The Crossing Dawn

III. Daybreak

I awoke to water dripping against my face. I found myself in my queen bed, but stars were all I saw when I look up. The crimson dawn made it impossible to tell between day and night. I felt like breaking down, because what I once called home was now a complete wasteland. It seemed like Katrina claimed what used to look like my house. I failed to find something I remembered. I could see nothing except a few torn walls and cockroaches. Must have been about 50 or 60, because I remembered myself screaming louder than I thought possible.

I woke up and stood on a floor that was nearly impossible to walk in. I was barefoot, so I needed a change of clothes as soon as possible. I found a worn down pair of boots near the remnants of my closet and put them on. It fit perfectly. I knew that, at some point in time, Nathan Logan had called this shithole a home. There was soft rubble in place of the door to the living room. I dug a little bit to find even more ruins. I was no researcher, but they looked centuries old. I could make out one frame that was relatively untouched. It looked to be my younger brother and I a few years back. A few tears traveled down my cheek and onto the center of the photo.

After a few hours of exploring the ruins of my old home, I looked outside the broken window into what used to be the main street of the neighborhood. I dug more and more and I managed to escape the dry gravel dispersed within my former home. I stepped out into the street, and yelled out:

"Is there anyone out here?"

I garnered no response. For a while I looked around the main pathways for any living human, with a metal pole for protection. At the end of one lonely dark alleyway I saw something.

4/18/2016.
The day I saw my first corpse.

I remembered the way he held the dry inscription written on the cardboard. It read:

"When the crossing dawn descends upon us, seek the brightness at the end of the tunnel."

I had no clue what any of that meant, but I started wondering more about the world I now reside in. It appeared that I was the only one alive. I have not seen one hint of human technology and I have not even seen food. Funny, I would have expected my cause of death to actually be written down, but so it seems that dehydration it shall be. I exclaimed a loud "Hello!" every minute while I ventured out into the city. I had not seen even an an animal save for a few flies and roaches. After walking for over half a mile, I find a point of interest: a mall down the end of the road followed by some other stores. I let out one last "Hello" before I enter the mall, but before I could get in, my body just froze.

I never really grasped the situation at hand: I am alone in this world and no one else is there to help. This punishment is worse than any version of hell. My cries for help are muzzled by the everlasting silence. Sure, I wasn't positive that I'm the only one left, but there was a distinctive "aura" that just makes me feel like the bloody hands of humanity have left, never to return. I was a living relic. Before I let myself just lay down and die, I opened that door. What was inside was... surprising.

Nothing. Abso-fucking-lutely nothing. No food, nothing I could eat or drink.

Someone was here way long before I was, and they decided to take everything there was. I can't blame them. In fact, I would be a little more angry had they not left a dagger and an empty backpack. beside the door. I looked at the blade, and it was a Victorian looking knife with serrated edges and a sharp tip. I kept it with me and dropped the pole. I find another piece of cardboard, only this one appeared to have nothing on it. I decide to use my dagger to write something.

"Help needed. Looking for anyone. Follow the signs."

And so I inscribed an arrow on the sidewalk periodically to aid those also in need, if any. I grew more hungry, more thirsty, and more tired. While scavenging for, well, anything, I started to see what resembled cars. These cars were unlike anything I remembered. Unrecognizable brands, weird-looking interiors, and nowhere to inject fuel. Electric, maybe?

I was an analytical type of person. I tried to sum everything up, you know? I was tryin' to figure out why the world was like this. My "deep thinking" was interrupted by the sound of a rolling bottle.