End Of Days

31: Life

The first time they turned the radio on it fizzled into silence almost immediately.

It was disheartening, but George insisted that the technology wasn't at fault. He had claimed that there was a certain range that the radio had to be in to link up over radio waves and talk to another device. It was as good a reason as any to pack up and hit the road again.

The last time they had stayed somewhere this long was the pharmacy that they had taken refuge in soon after the apocalypse began. Techno remembered vividly the last night they had spent together, watching the stars through the open window and wondering what the next day would hold. Wondering if they would even survive a week, a day, an hour in the outside world now that civilisation as they knew it was gone.

When they had left the pharmacy it had felt like a necessary anxiety. It had felt like the first of many steps along an uncertain path, where tomorrow was more a concept or a theory than the promise it used to be. It felt like leaving home for the worst reasons, it felt like fear and it felt like the unknown.

Leaving the house felt like putting on a pair of old shoes and walking a path long carved through overgrown weeds. It felt freeing. It felt right. It felt like a step in the right direction. The teenagers spent their last night at the house sleeping soundly, breaking only to change over the role of lookout. They had known, even then, that they would need their rest.

"I reckon I could hotwire a car." Sapnap said boldly as he made his way down yet another unfamiliar street.

Sally and Techno exchanged a look of raised eyebrows and skepticism. Sapnap glared at them. "Stop having your telepathic conversations right in front of me. There's this thing called manners, you know."

"Pretty sure manners died out with 90% of the human race, actually." Techno drawled, a slight lilt of amusement in his voice.

"And it's not telepathy." Sally added on, her flat expression doing nothing to hide the laugh in her tone. "Come on, Sap. Don't be ridiculous. Everyone knows telepathy isn't real."

"Just like zombies." George nodded along helpfully, unable to keep the shit eating grin from taking over his face.

Sapnap let out a loud noise of protest that sent his companions into a bout of laughter. Around them the town offered no response, but that was okay. The empty buildings and echoing streets made for a secluded background that promised isolation, and with isolation came safety.

It was obvious that this town had been long since abandoned. Techno figured that it was likely overtaken quickly by the wave of zombies that seemed to have swept through the country like a flash flood. There were bones on the roads-- all that remained of the corpses that had once laid here rotting. Time had taken its toll, surviving animals had eaten their fill. Tufts of grass were beginning to sprout between the sidewalk, widening cracks and slowly reclaiming what once was theirs.

It was nice, in a way. Not everything was dead and decaying-- sometimes beauty could come from horror. Even from tragedy, life prevailed. That much was proven by the reclamation around them. It gave Techno hope. He saw the way Sally and George smiled as they passed by a tree that had been allowed to grow wildly without restraint or trimmings of leaves to keep the pathways clear.

Maybe their world ending had been the start of another.

"No, seriously." Sapnap said as he fiddled around beneath the dash of a car that looked untouched since the world ended. "I got this."

"I feel like you don't." Techno hummed from where he sat on the roof of the car, leant back on his palms, eyes scanning their surroundings just in case.