Mother's Milk
After the first exposure of the nuclear rays, some of the skeletons could still move. They tried to get out of their cars, but they simply didn’t know how door handles worked, nor could they muster the strength to break the glass, as their muscles were gas pedal puddles. Their mothers died, their bosses died, their leaders all simply died. The metal boxes became their new prisons, tombs, sarcophaguses. They rotted in thick, soupy air, their skin curdling, unpasteurized
;
Two hundred years after the war, the metal tube sat on the desolate highway, filled with the sweating, rotten remnants of the milk it once held so dear. There were other cars strewn about, but the Milk Truck appeared particularly solitary–the smell, perhaps, caused it to be unfavorable. Not that anybody was really around to smell it, however, as the skeletons that occupied the driver seats of the vehicles had begun a process of decomposition. Calcium, in all its nutritious glory, could no longer serve the structures of these poor bones.
Soon, however, a resurface began. Emerge, in youthful folly, into the pasture. And thus, they did, from fortified holes, caverns, crawling, consumed by tightly sealed suits. They gazed at the remnants of the civilization their ancestors had told endless tale of. Stripped billboards, crippled trees, orange grasses, satellites of Icarus, and, ah, wouldn’t you have it, a lonely little Milk Truck, the silk of the kine
;
Rations had grown thin and many had starved over the vast amount of time. They were educated on the old ways of food, some even learned to farm with artificial lights. Alas, even with limits on births, there still wasn’t enough. A group of four scouts, thirsty for futures, scavenged the desolate landscape.
They walked, boots on cracked concrete, seeing nothing but pestilence and famine. Among the endless heaps of rust, the shimmering metal tube that harbored the sigil of a brown cow, beaming with passion, caught their eyes. They scampered across the mossy cement with their thick protective suits towards the beacon of nourishment. They walked around it, inspecting, admiring and discussing with caution. One of them climbed the latter towards the top of the milk truck, and began prying open the hatch. It wouldn’t budge, so another climber aboard and the two of them stood upon that silver throne and pulled and pulled, suckling. The lid popped open, the two almost stumbled backwards off the truck. They peered over the hatch and their mouths dropped in awe:
8,000 gallons of cottage cheese
;
They jumped, rejoiced, and soon all four were perched on the truck gazing at the eternity of caloric value before them. They took out their containment tools and scooped out a tub of the rich, creamy stuff.
“We should bring this back to be tested,” one stated. The others nodded solemnly, salivating.
“Or,” another proposed, “maybe one bite wouldn’t hurt.” The nods were more enthusiastic.
They each opened the food consumption pockets located on the sleeves of their suits and spooned in the Milk Truck’s bounty. They closed the hatches and the brought tubes to their mouths, the chunky curdles slid up and filled their desperate, surrendered taste buds.
Eyes rolled back. Lips licked. Bliss
;
The storehouse soon held tubs of cottage cheese, communal decadence. They tried to push the truck closer to their shelter, but the weight of the spoil held fast. They resigned themselves to making several trips per week in order to continue their gorging.
Weeks went by in eternal routine, the pilgrims stalking through the air, stripping their suits into the newfound freshness of the atmosphere. They began noticing small pink dots appear on their faces, four zits in a conspicuous order. The dots grew, bulging and writhing by the day, and with them grew bulges of conviction, faith, and most of all a thirst that could only be quenched by goopy, chunky, pasty cheese; the silk of the kine
;
The Milk Truck was surrounded. Creatures, bipedal just months ago, now crawled on their hands and feet, throwing their faces, consumed by slippery udders, into the air. They shouted, moo-ed, groaned; milk-curdling screams that longed for the great silver tube to reproduce, to continue to nurture them. The last of the curds had nearly been scraped and devoured by the bovineous horde.
They dragged the feeble, underfed, lactose intolerant habitants of their society, who cowered in fear of transformation, and splayed them along the roads in rusted chains. They carved images of smiling cows on their bellies with their new sharp hooves, opening them with patience and concentration, and removing their stomach bags. They dragged these sacrificial stomach bags, bleeding, towards the truck and filled them the remaining cottage cheese. They hoped, no, they knew, that the blood and intolerance would merge with the remaining cheese and cause it to multiply, containing the feast
;
The Milk Truck lay, light, where it had lain for so many years. It had been flushed, its ever-growing burden released. No longer was the desolate road it’s only companion. It now had hundreds of children, growing in number, to nurture it and cherish it for the bounty it once produced. They grazed the orange grasses and shrubs on the side of the highway, snouts down but minds in the sky, visions of cottage cheese keeping their ashes of hope alight. They cared for their mother, even long after its use, as they knew that without the cream it bestowed neither their social nor probiotic culture would subsist
.
Colby Wright is a recent graduate from the University of Puget Sound, with a major in English literature and a minor in History.