It’s the first full weekend of the new month, so I’m just about to get started on my latest Furious Fiction submission.

The story below is my story from this time last year. I cannot recall what the prompts were, and I think it is one of my weaker entries in the monthly competition, but it’s not without it’s charm, and perhaps it will be better received by an audience than it was by yours truly?

I also don’t seem to have a title for this one. If you think of a good one, please share it with me.

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Fall down, get up. Fall down, get up. This was the motto Jackson Hart repeated to himself each and every morning since he had made it through the first night of the so called “End of Days”. Unfortunately for Jackson, and even more unfortunately for them, the majority of his friends, family and co-workers did not make it past the first night of what the survivors now referred to as “The Undoing”. Those that did make it past the first night didn’t receive any let-up; The Undoing lasting a total of 7 nights, with 99% of the world’s population meeting their untimely end before all was said and done. Of course, that figure of 99% was purely speculative, and perhaps a little embellished. The members of Jackson’s group, collectively known as “The Stayers”, tacitly agreeing on the number because (a) it made the events of The Undoing appear even more devastating (as if they weren’t devastating enough!) and (b) it exaggerated the extent of their own valour in being able to make it through alive.

Aside from Jackson, there were 11 others in The Stayers – people from all walks of life who had banded together to aid in each other’s survival and to begin the rebuilding of society. The group had come together surprisingly quickly considering that modern communication – phone networks, the Internet etc. – was the first major casualty. Jackson was the third person to join the group, he met the others whilst scavenging an abandoned supermarket for supplies. He was overcome with emotion the moment he saw them, having spent the past couple of days absolutely convinced that he was a lone survivor. After a couple of weeks, the group had grown to include 25 members, but the growth wasn’t sustainable. People came and went, taking advantage of their hospitality but preferring to move on after a couple of days, emotionally scarred from the events of The Undoing and unwilling to put their trust in people they didn’t know. The Stayers referred to such people as Spiders.

Six months after what would prove to be the final night of The Undoing, just over half of the group decided to move on, hoping to find something more out there. Jackson was one of the 12 who decided to stay. One of the first things The Stayers decided to do when they were reduced to a group of 12, was agree on some rules that all members of the group would need to follow. The penalty for breaking any of the rules being immediate expulsion from the group. Rule 1 was to never talk about what you did to survive during the 7 nights of The Undoing. Rule 2 was that every resource found by a group member was shared amongst all group members. Rule 3 was to cut all ties with members who had left the group. There were 9 more rules, one for each member of the group, but it was Rule 3 that would prove to be Jackson’s downfall.