On the morning of Day 3, the world finally stopped pretending. The emergency broadcasts had looped themselves into nonsense hours before, half-finished sentences bleeding into static as if the systems were trying to hold on to consciousness the same way the people had.
By sunrise, even the static was gone.
At first I thought the router died, or the cell tower was overloaded. I checked the cables. I reset the power strips. Pointless muscle memory — things we all do when we don’t want to admit the larger truth.
But when I stepped outside, the silence wasn’t digital. It was global.
Cars sat crooked in the intersection near my street, doors left open as though the drivers stepped out for just a second and forgot to return. A pair of grocery bags lay spilled in the middle of the road, tins of baby formula rolling in lazy circles whenever the wind nudged them.
The birds were quiet. The dogs were gone. No traffic. No airplanes. No power tools from distant yards. I had never realized how much of our lives run on the hum of mammals. Without them, the world felt hollow — like a radio with all the voices removed.
I walked two blocks before I saw the first body. An adult woman slumped halfway out of her front door, one hand still gripping the frame as if she’d been trying to steady herself on the way down. She looked peaceful. Almost asleep. Behind her, I heard a tiny whimpering sound — a toddler sitting on the carpet, confused, waiting for her to wake up.
I didn’t go in. Not because I didn’t want to help — because I knew if I stepped inside that house, I wouldn’t be able to leave again. One toddler becomes ten. Ten becomes a hundred. And I’d drown before Day 4.
I told myself I’d come back. I said it out loud, like a promise. The toddler quieted when I spoke. They always do. Even children who don’t understand the words understand the tone.
The silence followed me as I walked. An entire world, held still. All engines stopped. All mammals gone. Millions of infants and toddlers breathing on borrowed time, waiting for someone who isn’t coming.
Except me.
I didn’t choose to be the one who lived. But I can feel the weight of every second now — the understanding that silence is no longer an absence of sound. It’s a responsibility.
And it grows heavier every hour.