Something To Think About

Thomas Mullen wrote a one-off story, the first of his books that I read.  The Last Town on Earth has cut all ties with the outside world, hoping to quarantine itself against the flu epidemic raging through World War I America.  It doesn't really go as planned.

Several small towns actually tried this, with about as much success as Mullen's fictional burg. 

What happens when someone approaches?  What happens if that person needs help, or poses a threat?  Worse, what happens when the town runs out of liquor?  Amid musings on relationships and permanence and family and good and evil, I found something that stopped me in my tracks. 

It gave me something to think about.  I give it to you.

And even if so much was stripped away that you no longer recognized yourself, the thing left was the part of you that you never understood, that you always underestimated, that you were always afraid to look at.  You were afraid you'd need it one day and it wouldn't be there for you, but in fact it was the one thing that couldn't be taken away.