They had been in the throes of passion when the bombs went off. The sound tore through the night like the shockwave of thunder without the gentle patter of rain to accompany it. A blinding flash of white light through the window, despite how far away they were.

Natasha ran from the bedroom, a curse on her lips, Adrian quick behind her as he jostled to dress himself. He followed her outside where she stood in a raincoat grabbed from the door. Staring at the lingering cloud in the distance. A great mushroom that covered the sky rising from the city and blotting out the stars like some angry god.

Natasha leaned into him, biting at her thumbnail as more flecks of white appeared in the far distance.

The bombs had been expected. The world was on the cusp of war and the tensions between nations were ever growing. This was the first step, but it was not going to be a war. This was going to be an extermination. The end of the human race.

Natasha cried and Adrian stared in baffled silence for a long time. They had expected this. It was the very reason they had come to their beach house. Should the world end, this is where they would want to be. They had discussed it, and they had discussed what to do should the time come.

After a moment, Natasha wiped her eyes and took Adrian’s hand.

“Come,” she said, a different woman now, the sorrow gone and replaced with grim determination.

Adrian followed as she pulled him along, the gentle eddying waves of the tide masking their footsteps.

She took him up to the top of a nearby cliff. Their home still visible down below.

The precipice of the cliff looked out over sharp rocks and strong waves. Adrian looked at this as they stood in the bed of wildflowers by the cliffs edge, but Natasha looked only at her husband.

“It’s time,” she said, and kissed him. It was a passionate kiss; it was to be their last.

Adrian stumbled over his words, stammering, and spluttering incomprehensibly in a bid to change her mind. She simply smiled back at him with a tear on her cheek.

Taking his hand once again Natasha walked up to the edge and closed her eyes before throwing herself into the water. He was meant to go with her, but Adrian panicked. Not ready to face his own mortality.

For a moment, as she fell and he stood, their hands pulled at one another, but his grip faltered and she disappeared, leaving him standing alone.

He found himself on the beach by their home again, kneeling in the sand, looking out at the waves. Adrian cried. In his mind he debated his chances, the severity of the radiation that surely coursed through him. More bombs had sounded since Natasha had died. More horrible mushroom clouds littered the horizon.

He was sure death was coming for him.

A gentle rain had begun. A slight pattering of black raindrops fell around Adrian. One glanced off his arm and sent a bolt of searing pain through him. This shocked him to his senses. He looked around, and Adrian saw wildflowers sprouting from the sand and dirt where the rain fell. They were a host of beautiful colours and shapes, the very same type Natasha had planted at the top of the cliff.

He knew this was madness. Was the radiation destroying his mind already, he thought? Was grief? He cared little at this point.

From the water before him, a creature now stood. The towering image slowly traversed the water’s surface, heading towards Adrian. Built of flowers and dressed in a crimson robe, the antlered creature brought the drenched body of Natasha from the watery depths towards him.

His skin was hot and flush, sweat covering him as the rain continued to burn, Adrian watched in a fever dream as this creature approached and placed Natasha on the ground before him.

“I’m sorry.” Adrian said, taking her hand in his. It felt warm to him.

He looked up to the creature “I’m sorry,” he said again. Apologizing for the world, apologizing for the death and the destruction, even though he played no part in it. All he could do now was plead with a god for the forgiveness of human sin.

“Nature will always strive.” A voice said sweetly in Adrian’s ear. It was the voice of Natasha. He looked down where she lay, now in a bed of luxurious wildflowers.

Adrian smiled, and slumped next to her on the beach.

Here he would die, and the world that was theirs, shortly after.