The Lightning struck its bolt exactly where it’d meant to–two feet to the left of the little boy with the very big destiny–and zapped the hell out of him. Then, the world went blinking mad, just as the Lightning had intended.
#
Apocalypses didn’t happen every day, but once they got started, they had this annoying habit of going about their business.
Those who exercised reasoning were the first to go, followed by fans of survival shows (they believed they understood the wilderness, having never left the confines of their paved-and-plastered twenty-fourth-floor apartments and most ended up eating the wrong type of mushroom in the first week). The hoarders did all right, at least for the first while. And the jerks? They made it all the way to the end, because nature loved adding a thorn to a rose bush. It turned out that at the end of the world, those CEOs who couldn’t convert a Word document into a PDF did just fine in a dog-eat-dog-eat-rat-eat-human society.
As you’ve probably guessed, the world went to absolute shite: war, famine, influencers… And now, all that remained was a desert wasteland, some withstanding concrete walls, and the kindling flame that had burned through humanity since the dawn of time: the insufferable need to keep carrying on despite all odds begging it not to.
This stubbornness struck the Lightning as intriguing. That’s why the Lightning and its fellow Natural Gods decided to set this whole apocalypse thing in motion–to see how far they could push humanity before it snapped like a Kit-Kat. The Gods called it divine justice. But, for it to be truly justified, they had to balance this test by giving one human a bit extra.
That human’s name was Dave. And yes, Dave was the small boy whom the Lightning decided to strike. Except now, he was an adult, lending some weight to the name “Dave” which doesn’t suit anyone under the age of twenty-eight. Dave had a destiny, but he didn’t know that just yet.
“And what the hell am I supposed to do with this junk?” Perdy said, sifting through the scrap littering her table.
Dave dug through the treasures and held up one indignantly. “This is worth eight rations alone. Muhammed paid me fourteen last week for the off-brand ones!”
Perdy seemed unimpressed. “Go back to Muhammed’s shop, then.”
Dave scowled. He and Perdy both knew Muhammed’s shop went up in flames two days ago after a group of raiders from the south decided to adjust ownership laws in the region. The poor man had lost his entire scraps business and most of his sanity. Dave couldn’t blame him. Without something to do, a man might as well lay out in the sun and waste away with the rest of the planet. “Fine,” Dave relented. “Four rations for the radio.”
“Three,” Perdy countered, “and two for the trowel. The rest is worthless.”
Dave sighed and shovelled the remaining bits back into his bag.
Perdy stopped his hand and picked up another piece. Her usually sharp face turned to something nearing softness, then skirted it by an inch. “And this… What?” she shot at Dave’s expression.
“Nothing,” he hastened to say, casting one last eye at the piece before Perdy could shove it under her workbench. The slightly battered white sign read, “Live, Laugh, Love” in sickeningly-sweet cursive. Dave tried not to feel any sentiment. Or feel anything at all, most days. Sometimes, people thought that if they kept some small piece of the world before, it might come back. Even people as hardened as Perdy the Junk Collector had their lapses into that fraught and dangerous territory called hope.
But Dave knew better. Because Dave was the reason the world ended. Not that anyone but his cat knew that. (And yes, most cats did survive the apocalypse, much to no one’s surprise).
Dave took the rest of his officially-confirmed-useless junk and headed home. Dave’s home, like most pre- and post-apocalyptic homes, consisted of four walls. In this case, the walls were made of corrugated metal and inexpert brickwork dug and cut by his own hands. Wood and its forefather, the tree, was as rare as a laugh these days.
His cat greeted him at the door, rubbing against his leg as he squeezed in, tossing his bag of junk in the corner.
“Hey, Pep. Miss me?” He dug out a rusted tin of tuna from his sole (and mostly bare) cupboard.
Pepper’s purrs turned avalanche-al as she dug into the rare meat. Dave sat cross-legged on the floor and watched her, content to spend the rest of his day sitting there, staring at nothing. That’s what people did in a world without television or books, or decent company. In the before times, they called it meditating. Dave called it “active decay”.
Dave enjoyed his mental wilting for all of two minutes before someone came crashing through his door, screaming wildly about the end of the world.
#
In the future, people speak of destiny in much the same way they did before plumbing: with awed whispers regarding umbrellas, cracks, and the superstitious crossing of arms in the air. (Incidentally, in this future, there is no plumbing: no showers, no toilets, and certainly no laundry machines. That’s why when you look around at a post-apocalyptic wasteland, everyone has a bit of dirt smudged on their face and, for some less-explicable reason, they wear a lot of netted clothing.)
