Apocalypse

Gerome perched himself on top of a miraculously still standing steel beam that had once been the cornerstone of a skyscraper wall. He sat, one leg dangling off, and looked out over the ruined landscape. Greenery still had not succeeded in cracking the dry, dead dirt and concrete ground that spanned so far off into the distance. Broken buildings as far as the eye could see dotted the horizon. Even the mountains that were said to have once stood tall and majestic had been broken apart, and were now ragged and dangerous expansions of despair that had become the everlasting, overwhelming world in which they lived.

Gerome's best, and only, friend leaned against the beam Gerome had posted on. "You believe any of the stories?" he asked.

Gerome didn't look down at his friend. They had spent many years together. They were all the other had. Correspondingly, they had a sort of sixth sense, always aware of the other's presence or lack thereof. "You mean about how this all happened?"

"Yeah."

Gerome sighed and looked at the position of the sun. It was getting near sunset. At night time, the bottom dwellers would come out and search for any fallen that they might be able to eat. Up this high, however, he and Darren could sleep in peace. Knowing that they would need to return to the underground before the sun rose, the bottom dwellers would never dare climb so many floors of a building, even if they knew there were a hundred fallen there.

"When I was a kid, my mother told me that several generations ago, the nations had created such devastating weapons that, when the peace treaties failed, no one survived."

Darren looked up at his friend. "Then how are we still here?" he asked.

"Yeah," Gerome replied, "I never really understood that part either."

Darren nodded and looked out at the setting sun. The atmosphere was so thick they could stare directly at it for extended periods of time without sustaining damage. The sun looked like a dim flashlight being shone through thick cloth. "My dad told me that the earth itself ruptured open and the elements erupted forth and tore through everything on the surface was ripped apart."

"That explains why the bottom dwellers are still here. But what about the rest of us?"

Darren shrugged. "Same problem."

Gerome slipped down from his perch, and the two set to work setting out sleeping bags to rest for the night. As they settled in, they both continued to think on the question.

"I guess the only people who could have known are long dead," Gerome mumbled out loud.

"And the records have probably been gone for a few hundred years," Darren agreed.

They fell asleep shortly thereafter, knowing that the next day they had more ground to cover.