It was cold. Too cold. Freezing. Unfit for any human. Unfit for any animal. Unfit for life in general. The ground should be blanketed with snow from the clouds above. But it wasn't.
The landscape remained dry, untouched by any form of moisture. Water vapor, liquid water, ice? None of it had seen the crust of this wasted planet in years. Decades maybe. Eh, what does it matter? No one was around to keep count. No one who cared anyway.
A gas station perched on the left side of a road that stretched across miles of land stood stationary. Unmoving. Lifeless. There was nothing to see. Nothing to do.
The automated doors at the station had stopped working just six hours after the rapture. All the lights in the world went out after thirteen. Every single nuclear power plants melted down after a month.
All man-made objects in the sky, the satellites, space stations, the Hubble Telescope, they all came down after five years.
Any humans that were in them perished many years prior. There wasn't enough food to go around. They killed and ate each other in a primal effort to survive up there. In one crazed frenzy, all the astronauts had killed each other, the victor dying from becoming sick after eating one of their peers. It was a slow agonizing death. Excruciating stomach pain, vomiting, diarrhea, and a high fever led to their death.
But it was nothing like what happened on earth. After the rapture, thousands of different species of monsters appeared, each species having a population size consisting of millions. They were all classified under one term, however. Apostles.
Disgusting beasts united under the title, apostles, came to destroy all life on earth. Every cow, sheep, lion, tiger, gorilla, whale, and any other forms of life you can think of were all massacred. Not even microscopic organisms, like bacteria were safe. Earth was wiped clean of all life.
The road was the same condition as it was the day of the rapture. There was nothing to weather the asphalt with. No seeds from trees, no water from rain to break it down into sediment. Nothing. Nothing at all.
Looking down the road, you'd think it was fake. Everything was as still as a framed photo. The scenery lacked all of what would make it look "real.
There was such an absence of movement, or rather life. No trace of anyone, or anything. It was static.
The road led east, toward the Sierra Nevada mountains. An easy breeze followed the road east.
Dead trees, irregularly scattered across the landscape remained frozen in time. Incapable of decomposition, these trees were doomed to an eternity of lonely perpetual existence. Not even the leaves that have long since fallen off had been absorbed back into the land it came from. No fungus, bacteria, or any decomposer was around to distribute it's nutrients anymore.
Robbed of any chance to be properly disposed of, their corpses litter the land. Their purpose now is a melancholic reminder of the halcyon days of prior.
Silence. It was silent. They say there's a calm before the storm, but with each storm there comes a peaceful dread afterward.
With every strike of lighting comes thunder. But after comes a wonderful awe for the majesty of the power it holds. One can't help but feel a sense of disquietude for the fiery destruction that follows.
But there was something there. Something on that road. A disturbance of the quiet peace. A serene crackling of the road approached. It had to have been an illusion. A dream.
A circular object was rolling down the road. It's black rubbery exterior rubbed the asphalt, causing little bits of the road to collide with each other, resulting in a cracking sounds.
A tire was rolling down the middle of the road. But something followed right behind it. Something bigger. Something that moved, that breathed. Something that was living.
A ponderous brown boot came crashing down. A man dressed in heavy layers of clothes was walking right behind the leaden tire.
The man swayed from left to right in exhaustion. He'd been walking for days. Weeks. Months? He didn't remember. He lost count… days ago. Weeks. Months… Years ago…? Either way, he'd been walking for a wearisome amount of time.
The man was unkempt. He hadn't taken a shower since the rapture. He hadn't combed his hair, he hadn't brushed his teeth, and he was in bad shape. He hadn't eaten anything or drank anything in years. By all accounts, he should be dead. But in a unnatural and ostensibly cruel twist of fate, the man had been granted the blessing of immortality. And it was all thanks to one creature.
Behind the wheel was the man, and behind the man was an apostle. It was a tall winged humanoid creature. Its limbs seemed to fuse together and branch off. It wasn't clear how many limbs it had, as it was always fluctuating to the naked eye. This was a result of the supernatural and frankly unfathomable appearance it took on. The best I could possibly describe it is as a twisted amalgamation of recurring limbs, organs, and eyes that would intermingle and synthesize, its inscrutable disposition on full display. The only thing you could clearly make out on it was its curly golden hair, though that even seemed to refashion itself. The only truly comprehensible part was the beautiful white wings perched on its back. Those were unchanging, and definite. An eternal protuberance set on a metamorphose mass.
The rest was an unclear mesh of limbs, eyes, noses, ears, and other extremities that would constantly pop in and out of existence. What the man saw of the creature was not its actual form, but his human mind trying to fill in the gaps of the incomprehensible appearance the creature presented.
He called it his "guardian angel." It would grant him, and him alone, immortality. He could not die. Any injuries he sustained would hear within minutes.
At first, the man was thrilled to have this blessing, but as time went on he saw more and more of the world he once knew crumble. Deceased humans littered cities. Most slaughtered by apostles, and some of their own volition. He saw people who had hung themselves from trees. Men women and children alike.
He slowly began to resent his immortality. He hated it. Eventually, he wanted nothing more than to die. He pulled someone out of their noose once and hung himself. He hung there for a week, his neck breaking and healing itself over and over again, and time after time he would suffer from asphyxiation, but he would never die. He waited so long that the noose snapped under his weight.
He threw himself off a six story building, landing facedown on the ground. His entire body splattered across the concrete. Every bone in his body had snapped. His entire face and upper half of his head had been pulverized, and his brain was turned into soup upon impact. It painted the curb red, and any remaining chunks of his frontal lobe rolled into the road.
He pain was immeasurable, but bearable if it meant he'd finally die. He went unconscious and he thought he finally succeeded, but he woke up a moment later. The guardian Angel loomed over him.
He hated it so much. He got out of the cities as soon as possible. He couldn't handle seeing all the dead bodies. It was too surreal.
People that had died years ago looked like they died yesterday. Just the sight of it was enough to traumatize anybody, but being the immortal being he was, he wasn't sure how to feel. Death used to be a fact of life. An absolute. It was the only thing you could say would certainly happen. But now that he had gone beyond the logical and physical limitations of life, he had convinced himself he was no longer human. He looked human. He acted human. But he lacked the most vital part about being human. Like everything else in this world, he lacked life.
Due to his sentiment of no longer being human, he deprived himself of the most basic of needs. Food and water were no longer a priority. He was always in a state of starvation and dehydration, but by this point he was used to it. He deprived himself of oxygen. Sometimes he'd forget to breathe, resulting in him going unconscious for upwards of an hour. But the most damning thing he deprived himself of was feeling. He allowed himself no emotion whatsoever. He wouldn't allow himself to think about the horrors he saw, felt, or experienced.
He couldn't cope. He would let himself fall both mentally and physically. The only thing getting him back up was the realization that no matter how long he waited, death would never come.
That was the miserable reality for the lone wanderer. He didn't remember much. He allowed most memories to escape him, but he remembered three important things. First was his name, Lucas. Second was his wife, Liliana. And third… and third… what was the… third one? Hmph. Lucas seemed to have forgotten the third one. That was a real important one too. He couldn't believe he had forgotten it.
Whatever. It'll come to him eventually.