I walk the empty halls alone. It has been years since they have seen the passing of human feet. In fact, there are no tracks of any kind across the dust and dirt that now form a layer over everything; even the rats and mice have avoided this place. Evidence of bloody carnage, years old, is scattered here and there. Chairs and tables overturned, holes in the walls (either from bullets, bombs, or bludgeons), blackened books and rooms from ancient fires, darkened spots of long-dried blood, and remnants of those who once walked these halls. Why have I come here? Why have I come back to this place I once knew so well? Are there any answers waiting for me here? Will I find what I lost so long ago and have yearned for ever since?
I sigh, looking for a place to sit. I find an open classroom, a few desks and chairs still intact. I take a seat near the back, next to one of the Unfortunates who was left to rot, alive or not, all those years ago. I say a silent eulogy for the dead that sits beside me, then slowly lean back in the chair and close my eyes. It is time to remember…
~
This was not the classroom it had begun in, though it was almost identical. The true origin of Destruction was farther down the hall. As of yet, I could not bring myself to approach any closer to that place, though I knew at length that I would have to go there.
The day had begun as any other day. The sun was shining brightly in the sky, reflecting diamonds off the dew that had collected on the plants the night before. It was a warm morning and people were out for their early exercise – walking, running, bicycling. No one suspected the devastation that was later to come. Why should they have? I certainly hadn’t. There was nothing to indicate the tragedy that was to occur just a few hours later. Even now, looking back, I can find no clues that would have allowed anyone to interfere and change the course of events.
Some say it was a freak accident, which I do not believe due to the number of simultaneous attacks. Others blame the militant groups. Still others say it was an act of God. But does it really matter what the cause was? All that should be of concern is that it happened. That is enough. I am one of the few remaining, and the only one who survived Origin. It is up to myself and the others who still live to remember those who did not. For if you are remembered by at least one, then your existence was not in vain and you may rest in peace.
More details…
I went to class that morning, early as always. Lecture proceeded for the first half-hour as it typically did, though an unusually greater number of people had shown up this particular day. This was nothing too extraordinary, though, and could be attributed purely to chance. I do not remember exactly what happened, but what I do recall is forever engraved in my mind’s eye. I think… I think someone stood up in the balcony and shouted something. Maybe it was “Death to mankind!” or “Freedom for a Revolution!” I am not sure. It was surely a kamikaze run, however, for what he did to us, he inevitably did to himself. I remember watching as a vile flew through the air, then hearing a gunshot, and watching the shards of glass shimmer down to earth like crystal rain. A powder, which sparkled in the light of the hall, drifted down over the people present. Then others around the room stood, tossed up and shot vials they, too, were carrying. The effect on the crowd was almost instantaneous. People panicking, shoving, screaming, trampling each other in an effort to get out. The doors were locked and barred from the outside. We were trapped. I tried to stay out of the way, trying to keep out of the mayhem, but someone must have knocked me over, because I remember hitting my head, and then… nothing, blackness.
When I came to, there was a heavy weight over me. It was very dim in the lecture hall; the emergency lights were the only things glowing. I realized the pressure lying across me was from a body that had fallen. Blood was oozing across the floor, and the smell… the air wreaked of death. I managed to push the fallen off of me and rise to my feet. What I could see in the twilight of the room were bodies. Hundreds of bodies. Some still moving, but barely. Most bloody and lifeless. The attackers must have dropped grenades of some sort after the chemicals, because there were large dark patches from explosions, and blood spattered over the walls and chairs. There was a scraping coming from by the door. I looked over and could just make out the form of some hapless victim, clawing at the door, still struggling to exit the room. She must have been near one of the explosions, because her legs were but bloody stumps, her face a tangled mess of matted hair and blood and flesh, the nails on her fingers – gone from scratching at the door – were now leaving bloody streaks. It was too much. I couldn’t handle it. I wretched and continued to do so until my stomach was completed purged of anything that it contained.
Why was I still alive? I should be dead. Or at least dying, lying among those already succumbing to the dark afterlife. What had stopped the Reaper from taking my soul? I didn’t understand. At the time, I couldn’t understand. All I knew then was that I had to get out. I had to get away from the morbidity that filled this room. For whatever reason, I was not one of them, and I didn’t want to stay around until I was.
