Overcast skies. We can breathe again. We can see the sun again, even though it’s what has forced us underground in the first place. The kids can play outside again, at least in the shade of the crumbling New York buildings. The city is a comfortable 100 degrees, enough to sit in the shade for a few minutes. My name is Steven and I’m one of the lucky ones. The unlucky ones are lying in the black pavement, their bones perfectly white. But even the sun can’t kill us all.

I make my way to the tarped city market where the sweaty pedestrians wipe their sweaty brows and rub their half-naked bodies with what little water remains. The reservoirs were just filled last week and were already running short. Maggie brought her swaddled baby with her this time to buy a few mushrooms grown in the subways. I smile at her through the baking heat. It’s hard to imagine that people wore full clothing, with shirts and pants, out in the sun in the old times. Her skin was glossy and dark with moisture. This world was so different than it was 40 years ago. A time when the weather wasn’t scorching, the air dry, the horizon orange with vaporous smoke from the black pavement. The city is hot. And the survivors are melting.

A little math. Vehicles stop functioning at 200 degrees. Humans stop functioning at 130 degrees. The tires don’t usually melt sitting on the pavement but they’re useless if the human driving them can’t function. The human brain turns to mush and becomes scrambled and confused. Direct sunlight is deadly to us now. It’s probably best that we’re forbidden from going outside when the sun is fully out. Black pavement can reach 200 to 300 degrees on a cloudless day which only adds to the heat topside. The roads that used to bring us together now drive us apart. Forty years of division and factions. Forty years of separation.

Heat creates fire, fire creates explosions. Cities burned. The only thing saving us is the smoke that formed the clouds, shielding us. Smoke from explosions of chemical plants or gas stations. They move across the sky –sometimes miles long — providing cover for a few days. Our ancient meteorology equipment helps us predict when its save. Dead cities. Dead bodies burning. The dead keep us alive.

Every so often these clouds will disperse and the death begins again, bringing bright sunrays, moving across the landscape like laser beams. But today we are protected. Today I might be able to find a trinket from the old world, from the city’s bones, to give to Maggie. Deep below we can hear the music being played. The sounds of a soulful 20th century jazz singer are blared from the underground subway systems loud enough for the surface to hear. That was Sal’s idea. Underground there was music and color. Aboveground there was orange and pain. Dust and ashes.

Calab and his daughter sit on a gutted car like a park bench, far from the pavement. It was Salvatore who led us here. Sal who cleared the subway with his small band of Christian Worshippers. I have become one of them. Along with most of the rest of us who came to the West End. Across from the subway exit is the hotel, filled with the right-thinking Patriots. Every so often a Patriot would sneak across at night and try to enter the humble gates of West End, wishing to speak to someone they knew but they would be barred admittance. This is a place for worshippers, not a place of violent dissidents, marred down by anger and a primarily white faction. Roads divide us, divide us with heat and rage.

The next sunray is expected to hit tomorrow, leaving us exposed to the sun again. Who knows how long we’ll be sequestered? It comes about once a week. A week of clouds and then an unknown amount of sun. This day happened to be Sunday.

Sal makes his rounds as usual, giving inspiration and the words of Christ to the people, almost   Christlike figure himself, lifting up the elderly with his words and kicking a ball around with the children. Religion is one of the only things humanity had left, at least that’s what Sal preached. He once asked me, “Do you not think humans should embrace the ever after when faced with doom and death?” I remember sitting there, staring into his dark eyes, wondering about my own long life, and couldn’t find an answer. The earth could repair itself. What then would happen to religion if society went back to being spoiled and overfed, where science explained everything away and there was no room for unanswerable questions?

The burn victims, the ones caught out in the sun for a split second, congregated together. Sal offered them water with his cracked hands and sweaty brow. So much tragedy. So little hope. So many stories of lost faith and people giving into the sun’s terrible power. A child who murders their parents in the sunray dirges, leaving them behind. Grandparents left behind by their grandchildren. Family used to be so important to our society. Not much anymore. At least under religion we could all become united again.  

Sal stares into the sky. Solemn. With pious yearning. He reminds me of a man looking off a bow of a ship, into the great nothingness of the ocean, considering the mysteries of the universe and smiling with unanswerable questions. He continues to smile while insults are hurled from the Patriot hotel. Insults like “Fake believer! If you stare into the sun you’ll go blind.”

A woman’s body lays on the black pavement. I try to ignore it. A ladder lay beside her. Her blue sash reveals her to be Janet, a woman who had a lover in the hotel. I smelled her cooking flesh, steam rising from the lifeless rags. My stomach growls and I hate myself for it. The Patriots wave their guns from the windows, focusing their ire on Sal and the religion he represents, instead of living with some sense of morality. Tomorrow, if decency permits, it’ll be a quieter day.

It’s Sunday. The sunray hasn’t come yet. There was a council meeting last night in the lower assembly hall. Rumors are spreading. The Patriots claim they have every right to claim every area in the city as their own, a right of conquest they called it, since the US government seems to have collapsed. Their guards have been seen with sniper rifles on the roof, preparing for an assault. Sal passionately argued that we must unite as one and welcome them with open arms instead of closed fists. We are a peaceful community and don’t have the proper weapons for a full-frontal attack. Sal preaches and no one seems to listen. They are afraid. But so am I. He believes that God will show us the way but even the strongest believers express their doubts. “If God wanted us to cower away in fear, he wouldn’t have brought the clouds to protect us. God wants us to one day return to the glory of the sun, without death, without pain.” He pleaded. Even I didn’t believe Earth would ever be safe and the ozone would never return to what it was. But the sheer passion in which he spoke eventually brought some of the Worshippers to tears. “We must believe in ourselves, as well as the Almighty, if we are to survive, even if it means sacrificing our dignity, our apprehension, and our bodies.”

