"If I were God, I would have made the world just so and no different. And so I have you... I have you.
The clocks stopped at one seventeen. There was a long shear of bright light, then a series of low concussions.
I think it's October but I can't be sure.
I haven't kept a calender for years. Each day is more gray than the one before.
It is cold and growing colder as the world slowly dies. No animals have survived, and all the crops are long gone. Someday all the trees in the world will fall. The roads are peopled by refugees towing carts, and gangs carrying weapons, looking for fuel and food.
Within a year there were fires on the ridges and deranged chanting. There has been cannibalism.
Cannibalism is the great fear. Mostly I worry about food, always food. Food and the cold and our shoes.
Sometimes I tell the boy old stories of courage and justice, difficult as they are to remember.

All I know is the child is my warrant, and if he is not the word of God, then God never spoke."