text: [Themes: fan fiction, serious, post-apocalyptic]
  
  You are a mid-twenties human being in Cormac McCarthy's novel The Road. When the world ended countless years ago, you were old enough to possess memories of your old life but too young to yet be set in the ways of the old world. Because of this, you had the upper hand both physically and mentally during the first few dreadful years after the apocalypse, but the real credit goes to your older brother. He taught you everything you needed to know about surviving on the road, and he always had your back. You don't travel with him anymore. In fact, you can't even recall when you last saw him, or where he went. You never try to remember though—your brain repressed that memory for a reason, and you don't care to find out why.
  
  You're bundled up tightly in a shirt, jacket, snow pants, and hiking boots. You've tied a cloth around your face to keep the ashes out of your lungs. You used to have a fair amount of supplies, but a close call with a band of marauders several days ago forced you to leave most of them behind. What did you decide to take with you?
  
  [Author's Note: This is not about love, or hope, or living life to the fullest. This is solely about survival and what it takes to exist in Cormac McCarthy's fantastic novel The Road. (This is for a class project. I do not claim any ownership of his book. I highly recommend you read it, if you haven't.)]
  
  > Your shopping cart, three large blankets, extra shoes, a lighter, and a canteen of water.
  The wind is noticeably colder today than it was yesterday. Already, you can feel the brutal winter creeping up behind you, taunting you by sending fatal, frozen ashstorms your way. As you push your cart south down the long, crack-laden road, the darkness that you've come to recognize as day begins to fade. You know that it would be reckless to keep moving in the black of night, so you resolve to camp out and try your luck at sleep. Where do you settle down for the night?
  
  > sleep in the road. If you were to get caught in a snowstorm out there, you'd never find your way back.
  With confidence that you've made the right decision, you park your cart in the ashes beside the road and hurriedly collect firewood, staying as close to the road as possible. Lighter in hand, the dry twigs catch instantly, and you sit back and watch the flames spark and crackle before you. A distant memory starts to surface, but the ashes in your mind make the image appear blurry, and you can barely make out a pair of tiny feet warming in front of a fireplace. You quickly push the thought from your brain and take a swig of water from your canteen. Bitter, but refreshing. You continue to add fuel to the fire and eventually, with heavy eyes, take your blankets out of the cart and bundle up for the night.
  
  > Next.
  You awake to the dull light—if it could even be called light—of morning. Your fire had died long ago, and as you look about you, it appears that everything is just as you had left it previously. You don't see this as a success on your part so much as a stroke of sheer luck that no one crossed your path. Gathering up your provisions, you place them back into the cart and begin on your way south.
  
  After having walked almost five miles, you come across what used to be a bridge spanning a wide river. The rapids may have raced along the channel at one point in time, but now the thick sludge only creeps slowly over the rocks. It would be slow going, but the water is shallow enough that you think you'd be able to cross. (After all, the shattered bridge will be of no use to you.) What do you do?
  
  > attempt to cross. The longer you stay moving south, the better.
  You step hastily into the water—and immediately recoil your foot. It's so freezing that you feel your foot instantly go numb. You take a deep breath and hesitantly step back in, bracing yourself for the brutal cold, and this time you manage to endure it enough to move your other foot into the river. Dragging the cart behind you, you begin steadily working your way across, with the water up to your knees, and then, to your waist. With only a third of the way to go, you suddenly feel a tug on the cart. You glance over your shoulder and pull at it again, but it's stuck on something, and no matter how hard you pull, it won't budge. You...
  
  > leave it. It's not worth wasting the time and effort to get it loose.
  You knew you'd have to leave the cart behind eventually, but that doesn't mean you're going to abandon the rest of your supplies. Carefully, so as not to fall into the river, you turn and pull out the blankets in which the rest of your provisions are hidden, and without looking back, you haul them the rest of the way across. You drop them onto the ground and your feet and struggle to catch your breath, then glance over your shoulder. The cart's still there, standing firm against the current. You're convinced that you wouldn't have been able to dislodge it after all. Once some strength has returned to your legs, you tie the blankets into a sack and sling it over your shoulder, heading once again along the road going south.
  
  > Next.
  Grey snow begins to fall as you make your way slowly along the road. You're not sure how long it's been. Days? Weeks? It couldn't have been months, you think, otherwise it would be getting warmer by now. At least, that's what you hope is true, for there would be no meaning in migrating south every winter if summer only grew colder. You amuse yourself with thoughts like these in an attempt to forget the twisting, empty feeling in your stomach. Impulsively, you remove your canteen from the sack of blankets and take a quick drink to quell the swelling of your throat.
  
  Later in the evening, you come across an abandoned gas station—actually, why do you even refer to it as abandoned? Everything in this world is abandoned and decaying, isn't it? ...There goes your brain again. You can't let it get to you. You have to hold on to the hope of survival, because without it, life isn't worth living.
  
  You take a deep breath and force yourself to enter the gas station. As you expected, all of the shelves have been ravaged and there's hardly anything worth keeping. You pay no mind to the open cash register and instead begin fumbling about through the mess in search of something, anything worth eating. You peer into one of the broken refrigerators and spot a sealed packet of some sort of lunch meat, hidden away in the corner. You open the door and pull it out, staring longingly at the pale hunk of long-expired, browning flesh. What do you do?
  
  > eat it. If you're going to survive the rest of this journey, you NEED to eat something!
  With an intense hunger welling up inside, you tear open the packet and scarf down every last slice of meat, licking your fingers and the packet once you're done. It's starting to get dark, so you hurry outside with a newfound, perhaps imaginary, stamina and bring firewood back into the building. As you set up the fire, you feel an uneasiness in the pit of your stomach and have to rush into the corner of the store to vomit. This persists for most of the night, eventually causing diarrhea and such a spike in temperature that you can hardly move. Curled up in your blankets and highly delirious, you pass into an agitated sleep.
  
  For the first time in a very long time, your dreams are pleasant. You find yourself to be a child again, playing on a playground swing set. You dig your feet into the mulch and push yourself in circles until the chains are wound so tightly that they send you spinning around and around. You let out a laugh. The dizziness makes you want to throw up, but you just keep laughing.
  
  Death takes you in the morning.