the end of all things

1.
I remember my mom telling me stories that her parents told her they had heard about the beginning of the Eternal Dark, all those years ago.  She told me that on the morning the sun never came, mothers held their sons and daughters a little closer while fathers by the hundreds of thousands slowly walked outside voicing various half-hearted excuses only to fall to their knees feet from the thresholds of their homes, begging the gods for answers and when none came, torn apart by despair, the fathers of the world, killed themselves en mass as their hope as well as their crops died.  The crops were obliterated but I don’t think the farmers were the most affected. No…it wasn’t the farmers, it was the children.
It didn’t take long after the darkness hit for each religion to blame everyone else for the darkness, each in their own eyes standing pure and blameless.  Everyone said that it was the sign of a wrathful god for the sun to be taken so suddenly but no one could agree which god was so pissed at humanity.  Everyone thought that the sun would come back after all the other religions were purged; the guilty forced to pay for their crimes.  So everyone embraced the obvious solution and started killing each other.  It was World War III.  It was the Crusades all over again except it wasn’t the Christians versus the Muslims while both beat on the Jews, it was everyone against everyone fighting for what they believed was salvation from the accursed darkness.  Land had nothing to do with this war, only infidel deaths.  Jerusalem was destroyed within a week of the start of this war, not saved for the end as in the past.  To this day, that terrible war is still called Armageddon and is still thought of as the end of all things to come.
Weeks after Armageddon ended and the earth breathed a collective sigh of relief, the Sickness arrived wiping out the adult population leaving millions of orphans to fend for themselves in the streets of the now empty cities.  Most of those orphans died in the first year.  Of those who survived, and to this day no child has seen their seventeenth birthday.  By the end of the first year, the total population of Earth is believed to have fallen below two hundred thousand.  Earth had become a planet not run by politics and healthcare, but a planet that was ruled by one law: Darwinism.
After the first year, children began learning to take care of themselves in the constant darkness.  They learned to provide food, to fend off competing families, to have children before they were fifteen, and to create their own weapons.  All this, my ancestors learned to do without natural light or the aid of a parent.  They learned to survive and to function, not as a society, but as individuals.  Who’s to say they were better off before the dark?
Cancer victims are virtually nonexistent now because usually something else kills them before the cancer can…God knows that there’s plenty of other ways to die now, none of them pleasant.  In my mind, who’s to say that’s not a cure for cancer, numbers don’t lie and the number of cases has dropped to around 2 in the last thousand years.  What’s wrong with helping out the greater good by rooting out the sick and the weak?  Nowadays, healthcare is free because there is no system, if it’s broken you fix it, if you can’t, the answer is simple…you die.  So simple, no one else pays for your problems…in fact no one pays for anything anymore because there’s no standardized currency.  Everything you have, you either barter with someone who doesn’t need it, you steal it from someone who needs it more, or you find it and make damn sure no one sees you find it.  I believe the that term before the dark for that was that it’s a “dog eat dog” world though now that phrase holds a slightly different meaning.
From what I’m told, around the same time as the Sickness appeared, the wolves showed up.  Not the cute, small, fluffy wolves that people nearly wiped out generations ago and for some unfathomable reason the same people decided to help return.  No, these wolves are the size of a Volkswagen with teeth as long as your arms and an attitude to compliment them.  As far as the children can see, there are more wolves on the planet right now than there are people.  The only good thing about this is that whatever kills kids when they turn sixteen, kills the wolves when they’re about seven.  In the old days, parents used tell children that there were no monsters under their beds.  These days’ parents tell their children to get out of bed so they can check and see if it IS the monster everyone’s so scared of.
This is no nightmare.  This is our world.  This is the night in which we live.
2.
My name is Salem, I am thirteen years old.  I am pregnant with my first child.  The wolves took my husband Valen a few months ago, but these days, who can tell one day from the next, there is no sun.  I have nothing but the clothes on my back, some herbs and gauze for treating wounds, some dried meat and mushrooms to eat, a knife, a rifle from before the eternal dark, and exactly two hundred and sixty two rounds.  In the interest of saving ammunition, I only shoot at the really big wolves, otherwise I use my knife.
I need to find somewhere to sleep, to protect my child.  I could really care less what happens to me now, so long as that baby is taken care of and at least given a chance to start his or her life.  I know I only have about 3 years, maybe four if I somehow beat the system but I’m not holding out for anything.
