Might As Well Be No Tomorrow

We were lucky enough to find another rest place; a place where we could stay for at least a while to regain our strength. Always being on the run was not something that was easy at all, especially when everyone was the enemy, for no one cared who they shot at and destroyed anymore. The government with their big armies said they went to war for defense purposes, yet they shot at and killed their own people while annihilating their own lands. They didn't care. Anyone who was still able to see could tell you that.

Even as I huddled in my blanket behind the cracked wall that could crush myself and the others with me at any moment I could hear their guns and machines. Machines that ripped apart the once beautiful land without mercy or care, driven by men and women who were just as uncaring. It would be easy to say we don't know why it came to this, but we all know. We all know that it was all lain out by the governments in a desire for power, which they thought they could only obtain through war and force.

There was no reason for some countries to be attacked, yet those people in charge of our countries made reasons to attack even the neutral countries. They forced them into war, saying silly things about weapons of mass destruction to justify their invasions and killings. What the hell did they think they're doing now? They were creating mass destruction from weapons created over the years. Weapons created through insanely augmented tax money and 'government' funds.

This augmentation in taxes caused many to go into poverty; in fact almost everyone was in poverty by that point. Only those with the government were the wealthy, but they spent all their money on the war, promising all the while to come back and help the people. Why couldn't they just help the people now? Why must all of the money be used to go for the war, taking away things such as welfare and other programs that would help the people get by? They wanted all that power, yet there would be nothing left to govern by the time they were finished. They were leading the world into extinction.

Those who became ill from any form of sickness, even something as meager as the common cold, stayed sick. Many died and others continued to die day by day. Because of this, among other things, people didn't even think of silly things like repopulating the earth and bringing new life to the destroyed world. Too much hope had been lost and the people who did try died, along with their child.

This hardship had befallen people of all races, countries and the likes, yet even still we were not united. Instead we were all against each other, except for those we knew from previous times. Driven by our fear, we ran from others, fought them and on occasion even had to bring ourselves to killing them. It was all a horrid existence anyway, so maybe we were doing them a favour by sending them away from the world. They were the lucky ones who escaped it all.

The skies, seas and the lands were littered with the armies' machines and weapons, creating not only a dark feeling but an actual darkness around the world. The sun couldn't find its way to peek through the clouds of gunpowder and the likes that blanketed the sky, and when it did, it was only for fragmented seconds before it disappeared again. It had been a long time since we'd seen the sun though, or the moon or the night sky for that matter. The sky that we saw was only a sham, something manmade that threatened our lives and caused more illness.

We had no technology to be rid of those illnesses, and even if we did it would have been taken away from us by the government. Few could remember a time when the technology the world held was a luxury, like televisions, cars and computers. Few could remember these things while many more said that they never existed in the first place. There hardly seemed to be any evidence saying that we once were living well and comfortably, instead of dying behind crumbling walls and in quagmire-like areas as far as the eye could see.

This technology had also been turned into not only weapons of destruction, but weapons against the people. Satellites were created to spy on the people, or 'monitor' them, as the leaders had once said. It was supposedly to prevent further violence from ensuing by capturing the criminals before they could do anything. Those were just lies though, as we all knew it was used to spy on and invade the privacy of others. Even if they were used to 'monitor' the people, it only went to show how paranoid the governments were, which caused more paranoia within the people as well.

A cough came from my left, another falling victim to inhalation of the toxic fumes being sent their way by the wind. I'd long ago learned to bury my face in the blanket, if one could call it a blanket, I carried no matter what, though it offered little in way of a shield. It wasn't so much a blanket anymore, but a thin, filthy piece of material that barely managed to wrap around my shoulders anymore. It provided little warmth, perhaps none at all, but it was one of my last possessions, along with the tattered clothing on my body, so I vied to keep it.

I, like everyone else, was infected with some sort of illness or another. I had no idea what it was, but fever racked through my body, my eyes were glassy and at times I could barely stand. Hell, for all I knew it was just a little case of the flu, but it seemed so much more extreme without medication or any indication of it ending.

My loved ones had died long before me, leaving me to travel with the people who used to be our friends and other acquaintances. At times I felt wary towards even them, wondering if they would all snap some day or another, since I knew that I would eventually. I would eventually become so overcome in the delirium that I would just start killing, assuming that I wasn't killed first, whether by the few remaining beasts in the world or by others humans.

Most of the animals were extinct by that point, but at times there were some that reemerged to try and take back their territory from the humans that destroyed it. All of the remaining animals were infected with sickness as well, not lasting long, but those that did fight were angered, perhaps even infected with rabies that sent them into wild attacks that couldn't be beaten by an unarmed human. It was better not to run from those animals, for they'd become faster as well, perhaps having adapted as much as they could to the new situation of the world.

In the past, there were probably few who thought that it would get this far. There were probably only a few who were classified as paranoid when they said that we would be the cause of our own destruction. Naturally I wouldn't blame them, for if this wealth and comfort really did exist for them then how could they possibly fathom anything else? How could they possibly fathom wishing that tomorrow wouldn't come as they heard a bomb or some other explosive tear apart the ground not far away from where they hid? I imagine it would be difficult.

But it was a reality. A reality so unbearable that only those fighting with their great machines probably thought about what they would do after it was all over. We, however, fully believed that there would be no 'after it was all over'; we believed that tomorrow would never come, though it didn't matter since all the days blended into a massive blur anyway. No one really knew when a new day had come, nor did they really care either. It wasn't important.

The ground shaking, the sound of the explosion and the feeling of impact were all simultaneous as far as I could tell. Regardless, that wall we'd been cowering behind, already broken, became yet another weapon in the brutal world. The fragments of its being flew at us all, not missing a single one with its large chunks of rock that hit us in any part of the body.

I heard their screams, produced by voices almost too hoarse to do anything more and from throats that felt like they were bleeding. I heard my own scream just the same, a reaction I no longer cared to abandon no matter how weak it made me sound. I was weak, so what did it matter? Besides, there would no longer be need to try and put on a strong façade. I'd been struck in the skull, also having an even larger portion of the building fall upon my body. I was crushed and died almost instantly, miraculously still having my blanket remain around my shoulders.

End