Shadi (the woman who burst into Dave’s house raving about The End) wore all the required post-apocalyptic garb in excess: black leather cuffs, a spiked collar, smudged black eyeliner, netted leggings, and impractically tall, heeled boots–as if anyone could realistically walk around in those for any amount of time whilst sober. Dave only knew Shadi was sober because most everyone was–not out of some bout of shame or propriety, but because liquor was hard to come by, and the components to make it even were more difficult to find. (That’s not to say some people hadn’t made their best efforts, but you only drank that once you decided you’d had enough of your eyesight).
“How many times do I have to tell you, Shadi,” Dave said patiently, “the world already ended.”
Pepper gave the newcomer a yellow-eyed stare.
Shadi pushed back her black hair and collapsed on the ground next to Dave. “Oh, right. You should really get a lock for that door. Wanna play snakes and ladders?”
Dave sighed. “Go on, then.”
“How’d it go with Perdy?”
“Won’t starve for at least another week.”
“All sunshine and rainbows, then.”
Shadi and Dave were the same age. Both had been six when the world ended. For Shadi, that meant screaming adults running like mad through the streets whilst everything burned. For Dave, that meant he woke up on the ground, ears ringing and nose bleeding as a lightning storm cracked around him.
He’d been struck, or nearly struck, but didn’t realise it right away. Then he’d heard a voice in his head with the authority of a movie announcer saying, “In a world where things are about to get a whole lot worse…” But this voice buzzed through him like an electric current. “You’re humanity’s last hope, Dave,” it intoned authoritatively. “You can also destroy it if you’d like.”
And sure enough, six-year-old Dave had a thought. He thought that maybe the world ending wouldn’t be so bad. Because sometimes the world could be bad. That singular thought set the world alight. It caused earthquakes, monsoons, nuclear launches, and the end of Hollywood as we know it.
Since that day, Dave just tried to keep his head down (and avoid any unnecessary thoughts). And for the life of him, he couldn’t say whether he’d imagined that voice. Getting almost struck by lightning had probably knocked something loose in his brain.
Dave and Shadi were about halfway through their game when another figure burst through Dave’s door, panting and pushing back the few remaining strands of mousy brown hair clinging to the top of his head. “We’re all going to die!”
“You should really get a lock,” Shadi suggested and rolled the die. “Snake again?!”
Dave rubbed his face. “What is it, now, Tony?” Somehow, Dave had become everyone’s proverbial wall on which to throw their spaghetti. Oh, how he missed spaghetti.
“Rain’s coming,” Tony announced.
Dave and Shadi’s mouths dropped open. Rain? But they hadn’t seen rain in… well, since The End. Another strange phenomenon that science might’ve been able to answer. Unfortunately, the scientists were some of the first to be ousted from the New World Order–they being the people of reasoning we mentioned before. Facts tended to be depressing, and anyone could open their eyes and see the climate had changed and all the penguins were dead. No use studying what they couldn’t fix.
“How do you know?” Dave asked.
“The flowers told me.” Tony was the town gardener. In a world where plants were more precious than socks (also a hot commodity) a green-thumbed plant whisperer was the most prestigious career path someone could take in the after-times. Tony was also the town mayor, and in the before times, he’d been a professional pie-eating contestant.
“Ah,” Dave said.
Of the people who survived the apocalypse, most sat under three categories:
- The aforementioned jerks.
- Those you’d see at the supermarket wearing their pyjamas.
- And those too young when the world ended to know any better about how things were about to shake up.
Shadi was a kid. And though Dave didn’t know for certain, he had it on good authority that Tony used to exclusively wear nightclothes out in public.
Any kids born in the after-times automatically became jerks out of necessity. Dave stubbornly resisted both madness and jerkness and therefore became everyone’s go-to confidant. Except for Perdy, the Junk Collector. She was inscrutable. And annoyingly attractive. And not at all interested in him.
“Rain sounds nice,” Shadi said dreamily.
All their water came from dusty holes in the ground and tasted as good as it looked. Rain had stopped when the world ended, and over the following decade and a half, superstitions grew like tumbleweeds about what might happen if it ever returned. The last lightning Dave had ever seen was the bolt that turned everything upside down–then right-side up again, but stirred in all the wrong ways.
“Are you saying the flowers spoke to you?” Dave cautioned. Folk said it was only a matter of time before mutants came from the nuclear aftermath, but somehow, Dave doubted talking flowers would be the first to evolve.
Tony gave him a look. “You feeling all right, there, kid? Flowers don’t talk. It’s their stems. They grow different. I remember how it used to be.”
“So–what happens when it rains?” Dave wondered aloud, and no one answered.
Unfortunately for them, they wouldn’t have to wait long to find out.
#
The day had finally come for the Lightning to return. It and the other Natural Gods agreed the human race had run its trials and proved, once and for all, to fall below standard. Cats seemed all right, actually, and the Lightning decided to let them carry on. But the Lightning’s chosen one, who had begun the end and never explored his bestowed powers after that day, had one last chance to stop the new beginning and make his final plight for humanity.