I begin searching around the rambling abandoned buildings of this once great city, looking for something with a basement, a small room and no windows for me to sleep in for the night.  Most people nowadays like to sleep somewhere where they imagine they have an escape route in case a wolf is lucky enough to chance on their location.  The way I see it, the wolf can run faster than me no matter how many escape plans I set in place.  I like to be able to see the only place a wolf can come in.
After about an hour of searching, I find a room to my liking in the basement of a building that looked to be bombed out during Armageddon, though who can tell anymore…everything’s falling apart now.  I roll out my bedroll in the corner that seems driest the scent of mold heavy in my nostrils.  I check my gun, making sure the safety is off and I curl up under my threadbare blanket and try to catch at least a little bit of rest.  Sleep is rare for me now.
Not long after come the dreams.  No, not dreams, memories, my mother convulsing and foaming at the mouth like a fish out of water as bright purple patches erupt all over her stretching and tearing skin as each vein expands and explodes in her body.  This is what the sickness does when it takes you, it’s gruesome, it’s traumatizing but it happens, it’s just a fact of life now.  I remember the necklace that she made from a chipped infant wolf tooth stretching as the tendons bulge and rip from her skin.  I remember her whispering “I love you” through the agony before she convulsed one last time and went very still.  I remember Valen looking into my eyes as he kissed me for the first time.  I remember when we lay together for the first time, the fear, the uncertainty, but most of all the need, the trust, the love…in my world there is no room for fear, uncertainty, or any other kind of weakness for that matter.  Most vividly I remember the look of shock on his face as the wolf padded stealthily up behind him and with a single bite nearly decapitated him before it simply jerked it’s powerful neck just once and ripped his spinal chord out through his neck.  I remember how the wolf seemed to be grinning as it licked the blood…Valen’s blood from its lips.  I remember the moment I froze staring, the imaged forever burned in my memory.  I remember running as far as I could, as fast as I could, tears blurring my vision, fear and agony propelling my legs forward one after the other, god I’ve never run so far so fast.  Finally, I collapsed; my legs gave out and dropped me into a rain gutter, my legs, lungs and heart burned with the fire of all my pain, my rage, my loss, and my sorrow.  I felt the cold concrete of the gutter rip the skin from my knees and palms and the blood as it began to flow and trickle down the gutter; a crimson stream into the drain.  Yes, I felt all of this, but no, I didn’t care enough to get up and move to shelter.  I remember how I lay in that gutter for hours…or was it days, crying and shivering as a cold rain began to fall.   
A low, rumbling growl pulls me from my memories.  My eyes snap open as automatically I shoulder my rifle.  I scan my surroundings; the door is creaking slightly on it’s hinges, a gentle wind blows quietly through a blast hole in the wall above my head, all seems at peace with nothing out of place.  I must have imagined the growl, the barrel of the rifle lowers ever so slightly
Suddenly, the door explodes inwards with a crash of twisted metal and breaking wood as a huge wolf leaps through the doorway flying directly at my throat.  I snap my rifle back up to my shoulder and squeeze off three shots at the chest of the giant creature, I hope to God or whoever’s watching that at least two of them hit.  All too quickly he’s covered the expanse of the room and is too close for the rifle to be any use, so I pull my knife knowing I have almost no hope of winning but ready to fight anyways for that one small chance, not for me but for my baby.  We circle around the room that has suddenly become too small for my liking, sizing each other up.  He’s huge even by the wolf’s gargantuan standards.  I can tell he’s hurting; blood is beginning to stain his normally molted grey coat a deep crimson, good; at least two shots hit, there is hope after all.  I keep thinking; even if he does succeed in killing me, he won’t live long enough to savor the kill.  Without warning, he leaps at me; I can’t believe how something so massive can be so graceful.  I dodge out of the way leaving my knife arm in the path of his throat.  At the last moment, I flick the blade and rapidly pull it towards me and am rewarded with a huge burst of canine blood drenching my arm and torso.  Thinking that I’m fast enough to dodge his raking claws I continue to move sideways as he lands.  Obviously I’m wrong.  I feel his giant claws tear across the left side of my chest, sword strokes that somehow stop within millimeters of my heart and lung.  Human blood begins to mingle with wolf blood as it drips and pools on the floor of the room making it slippery and giving the air a strong metallic scent that stings my nostrils.  The room swims before my eyes.  This can’t be the end, not now, not before my child is born.  Sensing an easy kill the wolf begins slowly, leisurely stalking towards me, he sees my weakness but also knows I can still be dangerous.  I know I probably won’t live through the night but I’ll make for damn sure that I take this fucking oversized dog’s hide as a blanket into that blackness they call the afterlife.  I stand there for a moment looking desperate, pretending to be more hurt and scared than I really am…no, I’m not scared.  I’m cold, detached; all I can see is exactly what I have to do, not what I’m feeling.  The Wolf senses weakness and moves faster, more eager.  At the last moment I dive off to the side, just as the wolf leaps forward.  I rotate in midair as I leap and drive my knife as far as I can into the wolf’s heart.  I feel the blade sinking deeper and ribs separating as I twist my knife until I feel the final beats of his heart resonating through the cold steel tip of my blade.  Everything stops.  Finally after what feels like an eternity, the wolf falls heavily on top of the knife…and on top of my arm.  I feel the bones snap with a sickening crunch as the weight forces my arm down onto a rock.  I feel the jagged edge of my bone against the thin flesh of my arm.
