The sun is about to rise. A streak of pink-violet cloud stretches across the sky. A faint breeze stirs the water beneath the hull, making soft creaking sounds, pushing clusters of green algae up against the sides of the boat. The briny stench of the algae is stronger than ever. The boat floats aimlessly, carried by some current beneath the sea. A marine current? No, I don’t think so. Not anymore. Nothing like that exists now. It’s all been wiped out.
A body drifts past our boat. Wrapped in a bloom of green algae—that sickly, fluorescent green, so eerie, so deathly—the corpse shows no signs of decomposition, just a slight swelling, the skin turned a ghastly green-gray. A man, once probably affluent, well-mannered, dressed in a black suit. His eyes are closed. He looks calm, not a trace of fear. His body is stiff like a slab of meat pulled fresh from the freezer. The algae curl around his throat, creep into his ears, his collar, stick to his oddly tinted skin. I’m not scared—I’m used to it. I’ve seen so many like him.
What is this water, in the end? I wonder, watching the corpse drift slowly away. It kills all who drink it—humans, animals, fish, even the plants and the seaweed. No living thing can resist it. Yet nothing decomposes. The bodies just linger, stiff, bloated, suspended under the sun like some grim ritual. I’ve seen massive, strange creatures from the depths, things that live in the blackest trenches, faces twisted and warped. I once saw a giant whale floating belly-up, like a small island adrift. It’s bizarre, how everything lays itself bare like this. For a moment, the Earth feels so small. And yet, I suddenly remember—our own condition isn’t so different…
The Teacher is awake, sipping rainwater from a rusty tin barrel, absent-mindedly gazing out to sea, his hair tousled in the wind. What is he thinking? He hasn’t changed much since before the End came. I remember the time before—not so long ago, really. A week. A little more than a week. The whole world still surrounded me then. We laughed, we dreamed, we had each other. But that’s all gone now, faded like some myth from a distant age. What am I even waiting for now? Hoping for?
I glance at the paintings the Teacher has stacked under the hull. Still those streaks of color without clear shapes or meanings, stretching, pulsing, dancing. He keeps painting. Just like before. Nothing’s changed.
I wait for him to light a cigarette. He will. Then slowly, he’ll pull out his tattered art supplies and begin chasing his dreams again. The children will wake. We’ll sit and watch him paint, watch the glowing tip of the cigarette, the curling smoke. We live because of him. We must live because of him. The sun drifts across the sky, casts long shadows, then sinks into that swirling green ocean again. Another day, gone.
And I start to sing, without reason:
We all live in a yellow submarine,
A yellow submarine, a yellow submarine…
And our friends are all aboard,
Many more of them live next door…
The Teacher smiles, curling one corner of his mouth.
I smile too—but the smile evaporates into the still air, like a bird vanishing into the blue sky.
The children stare, expressionless.
Flowers blue-green algae in the river water
The Teacher was killed.
We don’t know much about how, only that he’s dead.
A silent death, passing like a shadow.
He didn’t seem to suffer—he just left, as if nothing mattered. As if everything could be shrugged off like an old coat.
He said nothing to us. Just turned and smiled one last time.
Was it really that simple? We looked at each other and wondered.
We’d seen so much death already. We were tired. Another gone—just another pebble dropped into the ocean, gone without a sound.
But no. It wasn’t like a pebble at all.
The Teacher’s death was different. A heavy, cold fog settled over us, thick as early morning mist, so dense I could barely think.
We have to go, I thought. If we stay, we’ll all die.
So I led the children, stumbling, onto a wide, ruined stretch of land. I looked at his unfinished paintings one last time—and cried.
Some things don’t deserve to die.
And even death, for me, wasn’t such a big deal anymore.
We walked, dragging our feet. The land was barren, cracked, the trees fallen, the earth salty and thick with sludge. Our shoes sank ankle-deep in the gray, pungent mud. The soles of my feet were numb with cold. The children trudged silently, lips tight. In the distance, mountains melted slowly into the swirling mist.
What is this? What is happening?
I looked at the children, weary. I’m all they have now. But I didn’t care. I was indifferent. What am I even searching for anymore? The Teacher is dead. Maybe I should die too. A deep sleep. But I’m too tired to even want to die. It’s like waking up in the morning, wanting to rise and greet the day, but just lying there, paralyzed in the warmth of the sheets.
As we headed deeper inland, the trees began to green up. We started to see signs of life. But strangely, I didn’t feel joy. My heart was numb, cold, withered—just like the future. The people here looked just as lifeless. Gray faces, hollow eyes. They were slowly dying—not from hunger or poison—but from hopelessness. They stared at us with blank, cloudy eyes.
We have to keep moving, I thought.
We couldn’t stay with these herd-like people. They weren’t like us.
They didn’t have the Teacher.
We followed a shallow stream, barely trickling through mounds of gray earth. It led away from the heart of the land, toward the far side—where things grew muddy, dark, toxic again. On either side, thin green grasses sprouted, but their tips had already scorched to a lifeless yellow. They would die soon too—from this poisoned soil. The sea had crept in far, deeper than before. Here, there were all kinds of toxins—radiation, maybe, or algae blooms. From here, I could see the sea again—a vast blue chill on the horizon. We’d run out of road soon.
Then, I heard singing.
A lone voice rising over the desolate plain—yet it didn’t sound lost.
We turned. It was a woman, no longer young, walking toward us, still singing. The song was like a gift. She wasn’t singing for herself. She was singing for us.
Something like:
Why be sad, why?
At least we’re still alive…
Today
Tomorrow
The day after…
Still alive… still alive…
She twirled gently as she sang, spinning around me. Maybe she was mad.
I stood there, watching her, then looked again toward the endless blue water.
Out there, it was a sea of corpses, bobbing on the waves.
From the deep, swollen bodies kept rising, foaming up like the head of a bitter beer.
[End]
