Their Life After The End

Prologue

Prologue    

   I hear the piercing screams of my grandmother while tears start to gather in my eyes. I know I’m losing her, and when I do, there won’t be anybody left to take care of my little brother Abraham and I. She shouts at me, she’s telling me something but I can’t hear her through the shrieks of our neighbors. The parasites that came with the planet that collided into Earth have been eating away at anything that they could get their nasty little hands on. When they finally found their way to human flesh, they wouldn’t consume anything else. Now, nearly everybody I know has been ingested by the parasites or is on the brink of death because of them.

   A couple of months ago my parents took a few of their scientist colleagues with them and went on an expedition to find a safe haven from the parasites. Somewhere they haven’t gotten to yet. They haven’t returned yet, and I’m starting to think they never will.

   I feel Abraham’s little hand tugging on my dirty sleeve. I look at him and my heart breaks. His beautiful green eyes are bloodshot, his normally curly hair has settled into dreadlocks, neither of us has showered in at least a week, and his once smooth baby skin is now filled with the red marks left by the parasites’ fangs.

I sniff, “What is it Abe?”

“Look Priyanka, grandmamma is trying to say something.”

He’s right, her palm is outstretched and she’s muttering something. I crouch down beside her, a broken piece of glass pierces my skinny knee but I ignore it. As soon as I’m a few inches away from her she starts talking rapidly, I can’t make out half of what she’s saying because of the shouting and crying that’s surrounding us in the streets. A few days ago, a mob of infected men who had gone insane went through our neighborhood and destroyed every single house. Our home is still in a relatively good condition. Sure they broke down a few doors, shattered all the windows and stole all our food, but we can still call it a sanctuary.

   I watched as my grandmamma took her last worn out breaths before the parasites finished feeding on her lungs and heart, and then her eyes stared lifelessly into the horizon and her mouth went slack. I couldn’t contain myself anymore, I was only six, how was I supposed to hold myself together in these horrible times? I broke down right then and there. I started hysterically crying beside my lost grandmamma. I noticed Abe was just standing there, unable to comprehend what was happening, so I opened my arms wide for him, and he settled his boney back into the curve of my stomach and we fell asleep. Just like that, two siblings, caked with dirt, smeared with the blood of their diseased grandmamma, broken with fear, and hollow with the need for protection, drifted off into the world of uneasy sleep.

   The first thing I noticed when I woke up was the noise. I heard the steady flowing of a river to my left. Then I felt a slight teasing under my feet, I sat up slowly and found grass and trees and all kinds of colorful flowers surrounding me. I was intoxicated by the fresh smell that seemed to be everywhere, and then I realized something was missing. My brother. I jumped to my feet, which evidently wasn’t a good idea because I staggered and fell right on my bottom. It seems I was asleep for quite a while. I gave my self a few moments to gather my footing then got up again. When I turned around I fell to my knees, but this time it was out of delight. Before me stood the adoring faces of my parents, the four families they had taken with them, and my gleeful little brother.