Not from the personal narration of Thomas Dale

A giant clump of people - for it really wasn't anything other than a disorganized clump - walked close together as they made their way past the desert wastelands of what was once a prosperous world.

In the lead were Jezza and two other instructors, while the rest of them were scattered around the clump, making sure everybody was fine. They had enough rations to go for two more days, and they had already been trekking for about thirty hours, still not seeing any sign of life.

The terrain wasn't much of a desert than just a dry, cracked ground with lines that ran in all directions. Here or there, you saw a dying weed or a dead shrub, or if you were lucky, the remnants of some poor animal that died of starvation or thirst or maybe both. It was like one of those old western landscapes that you saw in comics and tv shows, minus the horses and "hold it there, pardner"s.

"We stop here for lunch," Jezza said, dropping her sack of canned food onto the ground. The other instructors did the same, the one who carried the fragile silverware - Holland - carefully placing it on the ground.

From the crowd swarming over the rations, Jezza could make out Sheard and Beaumont, also shoving their way past dozens of people to keep themselves alive. This was what the world would come down to when all the leftover foods were minimal. Nature wouldn't be the undoing of humanity - it would be humanity itself, in a battle for survival.

The sun scorched the sky ever since week three, drying up most of the water and leaving only small morsels of liquid to be contaminated by other causes. By week five, a strange breed of mosquito - deathmites, they called them - emerged from hell, or wherever all this was coming from. The deathmites came in thousands, and when they found food, whether it was an animal or a human, they all swarmed around the poor victim and drained their blood in a matter of minutes.

That was how the meat was cut off.

Later in week five, the Green Plague also erupted, growing on plants and trees but eventually spreading onto to people. That was when vegetation was also cut off, leaving everybody to resort to what they kept in the cupboard or the pantry.

Eat up, Jezza thought miserably. It may be your last.

After lunch, the trek went on. The walked... and they walked... and they had hope that they would stumble upon a refuge sooner than later, for, while the instructors had a map of nearby refuges, they might still not last to get there.

It was in the afternoon when a frightened young girl, probably not even eight, asked what was going on.

"We need to escape the refuge," Jezza answered, sighing. For such a horrible fate to be imposed on just a small little girl... her parents were missing - likely dead or dying. They found her clutching the arm of a teddy bear, cowering as she slowly starved to death. She fainted before they could bring her to the refuge, but ever since, they brought her back to a somewhat-healthy state, but still tried their best to hide the terrors of the world from her. After all, ignorance was bliss. The girl knew that something was wrong, but, like a dream, she couldn't tell what exactly was wrong with it.

"Why?" the little girl asked, looking at Jezza with her puppy-dog eyes. Jezza sighed.

"Something went wrong there. We need to find a new place to stay."

The girl looked worried, and Jezza wanted to kick herself. Oh, those puppy-dog eyes! If only they would go away! The girl looked like she was on the verge of tears.

"How long will we be staying in that new place?"

"I don't know." Jezza really didn't know, but she couldn't bear lying to the girl, raising her hopes and then shattering it to pieces when she would never see her former refuge again. It was something you were attached to at a young age. The children cling to their parents, the children cling to their homes. This girl lost both of them, and the refuge was the best she had. It was something she was used to by now.

"Will our new home be good?"

Jezza hoped so, but she knew that some refuges were harsher than others. "It will... don't worry."

The puppy-dog expression went away. Jezza sighed a breath of relief.

Meanwhile, several people away, Beaumont was also asking another instructor, Ermis, about the situation.

"How do you know it isn't a false alarm?" the fifteen-year-old boy asked, still keeping his eyes on the wasteland ahead of them.

"It couldn't possibly be," Ermis replied with the utmost definity. "The alarms are run by a series of highly complicated algorithms and backups. Even if there was a false alarm, one of the backups would shut the alarm down before it even rang."

"But say... if the backup also thought it was a Walking Corpse?"

Ermis shook his head. "Impossible. It's not every day when you see something bobbing up the sewer into our facilities. Plus, there's never been a false alarm ever before, and even if there was..."

Ermis stopped in midsentence. 

"Yes?" Beaumont prompted.

"Even if there was a false alarm, the chances of that happening are even lower than the chances of us surviving out here in the wild."

Beaumont blinked. "English, please."

Ermis sighed. "What I mean is that we'll probably last longer out here than not taking any action back inside and hoping that it really is a false alarm. Even if we sent somebody to check... say, a Plankwalker for instance, the disease would spread like wildfire if there was one. Plus, once we reach the other refuge, then we can check if there are any bodies clogging up the sewers."

