2012

A long, drawn out sigh echoed across the empty, run down room as Sandra leaned against the wall for support. Jamie, Simon, and Tiara had promised her they’d be back hours ago. She had volunteered to accompany them on their daily search of something, anything to eat. She had begged to go, but they gently refused, knowing that she was weak, that she’d only slow them down.

And in these days of war and decay, speed was of the essence.

So, they had left her on her own in the run down mall that was all that had managed to survive the brutal Soviet attack on the great city of Chicago. In fact, it was probably one of the only things remaining of the entire Eastern United States.

Sandra laughed without humor at that thought. She hadn’t been anywhere, or seen anything except the rubble and chaos that was the city in the past two months. She had no way of knowing if the entire world had gone to Hell, or if it were just a single strike on what the enemy no doubt saw as the most prosperous place left in America. But, what she had seen was more than enough to tell her that her thoughts were probably not exaggerated.

Two years ago. Only two yeas ago if anyone had told her that all of this would come to pass she’d had laughed it off and gone on with her happy, peaceful existence. But, five years ago was before Russia had been overtaken by the insane and bloodthirsty Mikhail Ivanov, and Communist China had decided it no longer needed our money. It was before America had elected a president more interested in his power than the well being of the country, or the world.

Two years ago was before the Chinese missile had taken her entire family away from her.

The year was 2012, and she remembered it perfectly. She was 16, and she had her first boyfriend. She was in love, she was on her way to a scholarship, and she was going to be an artist. Everything around her had held so much beauty. She was amazed by colors and nature and the way the sun reflected so beautifully off the surface of Lake Michigan when she would visit her Grandmother in Illinois.

She remembered her brother and her sister and the way she would always tell them to get lost or die, and she recalled with flowing tears, how she had never meant a word of it. She remembered her mother and father, and how they always seemed so much in love. It was the one thing in life she looked forward to more than anything. It was something she hoped she could come to feel with her boyfriend Grant.

It was love that she would never see again. It was love that had been killed by this war. It was love that was bombed into a billion little pieces as her small town home in Indiana was attacked by the invading Chinese army.

She had been with her Grandmother when it happened. She watched in terror and screamed in pain as every station in America switched to the late breaking news. America was under attack. And her family was the first of many to be wiped out.

Sandra let out another tortured sigh before collapsing to the floor. She hated when the others left without her. She understood their reasons. She had twisted her ankle a few weeks ago when they had been on their daily scavenge for something to put in their stomachs. It was not that she had tripped because of any carelessness, but that she wasn’t able to outrun the lone Chinese scout who’d been stationed to make sure every last citizen was dead and gone. Luckily, the others had been able to pull her into the safety of an open manhole before he’d caught up to her. But, now that they knew the dangers waiting for them, they couldn’t possibly have her hindering the process.

She knew all of this, and she understood it. She would never wish any harm upon herself or her new pseudo-friends at the hands of those horrible people. It was just that she hated being alone. When she was alone, the thoughts and memories consumed and overwhelmed her. She was tired of crying, she was tired of feeling.

There was a time, or course, when feeling was what she lived for. She lived to feel the paintbrush gliding over the blank canvas. She lived to feel the sun on her skin as she painted the beach at sunrise. She lived to feel Grant’s arms around her as she watched the birds flying in the sky, or breeze blowing through the trees. She lived for joy, and beauty, and color.

And now all that was left was black.

When the Soviets had first begun their attack on Chicago, she had been dressed in pink. She remembered that, because she remembered thinking how it was her mother’s favorite color, and how Grant had always liked her in it. She had been fighting tears when the first bomb fell seven blocks away from her Grandmother’s home.

In the chaos and death that followed, she’d only been able to grab one other outfit. It was on that she only wore with painting in solitude, when her emotions here so strong that only black, the color made of all colors, could possibly contain them. Now she wished desperately that she had grabbed another.

She checked her wrist watch again, about the only electronic thing still working in all of Chicago. It had been well past two hours, and she was beginning to get worried. While she would not call them friends necessarily, she had formed an intensely strong bond with her three companions, no doubt brought on by their shared pain and sole need to survive. The idea of being without them just about killed her. She couldn’t imagine them being able to last without Jamie’s sharp intellect, Tiara’s witty and amusing comments that were the only source of joy for any of them, and of course, Simon’s calm, ever calculating presence that made them all feel safe.

They were rebels, each one. At least according the president. The draft had been reinstalled practically a week after the attack on Indiana. Much yelling and protesting was the result, but it all fell on deaf ears, the president as much a dictator as the Communists he was fighting. At first she was immune. Not only was she only 16, but she was a woman as well. But within only a year of chaos and all out war, the Women’s Right’s Movement was finally put into full effect. As the day of her 18th birthday grew closer, Sandra was scared. She knew the stories, and she knew what her eyes were telling her. No one was going to survive this war.

There would be no winners.

There would be no survivors.

Not until the entire planet turned to dust, and the Final Judgment came to pass.

And she had run.

Tiara, Jamie, and Simon, kids about her age, had discovered her plan to escape, and had promised to stick with her. And stick with her they had.

But today they were not.

Finally having enough reminiscing to last her a month, Sandra slowly stood up, her ankle still causing her slight pain, and made her way out of the old burned down room that had once been in the process of becoming a new coffee shop to attract more shoppers to the mall. Walking around fallen bits of ceiling, and other types of debris, she made her way to the entrance of the mall, where her friends should have made their way in an hour ago.

Looking out into a sky so polluted by smoke and debris, that she had trouble remembering it was only 3:00pm, Sandra looked out warily at the destruction surrounding her.

Houses were fallen and in ruins.

Buildings had been blasted from existence.

Decaying bodies littered the streets.

She would have shivered, but the scene was nothing new to her. And she could only look on with sadness.

And that was when she saw it.

There could be no mistaking the bright light that flashed in the sky. She’d seen it over and over in the past two years, both on T.V. and up close.

But this was closer than ever before.

She closed her eyes, and was surprised that she felt no fear. She always knew she would not survive this. At least a nuclear bomb would be quicker than starvation. But as she waited patiently for her end to come, she noticed one important fact. There was no sound. A bomb was supposed to sound as it flew toward its victim. A grating, nails on chalkboard, fireworks squealing sound that drew the listeners hands to their ears and made your life flash before your eyes twice. But this bomb was silent, and she was forced to open her eyes.

And as she did, she couldn’t stop her tears from flowing. She watched in awed shock as the blinding yellow light in the sky became a soft orange glow granting color to everything that it shined upon. A ruined city that was all but gray began to come to life as if the sun itself were emitting straight from it. Everything glowed, and everything felt renewed. Before her very eyes, bodies reformed, eyes opened, and structures stood upright once more.

As she looked up toward the source of the miracle she was witnessing, Sandra couldn’t help but note, that her “bomb” had wings.

And a smile of true and pure love.

“Grant?” She whispered, not able to believe what she was seeing, but not wanting it to be all in her mind.

The glowing figure before her eyes smiled a crooked smile that she still remembered in her dreams, and extended a robed arm toward her, soft, intangible fingers becoming corporeal in order to wipe away her tears.

Backing away slightly, the glowing vision of her only love extended his arms in a silent gesture to take his hands.

‘So this is the end of the world, huh?’ Sandra thought, smiling a real smile for the first time since 2012.

“Then take me home.” She told the angel, holding his hands in her own.

And together they flew to a place where love was all there was and all that would ever be.