Year 1, AE

Year 3118, radio signals of peace are sent out to a newly discovered Earth like planet. Almost Immediately word got back, not knowing the our languages or what symbols mean what an image of warm colours and strange hands shaking was sent back and we took it as a sign to visit. On arrival we noticed the peoples where meek and nascent compared to us in temperament and advancement. With no shared language we stood in silence eying up all they had to offer, then started the most awkward attempt of a colonisation to date, claiming ships and power plants as our own through finger pointing. Earthen soldiers stood uncomfortably, shifting side to side holding PlasRifles at confused alien life who seemed unaccustomed to threats or violence.

The leader of the alien people raised an arm and made a signal not possible for the stiff, rigid hands of a human and within seconds, the two thousand greed filled representations of a whole species was dead from a white hellish beam coming from the heavens. then 5000 ships raised from the vast steel coloured oceans round the globe and flew for Earth. Weapons not thought possible were dropped on every city, not exploding like ours in orange smoky mushrooms, but in clean white spheres pulling everything in around it, next a gas bubbling and black, bio-engineered to only target humans was dropped on a north and south antipode where it spread all round like a black curtain being pulled on the time of the Homosapien.

Around 6,000,000 years of evolution to create life put to waste because humans couldn't pass a test of character from a more advanced species. All dead, all except thirty, fifteen men and women sent deep into the Earths belly to be frozen for 2000 thousand years and wait out genocide. Now they are spat back out into the countryside of Canada to rebuild and repopulate the planet. This is you, this is year 0 AE, after extinction.

The scribed stone sat staring at the thirty like something from a holy book, spat out the ground in a tube just like them along with supplies and books and a carriage. they looked at each other as if they shared the same schizophrenic delusion. some cried.

Some time later Maya sat six months pregnant in a cold wooden home wrapped in three blankets on a soft bed. The cabin screamed in creaks from the cold windy hills of a sloped mountain town.

"Clive?" she asked. He ignored her, sat on the end of the second, less comfortable bed watching out a gap in the boarded windows tapping a tune with the barrel of the rifle on the sill. A huge groan sounded and shook the house sending a dense plume of snow through the small gap into Clive's face.

"Clive!" Maya yelled.

"They're following us"

"You still need to sleep, I'll watch." They traded places, and Maya felt how rough the bed he had slept in for the past two days was and was filled with a rare shot of appreciation for the man. She got up and kissed him on the forehead as he dosed off and sat back in place. They weren't a couple, although he would liked them to be, to her the baby was strictly for repopulating(even waited the longest to get pregnant to the dismay of the group) and every place they slept in on the journey was in separate beds.

After an hour on watch she made herself a decaf coffee from their supply pack with a gas burner and a pot and drank it out of a stained mug. The supplies left behind for them was vast and more than enough along with books explaining agriculture, guides for healing injuries and illness and records of technology up till the extinction, but the majority of it was took by the ones who follow them.

Not long after being spat out a food chain formed. Of the original thirty, eighteen remained. Maya and Clive, the six men who killed the others and ten women who lost more freedom by the day until none was left. Maya noticed this happening before it fully set in and took off herself in the night with all she could carry. Clive caught her and followed claiming it was to look out for her, but she thought he was just scared and if he really cared he would confront the growing tyrants of the group. Not one did she thought, they all looked on judgingly and disapproved in silence, it never affected them or their assigned partners. Until their throats were cut in their sleep. They made their way half way up a mountain to walk along the side and make their way down the other side to lose them and now, on the way down, lie in trepidation in this cold desolate home where the fossilised family who owned it lay cuddled on the couch of the living room.

The next morning they trudged down the snow wrapped in thick coats and blankets. The air tasted like the spruce trees running uphill to their left.

"Two more days I reckon, map says there's a loch past the trees at the bottom. We find a boat not destroyed by time and rust then we can ruin the others and put a whole body of water between us. They wont bother following."

"that's good." uninterested

"We see any deer or rabbit we can use this bow and arrow I made last night, save the bullets and have less noise."

"ok." Maya knew all this and he knew she knew, but she let him go on. His anxious rambling even calmed her down sometimes.

