Surviving the End of the World

Author’s Note: So I’ll be starting a new series below while we all wait for Red Fist. I wanted to try something different from a super personal perspective of how I would be and how the world around me would be. I apologize if there’s any mistakes, I had a rough night.

Chapter One: The End Comes When You Least Expect It

Nobody ever seriously thinks the world will end. Nobody really believes that. It’s always a matter of joke and superstition. I used to see it all the time in people’s eyes. The amusement at the thought. There used to be a lot of people, especially my generation, who wanted nothing more than for life as they know it to cease to exist. They begged day in and day out for an apocalypse. I sit here laughing now, near this candle as I jot down my thoughts, tales, and stories from the old world, smiling to myself. I bet those people who prayed for this are dead now, most starving, many dying from disease, a select few get eaten by the beasts that roam wild, and onesies and twosies disappear and never return again. Many believe aliens caused this…the end of the world. Some whisper and mutter that the Lost Ones, that’s where they go, they get abducted. And who knows, maybe it isn’t all bullshit.

I know though, that whoever prayed for this shit is definitely wishing three years ago they had made the most of their life because now, there really is no life worth living.

Three Years Ago

July 19, 2019

It was a hot day, a normal day. The sun was beating the living shit out of everyone, and I wanted to just chill in the air conditioner, but I had daddy duties. I was taking care of my puppy, Milo, making sure he was okay, taking him out in the morning heat to use the bathroom so he wouldn’t ruin my carpet. I had already accomplished much that day. I had updated my blog, did some things for my book that was supposed to be released later that year in September, and went to the gym. I was happy, my life wasn’t perfect, I wasn’t rich, and I was uncertain about many things, but I had reasons to smile.

Daddy duties were over. I could chill out in the AC and let Milo lounge around, staring up at me with his puppy eyes making me grin. I swear he was the cutest puppy ever! A little gray-blue Pitbull with green-sometimes-blue eyes. I did the usual and hopped onto Xbox to lose myself into some video games when an idea struck me. Why not let Milo meet my niece, Janiya. I hadn’t seen her in a while. So, I checked with my older sister to make sure my niece was home and then went over there to see her.  I shook my head as she opened the door after I waited for five minutes on the steps.

“What were you doing?” I asked.

Janiya beamed at me and at Milo who was clumsily trying to follow me up the stairs. “I was in the bathroom, sorry.”

I hugged my niece. It always amazed me at how much she had grown every time I saw her. She was damn near as tall as me and beautiful, like her mother. I was always distraught. All my nieces and nephews that were teenagers were almost the same height as me, tall as me, or trying to tower over me. I was done growing, five feet, six inches, a short, kind of muscular guy in the right light. Many people said it looked like I stayed in the gym, but I didn’t see it. All I ever saw were my abs that were too damn stubborn; they would not fight through my stomach flab. I just loved food too much and didn’t see the glamour in the practice of dieting.

Janiya was trying to get Milo to come to her, and I watched with a smile on my face. She was thirteen going on fourteen in September. An athlete. A musician. A somebody that would no doubt be successful if she had been given a chance by the world to be great.

“Eh, Ni?” I called out.

She looked up at me with her brown eyes.

“Wanna go get some ice cream? Beat the heat?”

“Uhhhhhhh…sure!”

“Cool.”

Ni got up off the floor, “Just let me get ready.”

My niece ran off into her mother’s bedroom while I had a conversation with my sister’s roommate. It was a normal conservation in a normal house about normal things. Something I now miss. Normalcy.

Cookout had the milkshakes according to my niece. I never had them. So there we went. Ni got a vanilla milkshake, and I got a peanut butter and banana one. I convinced my niece to come to my place and play Crash Bandicoot Racing with me. Ni kept looking back at Milo who sat in the back seat, whining.

We drove past one of my old high schools. “What grade you going to next?” I asked her, I could never remember how old, or what grade my nieces and nephews were in. I had too many!

“Eighth,” she said. Ni was a quiet girl, didn’t do a lot of talking around me.

 “Soon you’re gonna be in that high school. You ready?”

Ni shrugged. I laughed. “Ouuuuu, soon you’re gonna be an adult. Four years go by quick, better enjoy it!”

Ni gave me a nervous smile, and I didn’t say much else to her on my drive home. We rushed into my apartment. Milo ran around Ni’s legs, wanting to play. She sat down on her phone, absorbed into it. I thought I was bad on my phone, but her generation was even worse.

“What do you do all day at home while school’s out?”

