• Date: December 31, 2013
    Time: 11:54:45 P.M.
    Event: New Year’s Eve Countdown
    Location: Times Square, NEw York City
    Population: 8.337 million
    Area: 468 square miles

    “Courtney! It’s almost time, can you believe it?” Erika squealed, bouncing up and down on the soles of her feet. Her black and white striped scarf bounced with her and so did her obsidian hair. Erika rarely got excited like this unless it was a special occasion such as her birthday or Christmas, but tonight was an exception. Tonight was New Year’s Eve, and 2014 was just around the corner.
    2014...just thinking about it is exciting. It’s the start of a new year and the start of a new life with new resolutions; resolutions that would change our lives for the good.
    “Really?” I breathed, noting my foggy breath in the cold night air as I rubbed my hands together, “What time is it?”
    “It’s 11:56!” she exclaimed.
    I smiled and pulled my scarf back up to my chin again. “I can’t wait...” I whispered, “A new year...”
    She beamed and threw her arms around my neck, telling me it was going to be the best year ever.
    “The best year?” I wondered to myself, looking up at the Ball. Its sparkling beauty was enough to make me cry, and in fact I had cried because Erika informed me and gave me her handkerchief to wipe my face.
    “Don’t cry, Courtney,” she smiled.
    I gave her a smile back and wiped my cheeks, glancing back up at the Ball again. Sometimes, when I was younger anyhow, I would wonder what made it shine so bright like that. Mom would say, “It’s the angels, sweetheart. They come down every year to shine their light on the Ball, and to let us know that a new year is coming.”
    Being sixteen now, I know that it isn’t the angels making it shine like that, but over thirty thousand LED lights.
    “It’s beautiful what technology can do, isn’t it?” I whispered.
    “Huh?” Erika wondered.
    “The lights,” I explained, gesturing to the ball as the countdown began, “It’s amazing.”
    “Just think, back then people couldn’t imagine something like this ever happening, I bet,” she said, “Oh! It’s down to ten!”
    “Ten!” everyone shouted in unison.
    It was like I could hear the entire world counting with us.
    “Nine!”
    Over seven billion people...
     “Eight!”
    If only they were here to see how beautiful it really is.
     “Seven!”
    2014.
     “Six!”
    2014.
     “Five!”
    2014!
     “Four!”
    Oh my God, for Christ’s sake it’s almost 2014!
     “Three!”
    So many new things will happen!
     “Two!”
    I can’t believe it!
     “One!”
    Happy New Yea—!

    KABOOM.

    That’s exactly what we heard. A huge kaboom just from afar, and when we turned to look, it was the Empire State building collapsing in on itself. Then, a flash of green was the last thing I saw.
    ******************************************************************************

    Date: April 14, 3014
    Time: 2:59:53 P.M.
    Location: Earth
    Population: Unknown
    Area: New York City

    Monsters lurk in the dark, waiting for your little head to hit the pillow and your eyes to shut. They hide underneath your bed and wait for you to sleep...then, then they get you. They grab you in the middle of the night by the throat and don’t let go.
    Don’t let them catch you.
    Don’t let them catch you in the dark, because if they do, you’re dead.
    “Alisa,” Luka called, shaking my shoulder, “Wake up.”
    “What for?” I grumbled.
    “I found breakfast, that’s what,” she whispered. I shot up like a lightning bolt and asked where.
    “The Forest,” she said, leaning close as her eyes bulged.
    “Not the Forest...,” I whispered, put back as my eyes constricted and widened, “Not again.”
    “Bu-”
    “No!” I snapped, “They almost got us last time!”
    “It’s only three, Alisa, we can make it, I kno—,” she tried.
    “No!” I shouted, driving my fist into the wall next to her, “You know what will happen! Why did you even go looking in there?!”
    “We haven’t had breakfast in two days, Alisa,” she said, frowning, “We can’t go another day without meat.”
