The chunks of concrete, crushed against each other and packed with dust that served as cement, didn’t yield easily. Yosef eyed the distance to the end of his patch and tried to calculate how long it would take him to finish. No one, he had quickly learned, would leave food over if he was late. And he was often late. When you’re used to spending 11 hours a day either learning or davening, you can’t compete with farmhands and mechanics at clearing debris.

“You don’t need to do this,” he protested again to Miles.

Miles grinned. “It’s obvious you were never on a sports team.”

Yosef tried to laugh through memories of basketball games and dorm room chess matches. Where were the guys now? Looking around at the desolation — a prairie of smithereens stretching to the curve of the earth in all directions, broken only by a few half-collapsed ruins, their group’s makeshift shelter, and the shallow water-filled dip they called the pond — he realized he didn’t want to know.

“Why has no one come?” he asked aloud, the question that had replaced weather and traffic as the go-to for small talk ever since the asteroid struck.

“A million reasons.” Miles sighed. “The whole continent might’ve been affected. I don’t know about you, but it took me three days to get here, and pretty much the whole way looked like this. And we aren’t even at the epicenter. So who knows who’s left and how much help they have to offer? Maybe there are bigger concentrations of survivors who’ll get help first. They don’t even have a way to know we’re here. They wouldn’t be able to see us from the air through this dust.”

“Where did you come from?” Yosef asked.

“My folks lived in Great Siven — it’s walking distance from here, but it’s pulverized, completely. I was in Northbend, visiting my grandparents.”

“And…?”

“No survivors. I was in a reinforced cellar, far enough out that nothing got flattened on top of it. You?”

“I was in Clifton when they realized it was going to hit. They tried to evacuate everyone, and I got on a train but I got separated from my group—” he swallowed. “I wanted to go back and find them but they wouldn’t let me off. But I climbed out—”

He fell silent, assaulted by memories of the chaos on the train, the panic as he realized he was separated from the yeshivah, squirming out the window, the horror when the wave of moving air knocked him off his feet, and he realized he had milliseconds until he passed out — or worse — with no one in the vicinity.

“Hey,” Miles said gently. “Hey, buddy. I know.”

Yosef aimed for a grin. “Thanks for helping me out. I’ll do the clearing, and then I can help with yours.”

Miles waved a hand. “Go save us both something to eat, that’ll be more useful.”

Yosef missed the oddest things from Before. Drinking straws to chew on when he needed to concentrate. Dehydrated potatoes from the top of the post-mishmar cholent. The high part of ke’ayal at dorm room kumzitzes.

Now, he wanted a hum. A vast background hum, rising crescendos of voice — the sound his mind associated with learning.

The silence irked. Into it, the Mishnah’s words fell like pebbles, hard and lumpy. Hameini’ach es hakad birshus harabim uba acher veniskal bah veshavrah, patur. Ve’im huzak bah… huzak bah… He squeezed his eyes shut. Huzak bah…

The rest of the Mishnah hid behind a brick wall in his mind. Unconsciously, he fumbled in his pocket for a straw; he only realized it when he couldn’t find one.

A group of survivors clustered some distance away, alternately appearing and disappearing behind the vast whorls of dust. Someone hooked his thumbs in his waistband and said something, a bunch of the others laughed. One spat on the ground.

Ve’im huzak bah… huzak bah…

They were surveying the cleared area, where they hoped to plant some of the produce they’d found in the debris. A desperate move, burying their meager supplies in the ground, with no sunlight, barely any water, dust storms flinging flotsam around like shrapnel. The finality of it, setting down roots, made Yosef’s shoulders tighten.

He clenched ragged nails into his thigh. Ve’im huzak bah…

He loves to learn, Rav Kunik had told Tatty, and Tatty beamed. A treasure, Reb Lozer, your son is an oitzar. He mamash loves every heilige word.

Hah. Yosef scrunched his aching shoulders against the outside wall of the makeshift mess hall. He’d thought it was true, then, been proud of himself even. Flying high after a good seder. Enjoying a strong mehalech. Hadn’t pictured himself trying to force words from an uncooperative memory. Dry. Cold.

