The night sky chokes me, enveloping me in darkness, the once familiar glint of stars long lost behind blankets of smoke. The metal of the gun I clutch in my hands comforts me, and I gradually rove my eyes over the flat expanse, keeping the two dark figures heading towards me insight. They stumble over each other as they reach me, and I shove them inside, closing the door.
Marie flips the light switch on, and I let out a hiss and run to close the blinds.
“Marie! How many times have I told you not to switch on the light when the blinds aren’t down?” I admonish, moving forward to relieve her of the bag she carries in her hands.
Marie sighs, and I don't fail to miss the overbearing glance she and Flynn share.
“I know, Louise, but we haven’t seen anyone – or anything - in weeks. The last living thing we saw was a deer – and you struck that with bullets before it could raise its eyes to meet ours.”
Flynn drops his bag and stretches languidly before dropping to the single mattress lying on the floor, his long dark hair framing his angular face. “Louise, I know you’re just being careful. But those...creatures, they’re long gone.” His voice breaks slightly, even as his eyes cloud over with the shadow of anger long suppressed. “They killed us, destroyed our homes, decimated our cities...they created the After World. And then they ran.
“Louise, they already took everything from us. Don’t let them take our chance at life from us again,” Marie implored.
The words wash over me and drown away. We’ve had this conversation a hundred times, and I’ve given up on trying to tell them that there will be no point of a second chance at life if we’re dead. Wordlessly, I grab the bags and rummage through them. There’s a bag filled with the sparse crops we can grow in the fields, and the other with scraps of cloth, bottles, and pieces of wood. Marie moves forward and gently clasps my hands. I sigh, looking up to meet her mint green eyes.
“Louise, I know you don’t want to, but we have to at least try and look for others. We have to at least try to make a living in this dead world. Like it or not, we can’t keep running forever.”
I close my eyes wearily and instantly recognize it as a mistake. The simple gesture is all my traitorous memories need to rush over me, dragging me back to that horrific day when the After World was created.
The streets are flooded with tides of people, the air choked with screams and cries of despair and pain. The footage I’m watching in my bunker, which my paranoid parents built for emergencies I used to think would never occur, is cut off suddenly, and the world trembles. My heart is raging inside my chest, and I curl up, trying to escape the bombs that are destroying my home, my world. I don’t see the mass destruction while it is happening, but awake to greet the After World, to greet the empty, desolate world we call our own now.
My parents gave me a chance at life with the blessing of the bunker. I don’t want to throw away this chance – but then again, what’s the point of a chance at life if I don’t live it?
I open my eyes and nod. “Tomorrow,” I say simply, and let myself be enveloped in a hug by Marie. Flynn just grins, pumping his hand in the air, and I’m reminded again of the fact that the bunker may have saved my life, but these two people I stumbled upon are the reason I came this far.
Now that we’ve decided to get out and do something, I can barely keep the excitement – and the unavoidable worry – contained. The sun has barely awoken when we cautiously step out, Marie and Flynn behind me like eager little puppies. The wide, desolate expanse of desert stretches out before us, the vicious heat of the sun tempting us to stop before we’ve begun.
We walk for miles, passing broken towns, blocks of buildings strewn about like a play area after a child’s tantrum. Finally, even the sun grows tired and falls down, and we take shelter behind a large section of debris. I take out our meagre supplies, taking a sip from the bottles we’d filled earlier. Unable to wrench my eyes open, all three of us slip into a deep sleep, the dark sky morphing to form the dimness of sleep.
In the morning, I rove my eyes over Marie and Flynn, my heartbeat calming as I see them safe. The next few days are much of the same – our resolve starts to die out, exhaustion seeping into our bones, hope leaking out.
After yet another day of futile efforts, I let the obsidian sky’s emptiness lull me to sleep. I awake to the comforting warmth of a wool blanket draped over me.
Panic burrows its way through me, and I hurriedly sit up to acknowledge a foreign setting. It’s foreign not just in the fact that I’ve never been here before, but because it’s familiar yet unfamiliar at the same time.
The place is bustling with people, and there are intact buildings in a wide circle around a field.
Everyone seems to have a purpose, and I’m dragged back to the times when this was a quotidian routine. It seems astonishingly developed, and as I’m roaming my eyes over it, my brain in overdrive to comprehend this, a man comes towards me.
“Ah! You’re awake.” His voice is pleasant, a twinkle in his dark eyes, his outfit blindingly white. I’m so shocked by the sight of another living, breathing human that I can’t even reply, only gaze at his weathered, tanned face, and welcoming smile.
“Welcome to the real After World,” he announces grandly, spreading his arms wide.
We roam the small settlement, and my heart soars at how many resources these people have. Gone are the days of our scant facilities, they have everything they could want here.
The whole affair has an artificial, unreal quality to it until my eyes connect with Marie’s teary ones. I rush forward blindly, engulfing her and Flynn in a collective hug. Tears roll down my cheeks, and a small thought dares to enter my mind.
Perhaps the After World isn’t so bad. Perhaps we can have a life.
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