I was awoken by the sound of a "Yo!", the source still unknown.
I opened my eyes, the sky was still dark. but it was brighter than I remembered seeing it earlier. The source of the "Yo!" made itself known, as Alfred wawed at me to get up, he also brought his index to his lips indicating that I stay quiet.
I sat up, got to my feet in a crouched position and quietly sneaked over to where Alfred was also crouched.
"I think you should see this", his voice was a whisper, silent but determined. He reached into his pocket and produced a strip of paper. the strip of paper seemed harmless enough, nothing really unordinary about it. he pointed to a particular mark on the paper, it looked like writing.
"mass... ...age estima... ...ths ar... 5...lion", from the get-go my assumption was "massive damage estimated deaths around 5 million" possibly the disaster that struck this city, or maybe a neighboring city, before moving to this one.
"What do you make of it?", Alffred asked me.
"I believe that it may have been a disaster on a grand scale for it to end up in the newspaper, but not massive enough on its own to destroy this city, otherwise we wouldn't have found a record of it here.", My hands were cold, sleeping on the bare ground was not good for your health, but my hands were cold with the realization that this may be the last record of a dying civilization. maybe ours.
"I concur, there is a very direct feel to the message, as if it was given as an on site report."
Neither of us spoke as we took in what the message might mean for our situation. if we were the last surviors it might mean we had no hope of ever returning to our respective families. but it might also mean a new chance. The previous order of the world had left me little more than broken and bitter for all the things that happened. I felt a twinge of happiness, happiness for being free. nothing tying me down to my previous world. Nothing but my memories. Weird really the ancient egyptians said that there are two deaths, one where you physically die, and the other when you leave the memories of the people left behind. Or at least that's what I remember being said in an episode of a cartoon I used to watch. It may not have been the most accurate source of history knowledge, but it got the job done.
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"What do you want to do now?", I asked Alfred. He looked at the paper-strip and took a breath, a slow breath, one that he probably knew would end in a sigh, yet he still did it. Then he did sigh, a long and quiet sigh. A sigh of relenting will.
"What humans are known to historically do after a natural disaster, move on.", Alfred had a sad look in his eyes, I felt the compulsion to say something, but I knew that I shouldn't.
As if planning this for ages, Clara chose that moment to wake from her own slumber.
"What are you fucking whispering about?", ever the colorful language, Clara brought an end to the decidedly closed discussion.
"Nothing really, I do hope that our whispering did not wake you?", Alfred chose to reply.
"Well you fucking did, so shut up and go back to sleep you bad impersonation of a llama.", I still could not really understand her resoning for swearing so much. but I decided to let the matter lay still for now.
As such I laid down myself, the poncho providing somewhat of a softening effect to the hard layer of rock. It may still have been hard, but it was considerably better than nothing.
I fell asleep counting the unfamiliar stars coating the almost twillight early morning sky.
And I awoke once more, this time not from a friendly "Yo!" however. This time silence greeted me, as I sat up to find a deserted camp-fire, a blood-trail leading away from the camp-fire, and three sticks making an arrow pointing the direction of the blood-trail.
"well shit."