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Silence.
Silence only broken by footsteps.
One after another
after another
after another
after another
afte
Something broke with a strange crunch under his foot, contrasting harshly in the complete silence previously only broken by the quiet footsteps previously muffled by the thick layer of grey ash coating the ground.
Expressionless, Alfred crouched down and dug his good hand through the thick, loose blanket of ash, the long-forgotten Geiger counter strapped to his belt briefly stuttering out frantic, warped clicks in an electronic death throe; a needless attempt to warn him of the radiated particles he forced back into the air by disturbing the dust that just as quickly died again, the batteries finally drained completely.
He was the land, he was the dust and the ash and the radiation, it couldn’t hurt him, it couldn’t harm him, he who was a part of the land, another natural landmark, made of the same bone-dry irradiated earth and with lungs full of ash.
Suddenly, his finger brushed against something sharp.
Hissing in pain, Alfred snapped the cut finger to his mouth in a strongly, completely human reflex as he reeled back, nearly stumbling over his own feet.
As the cut healed itself in the typical impossibly fast fashion, he nudged the thing over and out of the ash with the toe of his shoe, ignoring how his toes poked out of the worn-through sole.
Numbly, Alfred leaned down to pick it up, being careful of the broken glass that had cut him. He held it up closer to his face, struggling to rub the drab grey soot off of the mildly-melted porcelain with his one working hand.
Barely-readable text appeared as he smudged the soot, the bright-red words standing out eerily from the otherwise monochrome world.
Oh. I recognise this, he thought, surprised, the spark of recognition and the lingering pain of his hand bringing him fully out of his aimless and directionless stupor, out of his dissociation.
Realising what he was holding, Alfred turned the once mass-produced souvenir snowglobe the right way round, now being able to make out the stylized New York City printed on a plaque on the base. It looked like any of the thousands of identical snowglobes found in souvenirs shops in the once-thriving city, the illusion only broken by the half missing, shattered sphere of glass glinting in the low light, smudged with his fingerprints and ash, any liquid once existing inside long vaporised.
Oh.
He shook it upside down to try and get the ash out of the crevices of the inside, incredulously holding bringing up to his eyes, the once familiar skyline and statue iconic to his Heart because Washington may be his Capital, but it was never, never his Heart making something well up inside him as his dam broke, letting everything he had been repressing come flooding back.
Frantically holding it at arm’s length, Alfred spun around, desperately trying to line up the tiny plastic shapes with the fragments of scorched black metal rebar and concrete thrust out of the flat ground clawing into the sky that marred the otherwise empty landscape.
Alfred felt his throat close up, eyes stinging and burning as they tried to cry despite there being no water in him to make any tears, grey-stained fingers grasped desperately and painfully around the broken snowglobe.
Of course, nothing lined up, because they’re all gone nothing’s left no one’s left despite how hard he tried to match the snowglobe that had somehow miraculously survived to the sparse remains of the city and the faint image of his home his home his home his streets and neon and cozy hometowns and the sound of traffic and the smell of greasy food and it’s gone now it only exists as a memory because it’s gone filling his mind.
Even if there was enough of the city left standing to line them up, the snowglobe was a caricature of the once never-sleeping city, warping the true geography to show the most famous and recognisable landmarks side-by-side, despite how distant they were in reality.
Something forced itself past his chapped lips, a raspy chuckle bubbling free from his ash-filled lungs, quickly morphing into a strangled dry wheezing laugh as he doubled over, the trinket clasped against his chest.
Of course it wouldn’t line up, what was I thinking? How silly of me! Everyone look at America, he’s fading and he can’t even remember his city right, the city that was his Heart, his Home, the place destroyed because of him and his stubbornness-
Something protested inside him that this probably wasn’t the right physical reaction to what he was feeling as America struggled to breathe, delirious laughter still forcing itself out of him as he kneeled, the disturbed ash from his sudden movement floating through the air around him in a sick rendition of falling flower petals.
Distantly Alfred thought how he would be ruining his clothes right now if his deteriorating, sunbleached uniform hadn’t already been long covered in soot, clinging to the fraying fibres and ground into the weave.
The ash was as much a part of the uniform and a part of him as the ripped and faded American flag embroidered into the right sleeve was, as the name and rank - Alfred F. Jones, Personification of the United States of America - printed over his heart was, as the scars documenting his life over the centuries, as the bomber jacket hastily wrapped around his arm in a makeshift sling, as his unnatural electric blue eyes, as the feeling of his people buzzing in the back of his mi-
There was nothing nothing nothing there’s nothing they’re all gone there’s nothing left at all in the back of his mind anymore because they’re gone they’re gone they’re all gone and it’s your fault your fault all your fault your fau
Alfred didn’t know how long he knelt there. The silence resettled.
What do I even do with myself now? There’s nothing of me left. They’re gone, gone, gone.
Unless.
Alfred opened himself up to his sixth sense, letting his awareness spread over the land that was once his own, awareness he was so used to having to reign in to stop himself from being overwhelmed because a nation as young as he was can’t handle that kind of rush of information, especially in a city as big as New York.
And suddenly.
There was a spark there was a spark someone’s there they’re alive they're alive.
Distantly, Alfred felt the sparks of humans-not-his-own making their way slowly yet steadily down the coast of Alaska, likely an expedition from the small population of survivors he felt the faint, faint buzz of off in the far north of Canada looking for resources, or maybe a place to settle with a more favourable climate.
Faint connections, hazy and warped with distance, appeared as he spread himself farther; his people that had been away overseas when it all happened. Almost all of them had a slippery feeling to them, as they became citizens of the few other nations that had survived or helped found one of the many young, new nations that had emerged in the years since…
...since he-
Since I-
Since they all-
…
Since it ended.
Eons, or maybe minutes, hours later, Alfred raised his head, turning in the direction of his trail of uneven footprints in the ash that went on forever, disappearing endlessly into the horizon.
It hasn’t ended, though.
The connections felt through his sixth sense pulsed with life. They were fading, as they cast off their American identity and picked up new allegiances but…
I’m not gone yet.
And maybe, instead of mourning what once was, I should try and help those that still remain.
Alfred dragged himself and rose out of the dust, disturbed ash falling like a flurry of snow around him, snowglobe clenched in his hand even as the sharp edges cut into his palm.
He set off walking once more, but now with purpose in his step and determination in his eyes, the feeling of a few thousand - not millions not billions not anymore - of people still alive, his faint but existent connection to them thrumming lowly. He could help them.
He would help them.
I helped destroy the last world, I have a responsibility to make this new one as good as it can be.