OBLITERATED

My home was the worst affected, though I didn't realise it at the time. Not that my attention had been wandering, but when the news first came down I was several kilometres up the valley, amongst the sal and yuthika, trying to figure out what had gone wrong with my bees. They had been acting odd recently, kind of lethargic, and I had decided that I would sleep out near their boxes for a couple of nights, to see what I could see. I unrolled my blanket and made a fire and roasted up several naan, on which I would eat heaping scoopfuls of honey and comb and fresh clover far into the night. The quieting of the hive eventually hummed me to sleep, like my mother used to do; the wakening of the hive buzzed me awake in the morning, like my younger brother's alarm clock used to do. These days, I'd take the bees over either.

I never did figure out what was wrong with the bees, or even if there was anything wrong with them at all. But the days up there amongst the fresh breezes were very enjoyable, and I decided I'd have to go check on the bees again soon – to see about the lethargy, I said as I licked a scrap of honey from my lip. Either way, when I got back home I found that I was the only one around who hadn't yet heard about The Road. They said it just like that, too: "The Road is coming through," they'd intone as soberly as possible, and then keep staring into my face to record my change of expression. "Good," I'd say, stretching. "I'm sick of lugging my honey into town on my back."