So it finally happened.
 After countless books, articles, newsletters, prophecies
and websites were written about the subject, it finally came
to pass.
 It just wasn't what I expected. I mean, it's not like I
didn't wish the world would end sometimes. Sure, it happened
now and then. But I also wished money would grow on trees,
women would walk around topless and that the government
would someday legitimize Mary Jane, and a hell of a lot more
times then the first wish, so why did this one had to come
true?
 Anyway, it wasn't the bombs that did it, or nuke winter,
or pollution, or global warming. I think it was a bug. A
virus. There wasn't any fancy name to it, Virususus
Terminalus or whatever. There was no ominous sounding one
either, like the Plague or something like that. Why? 'Cause
there was no time, that's why. People died so fast they
didn't have time to figure out what was killing them. The
whole thing took less than 48 hours.
 So why am I still here? Good question. Thought about it
myself, and tell you the god honest truth, I haven't got a
clue. There's nothing special about me. I'm just your
average guy. I did get the flu about a day or so before the
end. I was a little feverish before I finally shrugged it
off, so maybe I got immuned somehow.
 Whatever. I mean, it's all in the past, right? No use
crying over spilled milk, as my Mom said when we had milk to
spill. More often, it was beer.
 So anyway, I'm wandering the city, and eventually, I
leave, since I'm sick of seeing dead bodies everywhere I
look. Figured I might as well travel around first time in my
life. See the sights, as it were. The best way to do that
was to use the highway, obviously. I thought I'd pinch
myself some guy's Caddie or Porsche. It's not like he's
using it anymore. Well, guess what? Soon as I reach the
road, I find out it's completely blocked. I mean like
thousands and thousands of cars backed up as far as the eye
could see, full of rotting corpses who used to be people who
wanted to escape the city and maybe live a little longer.
But they had the bug themselves and didn't know it right
until the end. Some cars were smashed into each other; their
drivers apparently stopped breathing right in the middle of
the road. Totally surreal. I would've thought this was some
weird narcotic side effect, except I finished all my joints
a day before.
 So I started walking. I didn't really have anything better
to do. Just dragging my heels along the dead, silent
superhighway, trying to stay off the hot asphalt as much as
I could to avoid the smell. Eventually I got tired, so I sat
down under some tree, pulled out my guitar and started
playing to myself. Nobody listening but me and the stiffs.
 I played Stairway to Heaven first. It's a good tune to
warm up to. Then I went on to some Spanish tune I used here
and there, and little by little, the tunes got jumbled up
inside each other and I kind of lost coherence. I was
playing just for the hell of it, and what came out of the
strings was a low, sad music I've never heard before. The
kind you hear in Blues concerts and ambiance scenes in old,
black & white movies. A funeral dirge for the end of the
world. The tune to welcome the four horsemen of apocalypse.
Except it wasn't roaring drums and blaring trumpets, it was
just one soft, lonely old guitar. It wasn't much of a world,
but it was the only one we had.
 "You play very nice."
 I was so surprised, I almost fell off the rock I was
sitting on. After I recovered my guitar, I looked up, and
there was a woman and a child standing there, looking back
at me. The woman was real pretty, in her 20's, long brown
hair gathered back with a red bandanna. The kid was maybe
12-13, and had big green eyes that kept darting around in
suspicion and a face that had the same amount of expression
as wallpaper.
 "I didn't mean to scare you." The woman said hurriedly.
 "No, it's okay." I said, a little embarrassed. "It's just
that I didn't expect... well, see, I thought I was the only
one left."
 "Apparently not." She said. It was kind of a dumb thing to
say and she seemed to realize it, so she stopped and we were
quiet for a while.
 "I'm Anna." She said finally.
 "Joe." I introduced myself. "Who's the kid?"
 "He wouldn't tell me his name." Said Anna ruefully. "He
doesn't really say anything. I found him wandering the
streets and took care of him since. We had to leave the city
yesterday so the diseases won't get us."
 "But what's wrong with him?"
 Her eyes narrowed in irritation. "What do you think? He's
traumatized."
 I shrugged and, dead serious, asked her: "Aren't we all?"

 We stuck together for the company and mutual benefit. Anna
was a tour guide once. She knew first aid and basic survival
methods. We raided suburban houses for food and supplies.
 At night we sometimes slept outdoors, and sometimes
squatted in the houses we raided, but we never stayed more
than a day anywhere. If someone would ask me why I couldn't
really answer. It was more of an urge than a thought, a
driving force behind our conscious actions.
 We kept moving.

