2099; All Lights Out

Bunker goes Bonkers

Petrograd was one of the many cities attacked by the nuclear bombs which fired themselves into the air and decimated the population of cities like Pyongyang, Beijing, Tokyo, Shanghai, Paris, New Delhi, Washington D.C, Georgia, New York, Moscow and Jerusalem recording astronomical casualties, many of which could not be recorded or confirmed.

With towers torn into halves and skyscrapers crashing down and smaller buildings caving into the earth, there was utter chaos and destruction around the world. The trees that prospered along the Park's road and side, big and small began to wither and fold in slowly. What was this?

Here, at Petrograd, six minutes into the crashing of the nuclear weapons that had showered the city in ruins and destruction, darkness began to form from within the sky. No, it was not within the sky. It was within the eye socket of everyone. 

One moment ago, there was chaos and enough daylight to see the terror that had just befallen this city and now, it was like there was nothing to see or anything to see through.

All lights went out at the very same instant as blackness filled the air in the absence of the sun that was above them a few minutes ago.

There was utter silence; graveyard silence all over the place with only traceable sounds of sniffles. There was a loud thud again and this was not another nuclear spree, it was a flaming object that had fallen from the sky and landed right in the middle of the park. It was the only source of illumination around the park and within the city as its flames reached as high as a 37 storey building with multi-coloured smokes spread across.

People began to take their eyes from the sight of this 'alien rock' to the people and bodies around them that were slowly vanishing and disappearing.

A boy, not more than 18 years old was clinging on to his mother's head which was on the ground alongside her body as he felt something leave his grip and hold. He held on to nothing which just happened.

How could he or anyone possibly explain this? 

With indiscernible screams flying across the city, no one could utter words, just tears and wailings of pain and utter heartaches.

In less than 30 seconds of the first vanishing, every other body, dead or alive, that was over 21 years of age and less than 17 vanished into thin air with no trace whatsoever of their existence.

The trees began to age at loose rates with green leaves turning brown in matters of seconds and fruits fell off as some of them decayed right from the tree before they hit the ground.

This scenes that unfolded could only be seen in Hans Zimmerman themed movies and here it was , happening right in front of the faces of the scanty humans who did not vanish.

Somewhere in Saint Petersburg, Russia, in what was an underground bunker majorly containing rooms that had been converted to laboratories with active biological and chemical experiments going on.

"Anya, it is near" Peter said while he was running out of breath in the presence of the shock that empowered him.

This message of Peter was heard across the lab next door and dread filled the atmosphere which was chemically modified to purify the oxygen within the bunker.

"How do we know it works?" Nikolay asked as he looked awful with fear getting the best of his posture and speech.

"We don't know. We have to just try it" Aleks said as she stared at the readings that floated in the transparent computer system before them. This computer software looked like it was running a countdown with only 9 minutes left. 

The time count was not stable or the regular seconds/minutes calculation that they were used to. In what was not more than 10 seconds of indecisive human time, the software countdown was down to 7 minutes, 34 seconds.

"What was this?" They all thought to themselves. If they were being honest, they always knew this was going to happen but they had not made peace with the timing it was to hit.

"Vladislav, get the kids to come here, just in case" Nikolay said as he looked towards the table where two chemical juices of varying colours had been set up.

"We each pick one, and just maybe, one of us gets to stay" Aleks said in a calm voice of acceptance of the inevitable.

They all looked at the 3 multi-coloured cups and sighed and picked the ones right in front of them. Aleks, Nicholay and Peter looked at each other with a face of "We might not all make it, but one of us should" as they gulped the whole liquids contained in their cups.