AT NIGHTFALL
The sun was slowly setting behind us, painting the sky in dull shades of gray and yellow, as the cold wind blew. Teresa walked with her head down, silent, right behind me. Mathias Santiago walked beside me, holding his AK-47 as if it were an extension of his own body. The way he handled the weapon, with the confidence of an old war marine, said more about his past than any conversa-tion ever could. I looked at him for a moment, then turned to Maria. Maria was a dark-skinned woman with deep brown eyes and long straight hair falling over her shoulders. She was about my age, maybe 20. Despite her youth, her eyes carried a weight that shouldn’t have been there. Nothing about us looked young anymore.A machete lying in the street bore an inscription: “INF-1 is not lethal. Vaccines will be distributed by the end of the year.” We stopped at an old store. The windows were shattered. I stepped through the glass, making that irritating sound of shards breaking underfoot. I doubted there was anything left inside. Mexico City, one of the largest cities in the world, now felt as empty as any other. We had come from Toluca. That city was dead. Corpses in the streets — most had died in their own homes. The cold was intense. I looked at a Santa Claus figure standing there like a ghost, its big eyes staring at me. Today was supposed to be one of those days for celebration: January first, New Year’s Day. But there was no celebration. No fireworks. Only the silence of dead streets. Now, Mexico City was in even worse shape than other places — the smell was vile.As I entered the store, I noticed there were still Christmas decorations scat-tered around: a small, dusty toy Santa Claus, very different from the creepy Santa at the storefront; a forgotten box of chocolates on a shelf. I carefully picked up the box and forced the lid open. Inside, I found a few chocolates. “Want one, Teresa?” I asked, offering her the chocolate. “No, thanks, Ricardo.” “Alright.” I kept exploring the store. It was strange to see those holiday sales for a Christmas that never happened. In one of the old freezers, I found a beer. I grabbed it, but it was warm. I hate warm beer. Maybe I could put it in the river to cool — a trick my uncle taught me when I was 14. We were on a farm when the power went out for two days straight. He showed me how to place the bottles at the bottom of the river to chill them. The smell inside the market was the same as in almost every city we’d passed through: the smell of death, of decay. I looked out the window as the sun slow-ly descended on the horizon. It was twilight, the moment when light dies to make way for darkness. “Teresa, want a beer?” I asked again. “No.” Teresa looked about thirty, but after everything she had seen and been through, she might have aged fifty years. She had lost everything: her family, her chil-dren, her husband… even the dog. Before all this, she had been a teacher, a kind woman who would never harm anyone. Now, her eyes carried the weight of deep depression. I was a psychologist before the Red Flu — or INF-1. I recognized the signs, and not just in Teresa. Mathias showed them too. Mathias, in his forties, had the face of a sixty-year-old. He was a former soldier in the Mexican army. He had watched his two-year-old son suffocate to death, and then lost his wife. That had broken him inside. “Mathias, let’s go,” I said to him now, as he continued grabbing what little sup-plies hadn’t been looted: some canned goods, boxed milk. I picked up one of the milks — it smelled sour. “Shit, it’s spoiled.” “Dammit.” The milk came out thick. I tossed it out. The last thing I wanted was food poisoning.“Mathias, get out of the store now.” “I’m done grabbing the supplies.” I looked at the sun, almost gone on the horizon. The sky was gray with a faint yellowish hue. In the street ahead of us, there were still bodies scattered around. We walked past them. Some lay on the sidewalks, bloated. Others were stacked haphaz-ardly in the backs of military trucks parked in the middle of the avenue, cov-ered by dirty, poorly stretched tarps. The black bags, many torn or badly closed, revealed hands, feet, sometimes even faces. Near the old government building, there was an improvised area where the bodies were laid in shallow graves, dug in a hurry. An excavator still rested