Heaven on Earth

  Heaven on Earth

  VIOLA TEMPEST

  Heaven on Earth

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  © Copyright 2022 Viola Tempest

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  All rights reserved.

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  No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law.

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  Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Names, characters, and places are products of the author’s imagination.

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  Cover Design by Adrijana Cernic

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Prologue

  Earth. They say God created the humans for a greater good, to allow them the freedom to make the best decisions that would benefit the creations of God, that would allow the Earth to prosper, just like God had intended.

  The trees were created to allow these humans to stay warm, to build shelter. The oceans were created to help sustain life, to ensure that the humans would never perish from thirst. Crops and fruits were sprouted to keep these humans alive, to suppress their hunger, and keep them satisfied for another day.

  But what God failed to realize, was that these humans were flawed. A darkness had seeped inside them from Lucifer himself, causing these humans to turn evil, feral, and vicious. The freedom to make their own decisions and to do as they wished were not without repercussions. With darkness, came destruction, and soon, God’s greatest creation began terrorizing everything he had constructed from his own heart and soul. From murder to cannibalism, the humans refused to stop.

  It had started off so innocent at first, a few minor violations and crimes here and there. But as soon as the humans found out that they could get away with even worse, they took advantage of it, first by killing criminals and enemies, and then their families and friends, basically anyone who looked at them weird or rubbed them the wrong way.

  And as time went on, God’s trust in his humans began to fade, watching in horror and disappointment as his once pride and joy turned to the side of Satan, joining Lucifer’s mission in his conquest to take down God and all things good. As a result, God decided to punish these humans, to wipe them all out and start afresh with a new batch who weren’t tainted and manipulated.

  And thus, an apocalypse was formed, turning all corners of the Earth into complete darkness, shadows looming above the heads of his people, and leaving nothing but evil in its place for the humans to finish each other off. The killings grew, with no regard for conscience or humanity. In fact, God even encouraged it, raining down weapons of mass destruction so they could shed blood in an ultimate massacre, and he could be done with them for good.

  And so, the bloodbath continued over the next seven days. One by one, the humans fell to their very deaths. Escape seemed impossible, and everyone ripped each other into shreds until there were none left.

  And on day seven, God could finally wipe out the Earth forever and never look back on his horrible mistake.

  Chapter

  One

  ~ Lily ~

  “Imalia! Imalia! Where are you?” Lily Caldwell ran down the streets of San Francisco, screaming out her sister’s name.

  They’d been inseparable, ever since they were just five years old. But since the start of the apocalypse, the city had been trampled by the hundreds of thousands of people either running for their lives or chasing to create chaos.

  Lily and Imalia were just outside their shared apartment at Bodega Heights, when they heard a loud noise outside, almost like a gunshot, followed by shrieking screams and a horde of civilians charging their way. Imalia barely had time to push her sister aside before getting trampled herself, falling victim to the rush of the crowd and allowing herself to be taken away.

  Oh, Imalia, if only she hadn’t been such a caring big sister. If only they had stayed inside, barricaded with a bottle of wine and a rifle for protection. If only they had stayed in their tiny hometown of Van Dyne, Wisconsin, where their parents still lived, instead of having such big dreams to move to a major city. So many scenarios ran through Lily’s head as she continued searching around all of Imalia’s favorite spots, from the frozen yogurt stop she’d been obsessed with ever since they moved there, to the park they’d used to hang out in and laugh at the joggers who went by.

  Lily sighed. Those were the moments. The good times. Oh, what she wouldn’t give to revisit them all again.

  But just her luck, everywhere she looked, even the subway station that Imalia swore she’d never step foot in even if her life depended on it, was empty. Well, not completely empty. Rotting bodies and stiff corpses covered the tiled ground like it was stitching together a sort of carpet, and Lily knew there was a 99% chance that her sister wouldn’t be down there, but it was worth a shot.

  Maybe she’s hiding down here until the worst of it is over.

  Lily shook her head. Even she couldn’t make herself believe the nonsense that was spilling from her brain. Not like things could get any worse for the city of San Francisco. This was the worst of it. Sure, she’d seen druggies shooting up and crack heads shitting on streets, but those were nothing compared to this… this… mayhem of mass destruction.

  Lily had always thought it’d be fun to live through an apocalypse, though the video games she’d played were a far more glorified version of the nightmare she was living in now. If only she’d kept her stupid wish to herself, maybe she wouldn’t be stepping through human filth right now.

  “Imalia! Imalia!” she cried out again, but the only sounds that reverberated were her own echoes. “Imalia, are you in here? Imalia?” she cried out again, tripping over a human arm that had snapped from its body against her foot. “Son of a bitch…”

  She’d only been down here once, and only for a brief second. When she and Imalia first moved to The Golden City, Lily had all the intentions of riding the subway to work every day. Afterall, owning a car in such a populated city was the equivalent of throwing an entire bank account straight down the toilet. A simple train ride would’ve only taken her twenty minutes a day, not the forty that it ended up taking when Imalia insisted they chip in for a car.

