Essay On The Apocalypse

This is my story of how I survived and helped other survive when the apocalypse happened five years ago. The world for me did not end with a bang nor a whimper, but with silence followed by flickers of orange that darted outside my vision as I slept.. At first I just tried to go back to sleep, chocking the flickers of light up to daybreak seeping through the curtains. Suddenly there was a noise like nothing I can describe. I was definitely awake then staring in the darkness at the wall on other side of my bathroom. Well at what used to be a wall. I looked at the time as I grabbed my phone 5:08 AM. As I cross the room towards it I could see sparks. The front apartment of the house was gone.
I reached back along my bathroom wall to flip the light switch, then I checked the light in my bedroom lights are definitely out, I do not know much about electricity but I knew that sparking wires were not a good thing. So I went down to the basement and turned off the breaker box. I ran back upstairs and decided to check the front apartment for survivors. On the way through the bathroom I tried the sink no water, no electricity, probably no gas. Using my phone as light I stepped into the ruined apartment. I do not remember much of what I saw, I think my brain was trying to protect itself all, I know is there was no one to help, and if there was well I couldn’t tell. I ran outside to go to the upstairs apartment, as I did I could see flickers of flame all around. I stepped back from the house and looked up. it was nearly gone, shit I grabbed my phone and tried to call my upstairs neighbours as I walked to the back of the house, come on answer your damn phone, I’m a realist I knew. I popped the lock with a knife and started up the steps. I knew what I would find. both men who lived upstairs dead, neither of them were strong enough to survive the shock, plus there was not a lot left of their apartment. I have to at least try, maybe somehow they are alive, stranger things have happened,” Yeah they are called miracles, and look around no one is passing out any today” Of course the voice in my head was right and fate wasn’t handing out miracles that morning and I found both of their bodies. I remember that my ability to remain calm was quickly diminishing, I kept repeating the mantra calm, cool, collected as I made my way back down to my apartment. Oh shit it was then I realized that it was too quiet and suddenly my mind made all the connections and shit oh shit. Then suddenly I could hear everything.
I stood there the cacophony of noise rising above the din in my head. I needed to leave, I needed to know what happened and I needed to get to my family. As I stepped outside and looked around at the chaos that surrounded me the menagerie of sounds began filtering out to their owners. Dogs barking, horns blowing, metal clanging and scraping, and the screaming and crying. People are shouting things to me, I decided to be a somewhat decent human being and see if anyone needed help. I knew that living in California there were plans in place to deal with disaster such as this but it might take a couple days to get to us and I didn’t want a bunch of dead bodies piling up. So I grabbed everything I could find to use for first-aid bandages, towels, needle/thread, lighter, alcohol, and tape.
I went up to the nearest person “what can I do to help”. The next thing I know I was helping to bandage and stitch people up after they were pulled from the wreckage of their homes and cars. Others were pulling the bodies into a basement a couple of houses away Probably to keep the wild animals from eating them. Soon people started coming onto the street from other areas, trying to loot and take what was not theirs. Fights broke out, shots rang, more bodies were pulled to the basement. For the next couple days everyone pulled their resources, sharing food/ water, helping with frightened children, taking care of the elderly and infirmed, and setting up barricades to keep predators out both human and animal. I can’t say that every choice we made was right and some I know were wrong, I probably would not have killed the looters, instead I would have opted to use their skills to get more provisions., but it was about survival.