Lamaka sat at the table staring at her trembling hands. It had been hours since the strange and terrifying event had occurred, and still she could come up with no rational explanation. She knew that she should get something to eat before the sunset, but couldn’t tear her eyes away from her hands. So she sat… her mind filled with a jumble of horror, wonder and unanswerable questions.

It had been almost a hundred years since the apocalypse that had wiped out over half the life on earth. A giant rogue asteroid from the asteroid belt between Saturn and Mars had been thrown in the direction of earth by a shift in the magnetic field of Saturn. Careening towards earth, the 11 mile long by 7 mile wide hunk of rock was sighted in time to give the earth six months notice. Named Armageddon by the people of earth, every nation worked together building nuclear warheads to try and deflect its movement away from the planet.

It was a feeble attempt at best, succeeding in only breaking the asteroid into thirteen pieces. Of these pieces, there were only four that actually impacted with the earth. As the other nine pierced the atmosphere they exploded and tremendous firestorms erupted, literally flattening every thing in their path. A nuclear winter followed, further decimating the planet and life forms.

Lamaka’s great-grandparents had survived… barely. It had been close to ten years before the sun shown down on a devastated planet with any regularity. Ten long, cold years before the dust and debris was finally washed away by the rain and snow, from the atmosphere. Lamaka had listened with wonder at the stories her grandparents and parents had told of that time.

It was during the few years after the sky was cleansed that the mutants had started appearing. Mindless, cannibalistic beings, in their slimy white skins that lived in the dark. From the time she had been able to crawl, Lamaka had been warned: “Never be caught out after dark ” Her parents should have heeded the warnings too. They had not returned one evening, and Lamaka never saw them again.

Now, Lamaka lived alone in a concrete building her father had built. He had scavenged for supplies for miles around until he had everything necessary, then had built the two-room house by himself before going to look for a bride for himself. It had only two windows and two doors, one window and one door for each room. One room served as the living quarters and the other as the bedroom. Lamaka had been born there.

Very rarely, other humans passed by. Lamaka’s father never invited them in, treating them with distrust. His loaded pistols in his hands and an arsenal of rifles protected his family from the roaming bands of looters and from the mutants.

Lamaka had seen lots of mutants in her short lifetime, from the safety and security of the house, she had watched them mill around outside. They hadn’t the intelligence to turn a doorknob, but her father had insisted on putting dead bolts on the doors anyway…. Just in case they accidentally turned one when they hit against it with their gnarled fingers. She had never been afraid of the mutants, as long as her father was around. Now though, she would cringe when she saw the misshapen footprints around the house every morning.

Living off the land, on the sparse greenery, Lamaka never ate meat. It appalled her to think that anyone would. Her days were spent collecting food, storing some against the winter. From inside the house, she would aim a rifle at any human who came to call…warning them to leave immediately. They always did.

Today, Lamaka had gone further than she had ever gone before. She had found a structure in ruins, made of a strange smooth stone. Exploring, she had found books… lots of them. Though they were brittle and crumpled easily, she managed to pack a few in her backpack to take home. Her parents had insisted on teaching her how to read, and the anticipation of actually having something to read caused her to shake with the excitement.

As she started out of the ruins, a movement in a dark doorway caught her attention. A mutant leaped out at her; it’s jaws gaping wide. She raised her hands to protect herself. The air around her compressed into a solid wall and as the mutant hit it, a horrendous noise…like a miniature sonic boom… filled the air and the mutant turned to ashes. She had turned and run all the way home… locking the doors and pulling the curtains.

Had she caused that? Did it come from her hands? HOW? If not, where did it come from? Could she do it again, if it HAD come from her? As the darkness fell, Lamaka sat, still staring at her hands. Never before had she felt such a profound loneliness.

School writing assignment 1998