Final

Zigzagging a motorcycle through the devastated city proved to be quite difficult. The streets were not just gridlocked, they were jam packed, and even though he took the freeway, Dave found it tough going. The death surrounding him was so over-powering he couldn't process it. He had to get away, get upwind, grieving could come later, feeling could come later.

About 5 miles into his journey, the devastation seemed to lessen, and not all the cars were on fire. Topping a rise, he saw what he'd been dreading. Movement. In the back seat of a station-wagon there was a person still alive. Swinging his legs over the saddle once again, Dave went to see what he could do. It was a woman, about 30 years old. She was blackened to a crisp, clearly dead, but somehow moving. He pushed the woman gently with his finger and she fell away. Dave saw what had been causing the female corpse to move. What was underneath was a sight too dreadful to behold, even for a cynic like Dave, who had seen many things in his long life, and who had had his natural compassion dulled by horror. A baby seat. With a small, burnt form in it. The sex was indiscernable. Blind, choking and writhing in agony, the baby was still trying to breathe, trying to LIVE. But it was failing.

It's mother must have seen the blast wave coming, and thrown herself over her infant to protect it. If she had not, the baby would have died a relatively quick death. As it was her form was just enough to protect the baby from the worst of the bomb's immediate effects, but in a twisted, awful caricature of the maternal instinct, she had condemned her child to suffer in hell for the last awful hours of it's existence. There was no way this horribly burned creature was going to survive, even if it could get to a hospital, and anyway the nearest one was part of a 10 million Kelvin atomized cloud of gas, pluming 100 000 ft into the sky.

Dave stared at the scene, unable to find words appropriate to explain the horror. "The problem is so big. What can I do?" The dry voice inside him warned him not to intervene. "There will be thousands of children in as much pain as this little wretch. You can't fix them all. What can you do indeed? You're just one man. You need to find the Others. You can do more with them than you can on your own. You need to get away. " Yeah, he was just one man. But he could do something on his own. Afterwards he would link up with Kissinger junior and fight to save the American race. But first he would do this; he would make things right, right here, right now. The future was uncertain, and he didn't have any spare ammo clips. But in this, he could help. He could reach out and save one child. Maybe not quite what the World Vision folks had in mind, but this earth was imperfect. Dave cupped the baby's stricken head in his hand one last time, reached to grab his gun, and fired it into the innocent's temple. The report echoed across the otherwise silent freeway, marking him for all time as a child murderer. The spasming stopped. This killing had been an act of compassion, and he would have to live with it for the rest of his life.

Dave turned away from the car, and vomited. He was tired, so very tired. He felt old, older than the Earth. He needed sleep. Bitumen on a gridlocked freeway felt suddenly soft and inviting. More than anything in the world he wanted to sleep now...

But he couldn't. He had a duty. He needed to regroup, needed to find Kissinger. He needed to fight the good fight. There was plenty of time to rest when he was dead, which might not be that long if he stayed within 10 klicks of a fucking H-bomb blast for more than a few hours. There were people in this world that needed killing, the end of their life stories had Dave standing over them, a Magnum 45mm lodged in their brains. And more than anything in the world, David Barry needed to find the Vaginal Orgasm, and keep her safe. It was only the craven part of Dave that wanted to sleep. Yeah, the Vaginal Orgasm might have perished in that 4-th dimensional Manchurian Tesseract. But right now, he had to operate on the assumption she was alive, and needed his help. With a superhuman effort, Dave shrugged off his weariness and got back on the bike.

From here on, traffic was thinner. this must be the point where people started not being instantly fried by the radiation. Dave thought, "Things can only get better from here. I'm gonna make it, we're ALL gonna make it. We're gonna be ok."