We never talked about what happened. 

Ashley noticed the unblocked doorway and the knocks had ceased. She didn’t comment a single word, but she knew what I had done. 

Our breakfasts and lunches and dinners became super quiet. I had no idea what to talk about, as every sentence I tried to muster out felt like a lie or a sin. I didn’t want to talk as the guilt would take over me. She also stared me with that questioning look everytime we met, but she didn’t say a thing. I think she was... conflicted. She knew her sister became a killer, but she also wanted to thank me for getting rid of those bullying predators.

But nights passed and days flew by. We returned to our normal selves within weeks and continued our lives beneath the shade of fear on the unholy planet called Earth. 

The government’s jets destroyed one random building maybe every week. The explosions became bareable for us, and deep inside, we knew we could just obliterate into stardusts at any second. 

Ashley kept asking me the same thing over and over and over again.

“What will happen after we die, Ti?”

I was a bit teary when she first asked me that. A kid, fifteen year old, should focus on her passion and hobby, and to chase her future while having fun with herself and her friends in a mall. This fifteen year old asked me about death and pain and torture and fear while we watched the sun sets in the west.

“Ash, I don’t know.”

“Is heaven real?”

I considered the question more than one minute. It’s a rather fascinating question, isn’t it? I wasn’t a Christian nor that I was religious, and now I’m still not, but I see the point of God and that it is plausible that God exists. The apocalypse proved it.

“I don’t think I can answer that, Ash. I really hope so.”

“Should we start praying, then?”

I looked at her with my weary eyes. I studied her face and her fear, but she was scared. She was scared for the future. She was scared of death, of how uneasy it made her.

“If you feel like it, go ahead.”

She prayed. I watched her. She was in inner peace. Praying gave her a hope, and it calmed her down somehow. She studied in a Christian school before dropping out at year nine, but she didn’t forget the basics of praying.

“Why do we live?” She asked once.

“Well... we live to fill each other.”

That didn’t really answer her question, but she got satisfied from the answer.

I had no answer, but I could try to find out.

October arrived longer than it used to be. Nothing much had happened, but the government kept bombing the streets and buildings.

Bad things kept happening to us. Rains of needles showered us non-stop mercilessly. The greatest enemy was not those hissing predators down there, but fear. Fear is the toxin in this story.

Then, Ashley fell sick. Her fever was the hottest and I couldn’t find anything to help out. There was no soup or something hot to boil and make her feel better. There was no antibiotic or medicine to assist myself on treating her.

I faked a smile every time I entered the bedroom, but inside, I was struggling to keep up. It’s hard if you live in a world where you know exactly that tomorrow is going to be worse and worse. I knew that all of this would not end. This pandemic is not a normal pandemic. It’s the end of the world.

I only hoped that her sickness got nothing to do with that stupid disease. I hoped that it was just a dumb fever overtaking her body.

I checked the cabinets in the kitchen and we were just so low on food.

I really need to get out there.

But going to the Walmart would be a suicide as everything there must’ve already been looted and that hundreds of predators pervaded the streets below.

I had a new plan inside my head. I would scavenge all my neighbors’ rooms on this ninth floor, but I would knock the doors first before breaching in. I didn’t want to be like those four punks ending up dead in the hallway.

I took a duct-tape and plastered my arms with layers and layers of them. I then put on my black sweater and duct-taped my arms again, doubling the already double-layered layers. I did the same thing with my feet and the next thing I did would be standing behind my door with my heart bumping louder than the horn of a truck.

I breathed in, calming myself, unclenching my nerves and relaxing my muscles. I closed both my eyes. Finally, I was ready, and Ashley was asleep. I touched the really cold door knob with one hand while the other gripped the baseball bat strongly. The air swooshed upon my face a second after the door swung open. 

My eyes searched the apparent empty hallway. No one was there, no sound was heard, no footstep approached me. Nothing deadly welcomed me, except probably the blood on the wall. First, I searched Mr. and Mrs. Loghin’s apartment again thoroughly to find some things I missed at first. I got nothing from there.

Secondly, I moved north, browsing the room next to the Loghin’s. The door was opened before, but inside, I found nothing but a dead dog. Henry must’ve moved to his parents’ house months before. He probably left hurriedly, leaving Cas, his dog, behind.

In front of Henry’s room, Ms. Franceska did not reply when I knocked her door and shouted her name carefully. She probably was inside, being smart as she always was.

And I knocked on the next door. 

“Mr. Gorley, this is Tiany. Do you by any chance have an antibiotic or something? My sister needs it dearly.”

No answer.

“Mr. Andrews, Ashley is sick and I don’t have any drugs to heal her.”

No answer.

“Tasya, if you can hear me, I need your help. My sister is sick and I don’t own any medicine.”

She answered, “Go the fuck away!”

I rounded many rooms in that floor, finding a couple of opened doors. I also managed to collect some instant rames on my search of medicine.

The last room I hadn’t explored belonged to Roundley, the skinny teenager who hated me more than my haters. Apparently, he was that kind of person who disliked every famous and rich figure for no reason (though his parents were famous and wealthier than ever). But overall, he was a good kid. 

I knocked on the door two times, three times, four times.

“Roundley?”

No answer.

“Roundley, it’s Tiany.”

No answer.

“Roundley, I know you don’t like me very much, but I desperately need help. Ashley, she’s sick. It’s bad. I need your help. If you have some−”

A hiss came answering my question. The sound startled me as it emerged so loudly behind the door. My thoughts went everywhere, but I also heard a voice… a human voice… a whisper.

“Roundley?”

My curiosity led my right hand to touch the knob and turned it. The door was unlocked, so it generally swung open. I peered inside but the only thing I saw was darkness.

