My breath hitched in my throat as I gasped for air in the dust around me. Asthma. The bane of my current existence. It felt like I was waking from a nightmare every time my slumber ended, but I only woke up to the nightmare around me. I could remember the bombs and the fire and the chaos all around me. Some had said the world would end in fire, but I had hoped it wouldn't be in my lifetime.

My name was, and still is, Matthew. Just Matthew. I prefer not to think of my last name. It reminds me of the family I no longer have.

The world was torn to shreds in what was a short-lived Third World War. Everyone was fighting, civilians were dying, and soldiers didn't know what to do with orders as clear as a brick wall. Their own governments betrayed them. Launched nuclear bombs hoping to decimate the enemy, but the enemy retaliated with their own. It was an all-out "blow the other guy to bits until he can't enter launch codes anymore" kind of fight. Some people had survived, or at least, I hoped so. I hadn't seen anyone, heard anyone, or recognized any signs that anyone had even passed through the area I was in. New York had been absolutely decimated. I had only been here on a business trip; I was a representative for a company than now had no meaning. Nothing had meaning anymore, except for non-perishable food, clean water, and shelter.

I'd been traveling on foot for a while. About a month now, since everything had gone to Hell. I had a messenger bag and a backpack with me. I slept where I felt it was safe, tucked away in a sleeping bag I'd scavenged. I usually lay in the subway system, on the ground where you'd have seen performers playing drums or singing or beggars kneeling, asking for spare change.

I sat up from the tiled floor I'd slept on, sliding my sleeping bag off of me as I struggled to catch my breath. I'd had asthma for a long time; ever since I was a kid. It was really bad now, with everything so polluted and covered in rubble and dust. I'd emptied my inhaler a week ago. I was trying to find a hospital, but I didn't know my way around New York very well. I was from Toronto in Canada, for crying out loud.

I sat there gasping for what felt like an eternity, before I slowly regained my ability to breathe properly, tears flooding my eyes. I hated waking up every morning like this, choking and gasping. Asthma attacks were more of a danger to me than starvation or radiation. I found it funny. Only survivor to be seen in N.Y.C. struggling not with scavenging for food or water, but with his own body due to an illness he'd always had. If anyone could have seen me, I'm sure they would laugh.

I stood up and brushed myself off. I was wearing the same tattered clothes I'd been wearing when the bombs dropped. Glasses, a pair of khaki pants, a red sweater vest, what used to be a white button up that was now stained black and gray from ash, and a pair of dress shoes. Most nerdy-looking apocalypse survivor ever, if you asked me. Among my belongings in my bags were survival necessities. Twelve cans of food that I rationed to one can a day, and bottled water that I had filtered with a t-shirt I had been wearing beneath my button up and boiled. I also had three lighters, around fifteen packs of matches, and two knives in case one broke or became too dull to use. I had raided a convenient store a few days after I'd gotten my bearings of what had happened to the world around me, and had taken everything I could carry that would be of use to me. The two bags were among the items.

I grabbed my messenger bag and slung it over my head, resting the strap on my shoulder, then grabbed my backpack and draped it over my back. I rolled up my sleeping bag and shoved it inside my messenger bag, clipping it shut with a heavy sigh. My body ached. I was filthy. I don't know what hope I had or what kept me moving on. Maybe it was the idea that somewhere, there was someone else still alive.

I took a deep breath and began walking, heading up the stairs of the subways entrance and going out into the faded morning light. The clouds in the sky were some natural, some from fires that still burned in what remained of the skyscrapers. They weren't skyscrapers anymore; that was for sure.

I walked in the middle of the street, glancing around at the empty taxis and civilian vehicles that had no use now. Expensive cars that had been so coveted only a month ago, now rendered worthless. Billboards and advertisements and all sorts of propaganda and preaching, now meaningless. Every last thing; meaningless.

I'd come to terms with the fact that I'd probably wind up dead out here in the wasteland of New York. With the hours and hours of aimless walking, there was a lot of time to think, and lot of things to accept, and a lot of regrets to forget, and a lot of dead people to forgive. If only I'd forgiven them sooner, I told myself, maybe I wouldn't be thinking of the regrets I had for not doing so. Instead I could think of what a wonderful person I had been before everything had ended, but in all reality, I'd been a wallflower for a lot of my life. I'd been kicked around a lot as a teen. Bullied. Berated. I figured it was best to just distance myself. Shy away from it all. Become invisible. I never forgave those bullies for what they did to me; I never knew why they did. Perhaps the reason they beat me was because they suffered abuse by the hands of someone else? Perhaps they shunned me for being gay, because they themselves were too scared to come out? Whatever the reasons, it didn't matter now.

