Melbourne, 2054

YOU DON’T KNOW me. I’m not important. What happened out there today … is.

I don’t even know what it was. The end? A beginning? Or something in between? It doesn’t matter; it’s quiet now. The dead stay dead. The screams … well, the screams fell silent. For that I’m grateful. We all are.

How does one make sense of what happened? How does one manage to squeeze an hour of sleep out of this brutal night? I don’t think sleep will find me. The hundreds of open eyes peering through the dark tell the same tale.

Shock. But what did we expect? Did we think the situation would escalate so fast? Of course not. And who fired first?

You see, it was supposed to be a peaceful demonstration. All we wanted was the truth. We knew the lies. We knew the reasons for the lies. But we also knew that our little country, our continent, hadn’t seen a drop of any real rain in two years. Before that, it had been sporadic with dry seasons enduring like a visit from the in-laws, and rainy seasons as elusive as a wet dream.

We heard of the Scharder Five. Rumors, mostly. We heard they were crazy. Delusional fools looking for a fast buck on the backs of fear. But they had discovered the truth years ago and our peaceful government shut them out. And we believed in that government.

Until the fires. Last spring. They swept up under intense heat. The hottest spring Australia had ever seen. The flames burned the sky and raged for … well, they’re still raging today. We see the glow to the north. We thought they were fighting it. Then we learned they had given up months ago. No water.

Then came The Prophecy.

Someone claimed an ancient scroll or tablet or something like that had been found in an Arab country where wars had been raging like that fire, but for thousands of years, instead of just one. No water to fight their blaze.

I don’t know who made the claim, but the government denied it.

The Prophecy.

A hoax. Like the Scharder Five. But the questions had already started. People were already dying. Entire families, even towns, wiped out. The Internet was being controlled. Monitored. Censored. That’s what people were saying, anyway. The rumors enveloped us all. Something was wrong. A conspiracy was keeping us in the dark.

Our world was burning, but to look at the Internet, you’d think we were surrounded by lush green pastures and monsoons. ‘Everything’s fine.’ I sent an email to an American friend of mine six months ago asking all sorts of questions. I never heard back. Many of us had the same story.

That’s the thing about tragedy. And fear. When people are cornered, or trapped in a box, eventually they start to talk. The talk leads to rumors and wild accusations, tall tales and myths. I never had cause to get on a plane; I didn’t know no one was flying anymore. That’s what I heard, anyway. Harbors and ports were sealed off, too. No one was coming in. No one was going out. I never saw it, though; I had to take others’ word for it. We all did.

Rumors. They can burn just like those fires to the north. They can ignite a world.

Embassies had closed. Government buildings sealed. The more they got hold of something, the more those rumors started to fly. We needed answers. We needed the truth. Two months ago ‘revolution’ became the keyword of our generation. We had to fight the inferno. We had to do something. That was when we heard of The Prophecy.

The Prophecy (supposedly) told of a cleansing of the Earth. A Noah’s Arc in reverse. Instead of floods, it would be a cleansing by fire. Do you see why we believed it? Do you see that’s why tonight, all those hushed voices are talking about it? The Prophecy has taken on new life tonight. It’s what we’re all thinking; it’s what we all fear, even more than the horror of today. And I can’t clear my head of the images of today. My brother Zeke standing beside me as we marched on Melbourne, waving a sign he crudely made that read, ‘Truth Now.’ It was the chant of the day.

“Truth Now.”

One minute he was chanting in time with the rest of us, the next, he collapsed into me, the back of his head plastered against Mildred Simms and her own handmade protest. I barely registered what had happened, my eyes riveted on the blood and bone fragments and brain matter that struck her, and her own look of horror. Then a hole ripped open her chest. Her dying eyes locked on mine. I never saw someone die before and I’ll never forget how the light simply faded from her brown eyes.

Then the chaos.

My brother’s body dragged me to the ground. The burning asphalt glistened from the blood. All that blood. I wondered how much blood could come from one person. But it wasn’t his. A river flowed in red. I looked ahead as a sea of bodies fell like freshly mown grass. Before them, the precision blades of an army barreled down. Tiny flits of flame coughed from the ends of hundreds, maybe even thousands, of guns. A haze of smoke filled the air. My ears didn’t hear them. All I could hear was the pounding of my heart. And screaming.

A whistle, a mosquito whizzed by me. My knees buckled and cracked against the pavement. Warm liquid rolled around them, and through my jeans. How long could it have been? I thought. How long could I have been there for this much blood-

Someone knocked me over as they ran in terror, screaming. I looked once more to Zeke and then did the same.

*****

I’m glad those screams have died. The dead stay dead and we have no time to bury them. Tomorrow we head out. To where, I’m not sure.

It’s all rumor at this point.