Wali

Alvin was walking down what was once a street with hundreds of cars. Back in the beginning of 2078 when the Super volcano Yellowstone exploded, it let out hundreds of thousands of pounds of ash into the air. The sun was unable to shine through for months, causing a sudden and major drop in temperature that caused the near extinction of many species, including humans. Alvin was once a marine biologist who went on a 200 day luxury-submarine expedition with his best friend Wali, just 2 weeks before Yellowstone went off. Alvin remembered when the fish first started dying and then when he stopped seeing the fish at all. On day 200 he and Wali decided to go up to the surface and when they did, they saw nothing. It was very dark and there were no people around, unless you count the few bodies laying on the beach.

Alvin was walking down the street, overrun with weeds and grass. He wore a facemask so he didn’t get any poison in his lungs from the highly polluted air. His mask was part of an old welders shield, with some duct tape and rusty pipes running all through it. Alvin arrived at a gas station and scanned the store with his mechanical arm. The scanner flashed red when the item that he was scavenging for was not located in the shop. The red taunted him and he continued walking down the desolate road. There were fires burning from unmonitored pumps and machines with bodies of anorexic looking people scattered all across the path. Alvin reached a shopping center named “The Utopia''. He slowly walked in and rounded the corners of the shops, scanning each one. Each red flash gave a stronger sense of hopelessness and gave him a discontent facial expression. As he came around the corner to the next store, he brought out his scanner and it didn’t flash red. It showed a brilliant shade of green. He walked inside the store with the smallest resemblance of a grin on his bearded face. He walked down the food aisle, unsurprisingly and disappointingly there was no food to be seen. There were still enough people alive to empty store shelves and leave nothing behind. He went behind the counter and found the medicine he was looking for. Wali had gotten really sick because of the air that he first breathed when coming ashore. He grabbed the medicine and with that he went back to his shelter more hopeful than he had been in a long time.

He arrived at his shelter to be greeted by Wali, who he gave a big hug. It warmed the cold heart of Alvin. Alvin gave Wali the medicine that he just found and gave him a bit of water to wash it all down. Wali was starving to death. Alvin was able to metabolize himself for a bit longer because of the amount of size that he had over Wali, but Wali was already super thin before the world went to hell. Wali went to lay down on the mattress in the corner of the room and Alvin went back outside in order to find them some much needed food.

Alvin walked back to the shopping center and shut down the scanner. His scanner would be no use when finding food for Wali. Alvin walked outside of his shelter and looked around, he was surprised to see motion in the distance. He slowly walked into the middle of the street and got closer. It looked like a person who was on his knees crouching over something, maybe praying. Alvin reached for the side of his belt where his orange handled machete was sheathed. When he was about 10 feet away from the person, he slowly started to pull it out. As he got closer he heard a squelching noise. A startling noise alerted the stranger of Alvin’s approach. Alvin had stepped on a plastic bag and the person quickly looked behind him. The squelching sound was revealed when Alvin saw what the person was crouching over. When the man turned, he revealed hands filled with meat and a wide smile surrounded by blood. The person stood up slowly and exposed the bloody knife that he had used to gut the person on the ground. The man sprinted towards Alvin as fast as he could, but to no avail. Alvin used his machete and slashed the man across the chest, leaving a deep gash that the man would not be able to recover from. Alvin took a deep breath. He cleaned his machete, sheathed it, and continued to walk down the road. He moved down the road more alert now then he was before. Alvin's legs grew tired as he kept repeating in his mind “find food, find food, find food.” He scanned his surroundings with his eyes and found a dumpster, he ran to it and threw the lid open. His face showed a grimace as he saw that it was just a bunch of crumpled up newspaper. He grabbed the newspaper and started throwing it out of the dumpster. As he reached the bottom there were 3 cans. He put his arm out and brushed the dust off the label to see that they were cans of beans. He put them in his backpack and started back to the shelter. On his arrival to the shelter he saw Wali laying on the bed just as he had been when Alvin left. Alvin walked over to Wali and started to shake him but Wali didn’t move. Alvin flipped Wali over slowly, only to see his eyes closed. His heart fell deep into his stomach when he realized Wali was dead. Alvin lunged back and his hand started to tremble. He fell backwards in disbelief at what he had just witnessed. Alvin got up, threw the door open. He ran out of the shelter and kept running and running until his legs couldn’t carry him anymore. Alvin crashed onto the street and it started to rain through the ash. He crawled to the cover of a nearby building and passed out from exhaustion.

As the months passed, the toll of Wali's death grew worse on Alvin and he became a shell of who he once was. Looking around the shelter, he would see illusions of Wali sitting there beside him and sleeping across the room from him. Every night he would dream of his late friend and every fond memory would later bring tremendous abysmal pain. One day Alvin awoke with depression that was too heavy to bear any longer. He walked out to the world that lost its light, just like he had lost the light in his life. He climbed to the roof of the building across the street from him and walked to the ledge. He looked down to the ground 9 stories below him. The voice in his head was absolutely silent and he yearned for it to yell at him about something, anything, but it shut down a long time ago. He turned himself away from the edge and started to dig through his layers of clothing. He grabbed onto something underneath his shirt and pulled it out. It was a small, golden, heart shaped locket. He used his calloused fingers to open the little locket, revealing a picture of him and a dog, a small blonde maltipoo. A single tear dripped down Alvin’s heartbroken face as he let himself fall off the edge. Before he hit the ground, he muttered the word, “Wali”.