The world has ended.
Within a discarded world covered in ruins by destroyed buildings from all over the world, a single man sat quietly looking at the sky.
The smell of blood reeks in the air, corpses of people, be they old or young, hanging and lying on the ground and in the buildings, yet nothing bothers him right now. Right now, he just wants to take a deep breath and enjoy this peaceful moment.
An unknown number of hours ago, the world faced the end of it. The destruction was fast, so fast that no one managed to react to it, be it the government or the people living there.
The first thing that came when the world ended was an endless amount of earthquakes that lasted for hours he cannot count. Killing most of humanity within it
All the countries of the world didn't take long to be destroyed and split apart by it. The ground shook endlessly as if it were moving towards something.
It didn't take long for the second coming of the end.
A minute after the shaking of the ground stopped, the rise of water began. A tsunami reaching skyscraper size came, drowning the world itself and the remaining survivor of the first destruction.
Thanks to his background, he somehow managed to survive the second hit. Being a student in an international school in the Philippines, the school had many facilities and useful equipment.
It was a pure miracle, when the water came he somehow stumbled into the infirmary. Although his head hurt from having gone through the earthquake before. He clings to the oxygen tank within the afirmary for his life. His broken and tired body meant nothing at that time.
He returns to the same thing he had gone through from the earthquake, where he can only hope and beg for it to stop. And cannot tell how long he was in this moment.
This time, the only difference is that there's no one screaming anymore in his surroundings, since almost everyone else had died in the first one. Their crushed and ground bodies covered the floor, leading to a pool of blood.
Now, here he sat alone in this destroyed world, looking at the clear blue sky. He finds it funny that the world ended, yet the sky was still the same. As if the world is telling him that no matter what happened on Earth, it won't affect heaven itself.
Slapping his cheeks to clear his mind. "Get it together. Right now thinking about what happened won't help you. Right now, you need to survive...."
Survive? Was there any meaning in doing this? The world is already destroyed to the point that he can't even hear anything in his surroundings.
"The hell am I thinking? I survived and I'll make sure to live till I can't anymore." Saying those words, he stood up from his position and started moving.
"Now that I think about it. What is my name?" The man was confused; in his memory, everything was still intact, except for everyone's names and his own.
As he tried to recall anyone's names, he simply remembered his family. We're there okay? Are they still alive in this new world?
His answer: "No."
He already knew he survived by pure miracle, and if somehow his family did too. That will be just ridiculous. He knew having these thoughts would only hinder him, so he spent some time gathering the last bit of care about them.
This would be the last time he would care about them. The moment he stopped this, he would never talk or think about them till he got the perfect moment to do so.
For now, he needed to name himself. He looked around and thought through what he should name himself now. With how the second destruction came, he named himself:
"Noah...."
"This will be my name for now. Till I remember my actual name." Leaving this thought, he started thinking about how he should move now.
The first thing he needed right now was a change of clothes, having gone through both destruction. His uniform was wrecked, to the point it was barely clinging to his body.
After doing that, food, water, shelter, and finally a weapon to use. With how the terrain around him was unrecognizable, he couldn't tell for sure if he was still in the same country.
"What language is that?" He asked, looking at one of the destroyed building boards before him. It was not an English letter or anything he knew of.
From the way they were written, he could tell it was either from the three countries of Japan, Korea, or China. Yet, even knowing this, he can't tell for sure whether this was right or not.
"If there are any survivors, I need to prepare myself to fight them." He resolved himself with this idea. With the world itself dead already, the law is dead too.
And without the government regulating these laws, people would not hesitate to commit crimes. It will be foolish to think someone would still bother to hesitate to break the once existing laws, with how the world is.
*****
A few days later.
"Jackpot!" The man screams, holding a container in his hand. Within the last few days, he has been moving north in the hope of finding anything useful.
The first few days didn't bring anything new. It was just the same destroyed buildings that didn't contain anything useful for survival. Though he managed to find some new clothes he can use in one of the locker rooms in those buildings.
Other than that, the buildings were mostly used, as nothing but a camp to sleep the night away, then moving forward the next morning.
After moving again for days, he somehow found himself in a small market. Without hesitation, he broke in and started munching on the food in them. Such as bread, water, and some instant food.
Luckily, he even managed to find a hiking backpack within the store worker area. He stayed in that store for two days only, eating as much as he could. Gathering what was necessary and throwing out what was not.
And after resting his damaged and tired body, enough that the eye bags in his face were gone. He took everything he could carry, one thing that could last long, and he started moving again.
Then, finally, after a week since the destruction stopped, he found the most useful things he could get in this world. A water filtration jug.
The box it was in told him that putting water in it for an hour would make it drinkable. This was the best. Sure, he already has water bottles in his bag, and some other useful things.
But having such a thing is better. Since he just needed to find a water source then wait for an hour. Then boom, an endless water supply that is drinkable is now available.
"The world is still a shitty place, but it is somehow better now." He muttered those words, watching the sky turn dark once again.
The night was the worst. Being a modern man used to seeing the lights everywhere he goes, he couldn't get used to the endless abysses of darkness surrounding him.
Not only were the surroundings in complete darkness, but also disgustingly quiet. So quiet that he can't even hear anything within it. And if something were to make a noise, he could hear the entire thing moving.
He camped deep underground where the destroyed buildings were set. The place he was in was a hospital. He was in the split section of it where the entrance table was on and made a tiny campfire that heat himself up and used the fire to heat water up for his instant noodles.
The double door entrance was in front of him, covered in debris while letting the moon shine on the entrance. The only other open space was to his left, a dark and gloomy area where not even throwing a fire in it, would light it up.
To his right, the hall was covered with the fallen debris. Probably results from the earthquake before.... Though there was a buried hand under the rubble, he ignored it only knowing this person, whoever it was, is already dead.
"Don't think about it. Don't think about it. Don't think about it. Don't think about it." The man repeated those words, telling himself not to think of any horror images he had seen on the internet.
In this past week, his only enemy was himself. Each time the night came, Noah would think of those horror images he had seen before. Scaring himself, stupid yes. But he can't help doing it.
"Lalalallaa. Nothing is near me, I'm all alone in this world. Nothing can touch me....." He felt something touching him. Since he felt the 'hand' touching him on the left, it meant this being came from the left entrance.
Ba-dump! Ba-dump!! Ba-dump!!!
He could hear his heart pumping echoing within him. Slowly he opened his closed eyes. There, a human-like being was staring at him. Though it looked like a human, the thing beside him was not one.
To be precise it looks more like a—
"Zombie!!!" He screams, pushing it away from him and running away from it. Making the zombie stumble to its feet.
Quickly grabbing the nearest hand-sized debris in the front entrance, he raised it above his head and crashed the zombie's head.
Maybe because the zombie was watching him all this time, it didn't bother to attack back. But this experience already told him what the third coming of the end of destruction was.
"The zombie era is here...."