17 days, 8:41:36 hours to go

        I will wait for you.

        “Lena...”

        Shock.  A brother turned into an enemy in an instant, wearing a sneer of triumph like a horrible mask, ridiculing him.  The world turned a red shade of rage, and his actions were suddenly no longer his own.  A struggle; blood splashed his world, staining it with an immutable taint of violence and death.  Blood lust gave in to horror as he was struck with the full weight of his darkest of deeds.  Then she was there, before him, and all he could feel was despair.  He spurned her.  Her desperate pleading invaded his ears like a rival tribe.  She begged for his love, raking his skin with her nails as though she could tear forgiveness from him.  Her closeness choked him, stole his breath from his body.  He turned, hurling her away in an attempt to find air again.  More blood, this time a bright hue of crimson that scorched his vision forever.  Panic.  He fell into a sea of self-loathing, and insanity gripped his body with clammy hands, threatening to rip his mind apart.  He knelt down beside her to see the light fade from her eyes, locked onto him as the last thing they would ever see.  He cradled her, called her name.  

        “Lena!”

        Judgment.  A sentence.  Ropes bound his arms and legs, holding him fast.  The ripping of his flesh, then a burning pain shooting into his chest.  That horrible sound of his heart's desperate, discordant rhythm followed by its sudden, dreadful silence.

        “LENAAA!”

        He was dead.  And then he wasn't.

        He knelt in the dirt, clutching at his chest and screaming her name.  He opened his ice-blue eyes and stared at the sky, disoriented, his mind a smoky haze.  His hands, stained dark (stained forever) with blood, fell to his sides.  He instinctively wiped them as clean as he could on the ruined clothing he wore.  Then he remembered it all, again.  It all came rushing back to him as it always did, and the fog of his walking dream receded and clarity reigned, welcoming him back to the world with its frigid, empty embrace.  He once again came to grips with the horror.  He dropped his head low, and when he moaned it came out low and soft, like the last breath of the dying.  He rubbed his eyes with his palms, roughly, as if he could wipe away what he had witnessed, what he had done.  Finally, he let his terrible hands fall into his lap, and raised his eyes.

        The first thing they fell upon was the body.  A dead man lay before him.

        This man, this thing, in front of him had been the last one to fall, but only after many grueling hours of murder.  In order to retain some small scrap of sanity, he had been forced to think of these things not as human, but something man-made, tools only good for one hellish purpose before their eventual disposal.  It was clothed sparsely in shredded rags, old clothing that had long ago faded in the eyes of an angry sun, clothing he also wore.  Sinewy muscles were visible where the clothing didn't cover, and they contoured the arms, legs, and torso in powerful strips, as did his.  Although the body itself was turned slightly away from him, the head was twisted at an unnatural angle; bending back so that he could look directly into the face of the dead thing.  Empty eyes stared out from it, eyes whose shade matched his own perfectly.  The face had been beaten severely; it was covered in ugly purple bruises that distorted the facial features, and blood still oozed out of multiple places where the skin had been ripped open by heavy blows.  Despite its twisted and battered appearance, he knew that when he gazed into the face of the thing, he gazed into his own.

        Death had not only touched this thing ahead of him.  It was everywhere.  Without even needing to look, he knew that he was surrounded by the silent dead, strewn all around where they had fallen to the slaughter.  There were many.  Hundreds.  Some were outside, but most still lay below in the bowels of the giant metal structure, now entombed in the place they used to call home.  He could feel their presence.  Men, women, and children lay all around him, many of their accusing eyes cast in his direction.  Now freed from life, those eyes were only mirrors that reflected his emptiness.

        It was all he was, now.  A reflection in the eyes of the dead.

        He shifted to get his legs under him, and screamed once more, this time in physical agony.  All at once his entire body was burning.  Excruciating bolts of liquid fire shot up and down his arms and legs and though his gut, pounding at his head with spikes and hammers.  His body had seen no rest, and he could feel the damage it had taken from the battle, damage that would need to be repaired before he could move on.  The pain was only a small part of his punishment.  It would inevitably pass, and soon he would continue; even now, it was fading at an unnatural pace as his body made itself whole again.

        He rose and stood on two unsteady legs, swaying precariously.  He concentrated on maintaining his footing while his weakness created the sensation of the earth tilting, seemingly determined to throw him once again into the dirt.  Reeling, he waited for the strength that he knew would soon flood his body again.  It had happened this way in every cycle that had come before.