I went to the back of the hall to the rear exits. I tested the doors. They were not locked, but they did not open. They must have been blocked from the outside. But how was I supposed to open them? I felt weak and nauseated from the carnage around me, and barely had the strength to think right, let alone force open a blocked door. Then my foot hit something round on the floor. I kneeled down to see more closely what it was before I picked it up. It looked to be a grenade. Was it a dud? I carefully probed it with my finger, only to find it still had the pin in it. I quickly picked it up and held it preciously. This might be my only chance for freedom. I backed away from the door, pulled the pin on the grenade, counted to three and tossed it in the direction of the exit. I quickly ducked behind some chairs and waited. Nothing happened. I waited a moment more. Still nothing. It could have been possible that it was only a moment or two that passed, and is was my anticipation that was making it seem longer. I was just about to stand up when there was a loud explosion, and the sound of shattering wood. A hail of splinters and debris rained down around me. Cautiously I raised my head above the seats. It had worked! What was left of the door was swinging loosely from its hinges, and provided an exit out of the Death Room.
Now where should I go? OUT. That was the only thought in my mind. GET OUT. So I left the death room behind me, and went into the hall. My gaze landed on the doors to the outside, their windows had been painted over so that I could not see what was happening around the building. My mind continued its singular thought: OUT. I went to the doors and tried to open them. They would not budge. They were sealed from the outside. I banged on the door, and hollered as loud as I could for help. I do not know how long I stood there, beating on the door, but it must have been awhile. At last a shadow passed in front of the painted over glass and paused. It was the silhouette of a person. An actual living human being! But the outline was distorted, as if they were wearing some sort of biological hazard suit. The figure then raised a hand with a tool and scraped away some of the paint, just enough to look through the window. Our eyes met for what seemed a very long moment before the figure stepped back from the door. I was sure they must let me out now! But what occurred next was the most soul-crushing thing that could have happened. Slowly, deliberately, the personage outside the building raised a can of paint, and once again covered the window, then turned and walked away. I was in shock. Absolute and utter shock at how cold and unconcerned the person outside was with the fact that there were still living people in here! I couldn’t take it anymore. I remember I sat down with my back to the door, broke down and cried.
~
As I sat in the burned out classroom remembering this, I could feel the tears that I had long since thought were gone, come back to fill my eyes. How could people have been so cruel! Looking back now, their paranoia was understandable, but what if those surviving in the sealed building could have provided some sort of remedy for the chemical poison contained in those vials? Yes, that’s right. There was more than just Origin: the lecture hall incident. It was simply the first. After Origin, I later came to find out that consecutive and similar attacks were made around the world. The chemical agent in those vials was the deadliest and most destructive organic compound the world had ever seen. Completely unknown before the attacks, it was later dubbed Libitina, meaning “Goddess of Death.”
I got up from where I was sitting, turned to my skeletal companion, picked up his hand and shook it, bidding him adieu. I went into the hallway again, and turned toward the lecture hall where it had all began, the Death Room, Origin. I took a deep breath and managed to move several steps closer before an almost overwhelming desire to turn and run away filled my being. I shut my eyes tightly, and grimaced. I was going to do this. I still wasn’t sure why I needed this, but I did. I needed to return to Origin. I went a few more feet down the hall. Halfway there. As I went to take another step, a shadow flickered in front of me. I shook my head to clear my vision. A spirit? Another shadow flickered by. Yes, definitely spirits. I forced back my tears, for their sake. They didn’t need my sorrow.
I was standing in the middle of the hall. I closed my eyes and slowly sank to the floor, sitting crossed legged, my head bowed. I could sense the souls forming a ring around me. I stayed still, and silent. Then slowly I looked up. The shadows had formed into something more substantial. They had taken on the shape of the people they once had been. Their faces – their faces looked so sad, so old, so tired. I wished I could help them, and the pain on my face must have showed. Maybe they remembered me from before, recognized that I had been there with them, or maybe they just knew I was one of them. By some freak chance I had survived, and now I had returned. They knew I was not here for them, and yet, they acted as if I belonged with them and they expected something from me. The spirit directly in front of me kneeled down, and slowly reached a hand out to touch mine. I put out my hand and our fingers interlocked, the soul’s image being much more substantial than I had anticipated. I looked up and met his eyes. “I’m not ready to die,” I whispered quietly. It seemed a small smiled quirked the corners of his mouth as he nodded his head, then stood up again. The spirits quickly morphed back to shadows and silently faded away. If I were to die, this was where I would come. The souls trapped here knew that, and now, so did I.
I stayed seated on the floor. I must remember more…
~
After I had been disregarded as unimportant by the suited people outside the building, and having cried all I could, I got up and wandered down the hall. Everywhere I looked there were bodies and blood. On the walls, strewn along the floors. There was the smell of charred flesh coming from the classrooms where fires had been set. I shuddered at the thought of burning to death. This had obviously been completely thought out and organized – everything planned perfectly.
I tried every exit in the building, but all were sealed as the first had been. Occasionally I would see the suited shadows moving about outside, but I did not try to get their attention again, I knew it would be futile. After wandering for what seemed like hours, I finally collapsed from defeat and exhaustion, silently hoping for death, and an end to this torment. And slowly, mercifully unconsciousness overtook my mind.
