Midnight in the Dust of a Fallen World (story) (Patreon)

As I promised, my other non furry piece for this month. This is short and a general reflection on the pointlessness of nuclear war, and what surviving it would mean.

The world roared and all there that could be heard was endless death. Clutched safe in the bowels of the earth, he could feel it. He heard the angry reverberation of the end and then the silence. This was it. There was nothing left. Sure, there was to be an after, but what type of after was this to be with so many dead and so much destroyed? All of this for the ego of one nation to best another.

The bunker was old, and it was small. His grandfather had built the shelter worried about a war that never came, inspired by the foolish belief it would see you through the war. Sure it could keep you safe; it would make sure you survived, but then what? Then what do you do? How many cans of beans can you eat before you can’t eat any more? How many shattered houses can you walk past searching for survivors in a blasted radiated landscape before you fall down, sick and poisoned from radiation, unable to go on?

He clutched the small yellow blanket his grandfather had added to the bunker’s provisions when he’d outgrown it as a baby. He found the blanket years later when he’d inherited the house and its bunker, and he’d left it here in case he had to shelter a baby, but there had been no time to bring others. The neighbors didn’t have one of these. His wife didn’t have one at her job. Only he did. He had been working from home quietly, safe from all the stress of the news when he got the emergency alert text message that told him what was coming. “INCOMING NUCLEAR STRIKE!!! SEEK SHELTER IMMEDIATELY!” it proclaimed, and after staring at it numbly, trying to understand for a moment, he had dashed outside to the shelter’s entrance. He saw the blinding flash of white against a brilliant blue sky as he opened the heavy steel door and jumped inside, letting the it slam behind him.

Now he was safe, alone, in a world where everything was ripped away from so many for foolish pride and bravado. His grandfather had wanted to save his family, and the bomb shelter had worked as it was intended. In the quiet aftermath, he was safe, but what came next? What happens after the end? What can you do but cry until you run out of tears and then feebly pick yourself up to try and put right a world completely broken?

There hadn’t been time to do anything but run. There was no way he could contact anyone now, even if they had survived the blast. What meager shelter could a nation offer its survivors if there was nothing left of itself? And, what could a man alone in a bunker of steel and concrete with a few rations do to save the world rooled by hot annihilation do?

He didn’t know, but he was going to find out.