The Last Day

I sighed in exhaustion and frustration as my search continued in vain. I was looking for the one man who could tell me what had happened. He had been there when the trouble had first started, seen it all happen and now he was the only one of them left alive, or so I'd been told.
It had been a few months before, as riots and destruction had raged on, that a strange woman had come to me, telling me of a wise old man who would have the answers and solutions to the mounting problems affecting the whole country. I had listened open-mouthed as she explained that it hadn't always been this way and that, in my unique position of command, I was the only hope remaining. She described in a disappointingly vague fashion the location of the man I should seek and, with no reason not to, I had set off.

I was close to giving up, and returning to my post as military chief, when the full moon's light shone on a snowy owl as it flew out from its hidden treetop perch across the trail. As I turned to watch the owl soar off into the black sky, I finally saw the clearing that I had been looking for ahead. The aged man I had been trying to find for so long sat there, cross-legged on the soft ground behind a blazing bonfire, the smoke shrouding him in shadow as it rose into the night.
"Why has this happened?" I asked when I reached him, knowing he was the one person who might know the answer. Just as I began to give up hope of a response, he opened his parched mouth to speak in a tired, croaky voice. He told me his story of the day that everything went wrong.


As a new dawn broke over the wakening city, sweet and merry birdsong coming from tall verdant trees went unheard as scorching fires sprang up in bustling office buildings all over town. A sudden power surge had caused the aging wiring to critically overheat and the resulting energy had been enough to set light to the kindling that were reams of battered papers and files which filled the tower blocks. The raging torrent of flames spread unbridled between disused warehouses and tall skyscrapers. Workers were trapped, screaming in futile, as the world burned around them. A young student working on the sixth floor of one such building leant out of a window, waving his arms in desperation, his shrieks of fear enough to invoke pure terror into anyone who heard them. As the flames licked his ankles and melted the cheap windowsill he leant on, he was forced to jump to a crushing and gruesome end as an unidentifiable body on the warm concrete pavement.

The city's pioneering and world-famous transport network, the pod system, was breached in a matter of minutes. The ease of use and speed were key features that had resulted in its lasting popularity and as such it had become the only way anyone ever travelled. The pods travelled fast beneath the ground like termites scurrying within their mound, taking people across the city in comfort and without being crushed in the tidal wave of commuters. Now though, as fire-alarms blared and blasted out their shrill and piercing sirens, the entire network was forced to be abandoned as billowing grey smoke filled the pods and suffocated the trapped but still yelling victims. The roaring furnace melted cables and cremated those who couldn’t join the crowd bursting through the wide, glass doors into the brilliant morning sunlight.

The fire brigade, who had been alerted by the sirens, were reliant on the pods to traverse across the city so were unable to reach the blaze by their normal means. They were forced to resort to the ancient fuel-powered trucks that they still kept in the seldom visited museum section of the station. The roads left in the city were in general disuse and littered with potholes every few metres. Mounting piles of abandoned junk; the usual broken white goods and squashed tyres, interspersed with sprawling brambles and nettles, slowed the fire brigade down even more, forcing them on diversions into the more pedestrianised areas. No one had felt the need to spend money on their maintenance or replacement, cars weren't used any more so it didn’t matter and anyway people had got used to averting their gaze from anything they didn’t like, or that didn’t look perfect in their city. Maybe, of course, it was just the effects of the pills that stopped them seeing what the government didn’t want them to see.

The vehicles they had taken were of a sort that sent exhaust fumes from the engine out into the city’s clean and purified air. The dense black smoke gushing from the rusting metal tubes in the antique machines caused alarm to passers-by and it took no time at all for the coughing and choking to begin. In a sterile and sanitized world, their bodies had been protected from unwanted gases and over generations they had become unaccustomed to the emissions from these old contraptions and with their bodies full of so many other chemicals, they reacted in the worst possible way and… 


"But what about the smoke from the fires?"

"Don't interrupt!" The wizened old man said in an authoritative tone, but he answered anyway as if he had always meant to.


Fires, of course, were an unavoidable part of life but they had developed a system of pills with which to counteract and minimise the effects of the smoke so they came to no severe harm as long as the concentration wasn’t too great. The exhaust fumes meanwhile, especially from such an aged and unused engine, were something else altogether and the people’s bodies were defenceless, left to succumb to the noxious gases.

With trucks rushing all through the city, it wasn't long before streams of choking people flooded into the hospitals complaining at their sudden lack of respiratory function. They crowded the sleek foyers and accosted the bewildered receptionists sitting in their comfortable black hover-chairs. It didn’t take long for them to give up and find their doctors themselves and soon processions of people bustled down tight corridors with worn carpets and paintings of flowers hanging askew.

The shocked medical professionals, sitting behind their sparkling white desks, were at a loss and could do nothing but hand out more and more packets of drugs that the angry mob demanded, seemingly with little regard to the effectiveness of the tablets being prescribed. Naturally, it took only a few hours of this unprecedented mayhem for the boxes of pills to empty and run out. All of a sudden, when people reached the desk they were told to leave, there was nothing left to give.

The coughing and spluttering crowds, believing they were dying, went to extraordinary lengths to find the precious white pills they craved so much. Fights broke out over the tablets already distributed across the city, even the closest of friends fought each other for them. One desperate man, in his frustration, launched a brick through a shop window, the glass shattering into a million tiny crystals that reflected the dazzling sunlight. Shouts of panic spread as some people tried to flee whilst others continued the battles for pills. It didn't take long for full scale riots to erupt. The depraved violence spread fast as fear and rage blended, but it couldn’t last for long without a scapegoat to vent anger at and maintain the crowd’s passion and raw ferocity. The authorities filled the position perfectly; the power surge, the fire, the exhausts, the lack of drugs, it all came down to them. The blame lay with the government and the riots soon developed from more than just a desperate search for medication to a protest at the system they felt was letting them down in such a bad way.

Sounds of wrenching metal and smashing glass tore across the city, the shouts of fear and rage mixed with the endless coughs. Those unaffected by the exhausts joined in the attack as the news there were no more drugs spread. All the smart and official government buildings became targets to the massive crowds as they swarmed like angry flies, hunting out victims and revenge. All the while fires continued burning, trapping those who had already been working and forcing those who hadn’t onto the streets and into the confusion and uproar; it became the only place to go.

The government knew of the devastation and reacted, for once, without hesitation. They did the only thing they believed they could - they shut it down and ended it all.

Countless scores died that day as the masses raged and crushed and destroyed. Fury spilt over and the fighting and exertion became too much for their already weakened lungs and drug-dependent bodies. The city died that day. Not everyone lost their lives but once the government shuts a city down it's over. It didn't take long to crumble into disrepair and ruin. The system’s flaws emerged with untold damage that soon began to spread further.

"It only took a day," said the old man, his weariness showing in his cracking voice, "just one day to destroy so much, a day when everything went wrong."

I turned away thinking about what he'd said, vowing to myself to pass on the story and try to fix the devastation moving across the country. It suddenly occurred to me there was a burning question left unanswered,
"Who was the woman who came to me?" I asked.
"She's my daughter, unfortunately she doesn't have your power or connections, that's why we needed you; you're our last chance." The old man spoke his last words in a gentle and reassuring tone. As I thanked him and began to walk away, the snowy owl returned from its hunt with its success hanging limply in its beak. I knew that it would be up to me. I would have to tell everyone how everything had gone wrong and where the blame lay. I could do it, make it better, I was the only hope and yet I had a determination to make it happen.



Word Count: 1690