Burn

Splat! My popsicle hit the pavement. Red juice speckled my white Converses like blood. I couldn’t even be mad as the stick fell from my slack hand. I had waited all summer for Randy’s signature strawberry popsicles, something I could only get at the Summer Festival, but to be fair, people have waited thousands of years for the apocalypse. I guess this year, the apocalypse won.

The hairs on my arm stood straight up, the only warning I got. The ground shuddered underneath my feet as a wave of heat hit my face. I could only shield my eyes as flames rained down around me.

Time passed in slow motion. The brightness behind my closed eyelids became unbearable, two glowing daggers piercing my brain. The guttural boom that followed shook me to the core. Then the heat. It was like the Earth’s very core was bubbling up. It would probably be a fitting punishment, considering everything we’d done to it. An eye for an eye, karma, all that.

The next thing I knew was the impact. Blistering skin met rocky, jagged edges of concrete, jutting up like teeth. Pain washed over me in waves. My consciousness was swept away with the tide.

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Darkness. That’s all I saw, though the entire cosmos swam in my vision.

I must be dead.

I stood up in a daze. My throat felt scraped raw and my head thundered distantly, but the rest of my limbs felt disconnected from me. Dead or dreaming.

It was only noon, but the sky was black. Not a pretty velvet color, but the sickly kind, the color of Death. Pillars of smoke rose into the sky from broken metal skeletons. What used to be the circus tent was reduced to a flaming mess. Main Street was swallowed by the earth, taking the library with it.

They said the end would come in 2000, then 2012. Early stories talked about it; religions based themselves off of doomsday. Whether it was God, AI, aliens, disease, war, or zombies, humanity had a fascination with their demise. From Supernatural to The Walking Dead, we devoured stories of people struggling to survive. Some featured heroes swooping in to save the day at the last minute, but others were post-apocalyptic. I knew now that this story would have no hero, no miracle cure. There was no one to blame. What do you do when the very Universe wants you dead?

Though the world ached and groaned, the air was silent. No one screamed or ran past in terror. No one begged for their kids or their pets to be saved; no angry mobs flipped cars.

Where was everybody? I limped through the streets mindlessly, peering into shops. Who would I even call for? How long would I even last? The pain was setting in again. Something wet and sticky coated my left side as a fire raged in my lower back, spreading with each step. My hands were covered in ash and grime, but I tore off a section of my shirt, pressing it to the wound. Something else dripped down the back of my neck, my hair sticking to my scalp, but I couldn’t stop to care about that.

A plastic bag tumbled across the sidewalk like a tumbleweed. Rhythmic thunder from overhead caught my attention. A Black Hawk flew overhead, towards the direction I came from. I opened my mouth to shout- what good would that do— but no words would form.

I sat down on the curb. My eyes burned. Tears obscured my vision, but I would not let them fall.

There were still people alive, but they did not care about me. Did they know what was coming? Did they know why everyone was gone? Even the animals were missing.

My stomach growled. The only thing in it was ash. The smoke was thicker here. As soon as I opened my mouth, it was flooded with a poisonous taste. I shut it, lowering my head into my hands. I curled up on the pavement, shaking from hunger and pain until I drifted to sleep.

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The eternal smoke burned my tongue when I first opened my mouth, but I hardly noticed anymore. My dirt-crusted hands tore at my dinner: toad. Roasted over one of those cursed fires. It had been two months, but they showed no sign of burning out. Nor did they spread. They just waited and waited.

They were like me, I guessed. I spent the first two weeks wandering, looking for people. Other than that first helicopter, I hadn’t seen anyone else, save for a single corpse, charred beyond recognition.

Some would say I was lucky. I survived, somehow. I battled through hunger, thirst, the smoke, and even infection, but I was still standing.

In a story, this is when I’d be the hero. I’d find some other unlikely survivors. We’d band together and save the day. Only, every hero needed their villain, and one could only be mad at Nature for so long.

We deserved this. Humanity was a stain on the purity of nature. We saw it a few years back, with COVID-19. When the humans were gone, the Earth began to heal.

We came back, though. We always had. That’s the beauty of humanity, I supposed. They endured. Case in point: me. Where there was life, there was hope, but I had run out of that ages ago.

I was a survivor, an animal. I scrounged for food. I hardly washed myself, and I hadn’t spoken a word. If anyone else was around, I probably scared them off with my creature-of-the-swamp appearance.

I wasn’t lonely though. Other people dragged me down. Their stares, their expectations, weighed me down until I could hardly breathe. I wanted- no, needed- to escape. I got my wish.

The humans were gone. I found the wreckage from the helicopter earlier today. Its pilot was gone. Only a trail of bloody footprints remained. As I was picking my way through their supplies, I found a beetle. It was the first sign of life I’d seen since the Start.

I squished the beetle. Where there was life, there was hope, and this doomed planet didn’t deserve hope. Humans, animals, Nature. We were all stains, desperately clinging to life. Like the dinosaurs, it was our time.

Not mine, though. Any minute, Death could strike, but each day, I kept on living. This was my purpose, the one I searched for my whole life. I’d find survivors and snuff them out. When the time came, I’d take myself too.

I stood up, discarding the rest of my meal and stretching. To anyone else, I’d just be a black silhouette. My black hood was up and my long pants blew around me like a robe. The walking stick in my hand curved a bit in the fading light.

The sun burned blood-red behind the clouds, casting everything in a ghoulish glow. I set off towards it, following the pilot’s tracks. Soon, I’d find him. I felt it in my bones.

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Two days later, I stood over the pilot’s prone body. Blood stained my shoes. I let it, staring ahead at the encampment.

Around me, the world burned.