In The After

Last day of isolation. The only sound I can detect is the loud hoot from the lonesome barnyard owl. It resides across the drive, in the old, dilapidated woodshed overlooking the rotting fields of corn and beans. Harvest time has come and gone, unnoticed. The produce was paying the price as it sat and wilted away in the baking heat.

You wouldn’t think it was the middle of winter in the small town in the middle of Nebraska. My hometown, at one in the morning. There are four rotating, battery-operated fans, slowly moving the stifling heat just enough to give the illusion of a cool breeze on feverish skin. My eyes roam around the small, dark enclosure, passing quickly over the empty twin sized kids' mattress. I ignore the pang of nearly overwhelming grief that surges upwards. Instead, I carefully enclose the agony in a small compartment in my mind, there to stay for another day. It holds so many different pains and memories of countless others in the Before. The heat has proven to be too much for nearly everyone. And if that hasn’t been enough, the reactors that have since melted and exploded have released enough radiation to poison the entire planet. And really, if that wasn’t quite enough, all the ice caps melting, and cryogenically frozen diseases and illnesses had since ravaged the rest of the dwindling population.

It had started slow. Even now, as I sit and swelter in the growing heat, as my skin literally melts slowly away from my bones, I can remember the Before. I am able to once again vividly recall the news anchors reporting on the ice caps melting at an alarming rate. There had been footage of young environmentalists, intent on saving this world as we knew it. Kids that were barely teenagers, pleading with the general population to stop. Stop digging, stop using irreplaceable and harmful fossil fuels. Cease the pollution of gas-powered vehicles and of large manufacturing factories. Please, they cried. Please leave us the forests and the oceans. Recycle, reuse, repeat. Use more solar energy, go all electric. Just please do everything you can to save us the world. Hell, it wouldn’t have taken much, really.

But we didn’t listen. As I lay here, the skin sagging off my near emaciated state, my skin sticking to the bare wood floors, ripping off at the slightest movement, I regret not listening. The wood underneath me has warped, due to the intense heat and all the moisture. The wallpaper that had covered the old farmhouse we’d acquired after the Tragic Incident was now peeling away in great strands. Again, my eyes were drawn to the small mattress with its pretty pink comforter with small, cheerful characters dancing. Their faces held a fixed smile, forever happy and ignorant to the reality of the world. There were dark stains covering the puppy adorned sheets underneath and I flinch away.

A hoarse cry is torn from my throat and I press a fist to my mouth, closing my eyes tightly. I toss myself back into the Before. Back when the ozone layer hadn’t been utterly decimated by the greed, violence and sheer apathy of mankind.

I can hear her sweet voice again here, can feel her squirming in my arms as she was tickled mercilessly. “Mom, I’m gonna pee!” she shrieked, blue eyes dancing merrily. Her cheeks were rosy, mouth open and laughing innocently. I stopped immediately and shooed her into the one-bathroom we had in the small, two-bedroom trailer we owned. She skipped through the hall before turning back and grinning. “Just kidding!” she exclaimed. I gave her a mock stern look, before bursting into laughter. Her tinkling voice joined in, and for a moment, everything was perfect. Life was good. Then the sirens started.

Her father looked up in alarm, holding a puzzle piece in midair. I gave him a forced smile as I held our daughter closer. “Nothing to worry about,” I said loftily, even as my heart raced wildly. “We know the drill.” And we did. In case of sirens, we would go to my mother’s and hide in the makeshift bomb shelter we’d created, at the government's bequest. Now, of course, all the scenarios they had been speaking of were strictly hypothetical. They had told us there was no reason to panic, just a couple of worldwide bugs they were quickly working out. Now, as I sit alone, my skin melting and burning high with the fever, I laugh bitterly. They had been so sure of the planet's continuation with us on it. So confident in their own abilities to fight against the natural order. Now look where we all ended up.

Still, we had done as we had been told. We followed only the real news, even as everyone became sicker and sicker. Even as we could see the damage from the radioactive explosions in our friends and family. We held firm in our scientists and doctors, in our police and military and everyone in a position of power. Until there was no more. Until, finally, we turned on the television and all there was was dead air. The radio, we were dismayed to find, was exactly the same.

Now, for the last eight months, it had only been me, my fiancé, our daughter, my two sisters and my mom. We sat in a circle around the t.v., my hands stroking my daughters back in soothing circles as the shock wore off and the panic set in. This was the day we knew it was over, and there was only one option left. We were low on perishables, very nearly out of water. We didn’t dare use any sort of appliance, especially a microwave, so most of the meals we had were cold beans and vegetables. A far cry from the fast food and eateries in the Before. Even as I sat there in silence, my siblings were coughing and choking, the Sickness setting in so deep before the rest of us. As my youngest sister pulled her hand away, I saw the dark splotches of blood on her arm. The radiation had set in. There were pieces of bone visible through my middle sister's arms and the pain was excruciating.

There was just more silence for a while. No birds chirped anymore; no dogs barked. There were no engine sounds of any sort anymore, and it would only be a matter of time before our emergency power system was no more. There just weren’t any more people left to run it.

Bitterness coated my throat. We had done this. We had been selfish and lazy, intent to just allow the continued assault on our home by ourselves. We had taken everything the world had given us and repaid it with hate and utter destruction. And this, this mass death, was our repercussion. I looked at my family once more, noting the different states of early decay and ailments from the Sickness. We had been lied to by the ones who were supposed to protect us, and now we were alone. I patted my daughter gently on the back and stood up slowly, ignoring the pain as my skin stretched. I gazed at each in turn, gaze questioning. In return, I received the affirmation. My gaze blurred with tears, but I refused to look away from their somber faces. My fiancé gently took our daughter in his arms and pressed a soft kiss to her forehead. She looked up questioningly, the only one to not have any inclination to what was to happen next. I nodded quickly and turned before the anguish could force its way out, walking quickly to the laundry room.

