After Annihilation: Would you want to survive?

by Gauri Mittal

  AFTER ANNIHILATION

  Would you want to survive?

  Gauri Mittal

  After Annihilation Copyright © 2019 by Gauri Mittal. All Rights Reserved.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Gauri Mittal

  Email: mittalgauri555@gmail.com

  CONTENTS

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 1

  In the end, we will meet at that place where only you and I shall exist, and there, within each other, we will find our purpose to live.

  The lines kept repeating like a song stuck in my mind. In these times of barren earth and a dark sky, the song that Aarav used to sing years back reminded me of the world that was lost.

  It had all started twelve months ago. The results for the final exam was out. I had passed. All five of us had. Sonakshi, Divya, Dhruv, Aarav, and me, Madhavi. After four years of togetherness in college, we were all going to separate. Sonakshi, Divya, and Dhruv to Sikka, and me and Aarav were to remain in Varshi.

  The next three months were taken up by finding a shared flat, the newness of the surroundings, the people in my new office—it was starting to overwhelm me. But still, I had Aarav. Aarav Kashyap. Black hair, tall, with broad shoulders, and a killer smile. I had been infatuated from the moment I saw him on the third day of college.

  By the third month of college, as fate would have it, the five of us were grouped into a team to work on a seminar. We all somehow gelled together so well that we started to hang out together from then on. At that time, I was still full of hope, thinking I could win Aarav’s affections. He seemed to enjoy spending time with me, and I with him. But I soon realized he never saw me as anything more than a friend.

  It was a month after that when Aarav got a girlfriend. Her name was Farhana, and she was the personification of glamour and excitement. Long, wavy brown hair. The batch beauty.

  He broke up with her six months later, and by that time we had become good friends. I had already learned to suppress my feelings for him, and they came out only as sarcasm bordering on rudeness. Still, we stuck together, but always along with the others. Eventually, he went out and consequently broke up with one or two other girls, which further encouraged me to suppress my feelings.

  I was a wimp. I never could confess. I couldn’t afford to have him not be a part of my life. But around the middle of the third year, he changed. He still joked about going out with some girl or the other, but unlike before, he never acted on it. By that time, I had convinced myself I had no interest in him other than friendship.

  I never imagined our lives were soon to change so drastically and unexpectedly.

  *

  “I going to be stuck with you in Varshi!” Aarav had whined as soon as we learned the result of the placements during fourth year.

  I made a face at him. “Monika is going to be in Varshi too,” I said.

  He put his hand on his mouth. “If you set me up with her, then I might be able to tolerate you.”

  It was all a joke. We were almost always jokingly insulting each other. Sometimes it escalated to such a level that I wondered if the teasing was real and we actually hated each other. But it still went on, our hanging out together. All five of us.

  Divya and Sonakshi were roommates, both taller than me and more studious and competent in sports. I, on the other hand, was careless, though I wasn’t insincere. I never could concentrate on studying, and I always did just enough to pass. Neither was I a very enthusiastic wanderer. I preferred sleep over everything else. If not for the other four, I would have had no social life.

  We were out almost all the time. Basketball court, roadside stalls, and the library were our favourite haunts. At the library, the rest studied while Dhruv and I pretended to. Dhruv was most like me, and Aarav was my exact opposite. Whenever the others badmouthed us in jest, Dhruv and I always took each other’s side. Aarav always acted annoyed at my carelessness and lost-in-my-fancies personality. Aarav had a huge fan following in the form of junior and even some senior girls. They were crazy about his looks and studious persona. I mocked him every chance I got.

  We were a good team. We were like a family away from home for each other. But all those years, my whole life, melted away in one second, as Iddis started burning.

  *

  It started with the news, almost twelve months back. Oil was scarce. The fight for oil fields had been getting more and more aggressive all over the world. Allies had formed. Political threats of war had become usual enough to fall on deaf ears.

  In a bizarre turn of events, the rogue nation of Pinaar, backed by superpower Aarkans, the country with the biggest known arsenal of nuclear weapons, had attacked Iddis, the peaceful country in possession of the largest underwater oil reserve left on the planet.

  Iddis’s capital city was razed to the ground. But no one predicted that the size of Iddis’s own nuclear arsenal had grown to unprecedented levels. Iddis retaliated. Within an hour, the capital cities of Pinaar and Aarkans were hit simultaneously. Two thousand square kilometres of urban civilization destroyed in one second, in each country.

  As predicted, Calam, the arch nemesis of Iddis, joined hands with Pinaar and Aarkans. Iddis was backed by Ijaha and Jashar. But they were also allied with Rehaar, another superpower and the nemesis of Aarkans. Weary of looming threats from Aarkans and Calam, Rehaar had secretly nurtured Iddis’s nuclear ambitions in order to be first in line to obtain oil from the West Iddis Sea. And it had been right in its calculations. The oil fields were handed over to Rehaar, leaving behind an unforgiving Aarkans.

