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These Hands

The man sat slumped over in a sterile waiting area of the county hospital. His hands rubbing coursely over each other in a worried way. Massaging each other as best they could through those thick calluses that spoke of a lifetime of hard work.

Though as clean as he could get, the man seemed far to dirty to be inside such a sterile place. It wasn't the dirt that comes from neglect. It was the dirt that comes with spending half your life working with it. The dirt seems to become a part of you, and you it.

Brows furrowed leaning forward he glanced around slowly at the much too large hospital. Every thing seemed too large now since "The Judgement".

This place of healing would have had nurses and doctors running here or there out to cure the world.

A soon to be father should never wish his unborn death. Yet night after night as he lay next to his young wife and the growing seed they had planted, he had wished just that many times.

It had been five years since "The Judgement", five years since little Beth Mullins his wife had met him at his door that evil morning. It had been five years since the world had ended.

His needing hands stopped as he quickly come to his feet. He stood hyper aleart, listening closely. Behind two sets of doors a woman's voice could be heard.

"That's good breathe steady we still have a while to go..."

Sitting back down yet still tense his hands again went back to there well versed movements.

"Please God...", leaked from his quivering lips.

Many would say Beth wasn't much to look at. Those people were nnot using Jesse's eyes or heart. Beth was plain short and stockly like her mother. City people might consider these qualities useless, yet on a working farm it meant an extra pair of capable hands.

She had complained about chores while growing up like all children do. Since arriving at Jesse's farm though she had never once complained. What she and the world had witnessed had taken the child out of her. Replacing the chld with fear nightmares and pain. Yet she did not cry, she hasn't spoken one word since that day.

The one thing Jesse remembered most about that moring, and it has hit him every morning since. Is the almost painful silence. He had read somewhere that Lewis and Clark could hear the ocean while hundreds of miles away. That seemed impossible before. there used to be so much noise, life in the world.

Hands massaged each other in worry. He stopped fidgeting looking at his now open palms. His hands had seen a lifetime of pain a lifetime of hard labor. He had used them to plow, to drive posts, even to help bury, all the families that had died in the "The Judgement". He had birthed livestock, cared for the injured, and put them down when the need arose. His big strong hands. Jesse clinched them into tight fists of rage and frustration.

"Useless, useless thats what they are!" Jesse almost screamed through clincled teeth.

The extreme anger and tension left him as quickly as it had come. The worst part of any situation for Jesse had always been the waiting, the watching. Jesse is a doer, like his father before him. Even in the face of something as grim as "the Judgement" he did not falter.

He had awoke that morning to the defeaning screams of what seemed like all the animals on earth. Most stopped after a few minutes as they died in grotesque positions. A number of them had to be put down before the wails of pain stopped. He had just finished putting the last one down outside the barn when he caught sight of Beth Mullins carrying her younger brother Tom coming up the drive.

Jesse had run to help her. After handing Tom's limp almost lifeless body to Jesse, Beth said the last words he would hear from her, "They're all dead!" That is until that very moment in the hospital. Over the now constant silence htat covers the world Jesse heard the voice he had heard only once before so long ago.

"It's coming!"

He knew that was Beth's voice.

"Breathe...bare down...PUSH..."

He stood no longer able to sit.

"Please god if you are going to take it make it fast not like Tom." Jesse breathed.

He remembered coming here after Beth first showed him the possitive pregnacy test. They had a long talk with the doctor. Jesse's first question "Are the birth and death rates any better for people than livestock?"

Being a farmer he had noticed the change in the world. It seemed like all living things only had a one in five or so chance of living after conception. If it survived to birth it had a one in three chance of coming out normal. The other two chances were ranged between a mild palsie state to total comatose state for life.

This is the left over effect of "The Judgement". All living things seem to be affected.

The doctors sad head shake was all Jesse needed. He had immediately brought up the subject of abortion. Though Beth did not speak she was good at communicating her feelings. She wante