1 A Vow Of Silence

Those who can achieve a true measure of silence, are the same people with the ability to control the vocals of the earth itself.

While it may come at a great lifelong challenge for some, a select few, immune to the harmful capabilities of the power of silence, are able to interpret and harness this knowledge and use it to their advantage, whether that's a good thing or a bad thing.

Yes, times are tough now, as I stand in an apocalyptic world that had once thrived as one of the most busy cities on the planet- I realize that silence may not be as terrible as it seems.

Hello. My name is Peter Lynn O'haren. My friends, or shall I say old colleagues, call me Pete for short. I'm 16 years old and I live in one of the most largely populated concrete jungles in the world, New York. My world is a bit twisted, I can admit, but maybe it's for what's best. Maybe a world of sound isn't really a world at all. Silence provides us with so many opportunities, wonderful opportunities that are capable of changing things for the better. No more arguments, no more fighting, no more choosing sides, no more violence. It's been ages since I've walked the streets and had the constant fear that somebody is going to say something that kicks me to the curb. That spine-tingling feeling that somebody is always watching you wherever you go, picking out your every flaw and throwing it out before you like a deck of playing cards.

That's another reason. No judgement.

I can appreciate the values of silence just as much as I can appreciate the values of speech. They each have their benefits, but certain attributes can lead to a heavy preference to one or the other. Most of the world has gone silent however, meaning no more TV, no more video games, no more songs and concerts. More importantly no more school, no Congress, and no president. You can imagine how fast our economy spiraled throughout the United States. In three weeks time, everything we knew and loved had vanished from existence. Chaos had broken loose.

Strikes and protests were held, citizens began to refuse to go to work, the death count was beginning to go up. Everything was uprooting, tearing itself apart from the inside out with no delay. Silence was beginning to rule, and with tyranny, comes madness.

Something changed in the crowd, and a merciless darkness fell over our city. People began to go missing without explanation, and found weeks later laying as rotting corpses throughout the streets. Fear was rising, and with that, vulnerability.

5 years ago when this whole thing started, and I was 11 years old, my birthday rolled around. Yes, I know that you're supposed to enjoy and celebrate the evening of surviving for another year, but what came to jostle my crowd of gathering family members, was enough to ruin any special occasion. The TV had come on with an announcement, real words were spoken by the broadcaster. None of us had expected such an action, and apparently so, neither did anybody else. The man was shouting and screaming, expressing all of the awful things that the government was planning against us. Clearly spreading rumors and falsely accusing people of things that hadn't even been done.. But my thoughts had changed nearly five seconds later as the unknown individual was torn off screen unexpectedly. I was confused, who pulled him off camera? Why was he pulled off camera? Was he telling the truth?

The television was turned off immediately and my birthday was resumed, in silence of course. The night changed though, no matter how we tried to play it off.

Any that's how I'm standing here today, closing on 6 years now in the middle of an abandoned city covered in trash, plantation, flipped cars and corpses. How did the city destroy itself you ask? Well that's simple, the madness of human kind.

People went crazy, murdering, robbing, destroying, and fighting. The mind began to turn into a machine of war, and all those who made a sound, were gone the next morning without a trace. As I had said before, silence is both a blessing and a curse.

I managed to keep my brains however. It was unimaginably difficult, especially with the added pressure of my family who was murdered in the first year. In order to keep my sanity, and my life, I vowed to an oath of silence. Rouge psychopaths wouldn't attack me as often while roaming the streets between specific hours of the day. I figured it would be easy too, just because I wasn't the most talkative person anyway- but taking a vow of silence meant that I couldn't make a sound of any kind, no matter what. That's how they get you.

As for now, I'm sitting atop the Empire State Building where my 'home base' is located. All that I have up here is a makeshift shack for at least some mild protection from the elements. Alongside that I have mostly stolen items. Don't go judging me for it though, it's every man for himself out here now. If you want to live, you stay quiet and you take what you need. Besides, all I grabbed was the essentials; bedding, clothing, means of protection, and a way to entertain myself through an old school camera that my dad gave to me. It stores all of the footage of what my life was like before this, everything from my childhood. It's all I have left to remember the past. All I have to remember who I used to be.

Occasionally, I'll have to leave my sanctuary in search of food. I usually just go for the nearest grocery store or gas station. All I have is a single backpack to hold everything that I take, and it doesn't help the fact that I already have to pack some things in preparation before I even leave. If I got stuck out at night, too far away from my camp, I'd have to bunker down somewhere safe to wait it out. And no, this isn't like the common zombie apocalypse where they only come out at night and feed from human flesh. This is what a real apocalypse is, the destruction of humanity. There is no virus outbreak, or blood sucking vampires that lurk in the darkness. We destroyed ourselves. And that's the worst kind of apocalypse.

Where I stand now is probably what I'll be standing in for the rest of my life. A broken world. Either I can choose to accept that, or I can end it now. Whether this building is in ruins at the base, shrinking it down to nearly half the size that it was previously, it's still the tallest structure around for miles. I could just jump..

But what I've come to learn out here, from myself, from the people around me, from my parents.. Giving up isn't an option now.

I'm in too deep.

Taking a bite from a frozen burrito I had retrieved from a convenience store earlier that day, I gazed out over my current surroundings of the rising sun. Rays of vibrant oranges, yellows and reds streamed across the dew lined sky like long, smooth strokes of paint across a canvas. I dangled my feet over the ledge of the building, 40 feet up from the pile of rubble below. While it looked like a mess from the outside, if you managed to slither through the cracks of the broken glass and concrete, what lies beyond there is a whole world in itself. I've taken the time to pull stray slabs of cement and rebar out of the way to make a tunnel system in where the entrance to the actual building is. I've only been inside the building once before, when it was grand and magnificent. Red carpet and sleek flowered wallpaper, marble flooring and mahogany chairs and desks. A large crystal chandelier hung from from exact center of the lobby. And to think that this building had once looked so pompous, rather than the mound of debris that it is now is astounding.

I watched the stray figures roaming the streets below as they lumbered and dragged their feet, bodies trembling violently as if they had caught a bad case of the chills. They cried out distantly for help in pain and agony, rotting and writhing in infection and seething with disease of the brain. After what I've seen, going crazy is probably the worst thing that could every happen to a person.

I often wished to talk to myself out loud, just so I could at least believe that I had somebody else here to call a friend. Unfortunately in these desperate times, things like friends aren't an option. Trust is something that people lack out here, and if you were lucky enough to stumble upon a sane living being, either they'd try and kill you, or they'd run for the hills. I don't blame them however. It's a dangerous world now. It's every man for himself, and I like it like that.

But boy did my life change that too.