  Lily sighed again. She used to hate her sister, with her spoiled attitude and always getting her way. Ever since they were kids, Imalia always got her way, from the toys they received for Christmas to the guys she dated.

  Ugh, not a dull moment went by where she didn’t piss Lily off. But now, now in this apocalyptic shithole of a city, she’d give anything to have her back. She was the only thing left from her previous life, the only thread of normalcy she could hang on to, and the one thing keeping her moving forward. Her one motivation to survive this mayhem.

  “Maybe this is karma,” Lily whispered as she continued roaming through the subway. The escalator was out of service, forcing her to walk down a death trap of a machine that would swallow her whole at any minute. “Maybe all those years of wishing she were dead… I finally got my wish.”

  If she thought the sight of the underground station was bad, it wasn’t nearly as bad as it smelled, like a truckload of nuclear waste had been dumped on top of a toxic dump in the most polluted ocean in the world. She tried her best to hold it all
in, hold in the bile slowly rising up her throat, but the stench was just too overwhelming and what little remained of her lunch came back up anyway.

  She took a second to compose herself, and then kept moving. Kept moving because it was the only thing she knew how to do.

  The tracks of the station weren’t much better than the platforms, the druggies once begging on the streets now decomposing where the rats used to search for crumbs. Now, they simply fed on the bodies themselves.

  Nope, still nothing, not a single trace of movement from a human body. Not a single reply from her sister nor anyone else. Nothing but the quiet squeaks of the rats, and the silent whistling of the wind through the tunnel.

  “Hello? Hello? Anyone here? Hello?” she called out, hoping that she’d find someone if she were in a different location, almost like the people were signals.

  Suddenly, a hand grabbed her by the ankle. She flinched and looked down. The arm attached to the rotting hand was nearly detached from the body it used to belong to. Just one little… kick, and the arm came flying off and onto the tracks of train sixteen. When she glanced back down, the body had stopped moving, lying still with the rest of them.

  Fear began stirring up in Lily. The city was usually dangerous enough when it wasn’t going through an apocalypse. Now, there was a high chance of someone jumping out and stabbing her in the throat, killing her before she even realized it. And with no remorse, too. Killing for the sake of killing, and that was it. She often wondered why she was out there instead of hiding, instead of barricading herself and trying to ride the apocalypse out… But that wasn’t like her. No. She’d promised Imalia that if they ever got separated, she’d go after her… and Lily had never broken a promise before.

  I’ll find you.

  It felt like yesterday when she had said that. But she would; she would find her.

  BOOM!

  Lily heard gunfire from up on the streets, followed by screams from two, maybe three, people — one woman, two men. Lily could hear the rattling of footsteps as they charged down the street, in hopes of escaping whoever was after them. But soon, the screaming stopped, right after the sound of another gunshot.

  Guess they didn’t make it very far.

  “Where next, boss?” One of the men asked another.

  Lily didn’t know just how many were up there, but if it was anything more than zero, she was in trouble. There were at least two standing up there on the street, maybe more, and she prayed that they didn’t come down.

  Sure, she’d taken a self-defense class before, but her one month of training definitely wouldn’t be able to withstand whatever guns the men seemed to have up there. So far, she’d been just surviving, but with a whole lot of luck and will, hiding here and there, and avoiding danger like a madman dodging bullets.

  “The subway,” another man responded.

  Probably the one in charge.

  “On it, sir. We’ll check every inch down there, and shoot anything that moves. No survivors!”

  “No survivors!” Several others cheered.

  Sweat began to pour profusely down her neck as she heard the clomps of their footsteps coming closer, first through the entrance, and then hurriedly down the stairs.

  They were coming for her; she knew it. And they were going to find her and kill her. She quickly looked around. Nowhere to hide. She could attempt to hop onto a track and make a run for it down the tunnel, but the noise would give away her position. Plus, she was never one to be quick on her feet, constantly tripping over them instead. She could duck behind one of the many trash cans, even hide in one, but that’d probably be one of the first things they checked. There was only one thing for her to do, and it wasn’t going to be pretty.

  Less than a minute later, the men arrived. There were five of them in total, each carrying a large rifle and wearing spiked boots that she barely saw through her squinted eyes.

  “Search every inch of the place. No survivors!” One man yelled.

  The others all agreed in unison and spread out, a few knocking over trash cans while the rest hopped down onto the tracks of the tunnel.

  Thank God, I screened out those options, Lily thought.

