The Apocalypse wasn’t anything like Leto expected it to be. There were no herds of zombies in the streets, no flocks of ufos in the sky, and no abundance of fire. There was no screaming or bloodshed. It was just quiet.

It was too quiet. Leto had gotten used to hearing near constant noises, having grown up in a city. Now she was out in the woods with just her little brother for company. The-ten year-old was usually so rambunctious, but something in him must have sensed that this new, strange world was quiet, for he no longer rambled on about anything he could think of. Even the forest bugs and animals seemed to take a break from noise. Pure silence reigned upon them.

Apparently a few people had actually been awake when it happened. They had seen the people disappear in front of their eyes, unlike Leto and most others who had been asleep or alone. For some reason or another, there was no possible way to get the full story out of those who had seen it. Some of them told stories with sounds that didn’t form words, in frantic motions and expressions holding emotions Leto couldn’t decipher. Those who were able to speak words in a way that made sense told a different story every time. A few would speak of a flash of blinding white light, calling it holy or some such if they were religious. Others talked about glowing portals or vortexes that swallowed their family whole. Some even spoke of simply blinking and finding the room devoid of life as soon as they opened their eyes. Maybe they had simply fallen asleep. Maybe none of them had actually witnessed the event. Leto couldn't tell.

That was back when people spoke. Or maybe people did still speak, and she was simply no longer around to hear? No, that didn’t make sense. The birds had stopped their chirping and the insects no longer cried out as one in the night. Her brother no longer cried loudly over wonder of when their mother would come back, and simply moved his mouth in the motions as though he was. Maybe she had gone deaf. She didn’t have time to worry about it.

She had to worry about food and survival now. It was a hard task for a girl of barely seventeen who had grown up in a city and had no knowledge of how to hunt or make a fire. She was a fast learner when she was hungry, though.

Still, it was frustrating, and she was tired, and every part of her longed to scream and pierce the suffocating wall of silence that surrounded her. It seemed sacrilegious somehow. She felt that if she made a single noise, all the sound the rest of the world had been bottling up would explode. The overwhelming crescendo of voices and sound might just drive her even more mad than the silence.

She didn’t know how or why she thought of this. She didn’t know why some disappeared and other stayed. She couldn’t even begin to comprehend how she instinctively knew to leave the city. She just knew she had to get to a place where man’s intervention had been slim, where the air was not clogged and the grass not paved. She somehow knew it would suffer less wrath. Maybe she had been good enough in life to warrant that, at least, if not the ability to move on with her mother.

Leto didn’t know anything, except for the fact that she never would. To know would require to ask, and to ask she must make noise. To make noise she must return to the land with the noise and she did not wish to return.

The quiet really wasn’t so bad.