17 2012

driving. Some people – astronauts, maybe - are trained to cope with sleep deprivation, and I envied those people who could stay awake for weeks without suffering too much. I was no astronaut – but I had no choice. I had to go on. The radio was still on in the background; the white noise had become rather soothing. At first there had been a few radio broadcasts, but recently radio stations were simply churning out white noise, or intermittent, pre-recorded government messages advising the public to evacuate if possible.There was a faint hope in my mind that, in my search across desolate wavebands, I’d come across a radio station broadcasting something that could give me hope - but this faith was weakening by the day: I didn’t really know why I was even driving any more. The road in front of me started to fade again. I looked at my hands, my knuckles white with the tightness of my grip on the steering wheel. I knew what was happening: the oxygen level in my brain had finally taken its toll, and my body convulsed as my hyperventilating lungs launched a last-ditch attempt to stabilise my oxygen levels. Euphoria spread through me as they triggered the release of endorphins, and I felt a numbness, too, as my brain start to shut down pain impulses in my failing body. * A car ground to a halt on the tarmac of Route 281 a few metres before a government-erected sign, which read “Heroica Matamoras 20 Miles – Safe City.”

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