The day the school fell, the sun was preternaturally bright. 

It doesn’t shine much anymore, so every sunny day stands out in my memory like an etching from Mother Nature’s tattoo gun. Sunlight does tend to make me sad, though. Sometimes, it’s better when you can’t remember what you’re missing.

We should take a walk, I suggested. You haven’t gotten out of bed in days.

The television said there’s a perfectly good reason why there’s so little sun; it said the whole thing really isn’t that big a deal. It gave us a whole periodic table’s worth of scientific explanations for the darkness – chemical weights, half-lives, physics equations, quantum possibilities – and then reminded us all not to worry so much about things we don’t understand. 

I feel empty, she responded. I’m so tired.

That was the year most of the buildings from before the war were torn down. Every day, the grumbling of construction vehicles and the blasting of explosives woke us at dawn and kept us company until nightfall. The television said it was because of the radiation; it said we were safer razing it all and rebuilding. It said the demolition was a sign of progress, of creation, but the sounds of destruction were cacophonous, and she was having a hard time with the noise.

I’m worried about you, I admitted. Please come out in the sun.

We trudged down the road once known as Main Street, ignoring the sentries and skirting the corpses of starlings. More and more birds were dying, plummeting to the ground mid-flight; there wouldn’t be any more before too long. 

It’s too bright, she commented dully as we walked. Maybe we should go back.

Let’s at least go past the school, I responded. I was desperate to keep her from descending back into the blankets of her bed and the darkness of her depression. She walked clutching her abdomen, as she had over so many pregnancies, as she had after so many losses.  

The day the school fell, she realized she was losing another.

***

I always found the local elementary school to be almost too quaint, brick-red and adorned with the archetypal brass bell. It spoke of happy childhoods and upward mobility; it shouted the American dream. Personally, I cannot fathom the small-town educational experience – it’s the antithesis of my own impoverished urban upbringing – but this had been her childhood school before the war, and she felt comfort in its presence. 

You see, when the terror alert level rose, she wanted to go back to her hometown. She was worried about her parents. This was before the attack, before the invasion, before the nerve agents started to spread. This was before we were no longer able to leave. 

She didn’t mind the lockdown. There wasn’t anywhere she wanted to go. Being home allowed her to escape into the memories of her youth amidst the chaos of our present reality. Lost in the past, she did not have to tolerate the omnipresent pain of so many miscarriages; but living in the present, she knew only grief. Since the war, she mentioned her formative years often – those glorious days when speech was free and weather patterns still made sense – and walking past the schoolhouse tended to cheer her up a bit.   

***

She jumped as a loud boom filled the air, followed by the unmistakable sound of falling brick.

That’s close, she complained. What are they tearing down now? 

We rounded the corner and froze.

The school – proud and well-maintained, a building befit to house the bright minds of the future and their endless potential – was already partially-demolished; it must have absorbed more gamma radiation than they thought. Ragged walls pierced with holes like eyes stood defiantly even as the wrecking ball swung. Dust hung in the air like a specter. As we watched, the building crumbled in on itself, the sound of shattering glass playing a requiem for the twisted rubble left behind.

What…? she asked blankly. But as with so many other heartaches at so many other times, I did not have the words to make any sense of it all.  

***

The day the school fell, I stopped being able to get her out of bed. 

I couldn’t have known it, but it would be our last sunny day together. The next time I ventured past the husk of the school, piles of debris and chunks of concrete still littering the dead grass, I would be alone.

Now, there’s no need for a school any longer, of course. The provisional fertility rate is down to single digits these days; the doctors quit tracking infant mortality after the rate surpassed 400 deaths per thousand live births. Our modern republic having the same health outcomes as Medieval Europe probably isn’t great for image. 

After she died, I was angry with her for the longest time. I was angry with her for leaving me, leaving me alone as the world broke down and the sickness continued to spread and the politicians in charge started to exterminate their own people. But after enough time of the world breaking down and the sickness spreading and the politicians in charge exterminating their own people, I forgave her. I am grateful for the time I got with her, for the babies we made who never got to see the light, and for the one memory that consoles me all these years later, at night when the gas in the air makes it hard to breathe.

The day the school fell, we held hands as we watched the sun disappear.