  Within a span of twenty days, ten thousand warheads were launched across the planet.

  *

  It was ten at night. I was at home with my parents for the week in Rajgar, the capital city of Iddis, almost two hundred kilometres from the metro city of Varshi, clubbing together for the weekend for the wedding of a close relative. The quietness in the apartment complex was more profound a day after the celebrations had died down.

  The place we lived at was on the outskirts of the city. Our rented apartment was not big, but it was comfortable. My father was a bank employee and my mother a homemaker. They had been married twenty-five years and showered their affection on me, their lone child. I was very attached to them and couldn’t imagine my life without them.

  Rocky hills lined the surrounding landscape. I was locking the door to my parent’s ground floor apartment when Peaches, my small Labrador, jolted out of the doors. I had taken her with me to Varshi for the first month, but not being able to manage her had brought her back to where she had been born. She belonged to my old dog of fourteen years, who had died two years ago. Peaches was her last gift to me.

  Not having changed my T-shirt and jeans since I
had returned from the local market, I dashed after Peaches with nothing but my phone in hand and sneakers on my feet.

  Peaches never behaved in a reckless manner. She was a quiet dog, and her sudden out-of-character behaviour made me apprehensive.

  Near our house was a forest, beyond a wide road mostly congested with traffic. Afraid Peaches would get hit by the incoming traffic, I ran after her as fast as I could. I came to the side of the road. Her eyes were shining green, reflecting the rays of the headlights of the oncoming cars. She saw me, fear and something unreadable in her stance.

  Not knowing what else to do, I took out my cell phone and called my parents, but the call went unanswered. The next person who came to my mind was Aarav. His number was in my call log, right below my parents. I called him and let him know where I was. He made a fuss, telling me to return home at once. I refused, saying I couldn’t leave Peaches alone. As the car came closer, Peaches ran over to the other side of the road and stood at the edge of the forest.

  “No! Peaches come back!” I shouted. Although tonight the traffic was sparse, she did not hear me. I was reluctant to go beyond the road and into the forest alone. Then I had an idea. I hung up the phone, not listening to Aarav’s protests, sent my location to him through the location tracker in my phone, and dashed across the road.

  My cell phone started ringing, and I knew it was Aarav calling to scold me. I came within a few meters of Peaches. Slowly, I neared, not wanting her to run away into the forest. But as I came within two feet of her, she took off. Forgetting my surroundings, the image of a wild animal eating Peaches flashed into my mind, and I went after her into the forest, towards the mountains.

  My phone stopped ringing. The forest was filled with noises of agitated animals and birds. I whispered the name of my dog, afraid to be loud in the unknown surroundings. Moonlight fell on the fallen trunk of a tree, and I saw the shine of Peaches’s coat, white in the light above. She was looking at me, as if beckoning me to follow her. I looked around and felt I knew this place. I had sometimes secretly come to play here in my childhood with fellow children.

  An intuitive confidence overtook me, and I followed her. I was no longer running; I was quietly following. We came to the base of a mountain, and Peaches stopped. I looked around, alert to any sign of danger. I knew I was putting myself in a vulnerable and dangerous situation, but I felt an unexplainable need to keep following the Labrador.

  She walked along the moss-covered mountain for a short distance and then disappeared into an opening in the cave. I hurried after her, reaching the bend. I was standing at the entrance of a cave.

  “Peaches,” I whispered. “Here, Peaches.” I tried to use words she was trained to listen to and follow. Peaches reappeared from inside the dark cave. “I’m not going in there, girl.” I shook my head at her.

  Her eyes were pleading. She took hold of the hem of my jeans and started pulling at it. I bent to pat her. “What’s wrong? You never act like this,” I said. I took out my cell phone and switched on the flashlight, filling the cave with light, revealing a long path winding deep inside. Curiosity was either going to kill me today or deliver me. Peaches was whining and growling at my jeans, asking me to hurry up. She leapt inside the tunnel.

  Before entering, I sent a message each to my parents’ phones and to Aarav. I let them know where I was, taking a screenshot of my exact location on the GPS and sending it to them over the dwindling cell phone signal. It did not get sent, so I signed and went inside.

  I walked slowly. At the back of my mind was the anxiety of meeting a mountain lion or a leopard or a bear. I recalled all that I had learned reading books, watching the numerous movies and tv shows about fighting with big cats and bears. Act dead only with brown bears. That was all I could remember, and hoped I did so correctly.

  Slowly I moved on, going deeper into the cave. We had walked almost three hundred meters inside when Peaches stopped. She was around five meters away from me and was now wagging her tail. At last, I would have her in my arms, and we would run back home. I turned back to reassure myself of the existence of the path that led to the opening.

  Then I hurled my body at hers, my hands outstretched, ready to grab her. Just as I did, the ground underneath my feet gave way, and I fell, along with Peaches. I screamed, frightened out of my wits. The ground had suddenly given way to something smoother, like metal, deceiving me by being covered in soil. As soon as I stepped on it, a metal door opened, and I fell. I vaguely remembered hurting my head. I looked up and saw Peaches looking at me silently, eerily.

