There’s nothing left, nothing at all. The fields are barren, raped of their fertility until nothing was remaining but wastelands. Sabotaged by unseen hands, life as we knew it came to a screeching halt. Everything dwindled with the lack of food and supplies. Life essentially became nothing.
What happens to a man once he loses everything, left with just his echoing thoughts and others that are in the same predicament as him? He reverts to his primal state, instincts heightening to animalistic proportions. The very center of out beings were twisting into mangled forms, vacantly reflecting what we once were. The humane organisms that morphed to survived the savageness of our own kind.
At one time we were just like everyone else, bustling about to keep up with the Joneses across the street. We were once driven by the desire to be at the peak of the economic pyramid, to be the ruler of the hierarchy of wealth. That was all shed along with the rest of our world. All worldly possessions were suddenly meaningless and life held more importance.
It all happened at once. A concealed beast of prey, so tiny that there were no accountable eye witnesses of what it is, was more ferocious than any terrifying creature on this very planet. It fed upon everything within its limits. Every plant, all source of nutrition as stripped away. None knew hoe serious it was until the live stocks and pets began to waste away, but by then it was too late. Dogs’ stomachs bloated and they roamed in anguish until their flesh gave way under the pressure building deep within them. By the time the carcasses of animals began to appear nationally, humans began to be infected too and would only last a few days longer.
It was only a matter of a month for the scientists and wealthy to flee, leaving behind all of us too meager to be considered worthy of life. Thousands perished, as expected in epidemics, which left corpses rotting in the sun, piled in heaps of gaping flesh and bones. It was all it took for the survivors to take refuge into the basements of buildings that touched the skies with stoned hands and jagged daggers of rock.
So there we were, all seven of us in a dark cellar, the only light filtering in came through a small window in the high ceiling, leaving the air murky and stifling most days. Our supplies had run out days before and we were ravenous. Every eye had a glint that spoke volumes of untold, excruciating hunger. Our stomachs had become warped to nothing but ash, pangs of constant alerts of malnourishment, begging to be fed. Sharp and needy is was, but nothing was left in storage to quench it.
In out place of hiding there were three men, me excluded, ranging in different ages and ethnicities. The preacher was fairly, his eyes bright and hopeful when we first met. He was a tall, lanky fellow with short tuffs of blonde hair that began to come loose between his fingers within two weeks. Every night he would stand in our circle and preach that we would be saved once our God permitted it. Every night he would pour over his Bible in the dim light of the moon and pray for a heaven that would never come.
On the opposite side of our group’s spectrum was a man name Jeff. The only reason why his name stuck in my memory was because he felt superior to the rest of us working class. He had been a business man, and he amassed a hefty sum of wealth. Jeff was meant to leave with the rest of the prosperous men of our time, but sadly money no longer was necessary in our world and he was forgotten. The most horrible thing is that I cannot remember his face; all that sticks is his dusty and torn suit that became even more ragged as time progressed in our clammy cellar.
The last in our troop of men was one with a weathered appearance, worn out from years of toiling in the beating sun and back breaking labor. His skin was tan and his hair thinning out quick. He wore an overly large crooked nose and a pendant upon his swelled chest bone that protruded prominently after we began to waste away. It was a pendant of the Star of David. His name was Melvin, but that is irrelevant.
Among us women, a lady who once had a husband sat in her rumpled dress shirt, peering at us all with lifeless indifference. Her blonde hair once shimmered in our pale light source, but now it hangs limply from her scalp, emphasizing her sunken cheek bones. Lindsey never had the ability to bore reproductions of her genes. She would often sit in the corner and reminisce on her life with her husband. He had been one of the ones to die immediately with the infestation and our dear Lindsey had never been the same again.
Lastly, there was a mother with her young child Annabelle. They stayed huddled together, the mother often soothing her child whenever the pangs would hit too hard. Annabelle was one of those children that looked like a pristine doll that should be shelved and kept preserved for all time. There was only one flaw with her though. She had bluish rings under her eyes, indicating just how sickly she had truly become. We had all suspected that she had contracted the virus, but she never swelled with the festering disease nor did she immediately die. So we all knocked it off to undernourishment.
We were sitting around in a circle one night when it happened, the event that would prove the men among the animals. The preacher man stood in the middle, his dog-eared Bible hanging in his hands. He spoke about the book of revelations, mulling over it in the center. His brow crinkled as he spoke and his hands waved round in large, billowing gestures.
Jeff stood up though, his face mutilated into a disgusted smirk. “Just shut it you Jesus freak, I can’t stand to hear another word of your biblical nonsense!” His tongue was a sharp, bitter edged sword and his eyes held the ice of all the arctic. He tended to snap at our fair preacher, blaming his God for our condemnation. Jeff believed that if there were even a God left, that he had turned a blind eye to us all.
I watched them interact, once steady and calm as the west wind, the other acidic and poignant in intonation. They clashed, they banged, and above all else, both rose to the occasion of being the first to act.
Hopeliss Community Member 
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