“Hello?”

A hiss.

I stupidly stepped forward. My brain was influenced by my curiosity, so I kept moving forward regardless of the consequences. 

I found the light switch and turned it on. The first thing I saw was a predator standing right in the middle of the room. She was wearing a really fancy dress beside a really fancy table with candle lights and rotten dishes.

The most terrifying thing about this predator was that its left eye wasn’t there anymore. 

It looked at me, and I could’ve sworn it smirked gently like a living person.

“Shit.”

The predator jumped to me without hesitation but full of anger and excitement. I didn’t know what happened next. I just swung the baseball bat as hard as I could at point blank, and the bat crushed the predator’s head and brought her down instantly. It screamed with pain, but the sound it was making made my ears bleed. Agony and filth filled the entire room when it bled out and finally died on the green carpet. Her head was almost opened. Maybe I did smack her too hard.

My eyes wandered across the room, searching for any kind of amazement. To my surprise, the bedroom door slapped open and a figure hurriedly ran toward the dead woman right next to me. I almost attacked the guy, but I saw that he was Roundley.

Roundley, the fat, angry boy turned out to be a really skinny, sweaty, filthy, and disgusting human being. He kneeled and cried beside the dead woman, hugging her and kissing her hands while his eyes plundered galons of tears.

“Roundley, I’m so sorry.”

I turned back and slowly headed for the door. I wanted to leave him alone to grieve. 

“Wait.”

I stopped. 

“You need antibiotics?”

“I do.”

“This is for Ashley?”

“Yes.”

“I have a few packs in the drawer in my room. Just take all of them and leave.”

I nodded. I didn’t wait for him to change his mind, so I quickly snatched as many white packs as there were. I saw stacks of food supplies towering inside Roundley’s room. He must’ve been sheltering himself from that woman for months. I couldn’t imagine being in his position. I even wondered how he got those supplies in there without the predator noticing, but I left that thought as I didn’t want to dizzy my head.

Before I exited the room, I took the liberty to apologize. That woman must really meant the world to him. 

“Roundley. I’m really sorry.”

He didn’t express an angry emotion or something like that. He just put on a poke face and nodded.

“It’s fine,” he suddenly said. “She tried to kill me more than once.”

My feet brought me back to my room where I immediately locked the door and slumped down on the sofa after everything that happened. It was too much for me.

I was weak.

I couldn’t help seeing things like that.

But it was the end of the world. Everyone across the globe experienced the same thing as Roundley and I.

It was the start of a new world, and we as humans had to adapt. 

—

Every day I witnessed the horror and the terror just outside the building. The street was now covered with white snow. The snow was blanketed by red blood. 

It was December and it was cold. Electricity had also been cut off for some time now, so being warm was a really difficult task. Thankfully, the never-used-before chimney in my apartment worked. We used chairs, tables, drawers, anything that was made out of wood to make a fire and warmed us up. 

Thank God my sister healed and didn't turn into one of those freaks.

Ashley prayed for this pandemic to end. I prayed for our deaths to be swift and not painful.

Supplies were running low again, so I decided to scavenge more of the floor below me. The entire section of the building was completely shut off. I saw no sort of predator or living being. I did see so many deaths and so many limbs. I even saw the corpse of Mr. Loghin lying on the hallway of the eighth floor.

I returned to my floor with a bag full of stuffs. I didn’t turn left to my room, but walked straight toward Roundley’s. I wanted to check with his condition, and maybe even lend him some few stuff so he didn’t have to starve and die.

The door wasn’t shut. 

“Hello? Roundley? You in here?”

I knocked the door and stepped in. “Roundley?”

I saw the same dead predator on the green carpet, unmoved but rotten.

“Roun−”

It was in the kitchen that I saw something extraordinary. The giant glassed window was shattered to pieces. 

Please Roundley. Please do not be down there.

And he was down there. I saw a body, lying nine stories down from the place where I stood. I saw the paved sidewalk being stained by dried blood. Roundley was down there, dead. The snow melted around his icing body.

“Fuck.”

I returned to my room and found Ashley waiting for me by the fireplace. She smiled as I came, but I did not return her warmth.

“What happened?”

“Nothing. I’m just tired.”

“Don’t do that. That’s a really basic answer to avoid being questioned. Tell me, Ti. What happened?”

I sighed after locking the door behind me. I sat comfortably on the couch and threw my bag full of food to her.

“Roundley killed himself.”

“Oh.” Somehow, Ashley wasn’t very much surprised.

“Yeah. It sucks.”

Ashley was just about to say a few more things to me, but suddenly, the earth started vibrating to every direction. Vases and pots and plates fell off from their places.

“Ti, what’s happening?”

“Earthquake. Ashley, down the table, now!”

I shoveled Ashley’s arm and went straight for the nearest table. Our dining table was strong as it was made out of plywood. The horrendous tremors made my sister screamed with panic. I hugged her as tight as possible but the earthquake didn’t stop.

“Just stay with me, Ash. Everything will be alright.”

But I hid my panic face inside my comforting one. Ashley shifted from screaming to crying.

“I don’t wanna die, Ti. I’m scared. I’m scared.”

“You’re not gonna die. You’re going to be just fine. It’s just an earthquake.”

The chandelier at the living room fell, but after that, no more tremors shook the entire building. The earthquake stopped before the building collapsed.

When we got out from beneath the table, our first sight was the giant mushroom cloud so far away. It was too far to be made sense of, but I knew for sure what it was.

“What’s that, Ti?”

“I don’t know.”

But I knew. I knew for sure what it was.

A nuke.

-------

Art : luchshie_photo from Twitter