“YouTube,” Ni said, cutting her eyes up at me.

 I shook my head. “What’s on YouTube all day?”

“I watch shows, gaming videos, and funny stuff.”

I nodded, understanding. YouTube was an easy place to get lost. One minute you’re on there looking for a way to fix your Xbox controller, the next your watching some guy dance to Poker Face by Lady Gaga, and the next you’re watching a motivational video because you think your life is trash. And shit, I don’t know maybe it was, but I guarantee you, nothing is worse than what life is now.

I grabbed my Milo to put him in my lap. “You got a boyfriend?”

Ni giggled and shook her head no.

“Yeah, you better not. I’ll beat him up!”

She laughed.

The rest of the day, I tried to teach her how to play Crash Bandicoot Racing, but she was hopeless. Kita, my sister called me and told me she would be over to pick her up and to see Milo, but she never came. We had played one Crash Bandicoot Racing games too many when I began to get concerned.

“Call your mom,” I told Ni.

She began to then frowned at me. “I don’t have signal.”

I picked up my phone. Neither did I. I found that very strange. I had internet in my apartment, what the hell was going on?

“I’m gonna go outside, watch Milo for me, please,” I told my niece.

My phone didn’t want to work out there either. The wind was strong, crashing into me, howling in my ears, and the temperature had dropped significantly. The sky was dark, and the sudden roar of thunder made me jump. Was the storm blocking our signal? When I got back inside, it was darker. I tried to turn on the lights, but they didn’t work.

“What the fuck,” I muttered.

Ni’s phone was glowing on her face. I went over behind her and instantly got caught up in what she was watching. It was a broadcast. The meteorologist was saying that this sudden storm literally came out of nowhere. He urged us to stay inside, saying that this storm was a hurricane. Rain began to assault the earth, I could hear it beating her down outside. The newsreel cut to an emergency broadcast. An overview of California. A raging fire seemed to engulf an entire forested mountainside, an aerial view of earthquakes shaking the city of Los Angeles. The reel cut again, to New York. The reporter there was standing in front of the Statue of Liberty, she was screaming at the camera, saying the ocean was rising. The video cut out when a basketball-sized piece of ice crashed down next to her. Ni stared at me, uncertainty on her face.

“Call your mom again!”

Ni tried and failed.

I tried on my phone and got through.

“Hello! I’m on my way. Is Ni okay?” she said frantically.

“Kita! I’m here. Where are you?”

“Like ten minutes away. It’s crazy out here. He’s coming back, Jamiel.”

It took me a minute to realize she was talking about God. I wasn’t religious. “Kita, I love you,” I felt like I needed to say it. I handed the phone to Ni.

She was crying and nodding and wiping her tears away. Something in me broke as thunder screamed down at us again. The darkness in my apartment shifted, and somehow, I knew things were going to get worse. I peeked outside, and the rain was really coming down, some of it overflowing onto the sidewalk.

“The world is ending,” I whispered to myself in awe, not really believing my own words.

I peered back at Ni. She was balling her eyes out. I rushed to her and grabbed the phone, screaming into it. “Kita! Kita!”

No answer. Just static.

“What happened, Ni?” I sat next to my niece, hugging her.

She sobbed into my shirt, shaking uncontrollably. “I—heard metal—and—I think…”

I wrapped my arms tighter around Ni, trying to soothe her. I didn’t think about what could have happened to my sister. In fact, I didn’t think about much at that moment. My brain was going haywire.

The fucking world was ending.

And now I sit, three years later by this candlelight, recollecting. Always aware, never able to sleep much. The world now is a cold place, full of scavengers, killers, starving kids, disease, blood, beasts, and a few people like us, who just survive. We aren’t good or bad. We’re just trying to live for a reason unknown to us. I want to die, honestly, I do. I can’t write books in this world. Nobody reads anymore. I can’t change lives. I would off myself if I didn’t have Ni and Milo to look after. Those two are giving me purpose. I just want them to be happy, someplace safe, and so far, I haven’t found it. I will though before the next end comes. Because I’ve realized something crucial in these last three years. It’s the reason I can’t sleep. It’s the reason I barely eat. It’s the reason I’m so protective over Ni and Milo. It’s the reason I don’t trust any of these nomads that keep eyeing my niece hungrily, these good men and women, who I’m starting to suspect are playing me for a fool. It’s the reason I keep my gun and my knife on me.

It’s this plain rule I learned. After seeing so many die. After shielding Ni’s eyes so many times from death.

The end comes when you least expect it.

So I make sure I’m always expecting the end.