They were just people who wanted to live.
The rest of the world chose to call them survivalists, or those who were a little bit touched in the head, preparing for an imaginary apocalypse as the world spiraled around the sun and civilizations rose and fell.
They were the ones who had decided subconsciously to prepare, early on, before anything was truly wrong with the earth. They dug bunkers and built homes on oceans and invested in solar and wind power. They grew their own gardens and became self-sufficient, devoured books and television shows alike that taught them how to live in the wilderness, how to be less dependent on the luxuries of a technologically advanced civilization, how to be independent and prepare for their world’s end. They learned how to live without.
They were the ones who streamed into the mountains the moment the lights began to flicker, who nodded sagely when the skies changed and time faded away, eyes roving over their supplies and mentally taking note of everything that was left. They established base camps and rudimentary villages capable of moving at a moment’s notice, using their knowledge of history and previous civilizations to re-create some type of safe haven in a world shadowed and eerie, bereft of its seasons.
They didn’t wear chainmail or play with swords. They didn’t change their manner of dress and speak with a different cadence. They didn’t eschew the culture they knew for one they had seen painted in a thousand movies. They didn’t imagine they were part of some grand role-playing event that offered the opportunity to live another, grander pseudo-reality. They didn’t pretend anything at all.
They simply prepared. They knew the end was coming, that they would finally be proven right.
And they were terrified.
Eventually, the mountains and wilderness where the survivalists settled started to fill up as people streamed out of the cities, searching for someplace to hide when the ground began shaking ceaselessly, bringing down the solid concrete walls that had sheltered them their whole lives. They fled, ill-prepared, and found others already there. The survivalists, the ones they had mocked. Yet it strengthened the newcomers, strangely stretched hope to find some semblance of society already established.
But for those who had come before, the arrival of the rest of humanity signaled only one outcome…
The day came.
Mere moments - or maybe hours - before the light began, something shifted inside the survivalists, waking them up, filling them with urgency. They tried to wake those they loved, tried to pull them up, to beg and plead with them to stand, to leave, and to get away. Some responded, moving groggily but willingly, trusting that the other – who’d been right so far – knew what he or she was doing. They stood shakily to their feet, grabbed a nearby pack, and followed, pushed into a staggering jog because there was no time for anything else.
But those were the exceptions. Far too many looked up with dull eyes and exhausted stares. There hope was shriveled, unfair, and drained. They shook their heads and dropped their shoulders in defeat. They turned away from the struggle looming in front of them and looked away, towards the light. It promised rest.
With urgency pounding in their blood and their instincts screaming at them to go, the survivalists could do nothing but give a final kiss or embrace, try to live a lifetime in that final single glance, before they had to turn away, their hearts cleft in two. There was no time to look back.
No time at all, because time had suddenly discovered them.
By the time the light began to bloom in its falsely loving caress, the survivalists had already begun to leave, knowing all that they left behind. They were young and old, men and women, little girls and boys who started running the minute they felt the humming inside their bones begin to intensify. And they understood that the end – this end, their end - had finally arrived. They didn’t watch for the light or wait for the sun to pretend to reappear. They chose the dark, hoping it would hide them from the glare of unknown forces that they knew hunted them. As the ground broke behind them, so too did their hearts break deep inside, echoing the destruction of the earth and those trapped by it.
They found boulders and caves and curving slabs of concrete. They hid from the light, tucked their bodies away and under, shuddering from imagined contact. As hours passed and the earth reshaped itself, they wondered if they were all that was left of the once vivid and self-aware mass of humanity. Wondered if it was worth running, worth hiding and burrowing into the dark in an effort to protect themselves from the now brutal light, which no longer offered any quick, comforting end, but rather a slow decay. They cowered and trembled and wondered.
Was anyone else left?
In time, the roars and trembling and crash of falling rock died down. All was strangely quiet – an odd silence, given how silent it had been before the end. It was a silence bereft of the collective breathing of millions. This one inescapable sign of life had been broken and crushed and split into an uncanny absence of any sound at all. True silence.
On the surface.
But underground, trapped and pulled into thousands of distorted, imperfect, irregular holes, the survivors crouched, the sound of their breathing echoing proudly, defiantly, frantically.
And of these, even less crawled and kicked and clawed and sobbed their way out of darkness.
They knew better than to stop, to think, to reflect. They simply kept moving. Their only thought was the belief that they had somehow escaped the devastation.
But they were far from free.
For they knew the end of the world as they knew it was just the beginning of something other, because they’d survived by choosing against the release death offered.
And now there could be no rest.
Over time, survivors emerged – one here, two there, a handful now and again, repeated at intervals. The sun set and night once again raised its true face over a disfigured world. Many faces lifted away from the destruction, searching for the light of the stars they had long been denied.
They had lived two lifetimes already – the easy one and the one they shared in that final glance with those they left behind.
Was there enough in them left for a third?
Above them, in a sky nearly clear and strewn with stars, the moon rose, full and beckoning.
And they knew.
