After Annihilation - Would you want to survive?

Chapter 1

In the end, we will meet at that place where only you and I shall exist, and there, within each other, we will find our purpose to live.

The lines kept repeating like a song stuck in my mind. In these times of barren earth and a dark sky, the song that Aarav used to sing years back reminded me of the world that was lost.

It started with the news, almost twelve months back.

Oil was scarce. The fight for oil fields had been getting more and more aggressive all over the world. Allies had formed. Political threats of war had become usual enough to fall on deaf ears.

In a bizarre turn of events, the rogue nation of Pinaar, backed by the superpower Aarkans, the country with the biggest known arsenal of nuclear weapons, had attacked Iddis, a peaceful country in possession of the largest underwater oil reserve left on the planet.

Iddis's capital city was razed to the ground. But no one predicted that in secret the size of Iddis's own nuclear arsenal had grown to unprecedented levels. Iddis retaliated. Within an hour, the capital cities of Pinaar and Aarkans were hit simultaneously. Two thousand square kilometres of urban civilization was destroyed in one second, in both countries.

As predicted, Calam, the arch nemesis of Iddis, joined hands with Pinaar and Aarkans. Iddis was backed by Ijaha and Jashar. But they were also allied with Rehaar, another superpower and the nemesis of Aarkans. Weary of looming threats from Aarkans and Calam, Rehaar had secretly nurtured Iddis's nuclear defence ambitions in order to be first in line to obtain oil from the West Iddis Sea. And it had been right in its calculations. The oil fields were handed over to Rehaar, leaving behind a confused and unforgiving Aarkans.

Within a span of twenty days, ten thousand warheads were launched across the planet.

For me it was a celebratory time because the result for the final exam was out. I had passed. All five of us had. Sonakshi, Divya, Dhruv, Aarav, and me, Madhavi. After four years of togetherness in college, we were all going to separate. Sonakshi, Divya, and Dhruv to the city of Sikka, and me and Aarav were to remain in Varshi.

For the next three months I was busy with finding a shared flat to continue living in the city while I started a job as a fresh appointee in a software company. The talk of impending war and political tensions were nowhere inside my 'circle of concern'. I was content, specially since I had Aarav with me. Aarav Kashyap. He was tall with spiky, jet black hair, broad shoulders, and a beautiful smile. I had been infatuated with him from the moment I saw him on the third day of college.

By the third month of college, as fate would have it, I was grouped with him in a team of five to work on a project. And slowly, all five of the team members became good friends. We began hanging out together at the canteen, the nearby cafeterias and began to go out in the evenings to the nearby malls.

Though a shy person, I was still full of hope, fantasizing I could win Aarav's affections without having to express myself to him. That he would simply fall in love with me as I had with him not unlike a movie. He seemed to enjoy spending time with me, and I with him. But, slowly I realized my fantasy was to remain just that. He never saw me as anything more than a friend.

A month later Aarav made his first girlfriend. She was the batch beauty.

He broke up with her six months later, and by that time we had become closer friends. I had already learned to suppress my feelings for him, and when they came out, it was only as sarcasm bordering on rudeness. All through the five years through ups and downs our group of five friends stuck together. And consequently I with Aarav. Eventually, he went out and consequently broke up with one or two other girls, by which time I had given up all hope of him ever feeling anything for me other than platonic friendship.