Fall, Rise, Repeat

by Matthew Schneider

  But there was still the rest of the world, and the East coast on the United States. With the massive world war that was currently dismantling modern civilization it was unclear whether or not humans would win this battle against themselves.

  Zav knew one thing for sure, however: he was the last person alive. Sane? A question that he could not answer simply because his answer was yes.

  So he asked it aloud: “Am I sane?”

  Jaiyana pulled him back. “Do you see me?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then the answer to your question is the opposite of mine.”

  Zav again felt content with her answer, although it was rather dissatisfying.

  Zav and Jaiyana walked the empty roads and climbed the piles of death until they reached the capital. The fortified walls were clumps of black cinder now. The White House was an ash pile. The garden was a hole filled with scrap metal and murky water from the flooding lakefront.

  Zav walked the old sidewalk and stood at the steps to the front door. There was no front door, of course, but Zav knocked on the air before stepping onto what remained of the doormat.

  He turned left and stood at the broken frame of the basement door. The door was surprisingly still in place. However, Zav could lean to the side and see the walls around the stairwell were completely gone, making the door useless. Not wanting it to fall forward into the basement, he sidestepped over a chunk of rubble so that he was perpendicular to the door in the empty space of what used to be a wall, gripped the frame, and pushed it away from the stairs; he watched as it fell to the ground and listened to it clatter in the quiet of the darkness around him.

  He stepped over the door and onto the first stair. From the top, he could already tell that much of the floor had collapsed. Still, he continued. Walking slowly, he crept through the fallen support beams and pushed through the debris to find himself at the front of the conference table.

  He was in the same spot he once sat before the city had erupted into a warzone. The table had been damaged from falling debris and splintered in many places.

  Zav looked around. There, on the right of the table, in a fallen seat, was the corpse that resembled Ryker.

  Zav knelt next to his body. His skin was burnt in some places, mostly on his upper-body. The fire from the explosions must have made its way into the basement and burned everyone alive.

  Ryker’s face was destroyed. His eyes were gone, and the little hair that had been on his head and eyebrows was gone as well. His lips were dark and cracked, offering no cover to his black and yellow teeth. Zav stared, then looked up through the basement doorway: Ryker’s face looked a bit like the decimated environment.

  Zav stood up and looked at the other people in the room. Carter Stevens was laying against the crevice of the floor and the wall, his torso completely separated from his waist. There was a plank of wood lodged in his stomach, and his flesh burnt just like Ryker’s.

  Zav walked over and fingered the pockets of Carter’s jacket. In the right-hand pocket, zipped up, was the computer. There were chips in the carbon body of the computer, but the hardware remained intact.

  Zav turned on the computer and browsed the music. Carter had preloaded many pop songs, particularly from the 1960s, and it reflected his passion for the Vietnam era well.

  Zav closed the window and opened his journal. It had been a few days since he had written in this digital history book.

  Zav turned on the speech-to-text function and swallowed. “In the future, this day might be known as the day that Chicago fell. I lost track of the date. It’s been many days since my last entry, and my confusing sleep cycles are of no help. My heart is as beaten as the ground around me. It’s a miracle that this computer is still here. It’s a miracle that Jaiyana is still here…”

  Zav paused for a moment while his vision blurred. He slowly set the computer down on the ground and rotated his head to look at Jaiyana.

  “I’ve seen Hell. The devil walked this earth, Death by his side. All the demons of the underworld crawled over the corpses and the angels wept as God slipped from the hearts of man. And finally, I am at peace with this idea.”

  Jaiyana nodded her head.

  “I am insane. But, I am sane. I am alive, yet I am dead. I am gone, yet I am present! And I present to you this present, the gift of life, nocturnal, forgiven, unbelievable!”

  Zav hummed to himself as he danced towards Jaiyana. He wrapped his arms around her waist and stared her in the eyes. “But you are dead Jaiyana. And my brain can’t play tricks on me if I know I am dreaming.”