I spend the better part of an hour negotiating my arm out from under the wolf’s lifeless corpse, nearly passing out from the waves of vertigo and agony pulsing through me.  Having finished this, I begin to examine the wound on my chest.  It’s not as bad as I thought it was…not mortal at least, but I can still see muscle through the torn skin of my breast.  No, the chest wound isn’t mortal; the broken arm is what I’m worried about.  Without that arm I’m virtually helpless.  Nothing screams “FREE MEAL!!” louder to a wolf than a human with a broken limb.
I quickly treat my chest wound with herbs and bandages, trying to the stem the steady pulsing flow of blood.  Goddamn that hurts.  Pain is good.  If it stops hurting then I really have to worry.  Having taken care of my chest wound, I set about binding my broken arm.  The pain gets so bad I have to stop for a few minutes to let the spots clear my vision.  I finally get the arm bound though I doubt it will ever work the same again.  I start at the fallen behemoth before me in wonder.  Even in death, he has a certain terrifying beauty about him and despite the blood congealing and matting his fur a certain serenity and peace emanates from him.  Though I may hate what he did to me and what he could have done to my baby, though he may have been my enemy in life, in death he is my brother.  I let him pass with honor and beg his spirit safe passage through the night.
I begin skinning him so at least some good can come out of the encounter.  It takes me about three hours to remove the pelt, treat it and roll it.  Even separated from the body the pelt is magnificent; flawless save for the wounds from my bullets and my knife.  I remove each huge claw and the teeth to make whatever tools I might need; even the smallest tooth is at least the length of my hand.  I begin cutting the remaining carcass into pieces and taking all the meat I can carry before I drag all the remaining pieces outside the door to appease any other passing canines…an offering.
I curl up back in my small corner of the room the only place on the floor clear of blood and drift to sleep…this time the memories don’t come.
An hour later, it hits me; a crippling tightness in my stomach forcing me to double up.  It lasts a few minutes before relaxing.  God that hurt…was it something I ate?  I hope it isn’t an infection growing from the wounds.
“It’s just a cramp,” I tell myself, “it’s just a cramp.”
I roll over and try to fall asleep again.  Half an hour later it comes again…oh my God, it’s the baby.  Not now, not here, it’s too soon.  Why didn’t I notice the water break?  I must have mistaken it for blood while I was skinning the wolf, God knows I was practically swimming in blood it would have been so easy to miss.  It comes again but this time it doesn’t fully go away, it only fluctuates, pulsing.  I writhe on the floor in agony as it builds still more, biting back the screams and closing my eyes against the tears.
THE AGONY WON’T STOP. MY GOD PLEASE LET IT END!
The pain continues for what feels like an eternity, building up, easing slightly, never quite leaving.  I have to keep biting down on one of the wolf teeth to keep myself from biting my tongue off in one of the spasms.  The pain becomes more excruciating than anything I’ve ever experienced.  Suddenly I feel an explosion between my thighs so extreme that I nearly black out.  I can’t pass out now, I need to stay coherent or else the baby will die.  The pain in my stomach begins to lessen, but the searing pain between my thighs continues to grow, my hips feel like they’re going to explode.  I lean forward to see how the baby is coming and am rewarded with the sight of a squirming head and a loud mewing cry.