"Check? But how? It's an entire city away!"

Ermis seemed to consider something, but then answered: "We have drones that get sent into the sewers to take several snapshots of how our waterworks are going under our refuge. Then the drone comes back, we look at what photos it took, and then judge whether it's safe or not to return."

Beaumont didn't look impressed. "So... if it really is a false alarm, we end up walking in a giant circle?"

"Not really. You see, there's a tradeoff here. If we really have wasted our time and walked in a giant circle per se, it would be a waste of time. However, on our return trip, the refuge that we went to has the duty to provide us with more than enough supplies to last all the way back. It's part of the Law of Survival."

"Say what?" Beaumont asked. "Isn't that a video game?"

Ermis nearly laughed. Or maybe he was just choking on something. Either way, the instructor said: "I wouldn't know, but it is a contract that every refuge-Head must sign. To not follow the Law of Survival would mean to be severed from all connection of other refuges. In other words, left to die."

Beaumont gulped. "Harsh."

"But necessary," Ermis added. "You must understand why."

Beaumont nodded. "But what if somebody just goes in a giant circle to get the resources?"

Ermis actually laughed, but it wasn't the LOL what a joke kind of laugh. Beaumont was pretty sure it meant You can't possibly be this stupid.

"Nobody would do that. It's just suicide."

Beaumont turned pink. 

"It's a dark world," Ermis went on. "I don't know about you, but sooner or later, we're all going to-"

The last bit of the instructor's message was cut off by a giant BOOM.

"Crap," Beaumont heard Holland say from somewhere ahead of him.

"Everybody scatter!" Jezza yelled, and then once the clump began dispersing, said: "Earthqua-"

BOOM. Louder this time. Closer.

"What's going on?" somebody yelled as the crowd was now completely scattered in different places.

"Earthquake!" Jezza said hastily. "The disaster kind!"

"What do you-"

BOOM. And then a dry cracking sound emerged from the earth, sounding much like thousands of twigs being snapped all at once.

"Scatter more!" Jezza yelled. "Further! Further!"

The ground suddenly split into two, swallowing several unfortunate people and then moving on, zigzagging through the already-cracking terrain to send more people into the abyss. The earthquake grew wider and longer, and then even wider and even longer until it was clear that it would eventually catch up and devour everyone into its ever-hungry jaws unless it stopped.

"SCATTER!" Jezza yelled, but it was her last before she plummeted down into the depths of hell.

The crowd was screaming now. Beaumont, running as fast as he could, looked behind just in time to see the young girl shriek and cry as she tripped and was sucked into the pits of death too.  Panicking, the instructors dropped their bags and also ran, their instincts kicking in, and for a moment, Beaumont thought wildly: Even in the end our leaders will be like this they won't care about it it's every man for himself WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE OH MY GOODNESS WE ARE ALL GOING TO DIE!!!!!

The carnage went on for several more moments, eating everybody in its way. The line was unpredictable... sometimes it went straight, and suddenly looped around and devoured the ones on the side before going straight again. It was like a snake, Beaumont thought. The snake from the Bible that his mother used to read to him when he was a kid that tricked Adam and Eve into eating the Apple of Knowledge. It was a snake, with its poisonous fangs ready to strike...

As the line suddenly headed his way, Beaumont didn't even fight the terror that mounted in him. He was going to die anyway. Everybody did. You grew old, you grew weak, and you died in your sleep. Or you were young, you were carefree, and then the acid rain boiled you to death. Beaumont's last thought as he fell into the chasms below was that line from Stephen King's The Stand. He had to read the book in eighth grade, and he didn't understand most of it, but there was always this line that haunted him ever since. Time was like a wheel that no man could stand upon. And in the end, it always came back to the same place.

Squeezing his eyes shut, Beaumont fell to his death.

*     *     *

Holland was one of the few who made it out of the bloodbath. There were only three others - all of them who were just ordinary people. There was nobody else to instruct them but him, but, although Holland didn't want to admit it, he never liked that kind of responsibility.

The instructor looked at the gaping hole in the earth in front of him. It was like the Grand Canyon - in fact, it was probably even deeper and wider than the Grand Canyon. To think that he survived... what were the odds?

"We go on," Holland finally said, turning to look at his three fellow people. Two girls and a boy, all of them likely teenagers.

"We go on," Holland repeated. "And we'll seek refuge at the closest stop. There's no more place to go back to with the numbers we have here."

The four of them left...