  Zav pressed his lips against Jaiyana’s forehead. As he exhaled, creating soft winds and stirring the dust on the floor, the particles that held Jaiyana together began to float away and twinkle in the reflection of the red sun.

  And as the world around him settled, he heard a faint whisper of the dawn of a new age.

  He returned to the floor and held the computer in his hands. “So, come now, diary, and let me show you the world. Walk and talk, shall we?”

  Zav held the computer in his right hand and climbed the steps. He carefully exited the White House and walked the driveway, searching for a vehicle.

  In due time, he had gathered his bearings and navigated to the Intersection of Death. Outside of the blast radius, the Russian armored vehicles sat on the fractured road in near-perfect conditions.

  Zav put the computer in his pocket after a wordless stroll and pulled himself atop the first Russian vehicle in line, one of the few left with wheels. He slid his fingers under the metal hatch and pulled with what strength he could muster, cracking it open with a pop! and reaching his arms down into the pit.

  His hands firmly held the Russian driver and, with a great amount of force, he was able to pull the woman out and throw her down to the road. There was a visible wound on her where a bullet penetrated the vehicle’s armor. He slid into the seat and pressed the keys between his thumb and index. He twisted, slowly, and started the engine.

  The vehicle roared to life and began rolling along the slanted, broken asphalt.

  Zav turned the steering wheel and gave the vehicle some gas. It kicked forward and he began moving across the deserted road. It was practically apocalyptic; in fact, it was!

  Zav placed the computer on the dashboard and began speaking. “It’s been a few minutes. But I am now driving down the lifeless and empty roads of one of the previously busiest cities in America. Now it is haunted by the souls of the innocent, painted by the blood of the children, and scarred by the sickle of Mr. Grim Reaper. I may very well be the last person here. But I will make my journey to the hotel to see if it still stands.”

  Zav rounded the corner, keeping pace with the rapid beat of his broken heart. In the distance he could see the beginning of the Holy Road. It’s funny, Zav chuckled to himself, that this Holy Road was the very beginning of the end.

  “Do you think, if I had not fought against the Russians, and had not led a rebellion of my own, that they would not have seen any apparent threat, and then nothing would have ever happened and never, ever, ever, ever, would the world have ended? But at least I can credit myself with the rise of the city.

  “But that’s life. I’ll say it—life is a cycle. One thing always leads to another, and no matter how many times we try to escape, we always end up in the same place. We are all stuck in a continuum. Break it! That’s what I tried to do: a great politician will disrupt the causal order of things in an attempt to form a better world. But this never works out...and my heart weeps to say that.

  “Fallen societies, risen worlds, repetition. Fall, rise, repeat. If ever anyone tries to explain the entire history of the world, the entire history of mankind, these are the three words you must tell them.

  “Science shows us that nature will force some species to fall. That’s simply natural selection. Nature wants the strongest to survive, because that is how a universe evolves. Through the strongest forms of life come a new generation—a promising generation, at that. And f
rom this new family of life, rises the son. Rises the dominant species. Rises a future. But nature seeks to hurt the weakest and sometimes, despite the harshest circumstances, even those who are weak can still grow stronger and step above the weakest link.

  “Animals do this. Not every kind of animal will survive. It will take years of rising and falling to find nature’s perfection. And humans are animals. Animals at heart, animals in God’s eyes. We are only held to higher expectations because of our godlike abilities to propose, seek, and determine.

  “Man has built dozens of empires. The Romans, the Indians, African tribes, the Middle East, dynasties of China...these were all triumphant, rising from the ashes of previous civilizations. But all of these have fallen in one way or another. The United States was the most powerful civilization yet! And still, it fell! Do you understand how unique the circumstances must be that something this powerful is crushed into a tiny shrubbery of what it once was? But let’s look at this on a broader scale.