The Lightning hadn’t looked forward to anything so much in years.
#
The storm came all at once like a nightmare–or like vomiting after eating a helping of fifteen-year-expired beans. It was about as pretty as that, too.
“Get inside!” Dave shouted over the wind.
“What, inside this tin can?” Shadi asked.
“Well, it’s better than being outside!”
“Is it?”
Dave threw up his hands. “Do what you want!”
“I told you the world was ending!” Shadi called brightly as Dave wrapped Pepper inside his coat and pushed through the mounting dust cloud toward Perdy’s shop.
He turned back and watched her and Tony dash for the mayor’s slightly more sturdy abode.
#
“I’m a little busy at the moment!” Perdy shouted, the sides of her shop rattling violently as she wrestled to board down the open windows. “All sales are final!”
“I’m not here to make a return!”
“Well, I’m not a charity shop, and I’m certainly not providing a safe space for everyone in town to hunker in and share their feelings.”
“Do you know what’s going to happen?” Dave asked in exasperation. “People need to hide!”
“They can do it where they won’t try filching my stuff.”
“Unbelievable.” Dave unzipped his jacket and Pepper popped her head out. “Will you protect her, at least?”
Perdy and Pepper shared a look. “Yeah, all right.”
“Great. At least you’re not a complete sociopath.”
“Well.”
Pepper leapt out of his jacket, the hair along her spine prickling as she sniffed her noisy surroundings. Heaps of bits and bobs from the before times littered the space in crates and boxes. Pepper found a neon pink bouncy ball and prodded it with a paw.
“Well, at least my cat will survive.”
“It’s just a storm,” Perdy dismissed, trying in vain to balance a nail over a loose board.
“Let me help.” Without waiting for her answer, Dave took the board and held it in position. “Waste of valuable wood if you ask me.” Perdy glanced at him, then picked up the hammer and tapped the nail into place. “You realise there hasn’t been a storm since…”
“Yeah,” she said. “Big woop. The world ended fifteen years ago. What’s the point?”
“Says the woman trying to protect her stuff over human lives.”
“You try being a successful businessperson at the end of the world and see how people like you. You either float or sink. That’s what my d–that’s what I’ve heard.”
Dave released the punctured board. “You could–”
A crack of lightning split the air, searing through each slatted space in the shop and casting an afterglow of prison bars. Pepper howled and dove for cover. Dave dashed for the door and looked out.
The sky had turned to a roiling mass of overcooked rat stew. Something wet splattered on Dave’s face. He reached up and wiped off the moisture, staring down at his hand. Rain.
A fork of light cracked the black atmosphere.
Dave felt emotions coming on and stifled them. “Is this what you want?” he shouted at the sky.
Thunder rolled like a barrel of skulls tumbling down a hill.
“All right, fine! You can come inside! Just–stop screaming like a madman,” Perdy called from the door, holding her whipping hair out of her face. “You’re starting to fit in with the rest of us a little too well!”
Dave turned back to her. “I’ve been meaning to mention this to someone for a while.”
Perdy raised her brows.
Dave dug a hand in the back of his hair. “So, erm, I’m the reason all of this happened.”
Perdy’s sharp face turned amused. “You prayed for rain a little too hard?”
“No, I mean all of this.” He gestured to their surroundings as the wind kicked over a few loose chairs and sent them flying into the beyond. Some of the less well-constructed shelters had already lost half their shingles.
“Great story, Dave. Want to come inside now?”
He shook his head. “I mean, I made the world end. When I was a boy. I got struck by lightning, and three seconds later, the apocalypse started.”
“Right, well, I’ll be in here if you need me…” She began pulling the door closed as another flash of lightning bolted across the sky and hit a makeshift radio tower. The whole thing ignited and crumbled.
Dave balled his hands into fists and stared at the Lightning. “What do you want from me? Why did you do this?”
The storm paused and turned to look at Dave–at least, that’s how he perceived the slightly darker masses within the low grey-green clouds: as huge, fierce eyes of infinite peril.
“Can I convince you to leave us alone?” he called.
The storm shook its head.
“I guess I’ll have to kill you, then.”
The thunder chuckled. Then it choked as Dave released fifteen years of pent-up angst. Because of this stupid storm, he’d lived in a shack in a deserted wasteland. He scraped a living off old trash. The girl he liked all but ignored him. His parents were dead. His cousins. His friends. Pretty much everyone he knew and liked from his former life. That left him and a bunch of insane people at the end of all things–no morals, and no real reason to continue with this life business except for those pesky instincts prodding them along.
Dave’s anger came out as a fiery tornado burning white hot. It seemed to do the trick.
But Dave was a human man standing against the forces of nature. And nature was eternal. The Lightning struck back–not at Dave, but at the nearby building with “Ye Old As Ass Shop”. The rusted building exploded.
