Spero: A Post-Apocalyptic Short Story |COMPLETE| ✔

<THREE>

10:15
June 24, 2023

Day  eighty~seven

It was a total ghost town. Nothing moved, hell, nothing even breathed.

I glanced around, my eyes tracing over the small town, searching for the smallest twitch of life.

Thick ash had settled upon everything in the small city, and wherever I walked, heavy footprints tracked behind me. I would have scratched them out of not for the ash that continuously fell from the sky.

I rooted around through the stores still in tact, picking up a heavy duty book bag and loading it with stuff. There was even a small gun shop, and I would have grabbed a semi-automatic if the alarms wouldn't have set off.

I'd be coming back for one of those, but for now, I settled for a thick Gerber knife that I strapped through the belt loop of my top-later cargo pants.

I narrowed my eyes, scanning everything around me once more. There must be something. Civilization and the people who were in it don't just disappear like this.

Finally, I noticed something by the fence lining another store further down the road.

As I moved closer, De Ja Vu overtook me, and I shook my head. A crumpled figure laid splayed in the dead grass.

I stared, my eyes widened behind my mask, and I retched in my mouth, trying not to throw up inside my mask. This image was definitely worse than anything I had seen in combat... And I saw some horrid things.

That feeling combined with the amount of sweat coating my body, and I felt absolutely disgusting.

The worst thing though... It was the smell.

Burnt flesh. Covered in broils and still-hot ashes.

I turned away from the body as I moved inside the fence, nearly falling down over the shock of what I saw next.

The doors of a small cellar were thrown wide open, and all of the people inside and out were dead.

A man stared up at me from stilled eyes, the emerald green color still shined like his auburn hair in the daylight. The whites of his eyes were yellow, and his pale skin was sunken in. This was an image that would haunt me.

For a moment, a dark thought crept into my head. They had food in the cellar, and assorted clothing and what looked like gear for hunting.

What? Come on it's not like they're ever going to use their stuff!

I shook my head at my self as I closed the cellar doors, nudging the man inside them. Those outside of the cellar still stared at me with accusing eyes, and I felt the heat of shame not because I caused this, but because I was someone who survived instead of them.

I sighed, looking at the remaining bodies outside.

Gently, I began to stack them side by side against the inside of the fence, and sweat coated every single inch of my body.

I remembered blankets that I saw inside of one of the small stores, and tromped over to them to gather the thick wool covers.

After I lined them all up beside one another, shoulder to shoulder so that they would never be alone, I tucked blankets over all of them, so that no part of them was showing except for the faint outline of a body.

Soon after this, I collapsed against the fence a ways away from the bodies.

I felt myself drifting, and I knew that both the shock of what had happened and the exhaustion from the unkind heat and thick clothing had to reached me.

I shook my head, my damp hair flinging sweat into my mask.

I got up, dragging myself to my feet. I didn't look back at the drab blue cloth, because I knew if I did, I would let loose the burning tears at the back of my eyes.

My water jug was tied to the side of my bag, dangling uselessly due to possible contamination. I turned around and began walking out of the open fence. I pulled it closed behind me.

I sighed, and I suddenly missed my little hole in the ground.

I glanced at the road I took here, and watched it's bends before it vanished into the trees.

I sighed, looking out at the unmarked tree line, knowing what I was about to do. A little plan began to chart its way into my head.

Nothing here is alive... Nothing in those dead woods that could hurt me anyways.

I looked at the trees one more time before trucking towards them, everything two times as heavy than it was earlier... Before I was scarred with yet another horrifying nightmare.