Richard was a ski instructor. In fact, he was the world’s last ski instructor… and that made him just about the most important person in the world.

Or what was left of it.

After the bombs, there were only three things that mattered.

There were the survivors, who mattered because they were all that was left of the world that had gone before. There were the mutants, who matter mostly because they ate the flesh of any survivor they could catch. And there was the snow.

At least, the survivors called it snow, but that was just their way of avoiding talking about what it really was. It was their way of avoiding talking about what had happened to all the buildings, to all the cars, to all the things… and to all the people that had been there before.

It was their way of accepting things, because calling it “snow” was a lot easier than calling it “ashes”, which is what they really were.

The snow fell all day, every day. It covered everything in drifts of the dead world before. Somehow the mutants had adapted to be able to run on it, but falling into a snow drift meant certain death for any of the remaining survivors.

And that was why Richard was important.

In the world that came after the bomb, a man who could fly on a carpet of snow was the most important man in the whole world.

  • Oddly hopeless and hopefull at the same time. Well done!