Few hours pass and Maya spots a white rabbit blending in with the snow and points it out to Clive. The makeshift bow and arrow strains as its pulled taut and some of the feathers stuck to the end of the arrow float off from a feeble whisp of wind. Maya thought about how the feathers were put on pathetically and would have no affect on the shoot of the arrow, it was all for show. Everything about him was show, he wanted her, same as the six tyrants who wanted the partners of the men they killed. He was just too weak and scared to take her and resorted to wooing her. Bad traits can cause good results same as good virtues can sometimes cause bad, she was sure of this and the wave of appreciation faded away replaced by an internal malign picking the man apart. Maybe she was wrong but to her, he hadn't earned the benefit of the doubt. The arrow flew and hit right in the neck and a laugh came, but distant. They both turned back and saw blackened human shaped evils further up the hill making their way down.

Forgetting the rabbit they ran, Clive standing beside, steadying her on the way down. They kicked up snow to the height of their heads in the panic and rocks broke under their feet. When making it to the bottom at the mouth of the forest the group following were now at the freshly bleeding rabbit. Knowing now someone was there they roared down at the trees as the two lay on their stomachs behind a rock. Late that night in the forest they didn't even think about a fire.

Clive dug a deep hole in a particularly tree dense part of the forest with one of his many tools he wore on his torso(another thing Maya felt was for show) and they both clambered in. Clive spread one of their blankets out over the hole and lay rocks at three corners on top and a wrapped another rock around the forth corner, taking him a long while to figure out a way to keep it down from below. He sat the pack and gun and his tools at their feet and lay back, it was as dark inside the covered hole as it was outside it.

"If they get us Clive, you know what I want you to do."

"They wont."

"You said they wouldn't follow us up the mountain."

"I know but-"

"There's no but, I'm telling you. Or I'll do it myself." this was an empty threat and they both knew it, the gun was a long rifle, too long for her hands to reach the trigger while pointed at herself.

"I wont have you let me be took by them like you did the others." She said.

"What's that supposed to mean."

"You know." she spat at him with malice.

"What was I supposed to do, I didn't know what people were the problem, They could of all been evil bastards and I wouldn't know. Was I supposed to have my throat cut too. Die to make a point. People who do that do it to inspire others. there's no one left to inspire, just us."

She didn't respond and he continued.

"I didn't see you rush to help either, you just left in the night, not taking anyone with you to safety, We could of snuck them all out, me, you and all the women could of went together."

"You would of loved that, have us all to yourself then." She turned on her side facing away and Clive thought now that no matter what he did or say she would never like him, never mind love him. Everything was shaded in the hue of the six tyrants and their greed. Every extra piece of food he gave her or whenever he lets her have the comfier bed was, to her, harbouring secret intentions to win her like a prize. They slept in silence that night.

They woke half an hour before dawn and ate stiff crackers spread with peanut butter and drank water straight from the large bottle still in the hole. Maya felt the baby slosh around eating her larger portion as Clive began peering out the blanket. Once finished he ushered her out and they kept on toward the water looking around franticly. A day and a half later they made it to the loch. Clive handed Maya the pack and checked all the boats for one that worked. The cold was less intrusive than the day before, crawling over their fabrics instead of piercing through and breathing the air didn't sting. Twelve boats lay around the wooden platform hanging over the water with three looking promising, the grass was here was greener with only patches of snow instead of blankets and a solitary house lay to their left.

The clouds ended behind them toward the hill with clearer skies ahead, as if behind them was a whole other world and ahead was something new, though better, but she didn't believe that. If they got away the child would be born and the three of them would choose between repopulating an inbred world or die out and let the others handle it. She planned on dying.

He hopped on the boat closest to the house and reached around, fiddled with something and it began to putter. He looked round with a cheesy grin and a thumbs up. They loaded on all there stuff and got ready to leave. Clive lay his gun down and then set about cutting wires and piercing the fuselage of the others. Once finished Maya was anxious to leave, called to him to hurry and he held out his palm for her to wait.

He went for a pee in some bushes nearby when crackle took him down. Manic screams happened all around them. People birthed from bushes and shrubbery from every angle just like how she imagined those alien ships did from their oceans on that planet all those years ago. She hopped into the water around grabbing the rifle and swam to the land around the house. The only route back into the forest was in direct eyeline of the screaming frenzy dancing over Clive, now kicking him and poking fingers into his bullet wounded shoulder. Behind was all open ground and would she would be saw.

