900 Days Since The Sun Went Dark
The intimate certainty that we can alter our destiny was the ruin of the survivors. No one is special.
Of course there must be others. I am sure, even after 900 days of darkness. But if there are others they must be like me, and those who are like me do not make sounds, they do not despair, they have no one to love and they are not loved. Those who are like me do not come out.
It is important to clarify that there is nothing particularly strange outside, except the darkness.
There are no zombies, no vampires, and no ungrateful dead rising from their graves. There is darkness, yes, a darkness that adheres to the skin, that pulverizes, that annihilates. The funny thing is that, despite perpetual night, plants live. I know this because I can see the tree in front through the planks that I used to cover the windows. Due to the closure, I could not say that its leaves are still green, but what I can say is that they have fallen and sprouted again. The tree lives.
I don’t dare guess at it. I never liked science fiction. In fact, I never liked reading; neither is the cinema. The only thing I like is the music. My old radio is my only company.
I have one of those age-old teams – it was my father’s – capable of tuning in to stations thousands of miles away. To save batteries I have maintained a rigorous system: I turn it on for exactly one minute, not a second more, not a less, at 23:59. In other words, I have been listening to what is happening outside for 900 minutes. This has allowed me to get a more or less general idea of what has been happening in that period.
The temptation to go out, that absurd idea that one can do something to save oneself, or to save someone else, took care of most of the survivors. Heroes always fall first.
Then fell those who sought less abstract excuses for doom, such as lack of water or food. You assholes. One can hydrate with the moisture that accumulates on the walls; one can filter sweat, urine; one can feed on insects, moss, excrement. One can even meet those needs for months by taking the precaution of isolating the corpses of their relatives in a dark, unventilated place, such as a closet; or dry them with salt and sugar. Cadaveric juices are also highly nutritious if kept in a cool place.
Finally, the last survivors to perish were those who went mad with isolation. Ridiculous, isn’t it? Hundreds and hundreds of days of darkness eating shit and then venturing into the night and dying just like anyone.
Sure there must be others, but those others must be like me, and those who are like me survive because before the sun went down they were already eating shit, they were already alone.
Sin From day 200 of darkness the electricity finally ran out, and the official stations stopped transmitting.
By day 475, there were no more civilians transmitting desperate requests for help from their private teams. Since then you only hear static: 425 days of clean and pure static, to be more precise.
My radio’s battery finally ran out. It is 00:00 hs. After hundreds and hundreds of days of static, with the last residue of energy, the radio finally emitted a human voice, almost a whisper, a word: my name.
I’m going out. I’m not a martyr. I never was. Not even now. So I am alive.
