Fire Age - From Embers

Someone Somewhere

I

Robert and Alice were, like you would expect from most twins, pretty much the same: round faces, black hair, round noses, hazel eyes and about the same height – average on the edge to short.

Though they did not agree on everything, it was not unusual to see them doing things together. Something they didn't agree, for example, was the end of the world – not that this was a common subject for them to talk about, it was just something that, deep down in their hearts, they disagreed.

Robert believed it would be quick, lightning-fast: a flash, maybe a boom, and everything was gone.

Alice believed it would be agonizing, with maybe some kind of demons torturing every soul that couldn't get salvation before it came to be, something biblical of sorts.

They were both wrong. While it started lightning-fast and so everything went down south, neither the earthquakes nor the tsunamis destroyed everything, and the only ones to agonize were the unlucky ones – the ones who drank the bad water.

Actually, it took quite some time for their city to get a bad case of "apocalyptical society"; they spent almost five entire months before starting to crumble. While water was the greatest concern at the time, it was easy to discern bad from good due to the enormous body count caused by the first one. In three days, they knew where it was safe to drink from and where it wasn't.

Housing, too, was a concern, because the earthquakes took down many homes and buildings. Most people were living among the ruble, under any debris that could protect from rain and wind.

What ultimately caused their downfall was food. With so much of the electrical network damaged, keeping meat became almost impossible. Soon, keeping cats, dogs and other small animals became almost impossible and, then, everyone was forced into a vegan diet.

People started to change then. They were angrier, always on the edge, waiting for some help that never came. The phones were silent. Not mute, but silent. With each passing day, fewer and fewer people picked up.

The easy assumption was that different people had the same problem.

At night, there was a symphony of rumbling stomachs that made it harder to sleep – specially if the rumbling stomach was yours. Food became rotational, meals became scarce.

But there was one thing that everybody got to spare, the only thing aplenty in those days: stress. During the first three months, it was all for one and one for all, with everybody helping as they could. As time passed, however, it became a everyone for themselves and God for us all sort of thing, where you would do anything to increase your chances of survival, even if it meant screwing your neighbor.

And the twins had their fair share of it, too. Their mother had died of a lung cancer the year before, and their father went missing as the earthquakes raged on – he went to another city when it all started.

"Your mother and I... we talked about that all the time. It's something special that she wanted you to have when you turned 18. Something she always wanted. I promised I'd give it to you when the time came, but I couldn't find one for the life of me three months ago. But believe me, you'll love it," he said.

As astonishing as that gift would be, they would love more to know if he was still alive.

No news was once good news, but after five months it became excruciating. The twins were growing ever so impatient while everybody else were growing ever so restless and uneasy.

"Hey, Al," Robert called one night when he couldn't sleep.

"Watcha want?" she answered, also not able to sleep.