12 BC 2 1

I found a maintenance ladder and a hatch. Locked. From outside. To be expected. Jumped down and without giving up checked other venues. Eventually found a crumpled passage towards freedom. Some of the ceiling behind that was caved in, air dusty. Since I didn't drop dead immediately it probably wasn't a bioweapon of any kind.

Started looting random piles of clothing strewn around. Boots, cargo pants, shirt, jacket of many pockets, contents of purses. The usual stuff. Walked room by room. Stuffed bags and pouches full of money and jewellery.

If not for the occasional collapse or automated alerts, it would have been dead silent. Not terribly daunting. Scavenging in the surrounding towns under threat of monsters was way worse.

Picked up a load of keys and key cards, as the floors were locked from one to the next until reaching a place where stairs abruptly ended. There was an open sky. Still fair bit of way to reach ground level, though. The giant sea creature lightly scraped the top floors off.

I sighed and clambered through the rubble swept to the sides. Tired, beat and all dirty, hoisted myself up the last peak. There were buildings! Debris all around, but great many still stood tall all over one side of horizon. An oddly familiar sight, but all the cities looked alike, right?

Not at all. That crime against architecture was undoubtedly one of a kind. No two buildings would collapse the same way. Which meant I was home! Not an impossible coincidence, we were somewhere in the vicinity already. Joy!

I would have never suspected soldiers have been bringing unholy beasts so near the population, within city limits. A bit hypocritical, but nobody ever asked me for opinion on such matters. Thus far they had done stellar job keeping them contained anyhow.

Getting closer towards residential district I observed the stillness of destruction. Nobody cried. Nobody was riffling through the collapsed structures. Nobody even came to gawk at the hole in place of our strongest and bravest.

No, this can't be right. The eerie serenity felt horrible. The stronghold of humanity was never supposed to be this inert, for it was the peace of graveyard.

Everyone can't possibly be gone.

Dropped my bags of goodies and ran.

We lived away from the law. That translated into location physically furthest away from enforcers. They're fine. They will be okay. My lungs burned. I sprinted as though chased even though I barely started, but I could not pace myself. It's far from here. They would be alright. Had to be. Please. I just want to go home.

I shouted, screamed for literally anybody to show up on the way but nobody peeked out in the dark windows. There was no rampant fire, no more sights of destruction. Everything was intact. Even the clothes I'd occasionally stumble upon. Not a drop of blood. Everyone was just gone.

"Anyone!" I screamed hysterically, after succumbing on my fours to catch a few seconds of reprieve. Then I ran again. I could barely see through white spots in my vision by the time I reached home.

"Ruby?" I fell through the front door. Silence was still sickening. Without stopping, I checked every room on the ground floor and then flew up the stairs. Methodically opened and closed. Nothing.

"Amber?" I called out and got an idea – she could be at work. It was middle of the very, very cold day.

I ran out into the deserted street again. Her workplace was pristine and open. Piles of clothes lain all around. My face flooded with hot tears for I recognised one of the piles. That was Amber's best attire. She never wore it anywhere else. The heartbreak was palpable, but monsters have given me too good of health for my ticker to just stop.

I wailed.

This was all my fault! And it wasn't even survivor's guilt. I put this in motion. My actions. I shouldn't have gone back. Not the first time, nor the second. If I was captured literally anywhere else, some other city of strangers would have been razed and I would not have cared. We all could be happily existing separately and I wouldn't be endangering everyone I care about with my every action.

Tears dried up and I sat listless for hours, hugging the bright yellow sweater that smelled of bread.

At some point I registered an invasive waft of smoke and waited for the fire to take me. A burner or two had to have been left unattended, after all. Nothing had happened. Perhaps someone was trying to get warm in this surprisingly chilly air? Or get attention of survivors? Maybe one of mine.

I forced myself to stand up. Swung the door wide open, stepped out and stared at the smoke billowing right into my face. I waited to burn up alive some more, but no such luck. Wind blew it all away momentarily.

There was a burning mound of trash in front of the shop. Someone was definitely alive to be running around and lighting these. Weird, but that was on them. I walked right to it and warmed my freezing fingers. Whoever made a bonfire in the middle of the street would come back. Might as well be sitting here.

So I sat and stared into fire long enough to start seeing faces in it. Then hear voices. Wonder what the dead were saying? I listened more carefully.

"Hello, how are you?" barely audible crackling had whispered. Such therapeutic, caring breakdown.

I sighed, wanting to go on diatribe about all the happy looting I was about to do, but it was just me and there was no hiding from myself. Reclined on one hand and muttered, "I had a rough day." The description felt a little inadequate, but I didn't look into the understatement further. Nothing would suffice.

"Corpulent Oleaginous Formation… ruins everybody's days," utterly quiet whooshing kept spewing seemingly unconnected words and I thought divine grace has finally bestowed a seizure upon my tired ass, but no. Voices in my head merely turned out to be spitefully outspoken.

"Yeah! Sleazy, slippery bastard," I added with vehemence. Perhaps venting would do me good, because anything else was too terrible to consider. Perhaps in a little while. "Keeps getting in my face as he sees fit, fucks everything up and then fucks off." I fell quiet. Wind could have been talking and I wouldn't have known – I've drifted far too deep inside myself again. The vast nothingness there was astounding. I exhaled and words escaped, "What am I supposed to do now?"

There was just one thing to do, really. I wasn't sticking around through any following misery and cold just to find something that could topple this natural disaster. And somehow the longer I lived the worse things I've come eye to eye with got, so I had little doubt - worse things were fast approaching.

"Do you want to play play play play," faint voice asked me.

Play? "Uh. Yeah," I could do with something little less grim. "Sure. And what are we doing?" It was silly to ask this of nobody but the voices suggested it first. At this point I was no longer worried about my sanity.

"Ammo," it whispered repeatedly, enticingly.

I snickered, because of course my inner voice would be as grim as the rest of myself. "Yeah, that would be nice, but in a flash of short-sightedness I've dropped the guns somewhere. We will need to figure out an alternative," I explained apologetically, but pulled out the loaded clips of my many pockets and looked around as though weapons would magically appear among the litter. No such luck.

Oh, well. Had no use for these anyway. Chucked the magazine into the open blaze. Wisps licked the blocky lump greedily, it glittered and then fireworks started popping off one by one. Flame and smoke zestfully shot up. Sparks kicked around, red charcoal broke up into parts and flew around just like the explosive lead.

"Ahh! Pretty. With chance of instant death. This was a great idea," I threw in another one, but the flames completely avoided the black oblong this time around.