As soon as I entered, I pushed aside the shelving that now held very few nonperishables and grabbed the loaded .22. The gun was surprisingly cool on my feverish skin. Swallowing even though my throat felt like it was being stabbed by thin needles, I stared at the photo collage on the opposite wall. When we had first started to notice that things were going back, back before the sirens had even gone off, we had all started printing off photographs of ourselves with our loved ones. There were some of us with our dad, who had passed previously due to an aggressive cancer. There were a lot with my daughter, a lot with our family. There were friends, and even just a few that were of things we wanted to remember in the After. Pictures of a happier time, where we could live blissfully unaware of just how gruesome our deaths would be. My eyes were drawn to the first time we met our daughter, and how incredibly joyful that moment was. I still have some of those photographs, even as I lay rotting, starved and dehydrated, idly stroking the cool metal of the .22 that held just one last bullet.

I suppressed a sob, turned and ran right into my fiancé. He gently held my face before pressing a soft, gentle kiss to the corner of my mouth, away from the small blisters that had appeared. Without a word, he nodded, a small smile on the corner of his lips, before placing the gun against his head. Squeezing my eyes shut, I cursed humanity. I cursed the gods and the universe. But most of all, I felt the deep-seated hatred for myself as I pulled the trigger.

“I love you,” I whispered, just as the bullet left the chamber and ended the first of six. His eyes, the same bright blue as our daughter’s, dimmed. He dropped to the ground before me, and I dimly heard screaming from the other one as the echo from the gun deafened me. I could hear the reassurances my sister and mom tried to give my daughter through sobs of their own. Through their own fear, they thought to soothe my child. Stealing my resolve, I forced my feet forward. Each step felt like an eternity; I wanted to flee. I wanted to drop to my knees in front of the father of my child and scream. But I had made a promise, way in the Before.

In a time where there had been no inkling of a threat to our very existence, I had jokingly said that, should an apocalyptic scenario arise, I would give them a merciful death. I would take that burden upon myself. I had foolishly volunteered, thinking that such a scenario would never exist. Now, there was no way I could just walk away. Failure was not an option.

Finally, and all too quickly, I stood in front of my family, blood spattered and holding the barrel of the gun towards the floor. I watched, almost clinically, as if I’d detached from my body, as my family comforted each other. My daughter screamed, but her grandma soothed her and told her it would all be okay soon. She shepherded her into the small bedroom, spoke quietly for a moment, and then turned the television on and turned the volume up. I closed my eyes briefly as the theme song from one of our favorite cartoons came on and almost gave in. A single tear marked its way down my cheek. I could not allow emotion to interfere, or I would never make it.

First, I said goodbye to my siblings while my mother held them, comforting them even in their last moments. And then the number of bullets dwindled down to three. As we gently covered them, shock too strong to overcome at the horror of what had had to be done, I gave my mom a quick hug and whispered goodbye before pulling the trigger again. Now, I had killed four people to save them from the horrors of a long, drawn-out Sickness that would end in the Nothing. There was no longer death, no longer cancers or years or dates. There was only the Before, and all that entailed, and the After, which was filled with the Sickness, the Poison, the Melting. The End.

After, as I cleaned up, it looked as if they were all sleeping. No longer was there pain etched deep into their faces. Not one expression was one of fear or sorrow. It was peace. Quickly, I opened the door to the bedroom and met the fists of my young child as she screamed and raged. She hated me. She would always hate me. I dropped to my knees, staring unseeingly at the wall behind her, sprayed with bloody vomit. She had gotten the Sickness after all, it seemed. With a low moan, I ignored her jabbing fists and enclosed her in my arms, and it was like a dam broke. Low, gut-wrenching sobs overtook me, and I wished for the first time she had never been born, because then I would never have had to make this decision.

But she was too young. Maybe she would get better, I reasoned. Maybe she could fight off the Sickness, even as no one else could. Maybe she was like me, and it wasn’t actually the Sickness. I sat knelt there and convinced myself to take her out, to find help, even as she shuddered and coughed in my arms. I convinced myself to carry my child miles and miles, in the blistering heat, to try to find medical equipment, or at least another person to help. But all we came upon when her last days were near, was an old farmhouse the held a lonesome little barn owl that hooted for its mate that would never return.

In the house, we found water and some food that wasn’t rotten. I used some of the water to bathe her gently, stripping her of her stained and filthy clothing as she had become too feverish for clothes anyway. She coughed so frequently now that she could hardly speak and had not taken in any sustenance in two days. Even as I had held her gently in my arms, she’d only spoken in whispers. “Mommy,” she said one day, this last day. “I’m ready to see Daddy.” And then, I knew she knew. I closed my eyes, fighting back the tears that threatened to spill over, and nodded. Within the span of half an hour, she was gone, and I had one bullet left.

That was three days ago. She lay on the far side of the bed, her blistered body relaxed, face colorless but at peace. And, with the last of my strength, I press forward, away from the window and towards the mattress. I crawl in even as the skin peels away. I press my lips gently to her forehead before slowly raising the gun to my own head. I will be reunited in the afterlife with my loved ones. I promised them I would be there soon. I close my eyes, count to ten, and pull the trigger.

Outside, the hoot of an owl was answered by the rustling of the wind as the last human was purged from the earth. Now, there would be a time of healing. It would take a while, at least a few centuries, but eventually the existence of the homosapiens would be completely obliterated and nature could thrive again. And soon, the lonely owl would stand watch over another alien species until the end of their time.