“Only God can show us the light.” The crowd spoke in unison.

Several hours later there was an explosion. Several of the ill-fitted guards, with their wooden spears and plastic armor, rushed topside while Sal and several of his top Worshippers followed. Outside the heat was coming. Rifle fire popped from the rooftops across the black pavement and several of the guards fell near the entrance of the West End underground. I only followed them up the stairs. Their blood splattered against my boot. I threw my hood up and made the sign of the cross over their grimacing faces.

The roads divide us. I say a hail Mary and enter the sunlight. It doesn’t burn and neither do the bullets from the rooftop. Perhaps they didn’t fire because of my age. Gleaming helmets, lifting from their rifles, meant they wouldn’t kill me. They looked to their rights, towards the torn city and beyond. Beyond into the sky. It was a blazing wall of radiance. The sunray wall was etching a destructive line appearing like a wavy mirage. It was coming.

I predicted the temp to be at least 100. Soon it would be in the 200s. That didn’t stop Sal from helping a family sheltering behind a fallen street sign. He carried the boy while the mother and father scurried after him, towards the entrance. “Help them back into the underground.”

I saw his resistance to my waiting hand. “Sal…you must hide. Get inside.”

“No.” He responded defiantly. “The Patriots will see that life is not about waiting to die. Life is about persevering on what we have left. Survival. I must show them…I must teach–” A warning shot was fired at the sidewalk near Sal’s tattered shoes.

The couple ran down below, shielding themselves from the bodies on the stairs. I couldn’t bring myself to retreat when I saw the determination in his eyes. He ran down the sidewalk and out into the pavement without even a second thought. The Patriot riflemen took aim. What was his plan…?

A flash of heat hit me. I had never been topsoil to witness the coming of the sunrays. It was glorious. A force of nature. God’s will. For centuries mankind has been tested by God’s will but as I watched Sal walking towards the sunray it seemed that he was going to test God. But he wouldn’t survive, no matter how much faith he had in his heart.

The riflemen lowered their guns and shouted. But Sal wasn’t prepared to listen. Sweat dripped into my vision, burning my eyes as I witnessed the tragedy unfold. If the Worshippers were left without a leader, how would they survive? How would they sustain a righteous community? His unyielding devotion and stoic determination illuminated the tenacity of the human spirit. Regardless of the darkness man face they would always find a way to push through it and become a beacon.

Approaching closer, I waved three bystanders back into the subway entrance, coming to the edge of the sidewalk and the pavement. Judging from the blade of dry grass that sprouted in the crack of the asphalt I had a moment of hope. If plant life could survive in the dark pavement, then so could the man who walked towards the blazing sunray, in tattered shoes and a shirtless back. His dark, glistening skin was itself a beacon. I figured someone, someone fair, had to record the events that were about to unfold, if nothing else to tell the real story to the people down below, as opposed to the false, conquering story that the Patriots would tell. The honorable involuntary eye witness to the story of a man who risked his life and those of his followers to test to will of God, to test how much suffering humanity must burden. I had thought it was a test of his own faith, to leap into the dark unknown but it couldn’t have been. For Sal was more than a man of faith. He was faith. Unfettered. Uncaged. Never to be questioned by anyone, even God.

His sacrifice would be an eternal one. Statues would be made in the underground. His spirit would be embraced by unborn children, by nonbelieving geezers like myself, by future generations, for all time. A martyr. A murdered savior. One for the ages. He would become immortal.

The wall of bright washed everything it touched. Buildings and dried desert shrubbery were consumed in the brilliance. Sal stood before it with arms outstretched like a cross. A black man standing against the white that oppressed him. It was a magnificent display of sacrifice and religious fortitude. The Worshippers would revel in my telling of the events. But then something rustled by my face, something like a peck on the cheek, a soft cool finger of wind. A cool breeze…I forgotten what it had felt like.

I would have been praised for bringing back the story of Sal’s death…if he had actually expired and fell to the dirt, into ashes, but he didn’t. Instead, he raised his arms, his hands towards heaven, his spirit never yielding. For several moments he stood before the sunray, almost disappearing behind the sun-fall. But no… I was wrong. We were wrong. The patter finally came to my ears. The wall…wasn’t solid. It was indeed moving but unlike a mirage. The waves…were rainwater. It was raining! The clouds indeed were parting, the sun laying down a wall of light, but with it came a sun-shower. Rain…so beautiful and life giving. I hear the clack of rifles being dropped but I didn’t care. There was rain and Sal lived. I let everything go, as the sunray approached, letting my hands leave my side and reach for the sky. So much fighting over misfortune and power when we only really want to be appreciated and cared for by a greater, cosmic presence. So much darkness from man’s thirst. If only they could all look up and be quenched. I raise chin as heavenly mist touches down on a man who lost his faith and found it. There will never be a time when mankind never needs a benevolent force to aspire to. Here is the rain…Here is the rain.