 Somewhere along the way, Anna and I became lovers. I'm not
sure if it was really love, or simple attraction, or maybe
we just needed to feel comforted, that we weren't alone.
Maybe it was a little of everything.
 One day, when we were sleeping in a nice, deserted
suburban house, Anna came to me and said: "We can't go on
like this."
 "Like what?" I asked.
 "This!" she answered, gesturing around her as if to
suggest that all of us, the house, the city, the whole world
had something very wrong with it. She was probably right.
"All or this. This wandering, this constant movement,
staying one night in a house, than up and away, over and
over. This isn't good for us, for the kid. We have to settle
down somewhere."
 "Why?" I asked. "What's wrong with living on the road?"
 "Living on the road? Is this your idea of a life? We've
never stayed put anywhere for more than a night or two,
we're always looking for some place new, we don't have any
belongings heavier than what we can carry in our pockets and
satchels, and we constantly have to look for food and water.
We don't even have any target, some place we're moving
towards. We're just drifting. This isn't living!"
 "Wrong." I said. I took her hand and lead her to a window.
Outside were three graves, hastily dug into the cold earth,
undoubtedly the former inhabitants of this house.
 "This isn't living!" I said, gesturing toward the distant
mounds of dirt. "You stay in one place too long, this is
what happens to you. Some... some Thing will catch you, and
kill you. You gotta be on the move, always on the move."
 "Running away." She said in a choked voice.
 "Yes," I said. "What you can't handle, you have to run
away from." Again, I pointed toward the graves. "That's what
they didn't understand."
 She was silent.
 "Life don't have any higher purpose," I continued. "No
grand destiny, no predetermined fate, no deeper meaning to
the whole thing. Drifting is just the way life is. You live,
then you die. Anything in between is just random,
coincidence."
 She didn't respond. With her head bowed, she started to
leave, then stopped at the doorway and turned to face me.
 "I feel sorry for you." She said quietly, almost
whispering. Then she left.
 We kept moving.

 That was about two weeks before Anna got sick. We ran into
a group of drifters, about five men and three women, who
banded together for the common good. We joined them, and for
a while things didn't seem so dark and lonely. We sought
food and medical supplies within the unkempt buildings and
crashed cars, sifting through the post apocalyptic wreckage
like hairless cavemen. That's what we were, after all. We
may have dressed in fancy clothes and even bathed almost
every day, but nothing more than this. Gone were the days
when we could look on ourselves as a part of a great
culture, members of a giant family of men and women who did
the impossible as a way of life. Survivors, that's what we
were now.
 During the day we scavenged the ruins, taking what we
needed. By night we sealed the house or apartment we were
staying in and huddled around the fire against the cold,
unyielding night.
 "Are you happy?" I asked Anna one of those nights.
 "That's a stupid question." She said. "I'd have been happy
if I started every day in my bed, next to my boyfriend, not
in a torn blanket in some draughty dump. Always wondering
where I am for a second, and then remembering 'Oh, right,
the whole world has gone to hell.'"
 "You're right." I said. "But you know what I mean. Are you
happier than before, or at least content?"
 She didn't answer for a while, then said "Yeah. Yeah, I
am. We all have to adjust, and make the best of what we
have. And compared to the rest of the world, I think a got a
pretty good deal."
 I smiled, and she leaned her head on my shoulder. I kissed
her forehead.
 "I love you." I said.
 She looked at me for a moment, surprised. "I love you,
too." She replied.
 We held each other for a while, and then she coughed.
Deep, throaty cough.
 "I don't like the sound of that." I said.
 "It's just so fucking cold lately." She said. "Don't worry
about it. I'll be all right in a day or two."

 But she wasn't. Anna's health continued to deteriorate
quickly over the next two days. Everybody knew what it was,
but nobody dared say it aloud. It was the bug.
 There was nothing any of us could do for her, except make
her a little more comfortable and shoot her full of
painkillers.
 One of the other survivors, Perren was his name, was a
doctor in his former life. He met with the kid and me in
Anna's room. Isaacs, who was our little group's unappointed
leader, was also there. He was a tall, lanky sort of guy. I
don't think he liked the job he ended up with very much, but
he did his best with it.
 Dr. Perren was saying that Anna didn't have long when
Issacs interrupted: "Is it the bug, Doc?"
 "Definitely." Said Perren. He seemed curiously calm about
it. "I've seen the symptoms enough times to recognize it
again."
 "How could this happen?" I asked. "I thought the bug
killed everybody who wasn't naturally immune to it. Whoever
was left was safe."
 "I thought the same." Answered Perren. "But apparently
not. I suspect Anna was infected with a mutated version of
the virus, created after the cataclysm. This mutation was
what passed through Anna's immunity systems. Since it
happened so quickly after the initial creation, I think that
mutation might be part of its modus operandi. It'll continue
to improve and re-invent itself until it has no more hosts
to infest. It's quite fascinating, really."
 Isaacs paled. "That means none of us is safe from it."
 Perren nodded.
 "Then we have to leave here now. Get the hell away from
that woman."
 "That would be pointless." Said Perren. "By now we are all
infected with this mutation, as we were for weeks before it
outgrew its incubation period. Only difference is, this time
we're not immune."
 The kid, who sat in a corner and said nothing until now,
stood up and kicked a table violently. It crashed to floor
in a deafening roar in the silence of the dark room.
 "What's with him?" Asked Isaacs. "I thought he was
catatonic."
 "He's sad." I said. "He's about to lose his second
mother."
 "Why doesn't he just cry or something?"
 "I don't think he knows how."