When I awoke, I do not know how much time had passed, though it must have been a good while for the smell had noticeably increased. I was thirsty. And hungry. I didn’t know if the drinking fountains were still working, or if they were, that the water would be safe to drink. But I decided water safety was not my first priority at the moment, and found a drinking fountain, which still thankfully worked. With thirst temporarily quenched, my hunger became ever more acute. Yet, as much as I searched I could find nothing edible. I resigned myself to hunger and began again my quest for a way out.
It must have been days that I wandered around the building, trying every door, every window, going back and trying them all again and again. I tried breaking the windows, but they had been reinforced from the outside. The smell of rotting flesh was becoming ever more pervasive and I could hardly breathe due to the stench. I had come across no other living being in these days. Was I the only survivor? How far had this chemical spread? How far had Death extended his hand?
Days turned to weeks. The hunger pains in my stomach became worse and worse. I thought I should die soon, but death never came. At last, when I was rechecking the windows on the ground floor, I found one that had somehow become broken from outside. The shards of glass lay on the floor below the pane. I hurried over to it and began breaking the glass with my hand. I was too desperate to care how badly I was cutting myself. With the hole started, it was easy to make progress and enlarge it wide enough so that I could climb through.
Once outside, I collapsed on the ground, giggling madly, insanely. I was free! Free! But why hadn’t I died? I should be dead. I had been passed over, but why? I looked down at my cut and bleeding hand and watched as the blood slowly stopped, then the wound itself began to heal. I stared in amazement as the gashes disappeared and my hand was whole and functional once more. I flexed it, testing its recovery. It seemed surreal and impossible. How could this be?
But my stomach gave me no more time to ponder this phenomenon. An almost incapacitating pain coursed through my body, and I curled up on the ground in a ball until it subsided. I recovered my breath, then slowly got to my feet. It was then that I noticed the odor of decaying flesh out here, too. I looked around. The street was littered with the corpses of victims of this attack. Then I noticed a white-suited individual lying on the ground. I realized that I felt no animosity towards him. Seeing the destruction about, I now understood his paranoia, and did not hold it against him. Sacrifice a few for the hopeful benefit of many. But that benefit had never come. I closed my eyes tightly, wishing it would all just go away.
~
I still sat on the floor of the hallway, staring at the door ahead of me, the door that led to Origin. It had not been until months after my escape from this building turned tomb that I had learned the organic chemical compound now known as Libitina had somehow altered my gene coding, granting me special healing powers as well as immortality. This may seem like a boon to some, but it has been the bane of my existence over the past few years. Yes, it has kept me alive where a normal human would have died, but it has not saved me from suffering. Just because I cannot die, does not mean I cannot suffer!
Maybe I returned here to find answers, though I know in my heart that there are none. There have been others like me, those who survived. Some are immortals like myself, others have mutated in different ways. I do not know why some of us survived while the majority perished via Libitina. Maybe there was something in our genes that allowed for a rapid mutation for survival, or maybe it was the circumstances that occurred during exposure. We might never know. But in my search for reasons, I have come back here. To where it all began.
Slowly I climb to my feet and take the last few torturous steps toward the door that leads to Origin. There were indeed barriers in front of it, ones that had never been removed. I pushed them out of the way and opened the door. The smell of decaying bodies had long since vanished from the room, and was now replaced with only the musty smell of age and disuse. I walked over to where I had been sitting that day, on the day of Destruction. The body that had fallen on me in the chaos still lay near my seat. I knelt down and gently placed my hand on the skeleton, paying respect to the dead. I then moved and sat down in the auditorium chair. Almost instantly I felt overwhelmed by emotions and ghosts from the past. Spirits living in the present swarmed around me and through the hall, morphing into the shape of their human form, all watching me as I sat there, none moving close enough to touch. I closed my eyes again, remembering the faces of those who had been there with me, the pain they and I had suffered, and the end all but myself had come to. I opened my eyes and looked around me, meeting the eyes of each of the faces. “I will remember you,” I said quietly. Then the spirit that had touched me before stepped forward through the crowd. I heard his voice not in my ears, but directly in my mind
“Thank you,” he said. “When you are ready, return to here and you shall have the rest you have granted us.” He smiled and then disappeared, quickly followed by each of the others.
I smiled sadly, nodding my head. Yes, I would return here someday, but not yet. There was still much I could do for this world. It was then that I realized why I had returned to this place. I had come back here searching for peace – peace of mind, peace of soul, peace of heart. I had needed closure from the past. I had needed to remember those who had been lost, and face the charred demons of history. Now… now I can move forward and move on. But even with leaving my past behind, ever shall the Ghosts be with me, but I do not mind. They shall not be forgotten, for it is my duty to remember them and the Day of Origin.
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