The Day the World Ended (Short Story)

7/29/2019 The Day the World Ended (Short Story)

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James Hall | The Day the World Ended | 1

The Day the World Ended

Part One: Morning

The morning brought sunshine, birdsong and all the signs of

a good day. The sky was a perfect pale blue, and the clouds, a

brilliant white. I left for work at 7:02 sharp, like every other

normal day, and arrived at precisely 7:41, as usual.

Work began at 8:00, and silence fell over the small office

building. The walls shook, the computers went black, the lights

went out, and screams filled the room.

The emergency sirens blared, and floodlights came to life.

All of the fifteen building occupants fled the building in a

panic, and escaped into the once-great city of San Francisco,

now, a monstrous pile of rubble.

I raced home, thousands of others were doing the same,

thinking only of the loved ones they left behind this morning,

what was left of the sidewalks looked like freeways in rush hour

traffic, I arrived home at 12:03.

Part Two: Midday

Thousands of people rushed by the remains of my once

beautiful home, now half sunken into the earth. I hurried to

find my wife and children, who I hoped had escaped the

collapsing building. I could hear them, calling for help from

somewhere unknown to me.


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I crawled through the debris and into the broken kitchen

window to search the house. Looking everywhere, I found no sign

of my wife and children in the house.

I left the almost buried house, and tried to find a way to

the backyard, the last place I could think to find my missing

family. I found my way over the roof and into the back, to find

nothing, but the corpses of the people I called my family. I

screamed for help, hoping one of the passersbys would find it

in their hearts to come to the aid of a stranger, in the

communities time of dire need, and soon, that hope was crushed

under the weight of a destroyed world, I was surrounded by

thousands of people, and we were all alone.

Part Three: The Last Night

As day turned to night, the death count skyrocketed, the

bustling city of more than one-hundred thousand people, now had

a population of only fifteen-hundred. At sunset, the glow of the

sun was matched in brilliance by the glow of fire against the

darkening sky, a heavy smoke choking everything under the stars.

The death of everything on Earth was fast approaching, and I

think everything knew that, ready or not, here it comes.

The sun was completely down by the time I heard a voice

that wasnt screaming. There was a man, hardly older than

thirty, trapped beneath the remains of the building he worked


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in. I rushed to help, following his fading voice, I found him,

but all too late, the death toll had risen again.

The smoke grew thicker by the minute, and the sound of

choking coughs filled the night sky, I could barely breathe, I

knew I would be dead in a matter of minutes. People resulted to

crawling, trying desperately to stay beneath the smoke, to hang

on to life for just a few moments longer, to say their final

goodbyes.

This was the end, the day the so-called crack-pots and

loonies had warned about just weeks before, and now, their

crazy prophecies had come true. The moment I realized I should

have listened, should have tried to protect myself and my

family. In this moment of realization, the smoke drifted to the

ground, and the world fell silent.

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The Day the World Ended (Short Story)