  She could hear the men yelling, shooting their bullets haphazardly without a clear target, laughing as if they’d gone crazy with power. Lily waited a few moments longer. She’d wait as long as necessary if she had to.

  “I got nothing, boss. You guys?” All the men regrouped nearby, the sound of clomping footsteps nearing her location. Too close.

  “Nah, ain’t nobody here. Let’s bounce. These bodies are starting to really stink.”

  “Yeah, let’s get outta here.”

  Lily continued to hold her breath and wish for the best. The stench from the rotting bodies was beginning to make her feel queasy, and she knew she didn’t have much longer until she heaved out bile, her stomach too empty to let anything else out.

  But still, it was either die by lack of oxygen or die by the hands of miscreants who were out for blood. Her blood. Whoever they were, she was sure they’d murder her if they found her, or at least, take her as their own to act as their personal slave.

  The sound of footsteps started to fade, the men eventually climbing back up the stairs. Silence filled the subway again. Not even the squeaks of rats echoed inside the concrete walls when Lily finally knew it was safe to come out.

  Pushing aside the stiff body of the man she had just torn the arm off of, she pushed herself through several others, who were all beginning to enter rigor mortis, holding her breath and brushing the pieces of human flesh off from her. It had been a good decision, too, in her mind. The rotting corpses definitely helped mask the smell of her perfume, which could have given her away.

  Her life was spared… for now.

  “Hiding from the Jaguars, too?”

  She jumped at the sound of the deep voice.

  “Who’s… who’s there?” she asked.

  But when she looked around, there was no one to be found. Well, except for the corpses, but those didn’t count.

  “Who’s there?” she asked again.

  When she turned around once more, she saw a man around her age appearing from the shadows toward the left wing of the subway. He had jet black hair, shoulder length, and his eyes were even darker than his hair, if that was even possible.

  He had a look of mystery on his face, like he’d experienced things, hardships, pain, like he had a story he needed to tell but was too broken to get it out. His leather jacket had a tear in the right sleeve, like he’d just gotten in a fight, and she couldn’t tell whether the stains on his dark blue jeans were stains of blood or sewage water, or some kind of other fluid she’d rather not think about.

  And she loved it, the way the tight denim wrapped around his tall, lean legs, and the way his biceps seemed to protrude from the thick leather. She didn’t think it was possible for someone to look so threatening, yet so sexy, at the same time. And it’d been a while since she’d seen someone who didn’t look at her like she was a body to add to a kill-count.

  Oddly enough, she didn’t feel personally threatened... Still, the fear of death caused Lily’s body to tremble uncontrollably as he approached closer to her, and she backed away. He was clearly trying to look harmless, his hands free of anything sharp or penetrating, and stretched to his sides, palms up, and his smile more welcoming than menacing. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t pull a dagger out from behind his back, after all.

  The city of San Francisco had become a true bloodbath, complete anarchy, no rules, no laws, utter chaos. Everything was free game now, including murder, and the city had truly become every man for himself. She didn’t know how the rest of the country looked, how the rest of the world looked, whether it still functioned in an orderly manner or had gone completely radical. Either way, she had to find her sister, so together, they could figure out what was going on, figure out if there was still hope to get help and live a normal life again, or whether she’d be spending the short
amount of time she had left running from the radicals.

  “Name’s Sydal,” the man spoke up again when he came just mere inches away from her face. “Thought I was the only survivor left aside from the Jaguars. How’d you escape them, anyway?”

  “The Jaguars?” Lily asked.

  “Yeah, the Jaguars. Those morons who were just down here blowing up the place? It’s what they call themselves, killing every last living being in the city of San Francisco, so they can claim it as their own and call themselves ‘kings.’ It’s pretty absurd, really. What’s the point of ruling if there’s no one left to rule?”

  “Oh, them, right. I hid under some of those bodies.” She pointed to the stacked pile behind her. “Guess they mistook me for one of them, and stepped right over me. Lucky, I guess.” She scratched the back of her head, tearing off pieces of the remaining debris from in between strands of her hair. “How do you know so much about them?”

  Sydal shrugged. “Let’s just say, I stumbled down the wrong alley at the wrong time. Found them taking down a nerd with a backpack. No mercy.” He shrugged again. “But, then again, what’s the harm, really, if it’s the end of the world? No consequences. No rules. Everybody’s just killing each other. And there’s always one, too, in an apocalypse… One group who manages to make an apocalypse even worse by speeding it up.” He scoffed. “As if people didn’t have enough already to worry about.”

  “Do you know them? How’d you get away?”

  Lily tucked a strand of her hair behind her ear and got closer, nerves rattling her frame, and the urge to know more pushing her forward. From there, she could see the thin jade ring around each of his irises, something she’d never seen on a human before.