In the first couple
months the world seemed to be in denial. Everyone was seeking second third and
fourth opinions, however once they all came back with the same “we’re screwed”
answer, that’s when suicide rates went off the charts, as well as humans really
began to show their true colors.
And
it all began when those Scientists who made the world wide announcement that
life on earth was about to come to an end because our closest astral neighbor
went Super Nova. Alpha Centauri, a name that was once only talked about by high
school teachers and the Star Trek nerds was now spoken with fear, hate, aw, and
even by the dooms day fanatics with excitement. I can remember when you asked
the average person on the street what a Super Nova was they would respond “Is
it a show on PBS?”
In
the months that followed, people raided the stores for food, weapons, and
building supplies. You suddenly had millions of people planning on building
fortified bunkers, all hoping to outlive the apocalypse, but the problem was even
if bunkers could save us from our looming death, most people didn’t know how to
build them. Those who did weren’t for hire as they were focusing on their own
time left. Like me. Money was useless as what would you do with it in a few
months anyways. Not that I was wanting to build myself a bunker, I just didn’t
want to spend what time I had left on a useless endeavor. Who would want to
live the rest of their lives in a little bunker anyways?
No,
I left for my family’s cabin once the raiding and pillaging began. I loaded
what supplies I had at home into coolers and boxes in the bed of my truck and
made for my dad’s cabin that he had left me before died. My only company was my
best pal, Winston, a big white American Bulldog.
On my way out of the city people were
literally rioting in the streets. I had to fire my 9mm pistol into the sky on
multiple occasions to clear the path in front of me. Once I even had to return
fire at a man trying to shoot my tires out as I drove past.
What
should have been a three hour drive to my cabin had turned into a 15 hour trip.
I was beginning to put the different people I came across into one of three
main groups, Religious Fanatics, Final Day Adventurers, and those who I and
Candice, a woman I had helped one day, justly called Savages.
As you can imagine, the Religious Fanatics were praying
to whatever divine being they worshipped for help, aid, forgiveness, and peace.
They gathered in massive prayer groups in churches, parks, and even city
centers. In fact, churches, temples and mosques had become fortresses for their
religious followers, make shift walls and fences were being erected from old
vehicles and other random debris lying around. And debris was the only supply
in abundance. These encampments were actually some of the safest places to be,
as they were almost all very well armed, and had the safety in numbers thing
working for them.
The Final Day Adventurers were the people that wanted to
go out with a bang. They traveled, mostly by foot and boat, as most other
transportation had shut down and as there was no one to man or maintain the
buses and airplanes. They were the people that I envied, as they seemed to
really be enjoying themselves. Travel and adventure seemed to do their hearts
good, as they were living life impulsively, like they had always wanted to, yet
things like responsibility and duty held them to their schedules. But who needs
schedules when the world is ending? And I am still amazed at how many people
actually began to really live when
faced with the last year of life.
The
Savages, men and women that threw “The Golden Rule” out the window, and moved
so far past what had been accepted as morally right, that they were being
viewed as inhuman by everyone else. They
looted, and raided everything that they could, and rape and murder was their
favorite past time. The strange thing was, it wasn’t only the criminals and ruffians
that you would have expected, but many of them had been respectable members of
society like soccer moms, or fire fighters. I had considered this for a time,
wondering how normal mundane people could regress into such vicious and brutal
behavior. I finally settled on a few reasons, one would be that maybe they had
experienced that treatment and was feeling that in order to no longer be a
victim they had to victimize. The other thought was, maybe it was a power
thing, and by taking and doing whatever they can before the world ends, gives them
some sense of control over their lives. Regardless of why, they were scary, and
after about month four, there was almost no military or law enforcement agency
that remained intact, as no one wanted to spend their last days away from
family and friends. This left the world up to total anarchy, and open for the
Savages to torment.
That
woman I mentioned earlier, Candice, I came across her and her two children as
Savages captured and robbed them. Candice herself was actually being forced to
the ground by a particularly disgusting Savage trying to have his way with her,
right there in front of her two crying kids. I shot the man and forced his two
buddies to back with my weapon, Winston helped by barking and growling at them
menacingly as I ushered Candice and her two kids into my truck. I dropped the
three of them off at a nearby settlement of Religious Fanatics, with a “good
luck” and “live well.” Winston left them with streaks of slobber on their
faces.
And
now I come to my own situation and the roughly five days until the radiation
and gravitational disruption actually ends all life on earth. I say “end”
rather than “destroy”, because after witnessing the past year of behavior from
my fellow humans, I see that we were more than capable of destroying ourselves,
as it was us that burnt and destroyed our buildings, and turned our world into
a brutal place to live. Apparently we didn’t want to wait for the apocalypse.
So I have hunkered down in my Rocky Mountain cabin. It
has no electricity as it relied on a generator that has long since run out of
fuel. I have managed to live by hunting and foraging the little garden that we
had planted. I am, and have been the only person in this cabin, with the exception
of Winston. Together he and I have hunted, and defended our little piece of
temporary real-estate until now we are alone. Sometimes we walk up the trail
behind my cabin that leads to a ledge that overlooks the Salt Lake City Valley.
A city that I had learned from my travels was one of the cleanest and well
maintained in the U.S., however looking at it now one could never tell that.
The valley is filled with columns of smoke from fires and burning buildings,
and at night the once vibrant city lights are almost all non-existent, save for
the handful of colonies set up by the Savages and Religious Fanatics.
I have spent most of my time documenting this past year
in my journals, as well as writing everything that I can remember about our
history and achievements. I have built a stone memorial from the rocks and
concrete that I had stored up here, originally hoping to build a stone hunting
shed. I am preparing to load all of these journals and even some flash drives
and my laptop that’s battery died months ago in a time capsule that I have sealed
from the weather with some old roofing plastic. My hope is that if another intelligent race
exists and every stumbles across this planet, that is soon to lay in waste,
that they can learn more about us than this year of self-destruction. Like
poetry, painting, architecture, music, and some of our scientific achievements.
So I bid whoever reads this to learn from our mistakes,
and to remember me and my dog Winston.
Jacob Daniel Adams
Born September 1984, Died November 2014
and
Winston Adams
Born June 2006, Died November 2014