~*~
3. Whisper in the Darkness
By
C. M. Bratton
The earth lay split and tangled, slopes canted at impossible angles, swallowing bodies – some dead and some alive.
Down one crevice, a man and woman lay buried under an enormous mound of earth and mud and broken stone. They were still breathing, a narrow channel of polluted air flowing down the side of a cracked boulder through the layers of upset earth into the hollow space that they occupied. How they ended up there, together, bruised but aware, they did not know. Too much had happened too quickly, their senses defeated by the urge to run and the roaring voice of the tearing ground. They were strangers, pushed together by the same harsh, agonizing decision to leave those they loved. Somehow, they’d both fallen – been pulled – down the same hole, into the same dusty chamber. As they lay there, listening to the sound of their heartbeats and gasping breaths, they gradually remembered what they had been running from.
Realization hit. Maybe everyone was dead. Everyone but the stranger next to me, of whom they were only vaguely aware because they became too caught up in the horror of the next thought: Why, they both wondered, had I preferred the chance to live alone than die peacefully with all that I knew?
What kind of world had it become to offer only two irrefutable, unalterable choices: quick oblivion or a long suffering life?
They hadn’t really thought to choose, but when the moment came, they had obeyed the commands of their bodies and turned away and fled the killing light.
As they lay in darkness, hearing the thunder become more distant as the ground continued to pile itself around their little cave, they realized they might die anyway. The agony of
considering that all their effort had been in vain choked them.
They wanted to live.
Thinking that their air supply might soon dwindle, the woman chose to speak, preferring to die at the side of a friend.
“My name is… Lucia.”
There was a pause and Lucia feared the man would not respond. Then she heard scrabbling in the blackness, followed by the feel of his hand clasping hers.
“Evan.”
They both smiled then and took several large breaths, convinced each one was the last. When the air didn’t run out, they gave in to exhaustion and fell asleep to the sounds of a breaking continent.
Many hours later, Lucia and Evan awoke, hands still tightly clasped. They might have taken a moment to be embarrassed by the intimacy, but they were distracted by how loud the sound of their breathing was.
“Do you think… it’s stopped?”
Lucia considered Evan’s question, her hand tightening inside his.
“I hope so.”
But he wasn’t finished.
“How long should we wait to make sure?”
Lucia heard the resolve in his voice. It was the same as that which filled the parts of her not aching with loss.
“I don’t know.”
Evan thought about his hand curled over Lucia’s, about the unspoken question of whether they could even get out. He knew they had to try. But he refused to think of what he’d left behind. Not what, but who, but he didn’t allow that thought at all.
Not yet, but soon, he promised himself.
“I’m glad you’re here.”
Lucia smiled, though he didn’t see it, because she realized she wasn’t alone after all. But her will to forget was only half-formed. Her smile faded. An image filled her mind, growing larger in the darkness. It was a beautiful picture – large round sparkling eyes and a wide, laughing mouth. A beloved, innocent face.
Her heart constricted inside her and she fought the pain spreading throughout her chest and smothering her with the immensity of her loss. Tears soaked her face, but she didn’t try to wipe them away.
Why did I run away? Why did I think we could both make it?
Another question simmered, unspoken even to herself because she didn’t know the answer. Not then.
Unable to stand the pain pouring through her, she thought to distract herself and talk to Evan. But the first words out of her mouth were ones she immediately wished she kept inside.
“How many did you leave behind?”
Evan’s throat constricted. Lucia, shamed, thought about trying to tell him not to answer, but he surprised himself by answering before she could tell him not to, his voice ragged with suppressed emotion.
“My mother. And my wife. My father we lost at the beginning of the haze.”
And still she didn’t see it coming.
“You?”
Lucia was quiet for a long time, filling herself up with the memory of a perfect face, expanding her body with the pain of its loss. Finally a whisper slithered out.
“My son.”
Evan was silent, thinking of the pain filling the space between them. A quote from a book he’d once read floated through his mind.
“We are born broken… born to die. Now or later, but certainly, one way or the other.”
Lucia didn’t respond at first, and Evan thought he’d offended her until her voice whispered out of the darkness.
“Are you saying that the choice we made – wasn’t wrong? Because if we hadn’t died when we were running, then we will here in this cave or some other time?”
“Then, now, when we last got in a car or plane or went to a mall. Maybe from cancer or some other disease. Maybe quickly, and maybe not. But it is going to happen.”
“Yes… so here we are, still alive… still broken.”
There was little to say after that. They rested a while longer, until, by mutual and subconscious need, they began to feel around the black, confined space, pushing and prodding to see if there was any give in the encircling rock, any yielding of pressure that signaled the possibility of escape.
There was nothing. Only a slim column of air rising up against the split face of a mountainside marred rock enfolding them. But when Evan reached up to the roof, he found it was made of packed dirt that sifted through his hands as he prodded it.
“Lucia, the ceiling is not solid.”
She stretched up and was barely able to touch the dusty, packed earth that should have been below her.
“Do you think it will fall on us?”
Evan shrugged, though Lucia couldn’t see anything there in the darkness.