One of the group turned — Reggie. He spied Yosef and said something that made the others look over and titter. Their voices carried on the grainy air but the individual words got lost.

He’d never imagined it this way. Extinguished and cold, cut off from the dust-curtained sky.

Was any of it — the fire, the love, the light — ever real? Or had it all just been a reflection of his surroundings?

Slowly standing up, he left the Mishnah unfinished and went back into the ad hoc shelter.

At first Yosef kne w he was dreaming. The station felt amorphous, clouds of indistinct faces pushing in around him and indeterminate voices crying out. But as someone shoved him — “Move, forward!” — he lost that knowledge. An elbow caught his shoulder blade, and he stumbled on, carried by the panicky crowd.

“Keep together!” Rav Kunik yelled over the din. “Keep together!”

Yosef grabbed Bitterman’s shoulder and tried to see if the train said anything on it. People eddied around him like a whirlpool, sucking him down. He struggled not to fall.

“Can you see if it says where we’re going?” he yelled. Bitterman didn’t answer, and when Yosef looked he realized it wasn’t Bitterman he was holding onto but an older man, and the group of white shirts and black pants was gone.

Choking panic took hold.

“Bitterman!” he yelled at the top of his lungs. “Cukier! Rav Kunik!”

Futile. Utterly, stomach-wrenchingly futile.

Then, a shove propelled him, stumbling, onto the train. His foot nearly caught in the gap between platform and car — a death sentence in this crowd — as he caught a glimpse of the yeshivah group boarding the train opposite, the train heading in the opposite direction.

Someone shook his shoulder, hard. “Yosef! Wake up! Yosef!”

Waking up with a cloth tied around your mouth and nose is hard to get used to, and in the fading of his dream Yosef tugged blindly, scrambling for breath.

“Yosef,” someone repeated in a whisper. He jerked awake and saw Miles crouched near his head. “You okay? You were shouting.”

Yosef closed his eyes and stretched his eyebrows up to mid-forehead, opened them again. “Yeah… ’mfine. Thanks.”

Silence sat between them for a long moment.

“Come outside,” Miles whispered at last. “Come see something.”

They tiptoed between breathing lumps in the crowded dark. Outside, grit crunched underfoot as Miles led the way around the back of the lean-to, overlooking the pond.

It took Yosef’s eyes a moment, then he saw them. Tiny, mesmerizing stars, darting over the water. “What is that?”

“Fireflies,” Miles replied, sinking down with his back to the shelter. “Somehow some survived. They’ve been coming out every night, but fewer each time.”

Yosef sat down beside him, eyes on the sparks. “Fireflies…”

“Magical, hey?”

“Miraculous.”

Miles laughed genially. “If you’re so inclined. Miraculous.” He plucked a pebble from the ground and passed it absently from hand to hand. “I always loved catching them in a jar when they were in season. They’re so… I dunno… magical.” He laughed shortly, rubbing a hand over his scalp. “Whatever.”

“How do they work?”

“Work? Not sure exactly. Chemical reaction of some sort? Bioluminescence, you know, lighting up from inside.”

Lighting up from inside. Yosef looked away.

“Hey, whatsa matter?”

“Nothing,” Yosef said shortly. “Thanks, Miles.”

“No prob. I come out every night. Dunno how much longer it will last. You’re welcome to join.”

“Probably not long,” Yosef said darkly. “Anyway, I need to sleep.”

“Okay,” Miles said softly. “Good night, then.”

Yosef paused in a half-crouch. “Sorry. Just…I didn’t sleep so well —”

“Hey, it’s really okay,” Miles said. He tossed out a laugh. “And if you stop seeing metaphors in everything, life will probably be more manageable.”

Yosef snorted. “Yeh. Thanks.”

The fireflies glimmered tauntingly behind him as he turned and reentered the shelter.

ÒSofty!Ó Lucas yelled, catching Yosef by the shoulder as he trudged back from the pond. “Reg! Dino, get here. You guys are foraging today.”

Reggie, scowling, made a disagreeable noise in his throat. “He’s useless.” He thrust a thumb at Yosef. “Give us Trent.”

