Alone in the Snow
A chilling wind that the toughest men fear; the stinging of a million tiny, icy needles that relentlessly strikes the unfortunate who have found themselves trapped in this frozen emptiness. Directly in the center of this disastrous and unforgiving wasteland is a child, a young boy only 7 years of age.
Nobody had believed it at the time, but the horrors of nuclear winter had finally become reality. In its most initial stages, it had been tame to the point where the ones who could not find refuge in a bunker had not frozen up on the spot, but it was devastating nonetheless. Down below, mothers scream for their children; they had clawed and fought to push through the enforcers to be locked above with their children, but to no avail. Many had already found a way to commit suicide, convinced that their own flesh and blood had been left to die above. Amidst the chaos and tears, one mother sits in the cold stone corner, clasping her hands tightly to her soul.
The situation above is no better, but it is a lot quieter. Many already lie in the icy snow, their eyelids too frozen to even move before their last moments ended. Faint coughing and crying can be heard from every direction, but the stinging shards prevent any visuals on the doomed. It is in this chilling hell that the 7 year old boy lies. He has no specialties to him, and has nothing but his strong resolve to reunite with his mother to keep him alive and warm. He has no idea where he is, and as far as he can tell, there is no place he can reach before his untimely demise.
There's no giving up for him though. One of his arms has already lost all feeling and had gone numb, so he grasps it tightly with his other and begins to drag himself forward. Using his legs for momentum, all he can do is push his half dead body through the barren climate. Discouragement and helplessness quickly enters his heart after one of his legs loses purpose as well; how long would it be before the rest of his limbs were dead?
An icy shard strikes the boy's face and his mother below feels a fragment of it as well. She quickly snaps her hand to the pain and realizes that tiny drops of blood were trickling down her face. One would be worrying about what had happened, but she was smiling- she had her connection finally made.
Both arms are useless to the boy now. Using the last of his energy, he turns himself on his back to spend his final moments on the Earth that man had destroyed. He felt like crying, but it was too cold, too frozen. He proceeded to close his eyes when a faint light entered his vision; a glimmer of hope. It could not speak nor move, but in that instant the boy once again felt warmth. His limbs moved, and a surge of strength entered his living corpse. With the needles pelting at his skin, the boy slowly brought himself to stand and limp towards the light.
The temperature was a chilling 78 degrees below zero Celsius. No human should have been able to move by this point, let alone walk, but this boy had life. He was dragging his body that could no longer be described as "living". A mother's love is a powerful thing indeed, and from it, a supernatural phenomenon was occurring. This boy was the last living soul on the surface of the planet for an entire two hours, and the undying relationship behind the parent and her child had pushed him to walk the entire time.
The time is now 2:32 AM- 2 hours and 32 minutes since the harsh winter had hit. Even with the warming light, the boy's vision is fading; he's in his true final moments. Upon one strong push of his body over a large hill, his stiff body mercilessly tumbles down it to the very bottom. At the foot of a nearby bunker a single enforcer takes notice of the persistent child and runs into the sleeting blizzard. As quickly as his freezing body will allow, the enforcer tightly grasps the child in his arms and pushes back into the bunker itself.
Down below, it's undoubtedly the mother herself that jumps at the enforcer's current possession. She softly speaks to her son who had overcome the impossible, but there is no answer, no response. The only thing on his face was a warming smile, and in his hand, a tiny light.