  “The ENTIRE world has been developing consistently, to the point where we’ve never had this degree of homemade destruction. And now, we’ve reached the stage of life that there has been too much ‘rising’ and nature demanded that something must fall. Or maybe, worse yet, it was God who demanded this. Or...it was man, who decided that civilization had become too powerful for its own good. And after the disasters caused by corrupt governments and men, all throughout history, it is clear that once again man is man’s biggest enemy. The free mind has conjured up a broken alternative to reality and attempted to make it true.”

  Zav arrived at the hotel. Most of it had fallen into the river. There was one section that was still standing relatively high, and atop of it still stood the antennae tower, but it appeared very fragile. The beams were bent oddly, and the reflective glass that once existed had been obliterated.

  Zav parked the vehicle and walked into the lobby. Not much had changed, but some things had been rearranged like a bad home-modeling experience.

  Zav knew the elevator would not work and pushed open the door to the stairwell. He climbed each step, practicing his mindfulness, appreciating the weight of each foot on the ground, the tensing and contracting of muscles, and the beauty of the life he still maintained.

  The last floor he was able to safely walk upon was the nineteenth. All that had been above this floor was now on the ground below. Zav walked into the hall, keeping his back to the front wall. Part of the building on this level had been ripped apart and he could very clearly see the empty city. As if it could even be called a city, since it looked like the surface of the moon. Zav stepped onto a slanted slab of concrete and pulled himself up as high as he safely could. He teetered to the edge of the foundation and sat on the bend of the beam. He crossed his legs and stared into the abyss.

  He held out the computer. “I miss everything. I miss the world we once had. I can feel the tears beginning. Life has been a journey. But life has been taken from so many. I wish to seek my way to the rest of the living world, but I cannot reach. Not from here.”

  Zav closed the window and opened the web browser. Using the tall-standing and strong connection of the antennae—a wealthy expenditure they had capitalized on early to have some connection to the outside world—he was able to connect. A building like this didn’t need solar power; it was large enough to be connected to the nuclear power circuit. His mind had no answer, but he knew what he longed for: one last chance to be known to the world.

  He attached the document to his clipboard. Ryker had promised a hotline would be available for contact with an organization in Europe – the last stronghold for mankind – and so Zav sent the document to the anonymous submission field where it would be picked up and someone in Europe would be notified there was an incoming signal from the dead zone.

  He sat, tears wetting his cheeks.

  Suddenly, the computer made a noise that Zav did not know the meaning of.

  “INCOMING BROADCAST: UNITED NATIONS REPRESENTATIVE.”

  Zav accepted the invitation and positioned the computer so the built-in camera could see him.

  The illumination sprang to life and he could see a man with light hair and light eyes sitting at a desk.

  “Hello?”

  “This is Guy Foss. I work for the United Nations Communications Committee and I received a warning that an influx of data was being streamed from an area that was presumed to be eliminated. Who is speaking?”

  Zav stared into the camera. “Xavier Starr.”

  “And what do you need Xavier Starr?”

  “I am the last, the sole survivor in Chicago. The last human.”

  “We see in our satellite that the city is in serious trouble, but that’s a strong claim to make. Might you clarify how you found this out?”

  “War struck. You know. And I am the last. The sole survivor. Xavier Starr. It’s me.”

  “Do you need to be picked up? What do you request? Many of our forces are occupied but we can make an attempt at rescuing if you are someone particularly useful to us.”

  Xavier heard the whisper of the end again. A strange streak, like a whistle in the distance. “I sent my story. I demand it be told to the world. I am Xavier Starr. The sole survivor. The world is dying, the world is falling. But soon it will rise again, and my name will be one that will be remembered.”

  “I can do my best to share this manuscript you’ve given me. Hold on, we’re detecting something in your area.”

  Xavier looked through the opening in the black clouds and saw a small sliver of light reflecting off a cylindrical shape in the sky.

  “The end.”