    “Well we’ll have to,” I hissed, pulling my arm out and brushing the bricks away. “So learn to like the vegetables we find.”
    I got up for some fresh air but she called out to me when I pushed the tattered curtain back to let in the light.
    “We shouldn’t be eating what we can find from the ground,” she said, “It’s not safe.”
    “It’s all we’ve got,” I muttered, squinting and shielding my eyes from the blinding sun. The sun felt good on my face like that, and it was the only thing I had left to remind me of what the World used to be before the Pulse.
    That’s what we called it once we finally felt safe enough to crawl out of our hiding places and communicate. Part of it had to with those so-called scientists back in 2013 trying to find new planets to live on after our planet was used up and the rest happened on its own. Of course by that I mean like all those usual alien movies from before the Pulse wanting to come to Earth and take over for its resources.
    I was there when the Ball dropped and when the Empire State building fell. After that, there was a flash of green. Then another explosion that was much bigger than the first; an explosion that knocked everyone off their feet. Its power was like a level five hurricane, Hell, it was even stronger than that. It was like a level five hurricane and a 9.0 earthquake that created an 800 foot tsunami.
    It was the Rapture itself.
    Lightning flashed across the sky, the sun and moon were black, stars fell from the Heavens, fire rained, and everything burned. Everything happened but one thing: God didn’t come to save us. He wasn’t there and because of that we suffered and died off.
    “If you won’t help me, I’ll do it myself,” she said, rousing me from my thoughts as she gathered her things into her rucksack.
    “You can’t shoot worth s**t, Luka,” I mumbled, smiling lightly, “You’d run breakfast away rather than bring it.”
    “Shut up and get your stupid bow,” she huffed, pushing past me with a smile too and throwing the bag over her shoulder.
    I shook my head lightly and went to the farthest corner on the right of the “room”, the hiding spot of the bow Dad gave me when I was just twelve. I never expected to have to use this thing to kill something, but then again I’ve killed many things with this bow. Many somethings, and many someones.
    It’s survival, I thought, making sure the line was tight and secure. I grabbed my arrows and went out after Luka.
    “Ready?” she asked, tying her bright red hair back.
    I whistled a tune from my memories before the Pulse, giving her a nod as I scanned the dry, cracked ground for any berries to snack on along the way. There was nothing this time unfortunately, but there’s hardly anything around unless you go into the Forest. In the Forest, well, that’s the promised land of milk and honey, isn’t it?
    Luka chimed in with her own seemingly childish tone, marching alongside me with her knife and net. I tightened my grip on the bow’s ivory grip and threw the arrows over my back so carefully it was like a form of art. As we got further and further from our home, I stepped over a corpse and didn’t bother to look down. Looking down was the worst mistake you could ever make now. Looking down was either looking down at a corpse or soon looking down at your corpse.
    I clenched my jaw at the approaching grass from just a few meters away and stopped humming. Luka stopped too and as soon as she stopped humming we both stopped walking. When I hesitated she told me that the clearing she found breakfast in was just a little ways west after going straight in.
    “You stay near me no matter what,” I said sternly, like a mother should.
    “Promise,” she nodded.
    I hesitated, glanced into the Forest as my heart skipped a beat, stopped, and sparked up again into full throttle, and then gave her a nod.
    “Quiet,” I whispered, slowly creeping in as my breath caught in my throat, afraid that if I exhaled they would hear.
    I don’t know you, I don’t know you, I chanted, maneuvering past the corpses slung from trees and ropes, sprawled out over the ground, and posted to trees.
    I could hear Luka whimpering behind me when she suddenly clung to my arm and dug her nails into my skin. I gave her arm a light smack, telling her to be quiet or they would hear, and ducked underneath a low hanging branch, creeping slowly.
    If the Forest wasn’t infested with these...these things, I’d say it was very beautiful. This time of year the leaves were as green as they could get, and the sun was as beautiful as it could get on the leaves.
    I stopped in my tracks when we came to a pond, and shot a dark look at Luka.
    “It’s not that deep,” she whispered.
