By Haley M. Forté

In the beginning, she begged for silence amongst the chaos of the end.

When the world stopped, time began to move quickly. Charlie hadn’t considered that once humanity could no longer keep the wheel turning, that Earth would continue to spin, just on its own accord for the first time in centuries. In reality, the spokes were slowed by the progress of humanity, and once the numbers began to trickle down like rain water off a roof, true momentum had been restored.

The sickness spread quickly, the fever washing over the world like a red tide in spring and summer. Hospitals became overrun, cemeteries expanded the best they could, and like leaves in winter, humankind began to die. In the absence of man, nature regained Her footing. Flora flourished, skies cleared, and the sea returned to its unbounded glory. Marine life, thought to be long lost, returned to the shallows, breached the waves, and amongst the dwindling land of man, the ocean regained its sovereignty.

She hadn’t been alone at the start. There had been Elijah, her loving husband, then Carter and Shea, colleagues, and trusted friends. Traveling together, they had fought back against the sickness in the only ways they knew how. Shea and Carter were both doctors of the old world, Charlie a botanist, and Elijah, a marine biologist, one who specialized in the ways of whales. Elijah’s love for the creatures had been a reason Charlie had fallen in love with him. His passion had been infectious and the others shared her sentiments. They shared knowledge as they wandered, healing wounds, eating safe plants, and attempting to understand the emerging world through the eyes of their fellow scientists.

There had been violence in their path, others who were unconcerned with learning to adapt, and only wished to take and destroy that of which they didn’t understand. Bloodshed had become inevitable in the harrowing landscape similar to the wars of the past and in a sense, humanity hadn’t changed at all in the new world. There just no longer was an excuse not to fall into their intemperate nature. Cultures died, democracies crumbled, and amongst it all, survivors wandered, slowly becoming far and few between.

However, like everything else, nothing in the new world lasted forever. One by one Charlie’s family had fallen to the world. Their lights snuffed out just as the grid had blinked out alongside them, damning her days to darkness. She had lost everyone, each death causing the pressure to increase upon her shoulders as she carried their lives with her like barnacles on the scarred skin of a humpback, each one more painful than the previous. Shea had died last, an infection neither of them could have prevented after a tumble through a stained-glass window, and after two weeks of fever and pallid skin, Charlie was alone, lost without her pod.

They had never avoided it, the truth of every day. Elijah had been the reasonable one. “There will come a day when the fever catches up to us,” he had said. “We can’t outrun it forever.”

He had been right.

Charlie knew it was inevitable and yet, the day she crafted her contingency plan in secret, her heart had never felt heavier. She knew which plants to use, which ones to cause her heart to stop after another slowed her breathing. A touch of spring water here, and a vibrant red berry there, and her final act of self-preservation dripped into a glass vial. The same vial that lay in her pocket as she stood at the base of the mountain.

No tears pricked her eyes as she began her climb. Elijah had always wanted to bring her here, to the place where he loved to watch the whales. The wilds were vast in size, but she had never felt smaller than in the time she spent climbing over fallen trees and tangled roots. The silence of the world followed her as she hiked. Shadows moved alongside her in the dark of the forest. It was unknown whether the lingering shapes were animals or ghosts of her past waiting and watching her final ascent. Memories of the past moved through her as the cliff came into view.

She imagined she could hear them.

“Only the males sing,” Charlie whispered, approaching the sea-spray-filled edge. “Only the males sing, but they all know the songs.” Visions of humpbacks littered her mind, their flukes breaking through rough surf in the Puget Sound from May to October. She thought of those times as she collapsed against a lone boulder overlooking the water. She also thought of the rising numbers on the television, the ever-present sounds of sirens, and the way Elijah’s voice had sounded as he lay dying under the cover of a rusted awning three years prior.

Clouds rolled over ahead, dark gray in color, as a chill spread through the misty air. Everyone talked about how the world would end, but nobody ever asked what would happen to those who remained after. Nobody ever thought of what came after. Carter had at first, but he had died before anyone had ever considered themself in the post of anything.

“When did it become after?” Charlie whispered to herself as she dug for the vial in her coat. A single breath left her as she lifted the vial to her mouth and pulled the stopper with her teeth. Keeping her eyes on the sea, she poured the maple-colored elixir down her throat, her earlier hesitation nonexistent. The vial almost felt heavier in her hand as she lowered it from her lips, watching as the last drop of liquid dripped down the side like setting amber. At first, she felt nothing, and on that cliffside, even the crashing of the waves was swallowed by the silence that wrapped around her, suffocating, and demanding as she became Atlas anew.

The rain had begun, heavy and frigid, and Charlie could not tell where the saltiness on her tongue originated. Whether it blew in from the sea below or finally dripped from her soaked lashes as tears returned to her. Everything was still and silent. Everything was over, and she was done.

Smiling slowly, she lifted her face to the sky, letting Mother Nature wash her once more of her sins as warmth began to spread in her chest and down her limbs as they grew heavier with each passing second. Seabirds flew above as their calls breached the glass cage that she had built around herself. Charlie let herself be swept up in their songs as ice fought with fire, both life and death grappling for a handhold on her soul. It was a battle, but she had no more fight left in her, not after Shea, Carter, or Elijah. Not after Seattle or Olympia, or any other city that had fallen, taking blood and breath along with it. Tokens of her dead friends clinked together in the torn pockets of her rucksack, aching to be reunited with their owners. Though, Charlie knew the truth, knew what had become of them and what she vowed she would never allow for herself. The world had taken too much, and free will was as rare as another warm body willing to take her out of the cold.

Her fingers became numb as the poison settled in her bloodstream, its fire burning through the frozen wasteland that cracked in her chest. Seven hundred and thirty-three days were enough. “Let us sing the songs of whales searching for the lost,” she whispered, her eyes locked onto the horizon. More tears flowed down her cheeks as the stone at her back dug in harder, adding pain to fire and ice.

She welcomed all three.

Death was winning in Her fight against Her sister as Charlie’s breaths grew shallow and labored, the poison reaching her heart quicker than she had anticipated. She could hear them, their voices, as they called out to her in an attempt to get her attention. They were muddled against the rain as they slowly morphed into a single call, one filled with anxiety and relief.

“Thank God!” the voice called, sounding close for someone so far away. “I saw the tracks from a few miles back and thought you would be gone by the time I hiked up here.” The voice moved closer. Turning her head, a figure moved into Charlie’s field of vision, blurry then clear, as a man approached her, a smile on his face as he gazed at the woman. “I really thought I was the only one left,” he said, exhaling as he stepped closer, only to pause as he took in what rested in her limp palm.

Seven hundred and thirty-three days, and she was no longer alone. Looking up at his face as it shifted from relief to sorrow, she allowed herself one last smile. He was human, and by God, he was beautiful.

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Haley M. Forté loves cats and hates hot weather. She holds an MFA in Creative Writing and has been drafting stories since the age of fifteen. Her work can be found on her website and in Something Or Other Publishing’s Winter 2022 anthology. When she’s not writing, she is playing apocalyptic video games, drinking tea, and learning all she can about the universe.