I wasn’t ready. That’s all, really. I just wasn’t ready. In another time, in another place, that may not have mattered. In another world, I’d’ve been gone forever ago.
But this is here, and here is now. And nothing works the way it did before.
It’s hard to tell time in a bunker, so I couldn’t tell you when now is. But it seems like ages ago when the last of them died. And we were all already the last of the last. The big fiery hurrah came and went and no amount of time in this deep, dark bin would ever change what was done. No healing. No fixing. Just a broken rubber ball in the sky, leaking life like a sieve.
But still, there were a few of us. Millie and Benny and Xuan and Duc and Nehal and...a few others. I’m starting to forget. We made a go of it. We promised to live for the sake of living. For the sake of humanity - like humanity was some grand gem we just couldn’t bear to see swallowed up by the void.
But the odds were never on our side. Death came for them, one at a time, across centuries or minutes, I really don’t recall. Their insides turned to goo or their minds did or they just walked out the hatch one day, like old Duc did, and went to meet the void where it lived.
But I wasn’t ready. And when Death came for me, I hid. Or I made excuses. And truth be told, Death hardly fought it. I thought I was clever, but I know now that I was the only one playing that particular game. He was coming to the end of his line, too. So he wasn’t the same as before either.
I fell, not so long ago. Fell and punctured a hole straight through my belly. The blood came and went and I thought, this is it. I was ready then, because I was lonely and because it hurt like hell.
But I waited too long. Death didn’t come. All the blood ran out of me and he never came. A whole mess of my insides and my outsides went limp and cold and he never came.
He was gone and he’d forgotten to take me.
Now I’m alone - all the way alone - in this bunker, with a pile of my guts and limbs that won’t listen, lying on the floor.
And there’s a scratching at the hatch.
And I’m wondering...wondering what comes after Death?
Something’s come inside. From here on the floor it sounds like a thousand somethings, skittering and slithering through corridors no one’s walked in ages.
Just who’s been waiting for Death to die?
I’d really rather not find out.