    I frowned and pursed my lips, grabbing a twig that was about two feet long and thinking that saying that there was water ahead should’ve been the first thing she mentioned to me. I held my breath and carefully, but slowly, sunk it into the pond’s murky water. It went down about six inches, and I decided that we could walk through it.
    “Take off your shoes,” I told her, slipping mine off too.
    She did as she was told and I prepped myself, taking a deep breath and grabbing the sides of my cargo pants. I slid them up so that they were to my shins and tightened my grip on my boots, slowly edging into the water.
    There were rocks, smooth ones at that, and more twigs; smaller this time of course. I took another step and shuddered at the feeling of a hand beneath my toes. Flaring my nostrils, I pressed on, looking back to make sure Luka was behind me like she promised. She gave me a reassuring nod and I took another carefully step, not wanting to aggravate the water’s serene state.
    We finally managed to cross the pond undetected, but I’m sure they were watching. Somewhere. Waiting, hiding, to catch us off guard and
    “It’s through there,” Luka whispered, pointing north into the opening in the trees
    “Get that knife ready,” I said, creeping carefully through the bushes, not wanting to rouse their leaves.
    “Already ahead of you,” she replied.
    We ducked under a few low-hanging branches and hopped over those unfortunate to go wandering in here without knowledge of how to fend themselves off until Luka stopped me suddenly and pulled me behind a thick tree.
    “Shh,” she whispered, pointing behind the tree.
    I peeked my head out just a little bit to see and gaped at the horde of plump deer. The size of just one was enough to last us both a week without having to go back out and hunt.
    “See?” she said as I leaned my back on the trunk, “Just think, we could feed ourselves for months if we managed to kill even five.”
    “The problem is preserving them,” I muttered.
    “Remember back in 9th grade when I told you about how explorers used to preserve their food?”
    “No one wants to die from too much sodium intake,” I huffed.
    “Well, Alisa, what do you propose we do?” she sassed.
    “We find a working fridge,” I said after some thought.
    “There’s no way in hell I’m going into one of those houses,” she hissed.
    “I’ll do it,” I said, “Let’s just concentrate on getting something to put in the fridge first.”
    “Good idea,” she smiled, “You take the high way and I’ll take the low way.”
    “There you again with that stupid movie,” I muttered, dropping my shoes at the tree’s base and digging my nails into the trees tough bark.
    I heard her giggle as I shimmed up the trunk and reached the highest and well-hidden branch I could find.
    They were drinking peacefully from a stream, unaware of my presence and having no care for the other presence that lurked in the Forest and the rest of Earth.
    Huh. Earth, I thought, chuckling bitterly. Might as well call it the ******** dustbowl planet instead. If we were home I probably would’ve laughed madly but this time there was no place for laughter or movement. One sound was a wrong move that resulted in death, and Luka and I know that well enough. Being quick on your feet was a must and being light as a feather wasn’t a choice. I’ll tell you one thing though, the last plump person I saw alive was being chased, and she didn’t get too far before they slung her up and ripped out her guts.
    Shaking my head in dismay, I gave Luka the “okay” by sounding the whistle of a Cardinal. She sounded one back and I took my position, reaching back to grab an arrow. I locked my eyes on a target and quickly got the arrow in position, drew the string back, and fired. As soon as the arrow made contact with the deer it let out a guttural bugle and bucked wildly, inspiring the other deer to flee. I didn’t give them the chance though, reaching back to grab three more arrows and firing them into the necks of the pack trying to get away together. They were dead before they even hit the ground and Luka slit the throats of the incoming ones trying to get out of the clearing at her station. I didn’t have time to watch them bleed out and fired another arrow into the eye of a deer rushing underneath the branch I was perched in.
    It roared in agony and staggered back, shaking its head wildly as it bucked and threw its body to the ground.
    I tightened my gaze and squinted, showing the deer no mercy as I sent an arrow straight through its heart. It stood still for a full minute, swaying side to side every once in a while until it finally staggered back and its knees gave out from under it.
