Lightning in the Twilight Sky Book I (Watty Awards 2012)

Chapter One

The end of this world. It has happened so quickly, like in the blink of an eye, but we aren't surprised. People are still dropping off the Earth like flies. Hopeless animals lay down on roadsides waiting to die, knowing that the air is contaminated. The Third World War has only been the beginning. Diseases spread like wild fire. There are new diseases of all kinds, from sexual to cardiac to nerve, but seventy times worse than the original infections. The billions of humans on the Earth along with the countless animals drop dead where they're standing. These things happen, but we were warned. We were warned.

Every day, of course, I would like to end, but I feel as though something keeps me from it. My dead family, my friends, everyone whom I've ever loved, I carry their souls in the back of my mind as if carrying their memories in my rucksack.

For seven days, I walk across roads torn apart from bombings. I wind myself around old mine fields. I walk until I must sit down and drink from my canteen of water. I pull out my low battery iPod from my rucksack and stick the head phones in my ears.

Every place around me was a battle ground several years ago. Dust is all around me: in the air, what's left of the water, my lungs, covering the decaying bodies and dry skeletons scattered across the miles and miles of dessert. This place I'm in now is Louisiana, I believe. Before, I lived in Florida and I have no idea how long I've been walking since I departed from my home. I just left when the last of my family dropped dead like the last drops of water on parched lips.

I turn up my iPod volume at these thoughts, to keep my family and friend's fresh spirits from talking to me, from drilling into my sanity, my strength, my spirit, my survival. "We're all born to broken people on our most honest days of living," states the singer in my headphones. He sings of God and faith. I try not to doubt God, but it's hard not to when He seems to have just up and left us.

I try to keep my sanity by listening to music, but the battery is extremely low. It reminds me of my goal. Find a building, find something... That means food, water, shelter...

I see a wrapper of candy on the road I'm on. Half of a child's old Barbie doll is not far from it. I can't help but smile because this means I'm not far from some kind of civilization.