Final Days

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