There was nothing left. Everything was gone: the buildings were reduced to rubble; trees were stripped of their leaves. Telephone and telegraph poles were the tallest structures left—it was somewhat odd how resilient they were, how they withstood the blast. The streets—if you could call them that—were filled with the remnants of humanity. The wailing, disfigured creatures wandering around were no longer human: they were nothing less than monsters.
All of humanity died that day with the blast. Those creatures that were wandering around looking for food, water, and shelter were following their primal urges the blast brought back to them. Yes—humanity had died with the city—killed off indiscriminately, without malice, and without being any sense of justice about it, that was the paradoxical nature of this new world that had been created.
Survival was due to random chance. The dead were stacked as cords of wood, or piled into putrid heaps of burning flesh. That smell filled the air—burning flesh accompanied by the rotten stench of garbage and sewage—one could basically taste it in their mouths. You’d want to gag, you’d want to vomit, but couldn’t. The sights were worse—the kind of sights that made you wish you were blind. People were crushed by falling beams or killed outright by the blast—one could see the shadow of where they last stood. Those unfortunate enough to live through Armageddon but still sentenced to damnation were pitiful. Limbs were lost and people were blind. The skin hung off of them and for some, it was replaced with glass and wood.
Coming down the hill was hope. Hope was something no being could possibly have on that day, but there it was. One could see faint light—the sun—that caused a silhouette that could be seen even against the darkness the ash caused. There she was, unscathed save for torn clothing and the dirt that covered her body. She was holding something. She walked down the hill—or was it a pile—carefully, so as not to disturb what was in her arms—her child. As she moved toward the street, remaining careful, one could see the infant more closely.
Then one would realize, that in this new world, there was no place for hope: the baby she held so closely was dead.
2 comments:
I like the harsh reality that your narrative brings out. It describes the picture really well and the end is nice in how it shocks you with the dead baby.
monsters, disfigurement, dead baby - those presences help convey both the lack of color and bleak mood of the image you've chosen. it's hard to tell isn't it? - whether the woman with her baby is moving into this post-bomb era or if she's literally just a standing pillar of charred remains?
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