The Beginning

The funny thing is that no one really expects bad things to happen. Our ordinary lives are filled with ordinary things. Sometimes things don't go our way and sometimes they do. Things that are truly bad, truly horrifying, are fairly rare.

For most of us.

When the earthquake hit it was a bad thing. California is used to it. We have so many that we don't even think about them when they happen. The ground rolls, sometimes something will fall and break, and then everyone watches the news and jokes about it or promptly forgets it ever happened. Once in a while a bad earthquake occurs, but these are rare and generally only result in localized death and destruction.

This time it was different.

The initial quake did indeed cause a good amount of death and destruction, but what occurred afterward was even worse. Something was wrong afterwards, like the universe twisted and the laws mankind had known were suddenly null and void. Religion might call it Judgement Day, zealots would call it the End Times, and survivalists would figure it was some kind of terrorist or Communist attack.

Most survivors wouldn't care to distinguish it, wouldn't care to give it a name, because they would be too busy trying to survive in the aftermath. In the end, after the end, all that would be left would be those who learned to survive on the corpse of the old world, those who were able to go beyond their continually slipping vestiges of humanity and those who were able to survive regardless of what they had to do.