No One to Save

It's an old story that is no less true for us than it was in the past No one thought they would actually do it. How many times have you heard it? Even if we only think of the last two hundred years or so?

No one thought they would put Hitler into power. No one thought they would drop those two bombs on Japan. No one thought they would napalm villages full of innocent people. No one thought those tanks would keep going over the students. No one thought the towers would fall. No one thought Trump would actually get the nomination.

Now, fifty years after that last one, add one more. No one thought they would actually push the button. No one thought they would drop the bombs.

When purifying flames fell from the sky, well, it was, oddly enough, mostly nonagenarians like myself who survived it. Upper-middle class old men who inherited houses from grandparents that were almost rich during the red scare. Men with forgotten fallout shelters hidden beneath our family homes. Some of us added some upgrades in the months before the end though.

When my monitor told me it was safe to go outside... well, I was, to say the least, surprised. How could the air be pure after only a year? I checked the instruments though, and they read true. So I unsealed my subterranean domicile and went outside.

It is amazing how nature, absent the cancerous influence of man, can take care of herself. She burned off all that crap we were using to kill her, and she did it using our own flames. When we set fire to the planet she used it to turn that pollution into choking smoke.

Then the plants took over, and I could see how they had grown. With no human hands to cut them down the trees were giant. Even the rose bushes were overgrown, taking in all the toxic smoke and creating clean air. With so much to filter out they overwhelmed the land.

The herbivores had grown to match the plants, and they wandered the land with almost no fear. The predators were mostly the same size, but they were faster, meaner. Their teeth and claws were sharper, they hunted in packs and killed without mercy. Huh, Darwin was right, and sometimes he worked fast.

So, that was what I stepped into. A world from the past, brought into the future by our own careless callousness. This was our planet now. I wondered if there was anyone left to share it with. Not that there would be any repopulating, not at my age. Someone would be around for that though, right?

I was wondering about such things when I heard a report. It was loud, especially in a world with no freeways. Then I felt the pain spread through my chest, the blood oozing down my chest. I looked over my shoulder, to see the twenty something that ended my life.

No one thought humans would stay the same after we ended the world.

#author #Awethors #shortsotry