beside a pile of corpses covered in lime. On a broken wall, covered in torn posters, a faded notice from the Na-tional Autonomous University of Mexico still clung. The faded ink read: “URGENT ALERT — THE RED FLU IS EXTREMELY DEADLY. GENETIC COMPATI-BILITY RATE: 80.1%. TOTAL ISOLATION RECOMMENDED. THE MEXICAN GOV-ERNMENT IS HIDING DATA. THE WHO AND THE UN ARE COMPLICIT. DO NOT TRUST OFFICIAL BROADCASTS.” I covered my nose as we passed the line of corpses. The smell was stronger. Flies buzzed up and down; one came near my eye, and I swatted it away. Mexico’s capital was now an open-air cemetery. There were corpses everywhere. Since December, we hadn’t seen a single plane in the sky. No sign of life, no news, nothing. We tried tuning shortwave radios to pick up any signal, with no luck. Santiago spent nearly all night with his old battery-powered radio, trying to find anything. “Do you like beer, Maria?” I asked, trying to break the silence. “I don’t drink.” “More for me, then.” I shrugged and took a sip. Before the Red Flu, I would have never touched something like this. My habits were different. My life was different. I was rich. Not just rich — very rich. My family owned several companies. Those glass towers downtown with my father’s company name, Marston & Associ-ates? Some of those were ours. Our businesses employed thousands of peo-ple, and even at such a young age, I was already one of the richest men in the country. We had mansions, luxury cars, private jets. My name was always in the society columns as the “promising young heir.” My mother used to say the world was a gift from God. A deeply religious woman, fanatical to the core. She believed everything had a purpose, a divine order. And now? Now I wonder if she would still believe that. After all, it was on Christ’s birthday that the world ended. I remember the 25th clearly. I went down to the building entrance. The security guard was gone. Not in the booth, not on the monitors. I walked through the building’s hallways and knocked on a few neighbors’ doors. No one answered. I stepped outside. The street was completely empty. Not a soul. Cars left with doors wide open. A baby stroller abandoned on the sidewalk. Shopping bags tossed on the ground, like someone had dropped everything and fled in a hurry. The smell was strange — not exactly rotten, but metallic, dry, like blood ex-posed to the sun. I walked to the main avenue. No vehicles. No sign of life. Just papers flying around, red blinking signs with generic quarantine alerts. I saw the first bodies there. Inside cars, collapsed on the metro stairs, piled in front of a looted pharmacy. All pale, motionless. Some still had masks covering half their faces. I screamed. Called for help. For anyone. I walked for hours, maybe the whole day. My throat burned, my feet hurt. The sky had that sickly gray-green tone, and the wind felt colder than it should have. By the end of the day, I returned home. Alone. I locked every door and window. Lit candles. December 25th was humanity’s last day. In November, we had eight billion people on the planet. On December 25th, I could count on my fingers the peo-ple I still saw breathing.What a cruel irony, huh? Jesus was born to save the world, and on His birthday, He chose to destroy it. Of course, I know religion or anything like that has noth-ing to do with it. It just… happened. Could have been anything: an alien virus, a biological weapon. Money was never a problem. If I wanted something, I had it. Expensive clothes? I bought them. Trips? I went wherever I wanted. I’d been to Tokyo, Paris, London — places many only dream of seeing. I had experiences that felt straight out of a movie. But now… now money means absolutely nothing. It’s not even good enough to start a fire or wipe your ass. “Why do you carry that AK-47?” I asked Mathias, trying to shake off the thoughts. He didn’t need to think long to answer. “In case we run into someone.” I chuckled softly. It was a bitter laugh. “Someone? I think that’s very unlikely.” Mathias looked at me seriously. “I don’t think it’s impossible. We found Teresa and Maria, didn’t we?” I didn’t want to argue, but deep down, I no longer believed. “It’s possible… but unlikely.” We kept walking. We left the empty streets and moved inland. We were in an old car, a ‘71 Opala, 80s model. As we left the