It was the summer of '82, my first year at Saint Vincent's. I'd just arrived in the city, a newly minted nurse from the Midwest, and taken an apartment on Perry Street with three other nurses. He was ... [+]
The city is silent around you, the place that you grew up in reduced to a graveyard of silence. You never thought you would come back here, willingly. Up until a year ago, you hardly thought you would be alone if you made the trip.
You ignore the towering buildings around you, casting long shadows over the barren streets. You make a beeline towards the treeline just as the sun starts to set, the sky bleeding into pink and orange.
When the world was still turning, when the city was still bustling, they would simply call it The Forest.
You break the rule that everyone in the city knew from their first breath, and walk straight into The Forest.
You break the second rule, by immediately introducing yourself when you are surrounded by the trees. You say your full name, and start to tell your story. All the way from where you were born, every childhood memory you remember growing up, every anecdote as chronological as you can remember.
You falter, slightly, when you reach ten years ago. Speak slower, as you get to that morning you woke up to a city screaming in fear, hysteria flooding the streets as beasts from beyond their solar system start rampaging with reckless abandon.
You cannot think much past trying to check on your parents. You get stopped just a few streets away later.
"What are you doing?" The stranger asks, demands really, and does not wait for a response. She grabs your wrist and starts to run the way you just came.
She saved you that day, as you piece together later. You never learnt whether your parents survived, but you do know most people did not.
You speak of surviving together, bonding over circumstances at first and then bonding together in a way that only depending on each other day in day out could do.
The details of the last decade escape your mind, but you try your best anyway. Most moments between them had hardly any time to settle before they had to keep moving, getting better at avoiding the beasts as they traveled.
They had a good decade together, in the end. She had not died to a beast, but to illness. Bunkered down in the middle of a winter storm, away from the elements but without enough medical supplies as she weakened by the day.
She breathes her last in the quiet of a too-cold basement, with you bent over her as the light leaves her eyes.
You fall into silence, trying to garner more words to speak, when wind whistles through The Forest.
Words float to you, whispers carrying your own voice. What do you seek?
"She told me a story." Of her grandmother, who lost her husband and walked into The Forest, and shared the life story of her husband with the air. Who had returned on the same day with his wedding ring, gleaming without any of the years it had weathered. The first to not be lost to time.
She cannot be returned to life.
"That is not what I seek." Before you is a clearing. The sky above is painted with stars, beautiful despite the terrors it had brought down. "I'm asking for a different miracle."
You describe the beasts, all your observations of what could slow them down, and what could kill them. You hold out a vial of poison — a cocktail of different herbs and mushrooms, condensed down into a liquid that fell them without fail.
"I give this to you, and ask that you destroy the invaders before they can shed blood."
The wind picks up around you.
You understand what you ask?
"A life for a life. My life for changing the future. So be it."
Is it worth it? If this works, she will never meet you. Will never spend day in, day out with you for ten years. Will never share her grandmother's stories with you around a campfire burning into glowing embers late into the night.
Is it worth it, giving up all of that, if she can live in a world not weighed down by grief?
Yes, you think. It would always have been worth it.
So be it.
The words echo your firm determination. The next moment, you are falling to your knees in weakness, the vial rolling out of your hand. You close your eyes, and silently apologise to your better half. For following through with the plan she had always disproved of, hating the odds of it failing.
There is nothing to lose anymore, not with her gone.
You do not expect to wake up again, but you do. The sun has risen, and you can hear birds chirping merrily. Far away, you can just barely hear the sound of a car honking.
You stumble onto your feet, mindlessly rushing towards the noise.
The stories always spoke of those who disappeared into The Forest. The Displaced, they called them. From years to decades, a missing person will suddenly turn up at the forest edge, having not aged a day since their disappearance.
The Displaced go into The Forest seeking to take, and so their years are taken in trade.
You realise, as you waver at the forest edge in utter bewilderment, that the opposite is also true.
For you who gave everything, for you who gifted The Forest for your request, it seems years have been gifted to you in turn.
The city stands before you, in its prime, bustling with life without the scars of an apocalypse.
-
You find yourself on a rooftop as the sun sets.
You refuse to sleep as the night drags on, as you huddle into your trenchcoat and watch the sky. You learnt the date from a newspaper, and you will see this miracle through to its end. Finally, you see the meteor.
The apocalypse had begun with one meteor, with one entity. The beast could multiply, but only after a kill. It had started in the dead of the night, with one beast picking on a lone man walking home, to two, to three, and then an army by sunrise.
You remember the recount from a survivor, someone who had managed to dig up camera footage before servers went down. That the meteor had landed in the middle of a street.
You squint, and through your hazy memories of the streetscape, realise belated that The Forest has grown, stretching its reach much further than you remember.
It means that this time, the meteor lands in The Forest. This time, the glow of the meteor fades into darkness, just in time for a flash of green to light up the same area. The poison, running its course through the beast, aglow in neon as it destroys the invader thoroughly.
You watch as the green fades to darkness, and after a long moment, finally lift your eyes away.
The night drags on into daylight, and nothing emerges from the treeline.
You did it. All it took to save a world who will never know your sacrifice is to lose everything you had gained during your survival.
Below you, the streets start to fill with people, with cars. A day-to-day life, without fear of being hunted.
She would want you to live that life.
Leaving the rooftop, wandering the streets again, you walk aimlessly until your steps slow at a familiar face.
She had aged gracefully in the decade you spent together, and seeing her this young reminds you again of what you lost.
She will never know you. Not in the same way.
Across the street, she enters a store lined with drooping air plants and hanging pots. Her grandmother's store.
Her grandmother had always hired the Displaced. Maybe she would hire you, too.
You enter the shop, browsing the flowers quietly as you eye the counter, where she chats enthusiastically with her grandmother. Even in the most peaceful days they shared, she had never looked this carefree, this at ease.
All you can think, when she flits by you without glancing your way, is a simple, definitive conclusion.
It was worth it.