At the end of the earth.

Chop chop chop chop. The silver and black blades of the helicopter sliced the air above Simon's head. The shock wave buzzed in his ears and Simon began to feel anxious. There was a man in a dark green uniform shouting something to the people clambering onto the aircraft. His face looked tired and the thin hair that swirled around the sides of his ears looked like torn thread on the seams of a broken sweater.
Simon was one of the last survivors of the quake to get on the chopper and he was forced to sit much closer to the edge of the door then he would have liked. But under the current circumstances he was glad just to be getting out of the city finally.
Simon looked around the craft, he didn't recognize anyone but he felt connected to each and everyone of them. He saw a woman in the corner assuring her small daughter that her father was safe and far away, and he could tell that her words were meant to calm herself just as much as her sobbing child. He could hear a man somewhere behind him complaining about his leg and he started to feel a few aches over his own body. His hand throbbed. Looking down he realized that his hand was pouring blood all over his clothes.
"Whoa man, that's messed up!" a teenage boy gasped pointing at the wound.
Simon hid his hand so no one else could see he was injured.
The yelling army man on the ground stepped back from the helicopter waving his arms and pointing up.
They hovered for a moment before speeding diagonally up into the dark dusk sky. As they rose the extent of the damage became very clear. Time seemed to slow down as everyone took in the scene. The voices of fellow survivors rang in Simon's ear but he couldn't understand what anyone was saying anymore. He became transfixed on the destruction of the place he used to know. There were no more standing buildings for as far as Simon could see. Thick black smoke billowed from collapsed apartment buildings. An explosion lit up the corner gas station on Hunter St. where Simon used to go to fill up. The earth seemed breathe, spewing jetsams of fire from the cracks in it's surfice.
The crusted rocks were becoming a monster, killing more innocent people in one hour then any other natural disaster. The ground was chewing the city up and the expanding harbor was swallowing up the left overs.
Simon looked to see if he could spot any other places he knew. He looked for the hospital where his mother was being kept until the cancer got better but he couldn't see anything. The smoke began the fill the cabin and the pilot struggled to gain alttitude in order to escape without suffocating his passengers.
Simon prayed for his mother, "Take me instead lord. Take all of these strangers too, I don't care, just let mama live. She's fought to hard to lose this way."
The fumes from the fires below choked Simon and the air craft lurched; hitting a patch of turbulence above the remains of a once beautiful church. The air and smoke spun around violently as time slowly caught up with him.
"This is the fucking apocalypse boys," a rugged man shouted in front of him, "It's like I've said all along, the fucking apocalypse!" The man fell onto his side as the aircraft tilted again.

~

"Oh, come on mama it's not that bad. I mean look at all this tasty food you get to enjoy everyday." Simon joked, poking at the gelatinous green goo on his mothers bed side table. Wires and tubes stuck into and out of every hole on his mother's body that Simon could see; linking her to a monitor that beeped and hummed. The doctors translated these sounds, telling Simon that the machine said his mother was "in stable condition."
Simon could never tell exactly how his mother was feeling; she wouldn't talk to him when ever he came by to see her.
Simon moved closer to his mother and brushed a few grey strands of hair from her face like cobwebs from an antique. "Do you want to watch TV mama?" Simon asked even though he knew his mother wouldn't respond.
The television flickered on. The man on the screen was talking about a flood that had destroyed nearly all the villages along some South American river.
Simon didn't care much for the news. When his father was alive he would always tell Simon, "The news is just a bunch of horror stories, boy, they're meant to scare you. If I want to know whats goin' on, all I have to do is look out this window. See, it's sunny,"
"How about a game show mama?" Simon said as he tried to figure out how to use the hospital remote, "Let's see if Jeapardy is on."
Knock knock. A doctor opened the door.
"You must be Simon," The man said from behind a clipboard "I don't believe we've met, I'm Dr. Gleason." Simon had met this doctor three times already but he shook the mans hand just the same.
"Nice to meet you, what can you tell me about my mother?" Simon asked, trying to see what was on the clipboard.
"Well, it looks like your mother isn't getting any better," Dr. Gleason spoke like Simon's mother wasn't in the room. "We're doing our best to keep her alive but her chances on making any sort of recovery are slim at best. In my professional opinion I think it would be in your families best interest to start preparing for the worst."
The world Simon knew shook as he took in the news.

~

In the infinite sky the earth is a burnt out ember. Joining ranks with other dead planets the globe spins and spins until eventually the sun it revolves around is also extinguished, and all that man has ever known simply vanishes into the black of space.