city, the smell lessened. I saw that the main roads were jammed with people who had tried to flee to the mountains when things really got worse.I saw a little girl lying on the sidewalk to the right, holding a small teddy bear. Her face still had mucus and blood around her small nose. Her blonde hair was spread across the ground, surrounded by flies. “She looked like my daughter…” said Teresa, breaking the silence. Teresa didn’t talk much, only on very rare occasions. Maria hugged and comforted her. Mathias was driving the Opala. “Try to find a station,” he asked. I grabbed the radio and put in the batteries. I turned the dial. Only static came through. I fiddled with it for almost 20 minutes until I heard something. “No way…” said Mathias, surprised. Everyone’s eyes widened. Even Mathias, deep down, had lost hope of hearing anything.“Friends, we have a refugee camp near Puebla. We have food, supplies, doc-tors… repeating the location…” He gave the coordinates near Puebla. “Holy shit… it’s right there… maybe we can even get there by tomorrow,” I murmured, with a glimmer of hope. The car swerved between the corpses scattered on the road. Sometimes we hit a few. The sound of bones cracking against the bumper made us shudder. We closed the windows to try to block out the smell of death. Night fell. We slept inside the car. The cold wrapped around us like a wet blanket. I slept curled up with Maria. Mathias and Teresa hugged each other in the front seat. Teresa had nightmares and screamed her children’s names in the middle of the night. Maria mumbled incoherent phrases in her sleep. I, on the other hand, didn’t dream. It was like I just blacked out… and then woke up again, like during surgery: anesthetized. We continued on the road to Puebla. On the way, an overturned truck blocked part of the route. We managed to get past it with difficulty. Nearing the city, we saw that part of the north seemed to be on fire. The Opala’s engine purred softly. The tires. Crunching dry branches, we swerved around vehicle carcasses, fallen trees, and twisted poles. On the sidewalks, faded mannequins lurked behind shattered shop windows. We were told the refugee zone was in the cathedral of Puebla. “Do you think this is safe, Mathias?” “I’m not hiding. When you go in, I’ll stash the weapons in the shop next door.” “Do you think there will be a lot of corpses in there?” “Why?” “During the great Black Death pandemic, most people fled to churches… and ended up dying in there.” “I’m sure they’ve already cleared the bodies,” said Maria, with her hand on her waist.We kept the knives. Mathias was paranoid. “I don’t need it… better safe than sorry.” We walked in through the door. The wind was a little cold, howling. Maria’s hair blew in the air. We opened the door. Walked past the chairs — some were emp-ty, others… had corpses.Once there, the metallic smell was strong. I grabbed a cloth — it seemed to be stained with dried blood from days ago. I opened the cloth… and almost threw up. It was a fetus. Malformed. A sharp pain hit my head. Everything went dark. When I woke up, I saw a man. Another, shorter one. And a woman in the mid-dle. I felt a sharp pain — it seemed to come from under my foot. They seemed to be eating something. The man was chewing… and so was the woman. The shorter man, bald, was biting down hard. Another one began saying something incoherent. I managed to regain con-sciousness.That’s when I saw, on the grill… a massive leg. That’s when I recognized the tattoo I’d gotten years ago: a dragon, on the leg.I looked down. My foot was gone. The pain was excruciating. I saw Maria… and Teresa. Tied to one of the chairs. The smell was unbearable — burnt flesh, coagulated blood, smoke mixed with the acrid stench of human skin roasting on the coals. The taller man tore chunks with his teeth like a ravenous animal, his eyes glassy, glowing with sick pleasure. Every chew made a wet, repulsive sound, like he was grinding something. The woman, with greasy fingers, licked them between bites. A string of fat dripped from the corner of her mouth, mixing with the blood that still oozed from the rare meat. She let out little grunts of satisfaction, as if savoring a gourmet dish. I saw pieces with tattoos. The bald one, the shorter man, used a rusty knife to carve strips of muscle from the thigh slowly roasting on the grill. The crackle of the meat blended with the snap of the fire. A piece fell from the grate and he picked it up straight from the floor, blowing off ashes and dirt be-fore devouring it. I began to cry. “Look… Sleeping Beauty’s awake.” The same voice from the radio was now speaking. “Motherfuckers!” “What the fuck is this? Why are you doing this?” “Look… it’s nothing personal. We’re just hungry. Really hungry.” “Want a piece?” He came over with a piece of my own leg, holding it out for me to eat.