    I sighed a breath of relief and locked the back of my knees around the tree as I fell back to hang upside down.
    “Did you get yours?” I asked, watching Luka remove her dagger from one of their necks.
    “Yeah,” she said.
    “All of them?”
    She nodded and proceeded to gather them into her net. “They won’t all fit,” she sighed.
    “I’ll carry them,” I said, hoping down from the branch gracefully.
    She nodded again and secured the net, throwing it over her shoulder as I retrieved my arrows from the deer.
    “You gonna skin ‘em too?” she asked as I slung their bodies over my shoulders.
    “You’re gonna help,” I grinned.
    “Geez, ‘lisa...,” she sighed.
    “As soon as we get home you can start skinning the first one while I go look for a fridge,” I said, taking the lead out of the clearing. I glanced back one last time to make sure we didn’t leave any traces of blood, and then ordered Luka to follow me.
    “Aside from deer, what else you want for breakfast?” I smiled. “How about some oatmeal? You used to love that.”
    “Oatmeal sounds great right about now because my stomach is on the verge of letting out one huge growl,” she chuckled inwardly.
    “You better wait until we get out of here or else this little expedition would’ve been for nothing,” I huffed, slowly crossing the pond again.
    “Hey, you forgot your boots,” she said.
    “Doesn’t matter,” I muttered, “I can go barefoot for a couple days.”
    “Want mine?” she asked.
    “No, I don’t want you getting cut or sick,” I replied, kicking the hand I stepped on earlier aside.
    “But what if you get sick, ‘lisa?” she whined.
    “I’m sure the Shot will prevent that,” I said, ducking under another low branch.
    “When are we due for another?”
    “How many months has it been?” I asked.
    “Four,” she replied.
    “Two months then,” I said, stepping over the corpse of a young woman. Unable to help myself, I glanced down and saw the maggots crawling in and out of her eye sockets. I guess she’d been dead a few weeks and they had finally gotten to her eyes, the dessert. Or it could have been a raven. Those things were notorious for stealing unsuspecting victims’ eyeballs, including the live ones.
    “We’ll run out soon,” she said quietly.
    “We will,” I nodded, being careful not to bump the hanging corpse slung from a tree.
    “Then what will we do?”
    “Go back,” I said.
    “Last time we almost died.”
    “I know,” I mumbled as we exited the Forest. It felt like the Devil had been leaning over my shoulder the entire time we were in there and when we left it was like he was gone. That’s how the Forest is now. It’s Hell, and those things are Hell’s demons. “I never said ‘we’.”
    “You’re going back alone? No way!” she shouted.
    “Shut up!” I hissed, whirling around towards her with wild eyes, “They’ll hear!”
    “Sorry,” she grumbled.
    “Anyways, I’ll be fine,” I said, turning back to face the deserted neighborhood we called home. If I were to tell you to draw a picture of an empty town during those “Ride ‘em, Cowboy!” days, you’d probably draw a couple of broken down wooden buildings and a tumbleweed blowing by. Well that’s what our little neighborhood looks like, but with bricks and concrete. Hell, someone ought to be holding a sign that says, “Welcome to Deserted Shortcomings! You won’t stay long!”.
    “You don’t know that,” she argued, “We can’t assume things anymore or predict their outcomes.”
    “You remember that old saying, right? ‘Assume makes an a** out of u and me’?”
    “Be quiet, Luka,” I sighed, “I don’t feel like arguing with you about that.”
    “Well excuse me for caring about my only sister,” she huffed, repositioning the net on her shoulder as she pushed past me.
    “Skin the deer and I’ll be back,” I muttered, dropping the ones on my back inside our little “house”.
    She refused to respond and I gave her a half-hearted shrug, turning on my heels to leave. I trekked across the barren ground, occasionally kicking a few rocks out of the way and squashing a couple bugs, thinking of how similar the two of us were now. Creeping carefully, I snuck over to a house that “belonged” to a woman named Edna. She was the poor sweetie who couldn’t outrun the demons.
