Silence and the End of All Things

We all expected the end of the world to be some loud, dramatic, catastrophic event. Maybe a meteor, or the Earth’s crust destabilizing. An ice age, or a great flood. For those more violent, perhaps thoughts of war and MAD, and even the wildest thoughts of an invasion of either extraterrestrial or domestic sort.

None of those were what happened.

It was, in truth, a quick and quiet affair. To this day I’m not sure what exactly it was. It could have been a poison, or a virus, or even a bacteria. People just...died. They dropped dead en masse, no physical signs nor warnings beforehand. It affected every demographic equally, and happened consistently.

Of course, at first there was a minor panic. News channels advised people to stay home, stay away from others. However, the speed of which this exterminated people did not allow any formal orders to go into effect. There was an attempt at martial law, in the country once known as the United States, but even that collapsed by the next day. It swept across the world in a matter of weeks, killing billions.

There was not enough time for a true panic to set in. When watching movies, the panic happened within hours of the announcement; in reality, the minimal looting and crazy acts - living life to its fullest, they said - were mostly contained to a few of the world’s largest cities. The news did not even sensationalize it, as they usually would.

As for the...fall, the quiet. The first thing to go was regular television. Channels simply stopped displaying. Smaller websites disappeared. Mail stopped being delivered, buses and trains stopped running. Planes were permanently grounded after one too many crashed when their pilots died.

Businesses started...not opening. Starting with smaller mom-n-pop shops, and then to larger corporate-owned stores, as employees stopped living, the businesses simply remained closed. After a while, and in desperation, people would forcibly enter these stores for supplies; while this was deemed technically illegal, there were not enough police officers to enforce. It was not near looting though; people were orderly, almost kind. Small nods and acts of gentle acknowledgement.

Then...there were blackouts. Phone signals started dropping. Running water soon stopped as well. Hospitals were abandoned, for no one truly survived when they entered the doors; there were not enough people to save them. Fires occurred...and there was no way to put them out, except for the few who had enough survivors around them who could douse the flames bucket by bucket.

One day, for those who still had electricity...the news channels stopped broadcasting. There were very few left by that time.

The internet was one of the last things to go, in a way. While most major sites went down around the same time as the news broadcasts, a certain network remained. It reduced in size; people would create their own networks, localized internet connections working off of servers of their own creation. As the blackouts extended, and more died, those localized connections disappeared, until the power never came back on.

As quickly as the deaths began, they stopped. Or perhaps there were simply not enough left alive to notice? For those of us who remain, we are left trying to pick up any piece of our old ways of life we can find.

For me, the one thing left, the one thing that is holding my mental self, is a heart-shaped locket. I found it when the businesses first started closing; it wasn’t a necessity, it was just shining, sitting pristinely on a hanger in an abandoned department store. It had no worth anymore, except that when I saw it, it made me smile. Inside is just a stock photo of a couple smiling; I wondered if I would find anyone to smile with.

I wish I could say how long it has been since the last deaths I knew happened. Maybe three years? Maybe five? The few others I have passed on my journey have been as silent as myself. There are no words left to be said, nothing can express what the few of us left feel.

Animals avoid us. They do not try to hunt us, do not even get so close as to smell us. Dogs and cats run away as well, and will not approach for food or warmth. Creatures caught in traps will go so far as cause themselves grave injuries, breaking limbs or necks to not come in contact with us. Only humans will approach humans now.

Those of us left, wander. Some try to stay in one spot, to farm and trap. It is too lonely. Even in silence, there is a comfort to another person’s presence. Sometimes we stay together only for a night, and sometimes we travel in groups. From city to city, coming together and then drifting apart again.

I’ve wondered if this is purgatory, or even Hell. I cannot imagine this is Heaven. We simply wander along, from one place to the next. I do not know why I don’t kill myself. I do not know why I haven’t died. Why some of us are left.

There is one thing I will not let go, though. It is the hope that there will be something better. Maybe we will make it, and maybe we will not. But someday, there will be something better. And until either that day comes, or the day I die, I will still smile to every person I meet in passing, and I hope they will find the strength to smile back at me. Even in silence.