It Was An Average Day

It's an average day here in the ruins, the same as any other day.  Savaging, exploring and fighting to survive.  It is a normal day all in all.



It was an average day when the end came, the sky was clear with the sun over head, although it was not a warm sun due to it being late October.  Still it was nice after several days of wind and rain.

No one suspected that this day would be the end.



At times I imagine that I can hear the voices of the dead and of the times long since gone, I can imagine people walking these now mostly silent streets as they moved to and fro through their lives.

I wonder if they could have ever imagined how different things would have been a few hundred years later.



I was returning to my car and headed home from work when I heard a sound that many of us were used to by now, air raid sirens.  We were used to them being practice drills and we would usually rush to a bomb shelter to hide.

But we have, over the past several years, stopped bothering to do such things because it is always only a drill.

Today we were wrong.



I am careful with my steps as I traverse the ruins, so much of the former city is unsafe for travel and exploration and many a careless scavenger has met their end when a damaged floor or fallen support beams have suddenly shattered beneath their feet.

So I am careful as I make my way slowly across the remains of a former building which is now little more than a shell of it's former glory.

I eventually make it through the ruined building and I enter the rubble littered remains of a large street.  Vehicles litter the road, as well as bones and a large amount of rubble.

Many died here and it must have happened quickly, or maybe they died slowly as they were wounded by collapsing rubble when the bombs fell.  It is hard to say and they are all long dead, they can tell me no stories of their end.



It was the first explosion that caught our attention and made us all react in sudden terror, the explosion was streets away but it was felt by everyone.  We were under attack.

Screams and cries filled the air and people run for any cover they could find, many other ran for their homes.

I was one of those who ran for my home and more explosions filled the air, more screams also filled the air and many of those screams were cut short as the explosions entered where we were, buildings exploding and many being either buried in collapsing brick and mortar or being knocked out, or killed outright, by blunt impacts to anywhere on the body.

I saw my house barely a few feet from me and I reached out for the door, only for another explosion to fill the air and my view was obscured as the wall came down on top of me.



I stop at a large pile of rubble where I can see a skeletal arm reaching out as if the person had been trying to dig themselves out.  Any skin and muscle is long since rotted away, or maybe eaten away, many years ago and long before I ever came here.

I look over to the remains of a house that the arm seems to be reaching towards, much of it's wall is gone and the house within looks to be in even worse condition.  I can see the bones of children there, were they waiting for their mother or father to return home when the bombs fell

Did they die instantly when their home was hit?  Was the skeletal arm reaching towards the house belonging to a former parent who came so close, but was killed before they could die with their children?

I will never know, but I do grieve for them even if they are too long dead to care for any grief from those of us in this day and age.



Somehow I am still conscious, but my head is hurt badly and my body is wracked with pain.  I can not tell if I have any internal bleeding, it is too dark in this rubble for me to see or even to do a self examination of my injuries.

I am more focused on getting to my children, on making sure that they are okay.  They should be home from school now, their father had said that he would pick them up from school.  I would have done so myself, but my boss had wanted to see me before I got off work.

And now I am so close to my home and I am trapped, maybe dying, and all I can think of is getting back to my children.



I can not hear anything outside of this prison of brick and mortar, I do not know if any more bombs are falling.  I do not care about that at this time, only my children matter.

So I try to dig out but the pain is increasing and my strength is fading.

I manage to pull away a large piece of masonry and I can see my front door, it is so close.

I reach out to it and then my eyes close, I try to open them but I feel light and numb.  Then I see a light.



A beautiful light and I am with my children once again.  I am home.



I find some dying flowers in a dying garden close to the house in a dying piece of park land, that it has survived this long says a lot for nature's determination to survive.

Once the flowers are picked I return to the pile of rubble with the skeletal arm sticking out.  I place the dying bunch of flowers down next to it and look over to the remains of two children in the destroyed house.



"Dream of the shore"  I whisper.  "We're doing our best to survive"  I sit there for a few minutes then I get up and leave the dead to the past.

I have the present and the future to consider after all, I have little luxury to consider the past.



It is always that way for those who try to survive the aftermath of the end.