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You could hear faint music as you drifted back into consciousness, your head throbbing as you opened the battered door of your shelter. Something charming and quaint, something you remember your grandfather used to play. One of his favourite songs, he told you one day. You remember being 7, running around in his backyard, ball in hand as you played with Archer, his terrier. You remember sitting with him, Archer in your lap as your grandad cleaned the scrapes on your knees and the tears off your rosey cheeks. Those memories brought a fond smile to your lips, almost forgetting the sight of the wreckage around you. As you snapped back into reality, you realised where you were, an old shopping mall. The rows of stores now ruines, chairs and tables strewn across the cracked tiled floors; escalators at a halt, covered in a faint green-grey palour. Everything was silent excepted for that track of song, pausing and looping a few odd times. The faint, sweet singing made you shudder in the barren building. Taking steps forward, you noticed ruble on the ground, and at one point, a small, blue slipper; you were clearly alone. The windows had smashed, all remaining glass clouded with yellow and white stains, but from what you could see, almpst everything around the mall had been demolished the the quake, cars toppled and crushed om one another, you were extremely lucky to have survived unscathed. But then, realisation hit you; where are the other shelters? Is everyone okay? For as far as you could see, there was nothing but rubble, not a shelter or survivor in sight. You jumped as a chunk of an escalator fell to the ground, dust rushing from the pale floors of the first floor as the thud shook underneath your boots. You looked around, the song growing increasingly irritating as your paranoia imcreased. All you wanted to see was one face, hear someone - something - even if it was distant. As time went on, the song repeated, the singers voice now almost bringing tears to your eyes as you rumaged through rocks and clumps of concrete for survivors. How ling had it been? The song had looped countless times, disorienting your sense of time after the tenth loop. With ragged breaths you searched, hands and feet clammering whilst you rushed around, yelling in hopes of either drowning out that taunting song or finding someone alive. The more you screamed, the more your apparent your lonliness became. Now outside, you could still hear the damn song, not helping you calm down from your panicked state. The sun beat down, not a bird or cloud in the sky. Nothing. The silence grew deafening as you screamed, sobs shaking your frame. Falling to your knees you accepted; You were the only person left.
Out of billions, the only one who had escaped quick enough to survive.