Dave spun and ran for it, screaming. The white-and-black spotted shape of Pepper the cat sped past and out of sight, and he kept running. “Perdy!”
The storm gloated and turned its rage on the rest of the town. Old, long-disused car skeletons flew into the sides of buildings, crushing them and whoever was foolish enough to have hidden inside. Tony’s beautiful, sparse garden got buried under a sudden bout of eyeball-sized hail.
Dave skidded to a halt over the shrapnel of Perdy’s shop and dug through it without any care for his hands. He heard a moan over the wind and hobbled toward it. “Perdy!” He dragged aside a long sheet of metal and a tattooed arm shot up, something clenched tightly in its fist.
It was the “Live, Laugh, Love” sign, slightly more scarred than before.
Dave reached for the arm and pulled the rest of Perdy up.
She emerged, shaking and cursing, and still holding her precious sign. She pointed it at him like a gavel. “This is your fault!”
“I tried explaining that two minutes ago!”
“Well.” Her face twisted as she caught her breath. She looked him up and down. “I think I believe you, now.”
He gave a pathetic shrug. “Great.”
The Lightning, bored of its other murderous amusements, turned back to the chosen boy and crackled with ecstatic energy.
“That, or we’re all mad.”
She hesitated. “What does it want?”
“To kill us, I think.”
“Lovely.”
“How can I convince you to let us live?” Dave shouted at it.
It squeezed out another burble of thunder, less ominous than before, but still deafening.
“Sure, yeah, humanity sucks!” Dave shot back. “I get it! We kinda screwed you over. Made a right mess out of it. Cut down the trees! Melted the ice! Started a lot of wars…”
“Are you trying to save us, or get us killed faster?” Perdy hissed at his shoulder.
“Yeah, we’re not perfect!” Dave yelled, and felt the Lightning’s energy build up and up. His and Perdy’s hair stood on end, and he became very aware of all the metal they stood on. “We’re not perfect!” he repeated. “And neither are you!”
This gave the Lightning pause. The rest of the storm pulled back a minute to listen. The entity’s question came as a sprinkling mist of soft rain.
“You started fires! You gave us the idea for them! And electricity? And violence? You were the first violence we ever saw! And what about your pals, eh? The earthquakes, the hurricanes, the tornadoes and flooding? We killed millions–but how many have you killed? You started all this mess–and now you’re blaming it on us! You should’ve been a better influence!”
The Lightning recoiled and considered.
“And also!” Perdy stepped forward and held up the little sign in her hand. “This!” she shook it to make her point.
Dave stared at her but she ignored him.
“In case you dummies can’t read,” Perdy yelled, “it says ‘Live, Laugh, Love’!”
“Maybe insulting them isn’t the best…” Dave started to murmur.
The storm shook, but it felt like the sort of shake one gives when they’re contemplating an existential question.
“Sure, people are shit sometimes,” Perdy said, “but we’re also pretty great! Like Dave, here. He’s always helping out. He threw himself at this storm so everyone else could get away. That’s a good guy in my books!”
Dave blushed. “Er, thanks.”
“Shut up. I’m talking to the sky.”
“Right.”
“Live, laugh, love!” Perdy repeated. “Your proof that humanity’s still got some promise.”
The Natural Gods, the harbingers of destruction, dipped their metaphorical heads together and murmured amongst themselves.
“How long do you think this’ll take?” Perdy whispered.
Dave was at a loss for words.
The storm turned back to them and let out a mighty, electric roar that echoed over the heavens.
And then, quite rapidly, the black clouds withdrew, sucking back the torrential wind. The Lightning flipped them one last, self-righteous fork, then vanished. The sky paled to a pleasant, saturated grey.
The first few cheerful raindrops fell onto the parched earth and melted into the dust.
Dave stood stunned for a few minutes before someone clapped him on the shoulder. It was Perdy. She was grinning. “That went well.” She looked down at the white-washed sign in her hand, then around at her destroyed shop. “I guess I know what we’ll be doing for the next month.”
“We?” Dave perked up. He still wasn’t sure he’d processed everything that had happened in the last five minutes, but he was just as ready to move on.
“A chance to rebuild, as they say.”
“I didn’t mark you for an optimist.”
Perdy sighed and bent down, snapping her fingers. “You are just a dumb boy.” Pepper popped her whiskered face from behind a nearby building and sprinted toward Perdy.
“Very true,” Dave agreed with a smile, and reached down to pick up his cat. Pepper purred and stretched out her neck for scratches. “You know what this means, don’t you?”
“Hm?”
Dave could hardly hold in the laugh. “Humanity’s new motto.”
“Oh, God. My mom would’ve loved that.”
And from that day forth, the Natural Gods watched on with patient restraint as humanity scraped a new start out of the tired earth, living by the simple motto to live, laugh, and love.