“Eat. Now.” He shoved the piece into my mouth. I ended up throwing up. “Ah… what a fucking mess.” The bald guy held my face tightly. “Don’t kill him. We gotta keep him alive… or the meat spoils.” “We’ve got the girls.” “They’re for something else.” That was the deal: We kill the men… and eat them. The short guy argued, “Alright… today’s your lucky day, pig.” He said that looking straight at me. At that moment, I remembered Santiago. He was hiding in the local grocery store… surely already setting up an ambush for those bastards. The girl was crying next to me… eating the fetus. The urge to vomit came back, but I held it in. I wasn’t gonna throw up again. The tall man with thinning hair looked at the girl — a redhead, full of freckles. Then he turned to me and said, “You know… bears, when they’re really hungry, kill their own cubs to survive.” He said it so naturally, almost politely. Like he was in a job interview. He pointed at something behind me — a small black bag. “My kids are in there.” “You sick fucks!” I shouted. “Look, buddy… if you behave, I’ll let you watch while I have fun with your friends.” A wave of hatred shot up my spine. That smug face. That grin from ear to ear. He looked like some TV host… laughing… and laughing… That’s when the shot rang out. The woman’s head exploded like a blood balloon. Right after, the man’s skull shattered. Blood sprayed into my eyes — hot, forceful. Santiago had arrived. He untied us. Looked down at my foot. He knew it was gonna be a problem. “Looks like… I caused you some trouble,” I muttered. We left the cathedral. My leg throbbed, red. And we walked… without looking back. We walked aimlessly. No one said a word. Maria was looking at my leg, worried. “We need to find some medicine… antibiotics.” Santiago replied, “That stuff can be dangerous. If you don’t know how to use it right, it could make his situation even worse. In the war, I saw a guy lose his leg… took the wrong antibiotics and ended up dead. Better to use alcohol first, clean out the infection.” We stopped the car. Everyone got out. Santiago grabbed the alcohol he had stashed behind the car seat. Without hesitation, he poured the liquid onto my leg. The cold burned like fire. The pain was searing. I passed out. When I woke up, I had a new bandage. We had stopped by a river. “We’re gonna stay over there,” they said. Everyone went. I stayed in the car. When I got out, I tried to walk. I was still starving. Every step felt like it was pulling my soul out. I watched Maria and Santiago talking. The car was by the river. I laid down on the ground. If I didn’t eat soon, I’d definitely be dead in a few days. A thought crossed my mind: “Maybe… it wouldn’t be so bad.” You think about a lot when you’re about to die. I can’t explain why, I just know it won’t leave my head. Thinking now about death… Santiago has a gun, a Mag-num. I’m planning to take it tonight. It’ll be quick, precise, almost surgical. And that’s how it happened. I’m writing this here — maybe by the end of winter we’ll all be dead, either from hunger or something else. Now, with this leg, I know I don’t have much time left. I feel almost dead. The leg hurts, throbs… I think it’s the first signs of tetanus. I noticed it looked dark, but didn’t say any-thing to the others. My head is burning. I want to leave this recorded, in case someone in the future finds it and learns what happened to us — and to the world. But I doubt it. There are so few people left. Credit: L.S Benveniste Amazon Please note the author of this Creepypasta doe NOT give permission for it to be reproduced in any form of media Copyright Statement: Unless explicitly stated, all stories published on Creepypasta.com are the property of (and under copyright to) their respective authors, and may not be narrated or performed under any circumstance.