  “Xavier Starr, I’m downloading your story. But our sensors are notifying us that we cannot send soldiers to your location due to a possible threat.”

  “Oh, I promise you there are no people here. Please, I’m president of the New United States…”

  “The United States fell into anarchy a month ago. Europe is the last stronghold for humankind and we are doing our very best to accommodate everyone’s needs.”

  “You can be here quick, pick me up and take me home. That’s all I ask…” Zav cried, holding the camera up to his face.

  “Xavier, do you see anything in the sky? We think the city might be under attack.”

  “Why would Death attack the Dead?”

  “I cannot answer. But sending help is not an option at this time. Please standby.”

  Part 4

  Chapter 25

  “A new beginning! God loves me! Man survives!” Zav said to himself, still sitting on the beam. It had been three slow minutes since the UN Representative had placed Zav on hold.

  Planet Earth was forsaken. Even if there was someone, somewhere, in the future, they would be walking on the ashes and the skeletons of billions of fallen people.

  Zav heard the noise again and looked up. The clouds seemed to thin, and he saw what he was looking for.

  “Kill me! Take me! Do your worst!” Zav laughed, rocking back and forth.

  He dug his nails into his cheeks and began scratching skin from his face. He screamed, cried, and swore at the pain, and decided that laughing was the best medicine.

  “Fuck me! Fuck you! Fuck off! Death! I’ll take it! Give me what they’re having, waiter, because I love it!”

  Zav hit his hands against his temples.

  “AH!” he screamed, blood dripping from his face. “HAHA! HUEHUE!” he gargled.

  “I LOVE IT! DEATH! BRING YOUR FRIENDS! IT’S A PARTY WITH XAVIER STARR! WHO SHALL BE FOREVER FORGOTTEN! MY FEAR! YOU GOT IT, MARX! THE END OF TIMES!

  “WHERE ARE THE HORSEMEN OF THE APOCALYPSE?

  “MOM? DAD? XAVIER? LYNYRD? THOR? IVAN? CHRISTOPHER—YOU FATASS.”

  Zav dug his thumbs into his eye sockets and screamed. His world became black, but he was sick of hallucinating. The pain was endless. The pain was eternal. But that was life.

  “BRING IT ON! I’VE HAD IT ALL! NOTHING CAN BE WORSE! DEATH IS A REWARD! I’M READY, SO COME TAKE ME!�
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  Blood covered Zav’s body, all streaming from his face. Some had even begun to drip to the beam he sat on and droplets rolled down the side.

  Zav shivered as a gust of cold air pressed against him. He leaned back and suddenly realized there was nothing behind him – all too late, however, and he fell to the floor beneath him. The air was pushed out of his lungs and he froze at the crack of his ribs.

  “Love life. End me!”

  Zav’s mouth hung open.

  “What are my final words?”

  Zav’s nose bled.

  “Here’s what I have to say: life is about those three words— oh, it’s not like anyone can hear me...but God can! So let me say this to you, figure in the sky.”

  Zav laid on the ground. The last, dying human, the sole survivor, the Xavier Starr.

  “Thank you for life. Thank you for the suffering. Thank you for the good times, the bad times, the easy times, the hard times. Thank you for those who broke my heart. Thank you for those who loved me. Thank you for the memories, the memories that will be forgotten. Thank you for the people who stood with me no matter what. Thank you for a world that evolves with the humans. Thank you for a life after this life. Thank you for the forgiveness. Thank you for an answer. The meaning of life must be thankfulness. Or maybe the meaning of life is the acceptance of death. Well here’s my acceptance! Thank you for death, O’ great Father. I hear it. Grim, hold my hand. Thank you for death. Fall. Rise. Repeat.”

  The whistle intensified, and the head of the missile poked through the clouds. It spun, spiraling directly towards Zav. It traveled at an amazing speed. The Grim Reaper rode his missile like a trophy. An explosion was readying itself.

  And thus, Xavier Starr perished from the world.

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