"Gather around," I said, tightening the straps on my makeshift vest as the wind howled through the broken shell of what used to be a government library.
The little ones leaned closer, wrapped in whatever scraps of warmth they had. Their eyes were too old for their age — the kind of eyes you earn only after seeing death come too close, too often. A few others — older teens, a limping medic, even the gruff ex-soldier we called 'Boss' — sat on cracked stone and rusted steel frames, waiting in silence.
"Before the infection spread across continents… before cities collapsed into bone yards and AI sentinels hunted anything warm-blooded… there was a time people called 'civilization'."
I paused, staring into the flames of our small campfire. It was flickering like everything else in this world — fragile, temporary.
"That civilization? It didn't die because of war or famine or natural disaster. It died because of four people. Four minds too brilliant for their own good. Four friends."
"They were the Black horses of their century", I added.
"Were they villains?", one of the kids asked promptly.
"No. They weren't villains.", I answered still staring at the small campfire. "Not at first.", I added.
"It wasn't supposed to be this way," I said aloud, more to myself than anyone else. But the kids were still listening. Wide-eyed. Afraid.
"They said they were building tools. Systems to help. Machines to protect. Biotech to cure."
"What they sought to create was a better future for the people of this world." I explained. "But what they created was... well... the start of our extinction."
I reached into my pocket and pulled out the charred remnants of an old photo — four young scientists, arms slung over shoulders, laughing in some Silicon Valley lab, blissfully unaware of the chaos they were about to unleash. Why I carried the photo of the people responsible for the doom of society is still a mystery to me. Maybe it was to let myself know that the real enemy is not the world out there but the darkness inside us all.
And then, I said the line I always end this story with. The line my father once told me, right before the drones took him:
"If there's one thing that can destroy the Earth, our famous Green Planet, it's the Greed of its own People."
Once a utopian haven for evolving life, the birthplace of art, thought, love — and the most intelligent species in the known universe — turned into a nightmarish hellscape by the ambition of its own children.
What started as a curious experiment — four friends dreaming of building a better future — became the greediest chapter in Earth's history.
And I, a survivor born in the ashes of this world, am here to tell you how it all began.
It has been more than 20 years since the apocalypse first started, and despite all this time, there are no signs of it getting any better.
It all started so suddenly that no one was prepared to fight it and within 3-4 days, the whole world was gone. Suddenly, the generation which was so used to lying in their beds and doomscroll was to fend off the zombies they were only familiar with, in movies. The first to be affected were the children and the elder since there was not much they could do. Soon, the Gen Zs followed suit. There was no chance that those whose job up until now had been to dance and make videos to please the internet could survive against the masses whose only purpose was to kill everything in their path.
Most days, we are scavenging the land for resources while trying to keep a low profile to not attract the zombies, not even sure if they are zombies or something else, but we like to call them the Hollowed since it was like the soul has been snatched from their body and the body has become a shell for Satan himself.
And thus, the world became desolated, charred and dystopian. But it's not all that bad, turns out when the world is burning, you have a lot of time to waste, and that's why I sometimes tell stories to the new generation which has never seen what the actual world looked like. This keeps me busy while also giving hope to the children to witness the old beautiful earth in future once this is all over.
Or is this how it ends - not with a bang, but with the world quietly forgetting we were ever here?