Fidgeting with my hands, twiddling my thumbs, a flashback of my life goes through my head. First, my childhood, then adolescence, followed by the few years in my twenties that I had before this moment. Nothing spectacular sticks out. Nothing seems superfluous. Nothing. My hands begin to shake as I step out onto the ledge on the rooftop. The clouds seem to cover the entire sky this morning. I question why I even exist, but then remember I will soon not have to ask this. I clear my throat as I evenly space my feet apart. I lock my knees so I will not fall until I am ready. My hands are still shaking. As I stand there, the clouds seem to be at eye level. I stand and stare, captured by the awe of the sky’s dark beauty. I close my eyes and prepare to fall into the busy city streets when the sound of objects falling around me captivates my attention. I think I fell, until I realize I am still standing on the ledge. I open my eyes and stare straight into the sight of the buildings in front of me all falling to the ground. They get closer and closer, yet I do not move. This magnificence is staring me in the face. The grey clouds seem to move away from me, when I realize the building I was standing on, is now falling, and sending me to my death, just like I originally planned.

I see the brightest light that I have ever seen. This must mean I am dead; it’s what the people who are dead see in movies and on television, so I must be dead. Death is just one bright light. Until that light goes out, courtesy of the man holding the flashlight in one hand and his little daughter’s hand in the other. When I explain to him that I remember nothing after the building falling, he tells me everything that happened. There was an unexplained disaster, but he predicts it to be a natural disaster. It was unexplained because it killed nearly everyone and no one knows what it was. He has been wandering around with his daughter for the past two days, trying to find someone else. He told me that they began their journey in New Jersey. We sit around on the street for a while and he hands me a protein bar. Apparently I haven’t had anything to eat or drink in two days; I don’t feel the slightest bit phased.

His daughter, Maria, is only seven years old, but has dreams bigger than anyone’s I’ve ever seen. She wants to search the world and find if anyone else is left. She also wants to rebuild the city and start over. Her father, John, just sits by and lets her dream, only lending a hand when she needs one. She runs in the street as her father and I talk. We hear her in the background, talking about how things will be when we rebuild and she’s Princess of the World. We examine the destruction. All of the cars that were in the streets are smashed or completely gone. We are both oblivious to what happened. Whatever it was is much larger than anything we could have ever predicted.


We had no idea to what possibly could have happened until about a week into searching the United States for other people, when Maria hands me a piece of paper.

“It says ‘sia Government plan for world destruction’, where is sia?” Her little, curious voice says.

I explain that the paper has a tear, which belies which country’s plan it was. However, it was juvenile to actually call your world destruction plan “plan for world destruction”. We brainstorm all of the countries which end in sia and also take into consideration their past with the U.S. The first one that comes to mind is Russia. He suggests Indonesia, but I refute that since we have an alliance with them. His daughter continues to search for more clues, now that she found this one. We suspect that we are somewhere around Kentucky by now, but we really cannot tell unless we would happen to find a broken road sign. Nothing is intact.
We continue to go in the direction which we think is south. Our goal is to get to Florida. I’m not really sure why, but that’s where Maria wants us to go. She thinks we will find people there, I suppose. Or maybe another form of traveling, like boat or plane. I don’t know her plan, but I follow her ideas. She has got us this far, I don’t see her letting us down anytime soon. When we stop for the evenings, she always hesitates. She never wants to stop until we reach our goals, but when we do, we don’t stop either. If we fail, we set another goal. If we succeed, we set another goal. No matter what happens, we set a goal, reach it, then set another goal. She is determined on finding someone else.

The strangest thing about all of this is that there are very few bodies. Since we left New York, we have seen less than one hundred. It is nearly 600 miles from New York to where we are now and we have seen less than a hundred. No one is around. Everyone is dead, but there are no bodies.

We have very few problems. Security is not an issue, because no one is around to harm us. Food is not an issue, because we can stop at a gas station, supermarket, or any other store and have whatever we please. Sanitation is a problem. There is no running water, so we stock up on water every time we find a store. We have taken a shower about every one hundred miles. We find a store with soap and water stocked on their shelves and make due of what we have. When it rains, we find shelter and wait until it ends. None of us have received an illness yet, so we are hoping that we don’t.

When we finally reach where Florida should be, we find nothing. There is no longer a panhandle sticking out from the bottom of the United States. It is gone. We stand on the uneven shore line, the waves crashing into it and splashing water furiously onto us. Maria takes a seat. I can tell she’s disappointed, even though she had no control over this. As she was sitting, just like the wind was our friend, it brought us our next and final clue. It brought us another piece of paper that cleared everything up for us. It explains how Indonesia was testing their new type of military tactic which had the power of 15 atomic bombs. But it wasn’t atomic power. It wasn’t supposed to give off toxins; it was supposed to end a country quickly and silently. This was not the case, as John, Maria, and I now see as we stand in the remains of the terrible destruction that this thing caused. We also see that it completely dislodged Florida from the United States.
We begin to go west; once again, I don’t know why. We have been living like this for nearly two months now. I can tell because we’ve been keeping track on the back of the government’s paper. It’s comforting to know what happened, but nauseating to know that someone had this kind of power. We check everything and everywhere for life, but there is none. Everything is silent. The buildings that do still stand seem to be unharmed, but if something is destroyed, it is completely destroyed. There is no in between.

Weeks pass, and we find no one. We aren’t sure of our whereabouts, but we believe we’re in Nevada. It’s beginning to get colder outside, so we keep trying to layer on more clothes. As we sit in a small town that was completely devoured by the disaster, John falls over. His face hits the concrete. I check his pulse, but there isn’t one. His face is already going pale. His skin is cool and soft. It feels like the skin of your grandmother when you run your hand over hers as she lies in the coffin. It’s cool and comforting until you realize that you just touched the hand of a dead person. His skin begins to disintegrate after a minute, and I stand and stare. I am flustered by this sight, but Maria just stands to the side and looks at the sky. After his skin is gone, his bones begin to go, then his organs, until there is nothing left.

Maria seems completely normal with this. She doesn’t even seem like it affected her in anyway. I knew she was independent, but she’s seven. Everyone needs someone when they’re seven.

When I shared this with her, she smiled, grabbed my hand, and looked up at me. “I have you.”

Everything in life finally had meaning, for a few weeks. I had something to live for. We made it to where we anticipated was Washington state. It was late-winter and we were about to begin heading east again. We were sitting, just as we had been when John died, when she fell over, her head hitting a wall, then the concrete, busting open into a bloody mess. In my mind it was worse than a massacre. It was the worst bloodshed in history, but it got even worse when he body began to decay, just like her father’s had. When she fell to the ground and her heart stopped beating, it was worse than when the rest of the world’s hearts stopped beating. She was a daughter to me. She finally gave me something to live for, and when she lived no longer, I decided I didn’t want to either.