“Trent’s needed for the turbine.” Lucas spun Yosef around and pushed him toward Reggie. “Deal with it.”

Reggie muttered something venomously, and Lucas, their elected leader, let go of Yosef and took a confrontational step closer. “Hey, you got a problem, man?”

“Yeah, I do.” Reggie pushed one fist into the other palm, knuckles cracking aggressively. “Foraging’s the most dangerous work. You can’t hitch us to a wuss who’s gonna drag us down. Trent can’t come, find some’n else.”

“Everyone else’s been foraging already this week. Take what you got and shut up.”

“If he don’t come back, it ain’t my—”

“You bet it will be—”

“Hey, people,” Miles interrupted, appearing through the haze from the direction of the pond. “What’s the matter?”

Reggie threw him a hostile glance and crossed his arms as Lucas explained.

“Relax,” Miles said, eyeing Reggie disparagingly. “I’ll go instead of you if you’re scared.”

Reggie’s eyes sparked. “Go instead of your stupid friend!”

“Nah,” Miles said easily. “I don’t feel like spending the day with you either. I was meant to be building the big shelter. Hop to it.”

Reggie opened his mouth but Lucas put a hand on his chest. “You heard him. The big shelter. Shut your trap and go.”

Hurling a last poisonous glower, Reggie went.

“You didn’t have to do that,” Yosef said in a low voice as they retrieved their makeshift tools — the head of a pickaxe lashed to a sturdy branch and an old fodder sack — from the shelter.

“Meh.” Miles hoisted the pick over his shoulder and picked up one of the group’s five water bottles filled with murky pond water. “I’m not scared of Reggie. And foraging has its benefits. Let’s go!”

Dino, a chubby boy, pale for a farmhand, started out in the lead, choosing west, into the wind. “Best head out a good bit first. All the nearby places been combed through already.”

“Lead on.” Miles shifted the pick. “You got the compass?”

“Yep. No appetite for getting lost in this soup.”

Yosef followed silently, focused on keeping his footing on the uneven plain as thick dust and shards of debris hurtled through his field of vision. The terrain shifted dangerously underfoot. Unlike the area immediately surrounding the camp, the ground here was fresh rubble, crumbs of the city that had stood before. It was unsettling, clambering through an endless field of ruins while unable to see more than a couple of feet ahead.

“Win icki uh!” Dino called from ahead of them after a while.

“What?” Yosef yelled. “Can’t hear you!”

“I said the wind’s picking up,” Dino said, turning to face them and cupping his mouth. “We’d better find shelter, this is a real storm.”

“Bit hard to find anything in this,” Miles muttered, shielding his eyes with both hands.

A whirling ocean of brown dust seethed round them, cutting off the rest of the world. Bigger bits of unidentified wreckage whipped past.

“Just keep going!” Miles yelled. He had to shout now even though Dino was right in front of him. “But hold on to each other!”

“Where?” Dino shouted.

“Forward! West! Until we spot somewhere we can wait.”

Yosef’s eyes stung, and he squeezed them shut. He grabbed hold of Dino’s shoulders, trying to shake off the memory of Bitterman-who-wasn’t-Bitterman. He felt Miles grip him from behind, and they jerked forward, an ungainly caterpillar.

Hobbling unseeingly over mounds of hazardous rubble, immense winds blasting by, unhindered by buildings, Yosef felt his palms spasming on Dino’s roughened shirt. He tried to open his eyes but the dust forced them shut.

Suddenly Dino’s shoulders dropped out of his grasp, and Yosef cried out, stumbling another step and tripping over Dino into a wall. Miles’ hands slammed into the brick above him.

“Shelter!” Dino was sobbing. “We found shelter!”

Holding on to the wall, they foundered around the perimeter of the structure until a gaping hole let them in. Moving sideways, out the wind, Yosef attacked his streaming eyes with both fists, rubbing as they twinged and teared.

“Bad one,” Miles said at last, over Yosef and Dino’s coughing. “I thought we were goners there for a while.”

“We prob’ly still be,” Dino said darkly, shaking out his ripped square of rayon and retying it over his nose and mouth. “Y’realise I couldn’t actually follow the compass in that, right?”