    The door was locked, so I picked it with one of the pins holding my hair back. It made a God-awful sound when I slowly pushed it open, and I sincerely thought of going back home for some WD40. I shrugged it off, opening it only enough to slip inside because any wider would’ve resulted in the loudest creak the World has ever heard, and closed it behind me, making sure to keep my tracks hidden well.
    I crept over broken boards, holding my hand over my face to keep the dust out of my system, and slipped into the kitchen. The fridge, a huge one at that, should’ve had some kind of holy light on it because it was completely unharmed, and I could hear the marvelous purr coming from it. I quickly ripped the door open and peered inside to see if there were any good items in it. There was nothing unfortunately but that didn’t matter because I dumped it all out and picked that bad boy up on my shoulder.
    I turned to leave when I heard the most frightening sound I knew too well. My heart burst into a full on run as I heard the sick clicks coming from the living room. I set the fridge back down, slowly, and approached the kitchen doorway cautiously.
    It was...eating something, I think. But then again every sound they make sounds like they’re eating. It’s sickening, yet so very, very frightening.
    I accidentally kicked a board and the noises suddenly stopped. Nothing happened for what seemed like a lifetime until the clicking began again. It was much more urgent this time than the last casual click of its jaws, at least that’s what I think they were.
    It began to hiss, sounding like a mixture of a feral cat in heat and a snake. There was a slimy, wet sound and it made me cringe as I heard something heavy fall to the ground. My breath caught in the middle of my throat when it grunted and clicked again and I moved to the side of the door in a hurry, thinking it had already seen me. The crunch it made, stepping on whatever’s bones it was eating, edged closer and closer until they stopped right in the doorway.
    I hadn’t prayed since all this s**t happened, but I was sure as hell praying now. I couldn’t leave Luka behind like that, not to mention the fact that she’d come looking after me and run into this dinosaur.
    I could see its sick teeth and the flesh and bones that hung in between them. There was a head, I think, hanging from its front teeth by its hair. The head, good Lord the head, was beyond description. The eyes...the eyes were dangling nonchalantly from its sockets and the cheeks were horrid. They were gouged out and had maggots crawling in and out of them, some losing their grip and dropping to the floor, and others dropping on me. I wanted to stomp them some kind of good but if I made any sound whatsoever, I would’ve ended up like the guy dangling between the monster’s teeth.
    The smell of the foul creature and the foul creature it had been previously devouring was purely sickening. It was like smelling feces, fourteen-year old garbage, and raw fish all at once.
    It clicked again, registered its surroundings, and slowly, ever so slowly, it crawled away, making those sick clicks, moans, groans, growls, hisses, and screeches all the way back to the living room, where it resumed eating. I didn’t want to know at all what that Thing was eating, but I had a pretty good idea.
    My heart, thumping like a jackrabbit’s foot, seemed relieved, but not enough to quiet down. Shaking like a junkie going through withdrawal, I finally got the courage to kick away the maggots that had crawled onto my feet and ease my way back over to the fridge. I know I shouldn’t have, but I couldn’t help but peer into the living room to see what it was doing behind that old overturned couch. Like my instincts told me, I really shouldn’t have looked.
    I shuddered and gripped the fridge again, picturing the way the beast casually leaned up and slurped the eyes into its slimy, drooling mouth.
    Muttering a litany of “shits” in my mind, I quietly hoisted the fridge onto my shoulder again, unplugged it, and crept out of the kitchen silently. Unfortunately it felt the need to spite me and flew open, dumping out a jar of pickles that looked over a hundred years old. It shattered loudly and I heard a heavy grunt from the living room, followed by heavy, quick, ferocious footsteps.
    It bursted out of the front door only to be blinded and burned by the sun. I watched it creep back into the shadows of the house and scan the area for the source of the noise from my hiding spot behind a somewhat-still-attached brick wall that used to be a fence. Making sure it went all the way back in the house, I crept back home, making sure to keep hidden the entire time.
