THE DEAD CITY

Jane stood in the chilly shadow of a monstrous skyscraper, staring at the sidewalk beneath her heels. There was no sound except for air blowing between the buildings like the breath of some mighty machine, and crows fighting over a stale piece of bread crust (or perhaps another body), and the buildings around her clicking softly as they ceased their functions and shut down. This surprised her, because she thought for certain the city always sounded like the booming of traffic and buses and taxis. Even with millions of humans lying open-eyed in their own bedrooms, their bodies devoured by plague before they even reached the nothingness of death, it seemed to Jane that the cars and the buses would still come.

She found some comfort in the sidewalk, in its softly worn and grey concrete shell, in its constant life that had remained unchanged since she was a child. It cried no tears for the dead, it mourned none and did not cease to be what it had been built to be---it continued its duty of sidewalk without complaint. Staring at it, Jane had an odd thought that if she sat down on the sidewalk and never moved, everything would be alright, and nothing bad would ever happen to her.

She sat down slowly. The air blew into her empty ears. Fear had long left her, she had tried to become angry but could not , and her mind wandered through its own alleys numbly, searching for nothing, and finding nothing. The city---what would happen to it? Would it be reinhabited and repopulated? Or would it remain a ghost city, haunted by nothing except the scavenging crows and seagulls? In time, would the skyscrapers tumble? Would the houses flatten and the buildings melt? Would the freeways and bridges crumble into the ocean?

Jane placed her hand on the sidewalk next to her, and was surprised to feel something cold and damp under her palm. She looked down, then lifted her hand slowly. Grass, between the sidewalk slabs. Tipping her head and running her red fingertips over the smashed grass, Jane vaguely remembered discovering the grasses when she was younger, quite little, and being disturbed about them being stepped on. She remembered trying to water them, telling people not to walk on the cracks.

Now the legs that had once walked on the sidewalk lay as stiff bars of pale, rotting flesh in the houses of the city, and the black business shoes that had smashed the grasses down sat cleanly polished at the foot of the bed, for the next day of work that would never come.

Jane stood and stared at the humble stubs of grass. Maybe, just maybe, she thought, stepping away from the crack, if nobody walks here for a long, long time, the grass will become a garden, and grow as tall as the gleaming skyscrapers . . .