Sheol

“I do not know with what weapons World War III will be fought, but World War IV will

                           be fought with sticks and stones.” – Albert Einstein 

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        IL-29, IL-31, KOMPSAT-4, and SES-15 hung around the earth like motionless electrons. It had been 255.602 sidereal days since the planet became a scorched wasteland, her green continents rotted to a rusted brown. New York City, Delhi, Beijing, and every other city turned from Metropolis to colossal silent tombs. All air traffic halted, the lucky few interring themselves in the Atlantic after an interminable avoidance of all land, for there was nowhere that escaped the zone. At last, the humans played their hands to end the Third World War! 

        IL-29, brother, have the humans come out of that building? SES-15 asked. Nothing yet. IL-29 replied, keeping its high-resolution camera scoped in on the ruined apartment. Rubble adorned the grounds, a dead crow lay sprawled out on top like a king of the smithereens. The air was still. 

        Slowly, two world beaten travelers emerged, creeping across the Earth which was theirs alone. The last two humans alive. However, their time was running short. They were malnourished, unshaven, desperate men. They were no longer people, no longer doctors or salesmen. They were Homo sapiens. ‍

        Ah, here they are now, said IL-29. 

        They still are alive, then? KOMPSAT-4 questioned. Ever since KOMPSAT-4 spotted them two weeks ago, they developed a sort of curiosity about these survivors; like a group of biologists watching bacteria under a microscope, the last living satellites of the world had come to watch the extinction of their mother race. 

        What are they doing, then? SES-15 asked. 

        Walking. They’re tired. IL-29 replied, keeping its camera steady on them. They looked like drops of paint on a scratched, ruined canvas. 

        Suddenly, the human in front turned and pointed up toward the top of the rubble, and began climbing up the fallen chunks of concrete. The other joined quickly, feverishly, his spindly form tripping against the ruins as he scrambled up. 

        What the devil are they doing? IL-31 asked. 

        They’re seeking higher ground. IL-29 replied.

        The human who began climbing first had stopped just before reaching the top, and stretched out a desperate hand upward. At first, it seemed like only an innocent grasp for a handhold at the top of the destroyed ruins, but his thin hands found their true target instead. The dead crow. 

        He quickly sat on the top of a fallen stop sign near the apex of the debris and raised the carcass to his cracked lips. None of the satellites could see precisely what happened, but anyone could intuit that the man had begun to eat the crow. 

        The other man had climbed up now. He said something, a desperate gesture toward the crow. Surely we aren’t reduced to eating that, the man may have said. Or, he may have asked for a bite. 

        The man with the crow took his food and appeared to rip off a piece of it. A wing, perhaps? The other man held out his cupped hands like a penitent receiving the eucharist. Time lay still for a moment. And then time moved like a bullet train. 

        The man with the crow swiftly arced his giving hand toward his mouth, eating the wing of the crow. The man with no crow turned his begging hands into talons, leaping with such ferocity that they both came tumbling off the debris. The stop sign came sliding off. 

        They hit the ground hard, and the man with the crow was on top of the other man, his hands around his throat, both of their faces red, their tired hearts spilling blood from the ventricle to vein to muscle for one last fight. The man with no crow hooked the man with the crow in his left temple with a heavy fist. 

        The man with no crow painfully rose, his right leg refusing to take any weight. The man with the crow was sprawled on the ground, both of his hands over his face. Perhaps he was weeping. Perhaps he was ashamed. 

        The man with no crow was back upon him now. He held a tree branch with both hands like a firefighter carrying an ax. The man with no crow raised it above his head, almost falling over backward because of the weight, and brought it down. It was over quickly. 

        Cain had murdered Abel once again. Or, maybe, Abel had gotten his revenge at last. Just then, a fierce wind picked up and dropped a cruel piece of debris from the building onto the survivor’s head. He fell like a marionette whose puppeteer let go of the strings. His victory was quelled. ‍

        And so it ends, IL-29 said, shutting off his communication box. The satellites began to drift away, pulled by an invisible string into the infinite expanse of space. On April 4th, 2049, the last human died. And thus died the Superbowl, the Libertarian party, the Stanford Class of 2048, and Wall Street. The furthering of quantum mechanics has been halted, as has the North Carolinian William Faulkner book club, Whamageddon, Twitter threads, and Statue of Liberty boat tours. No one has bought Michael Jackson’s Thriller in eight months and never will again. The cannabis plants have all wilted, the Tequila fermentation tanks have all corroded, and every powder of Methamphetamine, Diacetylmorphine, and Fentanyl Citrate will become one with the earth. The Ka’ba is a shrapnel-like chunk lodged in the Al Kiswah Towers Hotel, another piece hit the Salam Gate. Others became a granite powder sprayed across the holy site, scraps landed in the Jabal Thabir. Another piece sits firmly in the balled fist of a six-year-old Salafi Muslim who nearly made it to the Musdalifah before collapsing. “Humanity” is a fourteen-page chapter in the Explorers Guide to the Milky Way, a thick book sold in the Triangulum Galaxy to curious Martians.