Screams. The last thing I heard was screams. For hours on end, shrill wailing penetrated my ears, a pure fear being spat out into the uncaring wind.
And then it stopped. I blinked and was blinded. The fiery damnation of some sick god came to relieve us of our sins. In shelter I looked through the door and saw a girl run for cover. She entered the house and looked at the world outside. Her mistake. All windows shattered and soon she had been pierced by shards. One lodged itself in her left eye. Blood ran down her forehead, their flow only being ended when she collapsed, succumbing to the void.
In the 5 days since, the radios had confirmed the worst. Nuclear armageddon, the grand clashing of egos, had taken course. Those who had survived made their way to military camps. I did not hear help, I heard gunshots. The bodies were quickly disposed of.
I now sat back on a concrete bench and watches the small fire I had built, occasionally kindling it with wood scavenged from the nearby lumbermill.
"Ring ring, ring ring"
Under a pile of rubble, I heard the ringing of a phone. It had been the only sound I had heard in the last 2 days (excluding the bastard birds singing at ungodly hours). It ran out. I sat, once again enveloped in silence. Now I could-
"Ring ring, ring ring"
Fine. With a deep grunt I lifted myself up from the bench and went to investigate. My hand went red, the coarse rocks I was slinging over my back rubbing against my hand and ripping parts of my skin. I made an entrance and found my way into the cocoon.
A mother holding her baby. Though I wasn't sure if that was really what I was seeing as the maggots had made quite k work of her corpse. Flies buzzed around, impending themselves in the babies eyelids.
"Ring ring, ring ring"
The phone ran again from her ripped pockets. I shoved my hands inside and fished around until I found the dusty flip-phone. "CALL FROM HUBBY" it's dim monitor wrote. I clicked accept call and prepared for the first human contact I had had in the last 5 days.
"Oh my God you're alive. You're OK. I was so worried. Is Benjamin safe?"
I turned to the bodies and clenched my throat.
"The-the-they aren't alive" I stuttered, begging for this situation to end.
There was silence. I heard him rummaging through a desk, the sound of paper flying through the air. He scribbled something on a piece of this paper, the sound of paper on wood increasing my nervousness.
"Thanks for telling me" he spoke, no emotion in his voice.
There was a gunshot and then the call ended.
I ran out of the concrete den, ran past the fire, past the dead girl and into my old house. I looked at the body of my WIFE, the corpses of my children and the joyful photos that had been singed by the heat.
For the first time since the bomb, I wept.
