“There ain’t no sky today.”

“No?”

“No.”

“What about tomorrow?”

“Tomorrow? I’m not sure we’ll be that fortunate.”

The air was thick with despair, the ground damp with the long since shed tears of the natural world. The sky, once a dazzling blue, now the epitome of gloom. It gazes with eyes of tainted gold at the n’ere-do-wells down below, like bugs meant to be squashed. The sounds of its wailing grating enough to turn the grass brown and spoil the crops that we had tended to with such love.

It was a growing mass, unrelenting and hungry, a cataclysmic horror to witness. And yet, it was still more painful to look down.

We avert our eyes, but they won’t let us forget they’re there. They grasp with broken wrists and scratch with jagged nails. Desperate, so very desperate, for reasons they don’t have the capacity to comprehend. But nonetheless they are pleading as they grapple for the calves of passersby, crying as the ground refuses to let them go. It’s a cruel irony, being far out enough to taste freedom but too far in to grasp it. They are chickens without heads, robbed of the opportunity to run wild.

We sit on a porch that creaks as the wind blows through us, detached from its house but still standing with the power of spite and unfathomable determination one would not expect to be seen in such a rundown piece of timbre. The chairs have since been devoured, so we get splinters as we lean back on our palms, watching our last winter take the wanderers and leave little more than wisps in their wake.

“You think we deserve it?”

It takes me a moment to respond. We can see it on the horizon, but I can’t find it in myself to panic. I did my panicking when this all started, I’m too tired now.

I don’t look at him, but I can hear Pete’s breathing quicken next to me. He’s taking it worse, it would seem. Still, I keep my eyes fixed on the languidly approaching end. It creeps towards us with indifference. No reason to rush, it knows it’ll get here eventually.

“I’m not sure that matters now.”

We can’t say we weren’t warned. The vehement ramblings of people we brushed off as lunatics were clear enough: the end is coming. The end is near. It will not take prisoners.

Who knew they’d be right.

A tranquil land that was so long ago vibrant with greenery and the sounds of life is now barren and anguished. The mundane peace of everyday life has been replaced by sights best left unseen and noises that could only be voiced by the depraved souls of the damned.

It’s terrifying, despite the fact that soon there won’t be any consciousness left to be scared of it. Perhaps that’s the one comfort that can be taken from this.

Maybe this extermination is an act of mercy.

“Any regrets?” Pete asks.

“Plenty. It’s not worth lamenting about it now though.”

“I don’t know what to say. This moment feels so monumental, but anything I say seems so pointless.”

As the end grows closer, the atmosphere darkens further still. I can feel the heavy weight of inevitability.

“The things you said before this moment were pointless too, really. No reason to start worrying about the significance of it now.”

I feel bad for him. For all the people who held such hope for the future and have now been reduced to nothing. Whose memory will fail to live on as the rest of us are wiped, left to the will of the cosmos.

“I wish we had more time.”

“I’m sorry I’m the only person left to say that to.”