[ WP ] Its been 4 days since the biggest solar flare in history took out the power grid . A well educated homeless man smiles as he sits watching the city burn in the valley below . Why is he smiling ?

I walk out ahead exhausted into the mist forming on dusk, my aching calves drag my rather quickly weathered shoes off the now hard bitumen and kick up the dust of the mountains lookout. My hand whips up instinctivly ninja like and my 2nd down the line, my brother in law''the eager oger'' comes to a slow halt still back on the bitumen leading the family of survivors. 
 
 A shadow sillouttes against the fenceline of the lookout and the burning glow of Sodom beneath, alerting my attention away from the apocalypse I focus on the shadow as my body tingles not with pain from hiking but the heightened sense of fear and being frightened. It could be a trap, a honeypot, I step forward more with stern heavy feat kicking up gravel as I approach, the shadow now forms into a man leaning onto the lookout handrail, looking out onto what is normally paradise. 
 
 The man appears scruffy and more hard done by, more then what us survivors had just been through the previous 4 days, neither of us wanting or looking for a fight barely able to just hold on.''HEY YOU'' I belch out of my dry frightened mouth, my approach from an angle now slower when he does n't respond, my every step now a nervous decision as to continue. My once quick hands now cold and frozen in fear touch the same handrail as I let out an exhalation from hiking and also an icebreaker. 
 
 The toughest part was looking across once I had breathed out a sigh of relief, the man looked truly homeless, as if he had lived in these hills for years. Now this is how it went, I tell it as it happened, nobody else saw it, the homeless man was smiling away, like he had just seen his first hot bath and hot meal after all that time. I did n't understand at first, here was the apocalypse on society happening right infront of us, yet here he was, all alone and dishevelled yet with the biggest smile you had ever seen. 
 
 It took a minute or two before watching him stare in smile at the scene below did I even mutter the words' whats the gag pops''' as he was also a good years older and mountain wiser then me''. Within an instant his hand flicked up something towards me, my pain quickly returning to my calves as I rebalanced, my hand rapidly swatting out infront of me catching his quickly flipping coin projectile. I hardly flinched since the days before of reacting to some hairy moments, my clasped hand unfolds revealing a weathered old ten dollar poker chip. 
 
 Not before glancing back up from the poker chip the bewildering homeless man springs up onto the handrail and places a foot on it and his leading foot on the lookout ledge. I gasp in the now cold misty air as I stumble back, clasping the chip once again as he stares down at me on the edge and calmly smiling says'' I cashed out along time ago kid, you should have too''. His words not even finishing or me let alone comprehending them he leaps off the lookout ledge and almost silently drops into the plunging escarpment below. 
 
 the enderino. 
 
 could have also ended with me flipping poker chip over edge and continuing along or with wearing the chip as a reminder to always cash out or be the house. 
 