“I don’t know.”
They both slumped down again to think, letting silence back in to fill the small hollow. Lucia’s throat immediately tightened as a perfect little face flashed in her mind.
“I didn’t just leave him, you know? My son.”
Her words didn’t surprise Evan. He’d felt them hovering between them since she’d first told him who she’d left. Evan brought his arm around Lucia and held her against his warmth. She pressed her head into his chest, trying to hold back her screams of anguish.
“He was… too heavy. And I fell. I couldn’t… find him, couldn’t hear his voice anymore. He was gone… and the light started to go white… so I… kept running.”
At that, she broke down and began crying. Evan felt tears of his own slide down his cheeks. After several long minutes, Lucia quieted in his arms.
“His name was Fabian. Too big a name for him, but I just knew he’d grow into it.”
She sighed, a dry desert inside.
“I was wrong.”
Evan felt the strength of her loss resonating inside him; felt him reflecting it back to her, building the air between them with the force of their mutual pain. But if he was going to give in, why had he run in the first place? Why had he left anyone behind?
“Survivor’s instinct.”
Lucia started.
“What?”
Evan spoke quickly, his words rapid in an attempt to convince himself along with Lucia.
“Instinct. The need to live - it was stronger in you than any other bond you had, even to your own son. Even to my own wife.”
Evan took a shuddering breath before the words continued rushing out.
“My mother knew she couldn’t make the run, so she told me to leave her behind. But my wife… she didn’t believe me. She said we needed to stay in one place. I made a split-second choice, because there wasn’t time for more. And now… they’re both gone.”
Lucia felt his pain echoing hers, his guilt a mirror to her thoughts. She had survived by abandoning the one she loved. What kind of person did that make her?
Yet within her guilt hardened a core of resolve.
Lucia sat up abruptly.
“We didn’t escape the bombs or whatever they were just to end up here and die, especially not from our guilt.”
Evan moved his head the sound of her voice.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, there must be a reason we’re still here. So there’s got to be a way out of this.”
Evan took a deep breath. And he knew.
“Air!”
“What?”
Evan turned and reached for the crack.
“Air. It reaches to the top. We only need to crawl our way along it.”
“But how are we going to do that without burying ourselves?”
“We push the ground around us.”
“Around us?”
“Yes. Just think, if we take a foot of earth from above us and place it beneath us, where do we end up?”
“A foot higher!”
“Exactly.”
Filled with excitement, Lucia and Evan set to work. It was tricky and exhausting. They took turns at different tasks. If Lucia was digging, then Evan was crouching with his back bracing the small space and patting down the dislodged dirt. If Evan was shifting the dirt, then Lucia was fighting to maintain their hollow. In this
way, they burrowed upward, careful to only move one handful at a time, afraid of creating too great a displacement and becoming completely buried.
Slowly, they rose, hour after hour, refusing to quit, filled with purpose, with the certainty that they would see the sky again. And, because they had no way to gauge the passing of hours or minutes, time ceased to have any meaning to them. And without its meaning to guide them, to coerce them into thinking it was time to rest, or time to eat, or time to sleep, they felt freed from some immeasurably burdensome chain that had weighted them down since their earliest memories. Without that weight, their desire to rest, their thirst, their cramped and bent bodies, all became bearable again. Lucia and Evan became stronger because there was no clock organizing their lives and telling them what to feel and when to feel it. Without time to limit them, they had only to trust the beat of their hearts, the length of their inhalations. That was enough.
Still, they paused every now and again to stretch muscles and pop backs, to lay still and simply revel in existing. But never for too long, never enough for the sorrow that darkened them from within to rise up and topple the light of their painstaking ascent. They had lost everything – every loved one – yet still they fought, still they dug and moved and rose. To continue living with the consequences of their choice to run was the only way they could make their sacrifices have true significance.
Thus they scrabbled upwards, handful by handful, covered in dust and scrapes. Sooner than they believed, their timelessness broke when the blackness surrounding them began to lose its intensity as motes of light began to filter down. Perhaps it was the movement of the broken earth that somehow initially pushed them deep inside before reforming around them enough to bring them closer to its surface. However it happened, Lucia and Evan felt a shift in their burden far sooner than they had hoped. Adrenaline returned in a rush and they both began to claw at the ground above them. In a burst of motion, they emerged from their hole into a dimly lit overhang of rock. They lay, exhausted and sore, but victorious nonetheless. Perhaps the end would come now, but they had made it out.
They lay back, breathing in the strange air, unable to tell if, in the midst of the sulfur-tinged smell, it was fresh with hope or regret. But a wisp of flickering light caught their attention. Could that be the sun, they wondered?
Of their own accord, their hands reached for each other, seeking reassurance. Evan and Lucia felt no need to look at each other, to see the face they’d touched in the darkness. They would always know the other, be able to recognize the simple cadences of their voices and the staccato beat of each other’s heart. They were bound together in their survival, connected by the thread of their losses, the heartbreak of what they’d deliberately chosen to leave behind when they obeyed their instinct to live, survive, thrive…