Laps

by Skip Hanford

“Hey, Luke, throw me the ball,” Jorge said as they walked across the field, glad that late August had cooled down. Practice in 90 degree heat was no fun. But they were glad that they had bottled water again.

Grabbing the ball, Jorge ran back to throw a pass as one of the other players grabbed him and wrestled him to the ground. They were all laughing as they rolled on the grass.

“Hey,” DeShawn said as they picked themselves up. “Why are we doing this, anyway? I mean it’s not like there are other teams to play right now.”

“Normal stuff,” Jorge said. “At least that’s what Coach said. We do this, we help things get back to normal.”

“Yeah, but we’re a college team, but I’m only taking one class,” DeShawn said. “I heard about colleges doing that with their players before it all went down but this is ridiculous.”

The other players laughed.

“Yeah, but I heard they’re getting some of the old faculty back,” Danny said. “Maybe even new ones. They’re going to start being a real school again. Probably.”

“Maybe they’d hire somebody who showed up off the street,” Luke said. “That’s how I got on the team.”

“Well, we have water and food now,” Jorge said. “This place was lucky. Small town like this didn’t get hit.”

“Did they ever figure out who…” DeShawn started to ask.

“Not a lot of news on that,” Luke said. “When there’s any news.”

“Like Coach says,” Danny said. “We’re doing this for future generations. Keeping civilization going.”

“Hey,” came the loud voice they all knew so well.

“Speaking of Coach,” DeShawn said.

“You guys aren’t supposed to be standing around! This is practice! Laps! Everybody! Now!”

As the players ran around the track, Jorge called over to DeShawn; “Yeah, someday we’ll tell are grand kids we rebuilt civilization one lap at a time.”

The others laughed as they ran.

—end—

AUTHOR’S NOTE: As this is set in the world of my (unpublished) story “The Simple Life,” I used my pen name from that story here. —-skip