Apocalyptic Love

It had to be here.

My fingers fumbled feebly through my makeshift storage space, shaking violently in my desperation to find the little trinket buried deep in the junk I had stored there. My heart was racing in panic, thumping furiously in my chest, my pulses throbbing. It had to be here. This was where I’d left it.

My arm stretched deeper into the hole, sliding through the odd bits and pieces until my fingers grazed the base of the space. The smoothed wood of my cabin floor pressed into my cheek, stopping me from pushing further into the gap, but I didn’t need to. Just as a pathetic whimper escaped from my lips, my fingers wrapped around a familiar object.

Relief breathed through me as my arm snapped back to my body, dragging my closed fist with it and revealing my most prized possession. Wrapped in a red velvet cloth was a silver bracelet only just long enough to clamp around my wrist. Beautiful charms decorated the snake chain, brightening the silver with splashes of blue and green. My heart swelled as I held the small bracelet to my chest. It was all I had left of my family. It was all I had left of my old life.

The sounds of screams still haunted my nightmares. The screams of my family as they were mercilessly slaughtered. I was only young. A child of six years but even at such an age I knew to keep quiet. I knew not to call out for my mummy. I knew that those screams meant trouble. They meant I wasn’t safe, so I hid in my closet. Burying myself deep into my stuffed teddies with my eyes shut tight.

The end of human dominance began on the 20th of May, year 2013. As far as I could tell it had been a fast widespread attack, reaching every corner of the Earth. In less than a month, about 90% of the human population had been completely wiped out and according to the status of the world, we hadn’t regained our stance in the animal kingdom.

I remembered the day. It was the source of my daily nightmares and the only true memory I kept. Finding my brother in scraps and smeared across the hallway floor. My father was barely recognisable. His face was a mask of blood, his body ripped open and his hand reaching feebly towards the kitchen as if attempting a last ditch effort at protecting the love of his life. I knew who I would find there. I almost didn’t go. But even in my six year old thoughts I knew I had to.

The walls were red. The tiles lining the benches were drenched and dripping. I found her in pieces, I could barely tell what part of her body belonged where. All but one. Her arm had snapped off at the elbow and rested, pooled in blood, at my feet. I knew it was her arm, because wrapped around her wrist was the bracelet she wore every day. The very bracelet I hadn’t summoned the courage to look at in almost ten years.

Eighteen years. It had been eighteen years since the animals had gone completely nuts and massacred our species into near extinction. Eighteen years since I was left an orphan. Alone and afraid, unable to fend for myself at such a young age. I would have died had it not been for the Doctor. He’d found me, taken me into his family and brought me up in relative safety. At least until I turned fifteen.

Once the humans had been annihilated, the animals then turned on each other in the claim for dominant species. I hadn’t really known any better at the time. Doc had told me that before, in the old world, animals hadn’t been quite so big. Dogs had been loyal to humans, even tigers could be tamed. It had been a time where they didn’t have voices. They’d evolved, he said to me. They’d taken control of our destruction. Putting an end to the damage we’d caused the planet.

We were caught between the war of wolves and bears and I was separated from the only chance of survival I had. After nine years of the Doc’s protection, I was thrust into the world with only the backpack I carried and I was in the mindset of imminent death. Still, I kept myself alive. I’d built a home in an abandoned hollow in a jungle. I didn’t know where. Doc had always seemed to know where he was.

I hadn’t seen a human being in nine years. As far as I knew, I was the last one left; feeding off game in the jungle. Normally I’d hunt for small game. A rodent could feed me for a month if I ate a couple of handfuls of its meat a day. But it would soil long before then, and I couldn’t risk its repugnant stench drawing the attention of trouble to my home.

My thoughts drifted unwillingly back to the lion, my gut twisting again at the fate of my saviours. I hadn’t been back there yet, though I found myself silently twisting through the leafy trees until I reached the destruction the lion had caused.

Vines had already wrapped themselves over the fallen trees as if comforting them and there was no sign of the animal that had stalked me. Not of the humans either. My sigh was of relief and disappointment. Though I hadn’t held much hope to the survival of my people, the regret was there none-the-less.

It was when I crept through the broken clearing that something caught my eye. It was familiar, reminding me heart wrenchingly of Doc, and the secrets he’d kept in his backpack.

A square white sheet fluttered in the almost non-existent breeze, pinned to a tree with a small dagger. My fingers curved around the hilt, gripping it tightly as I tugged the sheet out of the tree. Paper. That was what this was. And I could see black scrawl inked across it. It was lucky for me that Doc had taught me to read, though as my eyes scanned the words, it took a little while to remember.

My heart stopped as the words registered in my mind.

Be here, when the sun is mid-sky. I will be waiting.

I’d been so focused on remembering how to read that I hadn’t heard as something crept behind me, until a hand wrapped over my shoulder.