    “Alisa, what happened?” Luka demanded, standing up promptly as I entered the house and breathed out heavily.
    “It was in the house!” I hissed, setting the fridge down.
    “What?” she gasped.
    “It didn’t see me but a jar of pickles fell out of the fridge and shattered, grabbing its attention,” I said, placing my hands on my forehead and pushing the wild hair back, “I barely got out in time.”
    “Did it see you come home?” she asked, her voice urgent as she shook her bloody knife at the “door”.
    “No, I don’t think so,” I replied quietly, glancing at the fridge in shame.
    She stared at me silently for some time and finally sighed. “They’re getting closer...,” she mumbled, “...and smarter.”
    “We need to cover our tracks,” I said, grabbing the deer’s hides, “Clean the fridge while I clean the blood off these thing.”
    “Alright,” she muttered, grabbing a bucket from the back, “We don’t have much time before the sun goes.”
    “Exactly,” I nodded, “And I could really use a bath.”
    That night we finished skinning all the deer and cleaning them, and we even managed to cover up our tracks in time. Dinner was the best thing we’d had in months, and we had more than enough to get by with for a long time, especially with the fridge running good like it was.
    “Alisa, you hear that?” Luka asked after a minute.
    “Hear wha-,” I started.
    “Shh!” she hissed.
    I frowned and listened, then gasped.
    “Put out the fire right now!” I growled, shoving my plate into the fridge and snatching Luka’s too.
    “It’s them isn’t it?” she cried as I shoved her plate in the fridge too and listened for the scurrying footsteps and clicks.
    “Be quiet and put out that fire!” I whispered, putting up the steel plate over the doorway.
    She finally did as I told her and I scooped her up quickly. Huddling up behind our bed with a blanket wrapped around our bodies, I told her to stop crying as the footsteps got louder and heavier.
    They’re bringing everyone...
    I rocked her back and forth, singing her favorite lullaby to her as the pounding on the steel plate began.
    “Shh, Luka, don’t cry,” I cooed, holding her closer.
    The pounding became urgent, accompanied by scratches, screeches, hisses, howls, growls, whines, moans, groans, and squeals.
    “Luka, look, look at me.”, I said, holding her face in my hands as she sobbed. “We’ve been through this before, we’ll be okay.”
    Click, click, click, click.
    Her crying became violent as she shook like a kicked dog, and I had to shut my eyes tightly to imagine a better place. As I was telling her that we’d be okay, the noises stopped.
    They just...stopped.
    I knew better, but I could’t help but let out a small laugh after a minute. They were going away.
    We outsmarted them again.
    “See, Luka?”, I smiled, slowly opening my eyes as tears slid out. “We’re o—”
    BOOM.
    The steel plate gave way into the house and flew across the room to slam into the wall as Luka screamed wildly. I hadn’t heard her scream like that since the Pulse in 2013, or should I say 2014, when we watched Mom and Dad get mauled by the Things.
    The clicking started again and I let out a high shriek with her, trying to back further and further away into the corner as they charged at us.
    “No!” I shouted as they grabbed our ankles.
    “No! No! No—!”, I continued, digging my nails into the wooden floor as I held onto Luka tighter. I could feel the wooden pieces of the floor curling beneath my fingernails as I cried. I felt Luka being ripped out of my grip and I let go of the floor to grab onto her, only to find the her entire lower body had been ripped away. Despite that, she still managed to look me in the eye and say that she loved me before they dragged her off, screaming.
    I went into the darkness, and when I went into the darkness, they caught me, they caught us, the last of Us, the last of the Humans.
    ************************************************************************
    Date: December 31, 3014
    Time: 11:59:59
    Location: Earth
    Population: 0
    Event: New Year’s Eve
    Area: New York City
    *************************************************************************************************
    <Code#365>: Exactly 365,607.4 Days since Pulse.
    <Code#365>: Happy New Year.