Silence followed this.

Almost died, Yosef thought wonderingly. The last few minutes reeled back through his head. Blazing white terror. Stumbling, blind.

“Well, now we’re here we may as well forage,” Miles said at last. “I had to drop the pick but I still have the sack.” He pulled it from under his shirt. “Split up?”

Yosef looked around. A house, by the looks of things, and they’d come through a gash in the kitchen wall. Most of this room looked destroyed, but the rest might prove more bountiful.

“I’ll take this here kitchen,” Dino volunteered, beginning to paw through a wrecked cabinet.

“Yosef, you want the upstairs?” Miles asked, heading through for the passage. “I’ll start down here and we’ll meet up.”

Yosef navigated the stairs carefully. They seemed mostly intact but it was impossible to be certain in the gloom. The outer wall had fallen away on one side of the top floor, and the wind screamed as it found the hole.

Nothing, nothing, nothing. Did no one in this family ever eat in their bedrooms? Or had they survived and taken the food with them? And clothes, nothing in the closets.

A blanket, now that was useful. A painted mug. Definitely good to have, and even a booklet of guitar chords, the paper could help for starting fires…

Downstairs, Miles had made a pile in the corner of the semi-intact dining room. Doc Martens, knife, tin of paint… Dino came in from the kitchen, hands dusted in powdered plaster, with a bag of sugar and some unidentifiables.

“Not a bad haul,” he said. “Lots of dried meats, looks almost like a hunting family smack bang in the middle of the city.”

“We’d better set ourselves up here,” Miles said. “Doesn’t look like the storm is calming down soon.”

“Well then,” Dino said, almost cheerfully. “Lunch!”

Yosef’s watch now reposed in the pile of broken watches near the kindling in the campsite — their make-do firelighters. Most of those watches had stopped at 6:47, motionless witnesses to the force of the asteroid’s blast. Some of the group had digital watches that had survived, but Yosef had discovered early on that they didn’t take kindly to his constant, “What’s the time?”

“What’s it matter?” Trent had snapped at him. “You got a train to catch or somethin’?” After that, he’d taken to attaching his tefillos to mealtimes: Shacharis before breakfast, Minchah before lunch, Maariv before dinner.

“I’ll just be a few minutes,” he murmured, peering at the compass Dino had put down and slipping out the room.

The hallway seemed the best place, enough dim light creeping in but sealed off from direct wind. Orienting himself east, he took out his pocket siddur and began.

He was partway through Atah kadosh when a door bumped against the wall and Dino’s heavy tread followed. “I’ll go see if there’s — oh. Sorry. Uh…?”

The capillaries in Yosef’s cheeks tickled as they widened. He kept his eyes in his siddur, glad of the cloth over his mouth but suddenly conscious of his light swaying.

“Uh… you okay? We got lunch going…”

After a long moment, Dino’s footsteps — lighter, careful — turned back, and a buzz of whispers started up. Another few lines, and Miles came to the door, then retreated.

It was only as he reached shalom rav that Yosef realized he hadn’t thought about a word of what he’d said. Not even modim. Less than an hour after Hashem had saved his life.

As Yosef reentered the dining room, the air felt taut, as though it couldn’t stretch enough to accommodate them all and kept snapping back like overstrained elastic.

“Sorry,” he said, feeling himself flush again.

“Hi!” Miles said, exaggeratedly cheerful. “You ready to eat?”

“Um, yeah. I was just, um, praying.”

Miles’ face cleared. “Ohhhh! I thought you must be, but then I thought, no that can’t be right, he isn’t wearing those boxes.”

Yosef grinned. “The boxes are just for morning prayers.”

“Gotcha.” Miles curved his mouth down and raised his eyebrows, impressed. “Although it doesn’t look like you’ll be able to pray tomorrow morning… I doubt we’ll get back by then.”

“I’d pray in either case,” Yosef said, sliding into a seat — a chair! — “but actually, I have them here. I always take them with me.”

But his words niggled. I’d pray in either case. He still davened, of course. Just like Before. But his tefillos, lonely and unfocused, fell wingless to the ground. Had they really soared Heavenward before or had that, too, been an effect of the atmosphere?