I didn't have many friends in my life. Didn't care to make them. Didn't want to, and now, I was somewhat happy for it. I didn't have anyone to miss. Didn't have any memories to reminisce on and kill my mood. Not that I had much of a mood anymore. Just a vacant stare ahead, and maybe a tinge of sadness when I thought of my family. I tried not to think of them. Tried not to remember them, because they were the only people I had. They were the only ones. When I was bullied I would run to my father, Francis, or to my step-brother, Alfred, or to my step-father Arthur. I knew they were dead. There was no way they'd survived. I knew California had been hit hard; that's where they had lived at the time, in a lovely place in San Francisco. Probably not so lovely anymore.

Thinking of them was the only thing that made me sad. I'd gotten used to seeing the devastation all around me. I'd seen bodies of people before. I wasn't scared of a thing. But when I thought of them, sorrow took a hold of me. I cried every time and wouldn't stop until it was getting too hard to breath and my eyes burned.

I thought to myself, maybe I could get to California somehow. Get on the outskirts of the city where the streets weren't clogged with cars, hijack whatever vehicle I can, and just drive and try to find my way from the East Coast to the West Coast. It was just a far-fetched musing. There was no way I'd be able to make it or find my way there. I had no clue how to get around the United States. I hardly knew how to get around Toronto.

I wandered aimlessly for a few hours through the city before coming across a sight that somewhat surprised me. It was the fuselage of a plane, lying on the ground, mostly intact minus a giant hole in the side that was likely from a missile. I thought to myself what it must have been like to have your last moments plummeting from the sky, then shook my head. Out of curiosity, I approached the hole in the side and peeked in, glancing around. The scent of decaying bodies hit me hard before I even had a chance to see what was inside and I flinched, backing up and away from the fuselage quickly. I should have guessed there would be a lot of bodies there.

I turned and made my way around one end of the plane remnant, not daring to glance to the side to see what lay inside the cylinder of decay. I continued on my not-so-merry way.

I found my way to a highway, and stopped. Did I want to leave Manhattan and journey on to somewhere else? I stood, pondering. If I followed the highway, it would take me to New Jersey, and perhaps, to survivors. I know New Jersey was hit as well, but not as hard as New York. Maybe there was a chance I would find someone, and that alone, made my decision for me. There was a sort of loneliness that clawed at my heart, and I hope so badly to find someone, anyone.

I ran a hand through my messy blonde hair and adjusted my glasses before continuing on, down the path on the high way. The cars on the highway were piled bumper to bumper, so I began to walk on top of them and climb. It was fun, I supposed, to do something you could have never done before. After about a half hour's walk, before me stood the George Washington Bridge. I walked onto the upper level so I could get a view from the highest point. I walked atop the cars until I reached the center, where a semi-truck was conveniently placed. I climbed up on its trailer and stoop, glancing around. The Hudson River lay still, with unmanned boats drifting along its waters. From up here, you could really see the destruction that had become of two the most recognizable cities in the USA. New Jersey was practically level to the ground, while New York only had a few tall buildings remaining.

Deciding to take a break and enjoy a peaceful moment in the calamity that surrounded me, I sat down and took off my bags, retrieving a bottle of water and one of my cans of food. It was some type of generic brand soup, but I was fine with it. Cold soup tasted amazing after walking nonstop for hours. I used one of my knives to open the can of soup, drinking the broth and then bending the carved out lid into a sort of scoop to get the noodles and whatnot out. I sat and ate and drank my water, the only man who would likely ever see such a sight as this. It was somehow serene despite the smoke billowing from collapsed skyscrapers and the death all around me. If this had been a month ago and I were telling people that I'd be sitting atop a semi's trailer, eating soup, watching New Jersey and New York burn in unison, I would have been called crazy.

But for now, crazy was a lifestyle, and I'd live it for as long as I could. It wasn't so bad after you accepted that this destruction was all there was left.

Once you understand that the world isn't going to change back, and there's no place that wasn't destroyed in the bombing, it changes from survival to living. Just not the kind of living we'd all been used to.