I smile through the excruciating pain and reach down to support the baby’s neck as it slowly pushes it’s way out.  The pain nearly sends me over the edge into blackness as the baby’s shoulders come out.  I blink back tears and force myself to keep my eyes open.  After what seems like an eternity, the baby’s feet finally emerge and the pain begins very slowly to recede, replaced by a soreness that fills my entire body and a sense of elation and happiness…I did it.  I smile contentedly, it’s a girl.  As I hold my daughter for the first time, I’m filled with a sense of peace and hope for this next generation, as well as a sadness knowing that her life will be much the same as mine.  I’ll name her Serene after my mother, a calm spot in the chaos and anarchy this world has become.  I tenderly guide her to my breast.  As she begins to suckle greedily, I offer a prayer of safety to whatever god may be there and listening at this, the happiest moment of my life.  Then mercifully and frighteningly everything goes black.
3.
Everything’s so much more important now; I’m no longer just taking care of myself, I also have to keep Serene alive.  Once I can pass her on to a family home, I could really care less what happens to me.
Family homes are interesting things; they are the only service that people share with other people.  Usually when people have children, they are nearing the ends of their lives.  When happens to their infant children once the sickness takes them?  Responsible parents drop their children into a family home before they’re taken so their children can live on in a safe environment after they are gone.
I found my way to a family home shortly after my mother died, I don’t want my daughter to have to fight through the streets to find a safe place for herself to grow up, only to starve to death while searching.  I want people to protect her long after I’ve passed from this world.  I will find a home for Serene if I have to do it with my dying breath.  I don’t even know where to start looking.
I’m scared, but I know I have to do this.
I can’t fail…
4.
I’ve been looking for a place for my daughter for almost a year now with no luck.  There have been close calls, raised hopes, and narrow misses, but no success yet.  I keep searching for those walls fashioned from heaps of recycled concrete, razor wire, and whatever else they could find that could keep the wolves away.  Any kind of fortification or permanence in a dwelling used to symbolize a family home, now every time I find something like that, I find a family jealously guarding their FIEFDOM, whatever that means.  My time is running out, I need to find a place for Serene.
Serene has grown up into the most beautiful toddler I have ever seen and it brings tears to my eyes to realize that I have to give her away to save her life before I end mine.  Every time I wake her up in the morning the look of utter trust, hope, and love in her eyes floors me.  I almost cry every time she tells me “I love you mama.”  I need to find her a place where she can be safe while she grows up so that when she’s older, maybe she can make a difference for what’s left of humankind, unlike her worthless, self-centered mother.
I faintly remember walking these streets before I found my home, but I can’t remember where that home is.  God it feels like that was another life.  We’ve been walking for a few hours today, since morning I think.  I look to the dark sky with some hope, realizing it’s not as black as it used to be, it’s more of a very, very dark grey like charcoal, which for a planet that hasn’t seen sunlight or plants in over a thousand years, is a VERY BIG DEAL.  We stop for an early meal as a cool breeze carries the faint scent of water to me.  I wrap myself and Serene in the wolf I took the night she was born, to fend off the chill breeze and pull some stale salted meat from my makeshift pack and offer it to Serene.  She takes it and begins eating slowly, savoring every bite because neither of us know when we’ll get another bite.  Off in the distance I hear a child’s laugh and another child’s cry.  Hope fills me as I pick up Serene, twelve-foot wolf pelt and all, and I begin sprinting towards the sound, hope giving my legs wings and propelling me faster.
Off in the distance I see a makeshift concrete wall topped with coiled barbed wire, relief fills me as I recognize the place where I lived for years.  I shout for someone to open the gate as I run forward, tears of hope and joy flowing freely, I even forget the pain that hasn’t left my arm since before Serene was born.