 We stayed with Anna for as long as she had. Which wasn't
much. I would sit by her bed and we'd hold hands silently.
Me, because I feared if I opened my mouth I'd burst in tears
in front of her. She, because her vocal chords were, by this
time, damaged beyond repair.
 The kid would sit in his usual corner, glaring at me with
accusing eyes, never saying a word.

 By the time Anna died, one of the other women and two of
the men were sick, and all the others were showing early
signs of the illness.
 All, that is, except the kid and myself.
 I went to see Perren. He could still stand, although he
looked like shit.
 "Why aren't we sick?" I asked.
 "You and the boy probably have different defense systems
than the rest of us." He said, and paused to cough his lungs
out. "You're carrying the bug, same as us, but in you two,
it lies dormant, waiting for its next mutation when it can
try again."
 "I don't understand. Is the virus mutating by itself?"
 "At first I thought so." He said. "But I had a sample
isolated from Anna's blood. When compared to an older one
from the cataclysm, you can definitely see a change,
but..."
 "But what?" I pressed on."
 "Well, the one I had taken from Anna's blood hasn't shown
any kind of change for almost two days now."
 There was a beat of silence as I digested this.
 "What are you telling me?"
 "That this virus doesn't mutate on its own. It needs some
other contributing factor." He stopped, seemingly lost in
despair. "Maybe body temperature, I don't know. Doesn't
matter now, anyway."
 I held on to the subject: " Or maybe a certain body? Like
a special body?"
 "Yes..." he said, furrowing his brow. "A unique metabolism
could be the catalyst. Hell, it might even be the cause of
the bug's creation in the first place. It's possible the
virus was just a harmless intestinal virus before it mutated
for the first time."
 "Which would mean the guy who made it infected the entire
world with it."
 "That would be the logical conclusion, yes. But may I ask:
Why are you so interested in it? Sooner or later we'll all
die from this bug, and the original host could be anywhere,
if he's even still alive."
 "Oh, I think he is, Doc." I said, rage slowly burning its
way through my body. "And I think I know just where to find
him."
 
 Isaacs had a shotgun. He carried it with him as a
precaution against possible raiders and surviving gangs. We
haven't seen any yet, but he held on to it, just in case.
 I ripped through his room like a hurricane, Isaacs
powerless to stop me. He just lay in his bed weakly in
glared at me. I was really tempted at that moment to put him
out of his misery.
 I found what I was looking for and let for Anna's tent,
Perren hot on my heels. He limped as fast as he could to
keep up with me.
 "For God's sake, will you think about what you're doing?"
he shouted at me.
 "God never cared about our sakes, so why should I care
about his?" I retorted. "And I have thought about this, very
thoroughly."
 "Look, just calm down a little, will you?" he grabbed my
sleeve in an effort to slow me down. I batted his weak grip
away like an annoying fly.
 "NO! It stops, now. I may be too late for everybody, too
late for... her. But I'm gonna see to it the little mother
fucker pays for what he did!"
 "Wait! You can't know for su-"
 I stopped in my tracks and looked him in the eye.
 "I do." I said with absolute, horrible certainty. "I
know."

I kicked open the door and scanned the room. There he was,
scrunched up in his dirty corner, looking at me with those
hateful, accusing eyes.
 Well, I told myself, he's about to get his hate completely
justified.
 Perren entered the room, but said nothing, probably afraid
I'll shoot him too.
 "Get up." I told the boy. "You're gonna get what's coming
to you now. What you should have gotten long before now. You
stupid, filthy waste of space."
 The kid didn't answer, as usual. He just kept staring at
me. He did stand up slowly, though.
 "You did this." I said, my voice trembling. "You're
responsible for everything, aren't you?"
 Silence.
 "ANSWER ME!!!"
 Nothing.
 I raised the gun, and cocked it. I shifted the safety and
was about to pull the trigger when...
 The kid opened his mouth slowly.
 I waited, but still he said nothing.
 Very, very slowly, his eyes rolled in their sockets and he
collapsed to the floor.
 I stared at his body in confusion. Perren rushed to his
side.
 "Dead." he said wearily. "The bug. Looks like he was ill
for a while, which is why he couldn't talk."

 I sat on a large rock outside the decayed, burning city.
The sun warmed my back; the flames, my face.
 Everything was clear to me now, as bright and shiny as a
cracked mirror.
 The kid's eyes, glaring at me.
 Accusing.
 I could still fell his eyes on my back. Something told me
I'll never stop feeling them.
 But that didn't matter. I had a job now, a destiny.
 My path was clear. I would seek the next group of
survivors and watch them die one by one, then move on to the
next. And the next. And the next, until there's just me.
 For the first time in my life, I had a purpose.
 I was the Angel of Death.