And Then There Were None

In the end, it all fades away. As the years turn by and the clock ticks down, our world will turn to ash, and we will be forgotten as if we were dust on the wind. We think of the end of days, and what do we really see? Do we see nuclear Holocaust, a zombie apocalypse, perhaps disease run rampant? Whatever we know, we must remember our humanity through it all. It was not any of those things that ended our world, not disease, not zombies, not nukes. It was our own self-involvement and our laziness that brought about the end of all things. It was something in our genes not that I would know humankind stopped reproducing and the old just kept getting old and young while there is no more young anymore. Nobody can really figure out why it is this way. Most people are too busy trying to download their brains into computerized constructs silly people sometimes they just do not know what hit him that is an actual loss of their own humanity, and I feel sorry for them.

I was young when it all happened, too young, 8 weeks old. I do not remember much of it, but people started noticing statistics; first, it was pretty curious. It took a while for the reality to set in for it all to become real. At first, it was just like joking on the media. It turned into a hysteria every government shutdown trying to figure out the cause people stop going to work they no longer had anything to work for or to leave anything to. This was unknown to humankind. We could always give birth, we could consistently reproduce, but what if we could not? Did nobody ever think of that? So, there was nothing in place for that to become anything but it what it was. Hey, a catastrophe of a grand nature that plunged the world into wars that it never thought would happen, and there were no babies to take the place of those soldiers who would die on the field of battle.

At that time, I would feel the loss of a loved one meant so much because there would be no more. People started blaming God and religion to be the cause of it. People of every denomination were ostracized and attacked for their beliefs which created the first war and ended many lives. I was only about 10 at the time. I lost my mother in that war. My father had died years before she had given me a Locket and told me to remember where I came from and to know where I was going after it all ended. During the attacks on Philadelphia, they took her and burn her I seen it from afar. A memory that will be etched into my very soul for all time to come.

There are so many things that have happened since then did I cannot begin to say people think maybe the government had something to do with it. Who is really to say what you would say in the first place? Why is there a reason they say overpopulation, but like this, I find it hard to believe? Why would they kill their own why would they put themselves in the same boat. Whatever the reason, I guess it does not matter anymore why, when, where, or how it is thrown out the window when it comes to survival. It is not about that anymore. It is about living from day to day, trying to keep your skin attached because one false move in this wasteland of a world and you are dead. You can kiss all your answers goodbye be because what is an answer when you cannot even utter the question. I tried my best to move away from Philadelphia after it all happened.

Now I find myself staring at this locket, wondering about my mother damning my father for his absence. I guess it was not his fault he died of cancer long before it all happened. I was the final gift to him from my mother. I was to carry on his name a name that I cursed every day. Nobody was there to protect us, and I blame him for that. I shake my head at the confusion of this reality, and I wonder what beta may come as I sit here as an old hobo but not too old you see, I'm in my mid-20s, but I'm probably the youngest out of a lot of old folk in the world there is nobody under 25 and that's scary to think much less to see. People just stare at me anymore, considering what's he going to do with his life because now that is a big thing anymore it's not about what are you going to pass on. It's about what do you do here now, and I have never felt that way about things. My mother was kind and gentle, a woman of God. If God does exist, I'm sad, not so sure honestly with everything that has happened.

I rolled the locket around in between my fingers check like a heart for the love that I hope for the pictures within it. I open it up to see a picture of my mother and a picture of my father on the opposite panel. It is comforting to see these pictures but painful as well. I know that the time will come when those pictures will not even matter when I will be, just like all the rest attacking each other for whatever they have. But as for now, I am trying my best to maintain my innocence because what else do I have left. I had no man to teach me pride, and I believe pride to be their downfall in the first place. I was raised by a woman who was prideful as well, but for God who did not save her as they let her on fire.

I smack myself in the head for letting those thoughts enter my mind and shake it clear of the images that it had created. Close the locket, and I place it back underneath my shirt where I felt it would be safe. You cannot leave things out anymore. People will take them. I do not know if there are that many people left to be honest, as I lay there listening to the angry rumble of the train engine as it forced its way along those tracks. Lucky to find a train moving shipments kind of weird, do not you think. As I am thinking the same as I start to drift off to sleep, I have certain days I have been on the run, not from anyone in particular, more or less from myself and the demons that I keep in my heart. When I keep moving, I forget about those things, and I can keep moving farther. I figured if I move far enough, they will be gone.

Sleep overtook me and I and left to my dreams, haunting dreams of insanity and chaos all that I have ever known sad for a kid to grow up that way no father, no future, almost no help the excellent part of my dream at that time was my mother saying that there was always hope you just had to look for it in the right place. She always told me fat to be positive wooden fight positive things. She said it was something called the power of attraction. I did not know what it meant, but I investigated it. And from what I understand, then people must be highly negative for this to have happened for the world. Joking in a dream how foolish I am, and then the dreams fade to nothing as I start to wake from where I was to where I am.

Screams flood my ears, cries, and gunshots. I do not know what is going on. I jump up, disoriented only to be kicked back down, my assailant where is the hood over his face up sack wool with the eyes cut out, I could just tell even through the math there was a shit-eating grin on his mouth. I try to move away to gain some sort of leverage, but he only overpowers me and forces me to the ground with his foot against my chest.

"No need for none of that, well, you might be the youngest I've ever seen," he says as he turns his head to the side. It is then that I notice that there are four other men within the train car. It has stopped some sort of town, not any sort of town I wanted to be. This town was on fire; this town was a side of the damned this is what happened in these days people snapped. The young were killed as well as the old the young were usually carried away. I do not know where they would take them. All I know is that they never came back. There were rumors that some for some the world were taking those men and women and dissecting them to try to find whatever was the cause of our malady. that is not a known fact but suspicion, and in my experience, that type of suspicion always originates from somewhere some grain of truth.

"The boss will definitely want him, so keep your hands off of him." one of the other four said to my brute of an attacker. This one was not as big as the one on me. He was slyer snake-like if his very words could cut you." search him and then place him with the rest but hurry up. I would like to get done with the looting it is in every day you get to loot our significant capital."

At his words, I began to look around and take in the sights of a burning white house before me. Hundreds of men were torching it with wild abandon. Most were screaming obscenities at the top of their lungs, blaming the government for all this mess was their doing. That they tried to weaponize something that got loose and went airborne, making it virtually unstoppable. As they screamed than gunfire erupted from the depths of the once house of the president and his first lady. Of course, the American government would hold out to the very end. This was inexplicably the war to end them all, the fight against our own vanity. To challenge the oppressors we found in others but in truth were only within ourselves. Shaking my head, my thoughts then turned to escape.

And as if they were never, their silver cars hovering a few feet off the ground appeared out of the smoke-filled night, and with that same shit-eating grin, the brute turned to me and laughed." Now we going to see what little boys are made of, well, err little men, but what is the difference really as long as I get to cut em open." Then he shoved me into the hovercar and slammed the door tight with a loud click sounding a second after the door was shut. Well, here I am once again; what did I do to deserve this? I clutched the locket tighter and thought of better days. There were not many. There were not many at all.

Fin