"Where's the girl?" a strangers voice yelled.

"Come out darling." another's.

"She's dead. been dead." Clive groaned and caught her eyes as she peered round the house. She rushed into the house through the back door and made for up stairs. All around was rotting and damp. Her baby was now kicking and she was feeling nauseas so held onto a wall to steady herself causing it to collapse in on itself from two thousand years of lying in neglect opening up the crawlspace behind. She crawled about not knowing where she was going, losing her balance and catching it again shifting through the veins of a rotted home. She made her way to a point where no light could be seen form the aperture and steadied the rifle and waited for hours as they descended into crazier screams and laughs into the night, the women laughed too, made jokes between Clive's yells.

It was night now, they had searched the house and got nothing and Maya hoped they were gone. She shifted along the way she came, the light from outside was gone so the light that would glow round her escape was dark. Remembering how easy it collapsed in on itself from rot she gave up on finding the old and began pushing on points without beams for a new and after a few minutes a section popped out big enough for her to squeeze through.

She was downstairs now. Pitch black, but could hear soft breathing all around. she took the lighter from her pocket and with the pitiful light uncovered ten babies scattered across the floor asleep. She wiped an orange dust from a window and saw the colour was from a fire ahead. There was six men and nine women laying knocked out in a bed of empty whiskey and vodka bottles. Beside them, near the house, the cart they trudged along the hills with all the supplies and books left from the far future past. The door handle began shifting, leaped behind it and it opened swinging into her body hiding her. The woman stumbled in mumbling a song to herself.

Maya stepped out of hiding and levelled the rifle head height recognizing the woman, Jess. They had liked the same music from before and used to speak about out it together a lot before she left. After checking on the last infant Jess turned and stifled a yelp.

"Maya?, please don't shoot."

"I wont, if you answer some questions." The woman nodded.

"Where's Clive." Jess tapped the letter d on her tongue three times before going silent and looking down and Maya knew the answer.

"Why are you still with them, you could leave right now, with me."

"I don't want to. It's not that bad."

"They killed the other men behind our backs and forced themselves onto you."

"Behind you're back." Jess corrected her. "We all knew, they told us before and it's not they, it was one woman to one man just some have two now and the forcing part, its just to repopulate and stay sane. They shouldn't have killed them, but what were we supposed to do, I didn't know who was all in on it, go and tell someone who was, then they find out I'm telling people and they kill me too. This way humanity lives." Maya was sick of that excuse now, let the evil fester and recruit because calling it out was too dangerous. She rammed the butt of the rifle into Jess' head and let her fall unconscious.

She began filling the boat with the supplies and the books and then the babies, one by one sitting them while sleeping on the floor of the deck boat hoping they wouldn't wake. Against better judgement she sought out Clive's corpse. He lay with a cut throat against a tree. She leaned and kissed him on the cheek and went back to the boat as the rest snored and rolled around her. The boat began puttering and she set off, again in the night, leaving the rest behind with only ten infants with her not looking back to see if the noise wakes up any evils behind.

the calendar she had kept now marked one year since being spat out the ground, Year 1 AE, she had birthed her child herself with little complication. She found a caravan in the country not long after getting off the boat and drove south, the weather was warm for the first time and she was sure she was in the states by now. The babies were sat in the back, some crying, some giggling. While driving she came to where she thought an old city must of been, Minneapolis maybe, completely void and flat from the eating white spheres that dropped on every city. And thought more about how easy it would be from here, only the cities were destroyed, the rest was left untouched from some respect that that alien life had of nature. Countless houses filled supplies, guides on farming, on medicine, construction, food for babies, everything they need to rebuild.

Both groups would repopulate the Earth. Maya's and the sixteen people back north. She would do everything to raise them better, she will teach them about the evils done or let happen, and one far day the descendants of her people will meet with the descendants of theirs and they will mix, soon not knowing who came from who and that if it really mattered because not all her people will be good and not all theirs bad, Good can come from bad and bad from good, she was sure of this and hoped the good would hurry into group up north while she planned to deal with the bad that will come to hers.