Cowardice

It all began when he closed his eyes. The dreams, the folklore, the beauty. If only it was as real as the death that laid before him. For so long he had wished that the earth died, but now that it had come true he missed it all. For every tear he cried every night before he slept, he remembered a face, and with each face erupted a deep sense of fear and guilt and melancholy loomed over him, and another tear came out; this process continued until he found himself awake the next morning, the only memories still being faces, beautiful faces he onced loved or hated. But all the faces were human, and now they were dead.
He stopped himself from walking out of the building each time he tried, he did not want to see the death anymore, and the radiation poisoning would be bad enough, without disturbing himself with pictures of his friends charred on the floor. What a coward, he thought. Why was I such a coward? He shuddered at the realization that he killed them. All of them. Dear god, if I could turn back time.
He sat on the floor. He passed his time by drawing, or writing. Mostly letters, as if he was able to send a letter to anyone outside of this damned gymnasium.
Maybe they were to the people who couldn’t stay like he could. After the first day, most of them left, most likely now puss-filled bags crying for help a mile away, slowly dying of twenty cancers and fifty infections from the grotesquely slow death of radiation. The second wave, the last of them left after the second day.
Had it only been three days? It seemed like a year, at least. He shuddered, then cried, knowing that seventy two hours ago, those that he loved were alive before all of this.
Although none of the people that were in the gymnasium before now were people he loved.
But he had to leave, even though he focused on his pain, hunger still gnawed at him, like his ferret used to relentlessly attack his palm, unsuccessfully, and toppling over. He laughed. Memories. Good memories.
He had to leave. He stopped himself. He had to leave. He cracked the door open, the wind was blowing towards him, scaring him, and he closed the door.
He unsuccessfully tried to calculate the flow of the fallout, and realized that the wind was pushing it all away from that direction, and depending on the wind before then, he could be safe by now. But even then, he didn’t want to risk it. But he had to. He pulled out his sweatshirt and tied the bottom of his pants to his ankles. Twisting the hood until it gave him only one eyehole, he ventured forth.

The side of the school he exited wasn’t too badly hurt, some radiation poisoning had made some plants grow ill-proportionately, while others were strangled by their own uncontrolled cell growth.
He tried going in that same direction. But he had to look. He had to.
He stood above his friends, one of which was still gripping the door. The black skeletal hand still held the bar, while the body was dust.
He looked down, more friends, he looked at the football field. The grass that survived the heat had turned a bizarre blue-ish color, in their disease, the bleachers toppled over, their metal no more uniform than a three year old’s scribble, now black and some melted off, and even more pieces were jarred into the walls behind him, or impaling some of the students. The home side showed a bit of the extended crater, the very tip of a very large sphere cut out the far off edge.
He realized that the open space to the left had once been a building. With people inside. He had delved so much in the fantasy of it all, he forgot the truth, and desensitized himself. He wasn’t sad for his friends, or mourned the deceased. He was in awe of the sheer force of what killed his friends.
The building vacuum ended in what used to be the perfect sphere ending the bleachers did, but parts falling and toppling over had distorted into some bizarre tetris shape.
He sat amongst his friends for the last time. He had no will to live. So he sat, and he died.
and finally the guilt of the game he thought he was playing with his friends, that grim game that killed them, died with him.
He was holding the door against them as a joke, but the blast followed. What if he had opened it for them? letting them in?
At least he would have died with them.
So now, finally he fulfilled that.