Suddenly, something massive, furry, and grey crashes into me.  It feels like I’ve been taken out by a freight train.  Serene flies out of my arms, and I instinctively roll to my feet, drawing my knife in a single fluid motion.  I turn around to face the wolf, consumed by rage and hate for the thing that’s jeopardizing Serene’s safety.  The wolf and I leap at each other simultaneously.  I slash my knife across it’s throat and stab it repeatedly in it’s muscular chest.  The wolf sinks it’s teeth into my left shoulder nearly ripping the arm clean off.  I stab it again and again letting all my rage and hate pour into the beast through each strike.  I barely notice that the wolf and I are covered in more blood than I can even comprehend.  My eyes barely register something dangling around the wolf’s neck.  All I hear is the sound of Serene crying, no screaming, in the background.  I do not notice the big adolescent boys and girls pouring out of the gate to see what’s happening.  With a yell of defiance, I pry the wolf’s mouth open with my knife and drive the blade through the roof of its mouth deep into its brain.  The wolf falls to the broken pavement in a pool of it’s own blood twitching slightly as it’s dying breath seeps out seeming almost like a whisper in the night. 
As the crowd disperses, I comfort Serene as best I can, she’s not badly hurt after her fall, only shaken, scared I barely even register that my left arm hangs limp by my side; the nerves severed.  I then begin taking care of the garish wound.  I take a while to stitch it back together, and realize that I can still move it slightly with great effort.  At least it wasn’t completely torn off.
Now that I’m not at risk of bleeding to death and my daughter isn’t laying alone and dying in the streets, I can begin to take what I need from the wolf.  I begin skinning it by making a cut from its chin down its abdomen to it’s groin…well I try to at least but midway down the throat my blade catches on something.  Curious, I bend down to look closer; it’s an infant wolf tooth on a rawhide string…just like the one my mother used to wear.  I yank the thin piece of rawhide from the neck of the fallen wolf and look closer at the tooth; it has the exact same chipped tooth as the one my mother used to wear.  Then it hits me like a ton of bricks; the plague that kills people when they’re sixteen doesn’t actually kill them, it CHANGES them.  The wolves didn’t just come after the darkness, Armageddon, and the plague, they evolved…it wasn’t a plague it was Darwin forcing humanity to change.  Humanity has become obsolete so it’s adapted to the condition of the world.
The wolves don’t kill us out of simple primal hunger or anger, they kill us out of shame so that their children will never know what they had become, so they would never have to experience eating their own kin just to survive.
Then it hits me; I just killed my mother.  Her body may have changed, along with her mind, but she was still my mother.  Oh god what have I done?  I clutch the tooth to my chest as the tears begin to fall.  “I can’t do this,” I tell myself, falling to my knees sobbing uncontrollably.
Eventually I stand up dry eyed and walk over to Serene.  I see the hope in her eyes as I tell her that she’s going home.  I take her hand and lead her to the gate, to her new life; a life that I hope is better than mine was.  I send her in to live with the other children.  I give the people there everything I have, except a wolf claw so my daughter will be able to fend for herself when the time comes for her to set out on her own road through life.
I kiss my daughter goodbye, the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do in my life.  “See you soon,” I whisper and walk out the gate.  I walk far enough so that the people at the family home won’t find me.  I will not wait to become one of those things, I will not turn into a monster that one day will hurt my daughter; the only thing I have left in this world.  There’s only one way to do it, I look down to the claw in my hand.  Slowly, I raise it high above my breast.  I close my eyes and remember those I’ve loved: my mother, Valen, Serene.  I feel the searing pain as the claw pierces my heart.  I love you Serene. 
Everything fades to white, the pain is gone, fading in through the white I see the tender face of my mother and the loving eyes of Valen, each takes a hand, helps me to my feet and leads me off into the sunset.
Blackness
5.
The Blackness is fading now, so everything’s a charcoal grey.  There’s no sun, but at least there’s hope for future generations.  I’m not sure if the sun is coming back or we’re developing night eyes like the damned wolves.
My name is Serene; I am a fourteen-year-old girl.  I am married to a boy named Hope, and I am pregnant with my first child.  I never knew my mother, but the people who raised me said that she was the bravest woman they had ever seen.  They told me that she had me when she was thirteen years old and gave everything she had to find a safe place for me to grow up.  The story of her fighting to bring me to my home is still legend at the home, passed down from generation to generation.  Now here I am, nearing the end of my life, pregnant, searching for a safe place for the baby to grow up.
Life runs in circles now; what happened to one generation will likely happen to the next.  There aren’t many variations in the life stories of my generation because we are all in the same situation with the same goal: to survive.  In the end, the quality of a person doesn’t depend on how unique their life story is in relation to the rest of the world, it depends on how they leave their legacy for those who follow.
I will die soon.  I know that but with this new life that grows within me, for once, I can look to the future with new hope.