Treacherous

All the Time You Need

Nighttime used to be a peaceful time of day. The hustle and bustle that came with the daylight hours would dwindle down as people went home for dinner, to sleep, or to do the tasks they couldn't complete while they were away at work. That is no longer the case.

As I stood on the bridge, looking out over the Hudson River, I could see movement down on the bank. A women's high-pitched scream echoed throughout the silent night. Soon after, two shapes took off running up the bank and into the abandoned streets. One small shape remained on the ground, motionless. I didn't move from where I stood. I was in no danger. At least, not for the time being. Safety wasn't guaranteed during the night.

At night, the crime rate doubled. People who were too scared to show their faces during the day left their homes to ransack nearby stores or homes to get the supplies that they needed. These were the people who didn't want to harm anyone in the first place. They were ex-businessmen, former doctors, what we referred to as the former one-percent. Now? Now, we were all lower-class citizens.

My father was stationed in the Middle East when the first of the government's began to collapse. Before, he wrote letters on a daily basis, even if they were only a sentence or two scribbled in between exchanging fire with the enemy. As the governments began to collapse, his letters dwindled day by day in length and in frequency until they stopped completely. Only the lucky were able to escape before mayhem took over. My father died somewhere in the Middle East. Where and how we will never know.

The United States was one of the last governments to collapse. China was the only country that outlasted us. My sister had been studying in England when their government collapsed one month before ours. She's still over there, most likely dead, because our mother would not let her come home. Our collapse was projected to be even worse than what it was in the United Kingdom. And it was.

Skirmishes turned into riots. Riots turned into gang wars. Gang wars turned into civil wars. It kept going until it was everyone for themselves. Close neighbors turned on one another. Families stayed together to protect one another. It was the homeless and the ones without families who fell first. Quickly, though, everyone began to lose their families.

When the government first collapsed, our small apartment had been packed full of about twenty of our relatives. Over the course of two months, that number dropped to ten. Then, it was just my uncle, my mother, my older brother, my father's best friend, and myself. From twenty to five in a matter of weeks. Most of them died before we truly understood what was happening in the city. Three of them were caught in the middle of a gang fight. One of them died trying to save an old woman who didn't want to be saved.

That was six months ago and there were now four of us. My uncle had lost his life trying to get bandages from an apartment building when it had collapsed. Now, the four of us living together in the basement of an abandoned home after our apartment building had burned down to the ground.

I put my hands on the unsteady railing of the bridge and looked up at the red lights that still, miraculously, shined bright in the otherwise dark night. The government that remained did their best to keep the power on in the important sections of the country. Mainly, they kept the power on wherever they lived so that they had the best that there was while they were still alive in whatever bunker they were tucked away in. The president was supposedly still alive. Supposedly. I guess that there still was an elite population that existed if you really thought about it.

I pushed off the railing and headed towards home. I kept my footsteps light and my eyes peeled as I made my way through the darkened streets. Every so often I would pass a building that had a candle burning or I would pass a stray animal, but other than that the streets I took were pretty empty.