Was any of it ever real if it all disappeared now?

It didnÕt feel like sleep, just a light trance that he drifted in and out of even as the back of his mind kept tabs on the yowling wind. Dino sighed and muttered, and Miles got up every now and then and padded past. The floor prickled with grit.

Miles still surprised him with a brisk, “Get up, guys, storm’s done.”

The world outside billowed with the regular dust, but the wind had died to occasional puffs. “Due east now,” Dino muttered, holding the compass flat and studying it. “Yeah?”

“We definitely veered during the storm,” Miles said doubtfully, “and in this dust we could walk just a couple yards either side of the camp and never see it.”

“We’ll see it,” Yosef said. “There’s the signal tower.”

Still, a vague unease settled on the group and they started off silently.

“Hey,” Dino said after a while, “There’s another house still part standing. Should we go in for a look-see?”

Miles and Yosef glanced up and then Miles gasped and began running, the sack flapping heavily against his thigh as he struggled over the craggy terrain.

“Miles! Hey!” Yosef called, taking off after him.

He caught up at the house itself, where Miles was fighting with the skeleton of a garden bench that barred a window.

“Hey,” Yosef panted. “What’s up?”

Miles dropped the bench, fingers shaking. “This was my house,” he said hoarsely. “This — my parents — but it’s still standing, so —”

“Ohhh,” Yosef breathed. “Oh. Miles.”

“It’s falling apart,” Dino, catching up, said. “I don’ think it’s safe.”

“The blast welded this bench to the window frame. Let’s find somewhere else.” Miles set off round the house without waiting for them.

They found him at another window, picking glass slivers from the frame. “Maybe through here,” he said. “This should be the dining room. I think…”

Yosef looked up at the house. It was grotesquely twisted, like different layers of a Rubik’s cube spun at random, each room a block. No wonder Miles wasn’t sure which room this was.

“Hey!” he said suddenly. “Miles, see here!”

Miles jerked. “What?”

Yosef pointed to a patch of writing scrawled on the outside wall.

RIP Em. June 8

Going south. Doug. June 11.

Slowly, Miles approached the message. He put a palm on either side of the writing and stared at it. Yosef blinked and looked away.

“Let’s go in,” Miles said hoarsely after a long moment and turned back to the glass slivers.

Yosef eyed the message another moment. “What’s it written in?” he whispered to Dino. But Miles heard and turned.

“Blood,” Dino said, almost nonchalantly. “Slaughtered enough pigs in my day to know.”

Miles paled.

“He’s alive.” Yosef gripped Miles’ shoulder. “Of all the houses… You’ll find him, you will. But it’s not safe to go in.”

“He was bleeding enough to write with on June 8th and still by June 11th,” Miles said harshly. “I’ll never find him again, I know it. I need something — photos or…”

“It ain’t safe,” Dino said uneasily.

“There,” Miles muttered, tossing the last glass shard aside. He thrust a leg through the window frame, but Dino grabbed him.

“Look first, ’ey.”

Miles peered into the dark square. He deflated. “There’s like a chasm we need to cross to get to solid floor. We’d need a rope or something, to hook over that broken piece of wall there and pull ourselves across.”

“You need,” Dino muttered.

“We don’t have rope,” Yosef said. “Let’s look for another way.”

But looking yielded no results. The front door was lost under rubble, the back one blocked by huge chunks of concrete. The windows were mostly barred, or too high, or opened onto craters in the floor that fell three stories. One room’s outer wall was torn away, but the door to the rest of the house was completely blocked by debris.

Miles grabbed a window bar and shook it. “It’s right here. We’ll never find it again!”

He was right, Yosef knew. Looking for the ruin in the choking haze would be futile, and anyway it seemed likely to collapse soon.

Miles had gone round the house again and come to a stop by the window he’d cleared, gauging the gap in the floor. “Hey.” He turned suddenly to Yosef, eyes hard and bright. “I got it. Your boxes.”

“My…?” But Yosef already knew what Miles wanted. Instinctively his hands went to his pockets.