  Then a vibration hit me. It travelled through the earth and shook my body. It lasted only a second. The underground compartment became hot, and I broke out into a sweat.

  Have I fallen into a furnace? All kinds of horrible thoughts crowded my mind. The heat intensified, and the pain in my skull got worse. Finally, I lost consciousness.

  I awoke to Peaches whimpering and licking my cheek. I opened my eyes and remembered what had happened. I immediately searched for my phone and to my intense relief found it by my side. It had been eight hours since I left my house, which meant I had been unconscious for six hours. I switched on the flashlight. The hole I was in was almost four meters from the trap door. Anxiety overtook me, but it subsided almost immediately when I saw metal bars running all the way up to the top. Thankfully I had landed on soft soil. I was relieved to discover the pain in my head had subsided.

  By now everyone would’ve been looking for me. I was going to get the worst scolding of my life once my parents found me. Peaches was digging at a bump in the corner of the hole. Something solid that looked like plastic was lodged in the ground. Curious, I helped her dig it out. It was a large pink water bottle with a huge round cap and a long strap to carry it around like a purse. It was filled with clear water. Wondering whether I might immediately be able to get home or not, I took it out and wore it like sling bag across my torso, just in case I needed the water.

  With Peaches clinging to my shoulders, her lower body encased in my T-shirt, my phone in my jeans pocket and the water bottle across my torso, I started my journey up and out of the hole. By and by I climbed up, first the right foot on the lowest metal rung, then holding the one above, I pulled myself up. It took me fifteen minutes to reach the top. The trap door was heavy. I tried to push it, but it wouldn’t open. A wave of fear ran through my spine. What if I was never able to open it and remained trapped here forever? I took deep breaths, which only reinforced the thought that oxygen was probably in limited supply in this hole, deep inside the belly of the mountain.

  Peaches’s weight on my shoulders was making me tired, and her body was heavy upon my chest, making it hard for me to continue breathing deeply. I visualised getting out of the cave and forced myself to feel confident that I would get out. I felt like crying but did not allow myself the privilege to.

  Finally, I realized that when I had fallen in, the door had been pushed inside. It was tightly shut with only a long, curved nail sticking out of one of the doors. I tried to grasp the long rusted nail with my fingers, leaning with one hand holding on to the ladder. It was futile. A rope would work well in this situation. Leaning my forehead on the ladder in front, I took a few deep breaths. The flashlight from the cell phone hidden in my pocket was dim.

  An idea finally struck me. The strap of the water bottle was long. It would work as a rope. The strap hung on the nail easily, and the weight of the water pulled down the metal door. The sound of freedom filled me with happiness. I climbed out from the side that was open, hauling myself up with my hands, using the edge of the trap door. Peaches jumped off my shoulders onto solid ground. I pulled up the water bottle up slowly and unhooked its strap from the nail, and the door closed again.

  I started hurrying out of the cave, back to where I had come from, when I remembered. I turned back and went to the trap door. It was covered in soil looking deceptively like the floor of the cave. I cleared the ground with my hand, as much as I could, till the presence o
f the metal door was apparent. If someone else ever got trapped in it, they would have no way of getting out without a rope.

  Peaches was barking for me to follow her back out. I got up and ran towards the narrow path I had taken to enter the cave. There was a difference in the air as I came closer to getting out of the belly of the mountain. The air felt drier and hot. The heat seemed to have increased considerably since I had entered the cave almost nine hours ago.

  Faint light was starting to become visible at the bend of the path, and I figured it was around seven in the morning. I imagined my house in upheaval, my parents worried sick after looking for me all night long. Aarav would have had alerted them to my location. The police might also have been involved. The scene at home would definitely be one of commotion once I got back. The scolding and anger from my parents would probably be worse than all the other things I would have to face. But I was just glad I was free and heading back to the safety and comfort of home.

  After half an hour of slowly meandering out of the rough path of the cave, I could see the main entrance. Light shined, in signalling it was day. But the light seemed somehow dimmer than it was every day. Had I estimated the time wrong? I blamed it on my eyes, which had been in the dark for so long. Peaches kept close to my heels, and we arrived at the entrance. I stopped short at what I saw.

  Where was I? There were no trees, there was no forest. Nothing but a blackened and charred expanse of earth as far as my eyes could see. Was I in a dream? Confused, I took one hesitant step out of the cave. The dim light of the sun fell on my dirt-covered shoe. It was not as bright as it ought to be. I looked up, expecting rain clouds to be hiding the sun. Instead, there was a haze that enveloped the whole sky. The air I was breathing felt thick, and the smell of burnt wood pervaded the air.

  For a second, I closed my eyes tight, willing the seeming illusion to disappear. When it remained as such, I stared convincing myself I was in a dream or in a state of hallucination. All would be all right once I reached home. I would be admitted to the hospital, they would give me medicines, and I would be fine.