In The End

1/4

There's always something strange about endings. You can sense them, almost taste the metallic bittersweet fading memory that is yet to come of how it was before.

When the world ended, it was all the same.

It was a few days after the Fourth of July and my older sister Octavia was celebrating her twelfth birthday. As we lived in the country, there were miles of open field around us, isolating us from everything. We ate burgers and cake for a late lunch before my mom started screaming and a cloud of smoke began to rise above the tall pine and oak trees.

We were bundled into the house, told to take the dog Sandy into the mysterious bunker that they had been stocking up for what seemed like endless years beforehand and just wait. For what, I never knew, and to this day, I still don't.

My dad pulled my sister back and she stayed behind as Sandy as I carefully went into the room. There were hushed words that I didn't strain to listen to because I was so consumed by everything that was in the room!

Cans upon cans of food were lined up against the wall. Five first aid kits filled to the brim with antiseptics, antibiotics and band aids were put in the corner next to so many torches and batteries and.. supplies for everything, really. There was dog feed and jugs bigger than me filled with water. In the corner were four green sleeping bags and rucksacks that were filled with t shirts, shorts and boots. Everything was green, dark green like camouflage.

I remember wrinkling my nose at it all and complaining: I hated the colour green.

My parents didn't come to the bunker under the house that evening. I asked Octavia about it but she shushed me, her light caramel coloured skin shining under the light of one of the torches. Something looked strange about her face - her eyes. They looked older, duller.

It took me a few hours to pluck up enough courage to ask her what was going on, and what the cloud of smoke was rising above the pine trees. The image never left my mind because even though it was strangely pretty, it changed everything.

"It's nothing, Phil." She dismissed me. "Everything is okay."

"But where are mom and dad?" I pressed on, stroking an agitated Sandy. It was as if he could sense something was going wrong too and it made me feel better because I wasn't the only one who didn't know what was going on.

"I said it's nothing, Ophelia. So stop." She snapped.

I stopped talking. Octavia never used my full name on me, always calling me Phil or Philly. Something was wrong, and even though she wouldn't tell me, I wanted to know what.

Octavia, being two years and a few months older than me, took charge straight away, rising to authority and demanding that Sandy and I sit in absolute silence and listen to her. She was a middle schooler and told me that she knew all about Politics. She claimed she knew why smoke had risen - the Blast, she called it - but she never told me.

To us in that tiny bunker, knowledge was power. And she had a hell of a lot of it.

It had been a few days according to the small calender we found in the bottom of one of the four rucksacks when we heard the screaming, the shots. Octavia, who had been describing her anger that this happened on her birthday stopped short. Her face paled and her breathing almost stopped altogether.

"Oct-" I was about to start but she gave me this look, one that said shut up. So I did.

There were twelve shots in total. Each one came closer and closer to us as we waited. The screaming never stopped either, dragging on and on until -