        He scanned the area for his horrid companion.  Show yourself, devil, he thought, let us finally finish this cursed journey, and I will be free of you and this endless mockery.

        Without warning, a raspy voice thundered into his head.  It came from everywhere yet nowhere, exploding across his mind and soaked with contempt.

        YOU KNOW I CAN FEEL YOUR THOUGHTS, VERMIN.  YOU REALLY SHOULD BE MORE POLITE.  AFTER ALL THE TIME WE'VE SPENT TOGETHER, AFTER ALL WE'VE DONE FOR ONE ANOTHER, WE SHOULD BE BETTER FRIENDS!  TSK, TSK, TSK.  YOU HURT ME.

        He heard the rustling of wings, then in his peripheral vision he caught it, over to his left.  Perched on a pile of bodies was a crow.  It stood watching him silently, intently.  It waited for him as usual, a silent sentry observing while he returned to the waking world.  He met the crow's soulless stare with a hateful one of his own.  As disgusted as he was by the presence of the thing, he was resigned to the fact that there was a link between them, a link that had proven over many thousands of lifetimes to be unbreakable despite all his attempts.  His only choice was to see his task through, and be done with it forever.

        The crow suddenly took flight on pitch black wings, arcing towards him, when at the last second it veered to land on the dead body of the man...thing... in front of him.  The voice in his head boomed once more.

        I HOPE YOU DON'T MIND ME EATING IN FRONT OF YOU, VERMIN.  I'M FAMISHED.  ONE FOR THE ROAD, AS THEY USED TO SAY!

        The crow broke its gaze with him and plunged its razor-like beak into the neck of the dead thing, tearing off a large piece and snapping its head back to force the gore down its gullet.  It gorged itself with another piece and then another, until sections of bone became visible on the body.  He looked once again into the dead man's eyes, and was once more reminded of what waited for him.  As he watched the bird devour more of the thing, he saw his future, an ending that was now very, very close.  His clock was winding down, and at the final stroke his hell would open and consume him just as this bird consumed the body before him.  Soon, it would be.  Very soon.

        Finally the crow finished its ravenous feast, and once again locked eyes with him.  He felt the condescending sneer ripple across his consciousness.

        DELICIOUS, AS ALWAYS!  LET'S GET THE LEAD OUT, MY BOY.  WE'RE BEHIND SCHEDULE.  COME ON, OFF YOU GO. ONE, TWO, THREE, FOUR!  HIPPITY HOP, VERMIN, HIPPITY HOP!

        I'm not doing this for you.  I never have.

        WHATEVER YOU WANT TO TELL YOURSELF.  NOW, LET'S GO KILL SOME MORE PEOPLE.  THERE'S ONLY A HANDFUL LEFT!

        The crow threw itself back up into the air, beating its wings against the dry air.  It climbed off into the steel gray sky, until it was only a black speck.

        He took a tentative step, and then another, and when his body told him that he was ready, he fell into steady strides across the dirt, past the body and after the crow, toward the distant horizon.  Dirt and ash swirled around his feet as he passed, coating his legs, coating his spirit.  He stared at the ground ahead of him, his head weighed down by eons of toil.  The only sounds that met his ears were his own footfalls, eerily reverberating off of the twisted, ruined structure around him.  The eyes of the dead watched him leave, their open mouths shrieking silently.

        One foot and then the other, as it had always been.  The last people of the world would feel his slow approach, and the insanity and fear would rise in them like bile.  They would turn on one another, and the weak ones would strike out at the rest, carrying out their sentence even before his arrival.  At the peak of their desperation, they would break down and give in to their more basic instincts to self-preserve.  With every cycle of violence and blood, it was the same.  The mind of Man was disdainfully predictable.

        The machine of the world had all but ground to a halt; he was within reach of finally silencing it.  He could feel them, across the expanse of miles that lay in between.  They scurried about like insects building a nest, scavenging what they could, while they could, and preparing for the inevitable.  They knew he would be coming, for he had never bothered to make his presence a secret.  Let them scurry.  Let them run.  It mattered not to him, for he knew better than any other being left on the planet that there was no place left to go.

        He did not even raise his head when he heard the beating of wings on the air.  First a few, then more and more until the roar was almost deafening.  He did not even raise his eyes when the dark cloud above him blotted out the light of the skies.  His messengers flew ahead of him to herald his arrival.  Humanity's remnant would soon know the approach of its executioner.

        Doom was his every step, and death stained his hands.  He headed eastward, towards his release.  He headed eastward, towards the blessed end of the world.