable gardener, I had all the extra room needed for storing fresh produce, water, and my abundant quantity of preserves and canned goods.

Not having a clue about what was actually going on at the base, I turned on the lights, locked both doors, and decided to block the vent pipes while I remained inside. I didn’t have my watch on, but could still hear the sirens for what seemed like half an hour, when they suddenly all stopped at once. I held my breath, straining to hear anything at all, but there was absolute silence. I waited a few minutes, then considered opening the doors to peek out. I had my hand on the latch of the cellar door, which led up the twelve-foot ramp to the outside door, when I heard a gentle whooshing sound. I let go of the latch, and stopped to listen as it began to gradually increase until it sounded like a hurricane wind. The vent pipes rattled for a minute, then all fell silent again.

I sat nervously at my little work/prep table in a corner of the cellar and debated with myself. What was I supposed to do now? I knew absolutely nothing about the events happening outside. Was it nuclear? An electromagnetic pulse? Maybe it was a foreign missile attack. I must have spent an hour contemplating, coming up with possible scenarios before I decided to peek outside. Summoning some courage, I did my best to convince myself that it couldn’t be that bad; there had to be an explanation that made sense.

Determined to find out, I slowly undid the latch on the cellar door. As quietly as I could, listening carefully, I crept up the ramp to the outside door. I paused for a moment, gathered more courage, turned back the deadbolt, and opened the door a tiny crack.

I thought it was a good sign that the incoming air didn’t have any smell. I stood looking at the crack, took in a few deep breaths, then realized there was something wrong. I should’ve been able to smell the grass and weeds growing around the door but couldn’t. Immediately feeling a rush of adrenaline, I quickly closed and locked the door again. Then a wave of fear hit me—hard.

I rushed back down the ramp and into the cellar where I started pacing. I needed to calm my nerves and figure out what to do next. I don’t know how long it took me to relax and, from a survival standpoint, attempt a rational analysis of the situation. I figured I would only be able to live in the cellar for three months, maybe four. If I did stay that long, would somebody come looking for me? Was there anyone out there who could? Would I rather die down there, or find out what happened and try to survive outside in whatever aftermath was waiting for me? There had been nothing audible since the hurricane-like noise occurred.

Despite the fear, the instinctive need to know won the contest. I headed back up the ramp, somehow accepting the idea that I may not live very long if the outside circumstances were unsafe. As I stood in front of the outside door again, I tried to force back the adrenaline and fear with my mind. I closed my eyes as I turned the deadbolt and opened the door—all the way.

After breathing in the scentless air for a moment, I opened my eyes. Unable to comprehend the scene in front of me, I was too stunned to react. What was I seeing? I just stood there, looking into my backyard, wondering if I was hallucinating. Was I dead already? Everything, and I mean everything, was almost completely grey. It was like all colour had been removed or muted, as if the totally grey sky was producing its own light or filter to make everything else grey—a grey projection onto the world before me.

I took a tentative step onto my freshly-mowed, grey (with pale green undertones) lawn and stood staring across one of my fields, then across a section of the valley to the north mountain. Because of the greyness, the horizon was barely perceptible. It could only be seen because of the hint of watercolour green coming from the normally rich, vibrant-looking mixed forest on the hillside.

Overwhelmed, I stood looking all around me for a few minutes, then I finally looked at myself. Holding my hands out in front of me, I discovered that I wasn’t “greyed out” like everything else. My blue jeans and wine-coloured t-shirt still retained their true hues as well, which somewhat calmed me, except for the feeling that I was walking around in somebody’s dream. How else could I interpret this? In my mind, the word surreal didn’t even come close to describing this situation.

Wanting to see what the inside of my house looked like, I started walking the thirty yards or so toward my back step. I stopped halfway as I realized another anomaly—there was absolute silence and nothing was moving. No birds were chirping, no bugs flying, no breeze blowing, nothing was stirring at all. Had I been transported to another planet or parallel universe? It wasn’t like me to entertain such thoughts but I’d seen enough movies, documentaries, and had read enough books to know that current technological advancements had brought these theories within reach.

