Through Shadows by A.M. Justice

Author:A.M. Justice
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: QuaranCon Presents

THE END OF the world came on a Monday afternoon.

It was pretty exciting, if I’m honest. I’d fallen into a rut with my daily routine, finishing tasks by rote, and more often than not, contemplating whether there was any point to suffering through constant doldrums for so little reward. No one ever appreciated how hard I worked. No one ever smiled when I showed up. It got to you after a while.

So, when the world came crashing down, I didn’t mind at first. Talk about a shake-up. Fire and broken glass. A smoke-riddled sky and burning rains. Fear as thick as smog and pavements shiny with blood. Granted, such things weren’t entirely novel, but the scale of it certainly was. Boredom became a distant memory during that initial stretch of days, racing from one place to another, trying to stay ahead of it. And yeah, we can talk about how the fall of mankind wasn’t unexpected with the way things carried on between people and nations, but nothing prepares you for the reality of it actually happening.

Just as nothing prepares you for what comes after the fires burn out and the bad rains stop. The stories don’t talk about the situation later, once roving bands of thieves and barbarian kings have sacked the sanctuaries kinder survivors managed to create. They don’t say what happens once apocalyptic scarcity sets in, and need plays out its self-destructive game until the final sparks sputter and die.

And now they never will, so I’ll just tell you.

It gets really quiet. Not the quiet of night-time, like the normal world knew it. I’m talking the total absence of human voices, here. Not a hush, but a void.

I wandered through that scarred landscape and reflected on everything I’d taken for granted. I asked myself: Had it really been so bad? Life was meant to be annoying. Agitation keeps the molecules spinning. It’s the engine of innovation. Look, I never could stand people, but without them, when it was only me and that awful silence, I realised my mistake. If one’s existence depended on the world functioning merrily along, an apocalypse was really inconvenient. Without purpose, there’s only oblivion.

In case you’re wondering, yes, I was starting to feel sorry for myself.

It was about then I came across that group of kids.

There was a lot of screaming when they saw me.

So much screaming.

My skull rang for a good five minutes after the oldest one – a plucky, twelve-year-old girl – managed to quiet them down. Why are small people so loud? I went ahead and asked her this.

She propped dirty fists to the waist of her threadbare dress, her little face smeared with dirt and wreathed in chaotic curls, and said, “They’re scared of strangers.”

I bet they were. I bet they’d never seen anything so terrifying as the desperation of adults. How they’d survived on their own for so long was a mystery.

“There aren’t any strangers out here anymore,” I told her.

“You’re a stranger.”

“Not really. I’m sure you’ve seen me around.

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