Ashfall

Ashfall

"Are you there, God? It’s me."

I say it out loud, though my voice barely rises above a whisper, scraped raw by dust and dismay. The silence that answers is dense, almost tangible, like the air itself is holding its breath. I used to think silence meant peace. Now I know better.

Outside, the sky hangs low, not with clouds, but with ash, thick and constant, falling like snow. The sun is just a pale disc now, smeared across a dying horizon. Everything is coated in grey: the buildings, the ground, my skin. Even time feels colourless.

It’s been what? Nearly a year since it happened, since the world folded in on itself. I lost the calendar weeks ago, but my body keeps the memory of days. My prayers, if you can call them that, are all I have left to mark time. Not that I ever believed in you before. But belief is a luxury of the comfortable.

So here I am, starved, not living but surviving, not enjoying but enduring.

I reside in a bunker, underground, it used to be military-I think, judging by its old, rustic design, the ration tins and the artillery shells scattered across the floor. Everything echoes down here, my footsteps, my breath even my thoughts. I “live,” with another guy, his name is Jamie, I don’t know much about his life before this, which is ironic as I’ve been down here for a year now. He just tells me the same, basic answer every time, something about a regular office job, a couple of girlfriends that moved on and a small flat in the city, nothing emotional, nothing real.

Jamie’s not cruel. Just closed off. Like the world burned all the softness out of him, and now he’s just skin stretched over routine. He never raises his voice, never panics. But sometimes, when he thinks I’m asleep, I hear him talking to someone who isn’t there. Soft, broken stutters, like he’s remembering how to converse.

I listen, but don’t act. In the bunker, we keep to ourselves, the past is over.

Lately, the lights have started to flicker more often. The generator’s dying, same as everything else. I’ve opened it up a dozen times, changed what I could, but it groans now when it starts. Like it’s tired. Like it wants to give up.

And last night, for the first time in months, the radio made a noise.

Not just static. A pattern. Three quick bursts. Then silence. Then again.

I didn’t tell Jamie. Not yet. I’m not sure if it was real or just another trick of the dark. But my hand’s been hovering over the knobs ever since, waiting. Listening.

Because if someone’s still out there, if anyone’s still out there, we need them.

Or maybe… I do.

Jamie would say it’s bait. An error, a false signal. That nothing good comes knocking anymore. And maybe he’s right. But that sound, those three short bursts, it sliced through the silence like a voice in a dream.

I’ve started sleeping in the comms room, if you can call curling up on cold metal, sleep. The chair’s rusted, the console flickers with half-dead light, but I stay. I watch the red LED blink. I stare at the dials and knobs. I listen. The signal hasn't come again. But I know I heard it. I know it was something.

Earlier, Jamie asked me why I was spending so much time in the comms room, I said I was fixing some faulty wiring. He nodded, but his eyes lingered too long, watching me like I was the unstable one. Maybe I am. But in this world, madness is a default, a measure, a normalcy.

I don’t know what I’d even say if someone replied.

Hello? Are there any other survivors? Is it over?

What if it’s not another survivor?

What if it’s something else?

What if it’s worse?

The worst part isn’t the fear. It’s the hope. It seeps in like light through a crack, and once it’s inside you, it won’t leave. You start wondering about things you’d lost and buried. About people, about life before this. About what might still be breathing under all that ash.

And then you start praying again.

The third night without sleep was when it came again. Those same 3 bursts, then a pause. Then a voice, cracked, broken but real.

“Anyone… hear this… survivors… west sector… 2 clicks… north of… city.”

I froze, my mind overflowed with thoughts and emotions, my breath caught somewhere between my lungs and my throat. The signal faded, ending with a deafening crackle of electricity and there was silence once again. But this time, I knew there was hope.

I stumbled over to Jamie, tripping and falling and eventually I reached him, whispering into his ear, “Jamie, wake up!”

He grumbled something, opening his eyelids just enough to capture the excitement displayed on my face.

“It’s the radio, someone’s out there Jamie!”

He listened half-heartedly, eyes clouded with suspicion.

His face didn’t move. Not at first. But when he heard the recording—“Survivors. West sector.”—something shifted behind his eyes. A flicker of disbelief. Then fear.

“How do you know it’s not bait, a trap?” he asked quietly.

“I don’t,” I said. “But what if it isn’t?”

We stood there for a long time, just listening. A signal that had survived the end of the world.

Jamie sighed. He didn’t speak, but he didn’t turn away either.

By morning, the message had stopped. But we’d already packed.

Two bag packs. Half our remaining rations. A flare gun. The last working compass. We stood at the entrance to the hatch for nearly an hour, neither of us saying the thing we were both thinking: We might not come back.

We stepped out, the ground was brittle, the horizon still endless and ruined, ash swept in curling at our feet and the sky was a mundane shade of nothing.

Ready?” he asked.

“No,” I said. “But let’s go anyway.”

We walked toward the flicker, side by side, two silhouettes cutting through the light.

The sky was still grey. But this time, it didn’t feel empty.

By,

Tejas Gupta