Before continuing up my back step, I bent down and plucked a few blades of grass. In my hand, they stayed the same shade of grey/pale green but the texture was clean and normal. Whatever was causing the greyness definitely wasn’t a coating or dusting of any kind. What kind of tech or weaponry could remove colour or mess with the spectrum like that? It was so far beyond my understanding that I felt a brief moment of insanity. I laughed hysterically as the lyrics from "Grey Day" by The Guess Who started up in my head.

After that episode, I went into the house and looked around. Everything was grey. I flicked a light switch, checked the phone, and the computer, but there was no power. The digital displays on the stove and microwave were off, so I went to check my alarm clock which had a battery backup. It was also off. I took a fresh nine-volt battery out of the mostly-junk drawer and put it in the clock but it wouldn’t light up. Why wouldn’t batteries work? I pulled a flashlight out of the drawer but that wouldn’t work either. I went to the breaker panel but nothing was tripped. I was becoming convinced that some type of EMP had been generated but, if it was that powerful, why weren’t there dead birds and bugs lying around? Like humans, their cells rely on electrical impulses to function. Shivering, I thought about how the cellar had protected me.

My nearest neighbour was almost two miles away to the east, as the road I lived on was surrounded by many farmers’ fields and sections of forest. The local fire station was only a ten-minute walk to the west. I set out, thinking the station might provide some clue as to what happened and, if I was lucky, someone to talk to.

As the station became visible, it was depressingly clear I wasn’t going to be talking to anyone—the entire garage was wide open, empty, and grey. I entered the garage and went in through a side door that took me into a very large office where a computer and radio equipment sat—dead. Looking at the few bits of paperwork on the desk, there was nothing there to indicate what may have happened. Feeling lost and mentally exhausted, I laid down on a padded leather bench at the other end of the office, curled up, and cried until I fell asleep.

It took a minute for me to figure out where I was when I awoke, and the greyness of everything around me threw me for a loop all over again. I sat up, not knowing how long I’d slept, and realized I needed a bathroom. I was also feeling hungry and thirsty. I wandered back out to the garage, wondering where I could find the bathroom and kitchen. I entered through a door on the other side, and went up a stairwell to the second floor.

The kitchen/lounge area was huge with large, wide windows looking to the north, east, and south. The bathroom was easy to find. When I was finished in there, I had a look in the fridge and found all kinds of grey goodies. I chose an egg salad sandwich, a bottle of water, and walked over to the east window.

Looking out across the greyed-out valley with an almost panoramic view, I noticed a small area of bright green on the side of the south mountain. I left the sandwich and water on the windowsill and moved over to the south-facing window to try to get a better view. It was impossible to tell what it was, being so far away, but it stood out brightly against the muted grey/green surrounding it. Too hungry to think clearly, I told myself to eat first and revisit it later.

I grabbed my food from the east windowsill and sat down at one of the tables. Looking around the room while I ate, I noticed something lying on another table. I walked over and saw it was a pair of binoculars. When I picked them up, I discovered a heart-shaped silver locket was hiding underneath. Curious, I opened it and was looking at a portrait of a Saint Bernard on the left side. The word “Hope” was engraved on the right side. Was that the dog’s name? After looking at it for a moment, I picked up the binoculars and looked out at the south mountainside again.

Focusing on the green section, it appeared to be a normal piece of mountainside forest that had escaped the “grey-out”. I stared at it for a long time, hoping to see movement of some kind, but it was too far away.

If this was the apocalypse, someone or something was obviously guiding me. Were there others out there in the same situation? The binoculars and locket couldn’t be a coincidence. They must have been deliberately placed to give me direction to the “Green Patch”. A Saint Bernard named Hope? Saint Bernard dogs were bred to aid people lost in the mountains.

It would take many weeks of preparation and planning, but I told myself I would make it as long as I was carrying my heart of “Hope”.