I’d found a respectable lighthouse rising above a bay of gray washed whitecaps beating on the rocky shore of the Atlantic. Up and down the coast I’d walked, looking for a bleak place so I could paint the sadness of my loss on a canvas, gray upon gray and streaked with tears. No place had captured the unmoored pain that floated around my life. Losing Martin to the ravages of the wasting disease, a foul black disease that wells up from every orifice, every opening, boiling evil from the insides of everyone it attacked. For so long, he’d been well, even as the masses fell into bubbling black pools in the streets. Lights burned around us, then flickered out as the months passed.

We were careful: washing hands often, wearing masks, keeping to the woods to avoid the spreading contagion that coated the cities. Crunching leaves underfoot, we walked slowly through banks and bluffs running along the eastern seaboard. Together we made our way.

“It’s got to burn out, right?” Martin asked.

I didn’t answer. I should’ve but I was feeling blue. The world ended in a few blinding weeks filled with news reports and blowing smoke and screams.