Once the radioactive rain stopped a strange, stark and desolate dry season came upon us. You could see the moisture evaporate before your own eyes, steam from the pavement cracks, grass recently green now pale and scorched, bushes and shrubs hanging limp and bedraggled. Our new kind of contaminated summer was not to be a comfortable season. There were murmurs and whispers of water shortages, empty lochs and choked rivers. The pressure in the taps had diminished and the water had a strange taste and colour that made me feel uncomfortable. Bottled water's price soared, we didn't even try to buy any. The crooks were making a fast buck, a last buck as far as I was concerned. We tried to manage our remaining supplies.
One night we looked out across the Forth, the whole of Fife seemed to be ablaze. The tinder dry scrub, the parks, fields and buildings, everything was alight. The heat radiated across and we felt it on our faces and in our lungs. On the water some escaped by small boat or pleasure craft, a few just drifted by downstream, watching the fiery destruction. Now that the road bridges were gone there was no quick way either north or south. Many had headed west but I imagined that would only add to the chaos we'd regularly heard of, over in Glasgow and beyond.
I tried to get some sleep, do some thinking, decide what to do even. There were few good choices and no likely interventions of outside help. So the time will shortly come for us to set sail, setting out on our boats to who knows where. Before we just stared out of windows, into screens and refrigerators or at each other. We're explorers now. The Great Sea of Joy beckons.
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