“Your boxes. They’ve got thick straps, no? And they’re long, I saw them this morning. We can use them as rope just to get across here, they won’t break. And if they do, I’ll fix them, okay? I’m handy with that sort of thing.”

Later, replaying the scene a million times, Yosef knew he should have been gentler, but shock took over in the moment. Stepping back, he held onto the tefillin in his pockets. “No. No way.”

Miles’ dusty face tightened and his eyes seemed to shrink.

“I’m sorry,” Yosef said belatedly. “I’m really sorry, Miles, it just — these are holy, okay? I can’t use them like that.”

“I—” Miles said, voice hoarse and exposed. “Please, Yosef. This — I don’t know if — and maybe there’s something, a photo or — Look, I know they’re important to you, I’ll be careful. Really.”

Yosef hunched involuntarily. “I’m sorry. I’m really — I’m sorry, Miles, I can’t, it’s not allowed—”

“Yosef.” Miles’ voice shook. Yosef froze when he saw tears forming in his eyes. One overflowed and tracked its slow way through the dust on his face, leaving a trail. “Please, Yosef? Please…”

Yosef tensed his fingers on the tefillin, feeling the blood leave his knuckles. “I wish I could help you,” he said feebly. “Believe me, I wish I could—”

Miles’ face closed. “When you needed help, I didn’t say ‘I wish.’”

Yosef blinked, lost for words.

“Get out the compass, Dino,” Miles said coldly. “Get going.”

“Miles —” Yosef said. It came out squeaky; he coughed.

“Not one word from you.” Miles turned at him roughly, bringing his hands up, then dropping them in shaking fists at his sides. “Not one word, you hear?”

The whole way back to the camp, hours and hours, the wind whistled and the dust billowed and Yosef slogged behind the others, empty. Completely empty.

Yosef guessed it was around three a.m. when he gave up twisting and tiptoed out the shelter. Time-guessing seemed pointless now, without a watch to check against, but instinctive nonetheless, and he wondered vaguely if his circadian rhythm had suffered. Finding a spot, he sat down. Dark. Dust. Blind.

Reggie, with a fly’s nose for rot, had picked up on the changed air between him and Miles as soon as they returned and let loose with relish. Hunger and angst swirled in Yosef’s stomach, and he dug his nails into the ground, imagining holding on to the edge of a cliff.

“Hashem?” he tried.

But his heart stayed dry and cold, something hard lodged in it.

A small movement registered at the edge of his eye. A moment later he saw it again. A dancing bit of light.

One last surviving firefly.

“Stop it,” Yosef muttered, viciously toeing an invisible piece of debris.

The little glimmer danced on, oblivious.

Nothing, Yosef thought, quiet and cold. Everything I gave up, and nothing. No rescue. No quiet from Reggie. Not even a good tefillah.

No light.

And suddenly he was crying, head on his legs in the pitch black. No light around him; no light within. Just cold, empty actions and a million miles between him and the sky.

When he looked up, the darkness had faded a little, and he realized he’d misjudged. Time for Shacharis.

Taking the shel yad from his pocket, he started to wrap it, once, again, again. Mechanically. Opposite his heart, hah.

As the harsh edges of the bleak landscape softened into a semblance of light, he realized the firefly’s light was weaker. Maybe the last time I’ll ever see a firefly, he thought, and suddenly he was sorry for his hostility. Maybe it’s the last firefly in the world.

“Bioluminescence, you know, lighting up from inside,” Miles’s voice came back to him.

But how? Yosef wanted to scream. How?

Something moved nearby again, but much bigger. Yosef turned sharply. Near the shelter, his eye caught Miles’s for a millisecond; then Miles spun on his heel and disappeared behind the curtain of dust.

Sometimes there’s no light, he thought dismally. Sometimes there just isn’t light.

Then what?

And suddenly he knew.

Sometimes there is no light outside. Sometimes there’s not even light within. But he would keep going, keep doing. Dry actions, going through the motions. Holding on as tightly as he could until the light shone again.

A sliver of sun rose over the lip of the earth, lighting the devastation in sharp relief. Yosef adjusted the shel rosh and began his tefillah.

Somewhere to his left, the last firefly swooped through the dust and disappeared.

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 788)