Impetus by Scott M Sullivan Page A

back in surprise. He fell backward into the door, pushing it open and tripping over the threshold into the home’s interior. “Solomon,” he said angrily after he ended up on his back. It was the situation, not Solomon, that burned him. But he was caught up in the moment. His nerves were already on edge. Why hadn’t he heard Solomon come up behind him? Over squeaky floorboards nonetheless. That bothered him. He was losing focus.
    Solomon did not speak. He walked over and picked Mick up off the floor. For a man his size, Solomon was as strong as a bear. It was a deceiving trait considering he was much shorter than Mick and had no discernible muscle mass.
    Mick rose to his feet without much of his own doing. Solomon then began to pat the dust off Mick’s clothes.
    “ Thank you,” Mick said, stopping Solomon. “But I can handle that.”
    Solomon backed away slowly but stayed on t he front porch. He looked nervously down the street.
    Mick finished the job that Solomon had started and patted the new layer of dust off his clothes. He did not know why he even bothered. His pants were sure to get dusty in another minute or two. Another habit formed in his youth, he figured; one that seemed impossible to break no matter how little it mattered.
    Then, out of the blue, and again at the strangest of times, Mick thought of his father. It was of a saying his father loved to repeat, especially to someone from out of state. It worked best when they lived in a sunny state like California or Florida. He would say, “If you don’t like the weather in New England, just wait a minute.” It was never funny. And rarely did anyone laugh out of anything other than a sense of obligation. Of course, it may have been pity, too. But his father used it whenever he could. As unfunny as it was, his joke was borderline accurate. At least it used to be. Mick looked to the filthy sky. He would love to see the weather change to anything other than cold and colorless. Thankfully his father had died before the meteorites hit. He would have hated to have nobody to tell his awful jokes to.
    Mick reached out for Solomon, to grab his arm in a humanistic way, to assure him that all was well. He regretted yelling when he had. The moment had gotten the better of him. And Mick tended to feel comfort when accompanied by touch. He had always been a tactile person. And he assumed, sometimes incorrectly, as in this case, that others felt the same way.
    Solomon backed away a few steps.
    Mick held up his hands. “Okay. Fair enough,” he said. “Did you follow me here?”
    Solomon nodded.
    “Why?”
    Solomon said nothing. He strode past Mick, gently brushing against him as he did in the alley, and straight through the open door of the house. Mick went to stop him, to warn him of the dangers this world posed, but he did not think Solomon needed him to explain that. Solomon had survived just like the rest of them up until that point. And for all Mick knew, he’d done so on his own.
    “ You sure you want to go in there?” Mick asked. But Solomon had already vanished into the darkness beyond the door’s threshold.
    I guess so.
    Mick cautiously followed Solomon into the house. What else was he going to do at that point? He now felt a sense of obligation to protect Solomon if need be. To the best of Mick’s knowledge, Solomon would not have even been there had Mick not asked about the rations. He felt as though he’d drawn him there. And Mick could not allow more misery to occur because of his poor decisions.
    “ Solomon?” he said in as close to a whisper as he could muster. The inside of the house was dark and musty. A very fine coating of dust had settled on everything that Mick could see. Despite the dust, the house looked maintained in a way. As if it had a post-Impact cleaning service.
    “ Solomon?” he said again, looking into the room to his right. Where did he run off to?
    This room was relatively clean like the rest of the house. A large brown couch