Work Text:
It had been a few years since the war. The purple fellow dragged his feet on the ground of the biggest city he had ever seen. This, of course, was before the war. Now he slouched between ruins, ducking behind a falling wall whenever a carnivore tried to chase him down. It may no longer be a war between the members of his own species, but he was still being hunted down by nature, one of the last not taken into the ground yet. He would sometimes come across site of battles, some big with piles upon piles of bodies, some small barely distinguishable from the rest of the ruins. With no one to tend to them, to freeze them in time, they were slowly being reclaimed. The wooden ones first, then clay and stone. Only cracked and fallen parts left on the surface. Some even fell underground, their cellars swallowing them whole, the canals artificially created slowly succumbing to time. In some cities he would find places nearly untouched by this process, but they, like him, were slowly dying. He didn’t have long.
In war, no one truly wins. This all sides knew, but all forgot in the heat and anger and hatred that was clouding their hearts and heads. The reason long forgotten, as time took its toll on memories and writing. Even the tales as old as time began to fade, telling was their only way to last. But that had long since faded away.
They killed each other, one more gruesome than the last, always inventing new ways to kill more at once, fast and faster until they killed most that had been alive. Whole areas left unpassable for life, lest one wants to endure the worst of deaths. Some derived ways of surviving the weapons, but just as quickly a new weapon was crafted. An end never in sight.
Until one day, in the middle of autumn when a certain fellow, barely old enough to fight, derived a way to end it all. It was not nice, would destroy them all, but make the suffering stop. A biological weapon, engineered to attack only one type of creature, so perfect it would always linger to rot out any re-emergence of this kind.
But through sheer luck some survived. None of them knew why, neither did they know why all others ceased life. The purple fellow was one of them, spared only to wander the streets of cities long unpopulated. He found solace in the little things he found along the way. A book here, a painting there, some ruins that gave a hint at what beautiful old building once stood there. It showed him that there was hope. Some things survived the test of time, if weathered.
Some days, he really needed this reassurance. Being alone was taking its toll, thoughts turning to poison waiting to be gulped up and acted upon. But still, the purple fellow persevered, going from city to city in his quest to find refuge, safe from nature itself. The world he knew now was far from the old days, but sometimes he thought it wasn’t that bad. The troubles of the olden times were gone, like a single grain of sand in the desert of time. Some days he did miss the noise and the people. He was so alone on those days.
Other days, he relished in the relative silence, listening to birds chirping and dogs barking at each other. Every so often he would see others, those who also survived the end. But those times were few and far between. And he always hid, in fear of what would happen if they saw him. They often were in small groups, three or four a pack, and sometimes armed with makeshift weaponry and ready to attack anything that moved. Others were alone and themselves hid at any sign of life around them.
In total he had seen around thirty of them. In the beginning he saw them often, the same faces in a few places before vanishing in another direction. But by now these encounters had lessened, maybe one every few months. Not that he had been able to keep track of time. It had started to lose all meaning. The only thing that mattered was getting away from all this. Maybe he could find somewhere, where there weren’t ruins taunting his survival and waiting for him to die underneath them. But he had been wandering for so long, that he was ever so close to just giving in to it. The only thing giving him a reason to continue was the promise of the sea, written on signs and markers. 300 Kilometres to the coast. 200 Kilometres to port. 150 Kilometres till the harbour city. 100 Kilometres till he could try to escape this retched blob of Land in the middle of the sea. Maybe he could find paradise off the shore? It was worth a try, he told himself.
Many moons later, he found himself in a city that used to house ships and freighters and yachts and boats. But they had mostly sprung a leak, slowly succumbing to the waterline. A few wooden boats were left, most of them too big to paddle alone. But one was small enough.
After days on the water, he had no more energy left. Paddling had been easy at first, but the lack of food was getting to him. In the cities it had been easy to eat. There were still lots of canned foods left that he could heat upon a fire. But on sea this was another story. If he was lucky he could catch a few fish, eating them raw was better than not eating. As luck would have it, he was not in salty waters. But still, his strength was slowly dwindling.
On his boat, he came to realise that he could no longer fight. His fate was sealed. He could draw it out a few more days, maybe a few weeks, but he wouldn’t make it a whole month. It was time to finally give up. So, on the brink of night, as the sun was at its reddest, he tipped the boat and with it gave himself to the sea.
Weeks later, people just like him, lost and afraid, would stumble upon his body, washed up on the shore, slowly beginning to rot away. They would pay him no more respect than the countless others that had washed up on the shore, killed by the perfect plague. They too had not much longer to live.