By Thomas Miller

The collapse came suddenly, like a predator in thenight. There had been whispers of economic downturns, food shortages,and civil unrest, but no one truly believed it would come to this.When the government fell, when the last stockpile of food was raided,when the final gallon of gasoline burned away, humanity turnedagainst itself.

The cities were the first to fall. Without fooddeliveries, the people resorted to scavenging, then hunting, andfinally... feeding. First, it was the pets. Then, it was the weak.The ones who could not fight back. The elderly. The sick. The vegans,ironically the first to go—thin, clean bodies, easy to overpower.Their screams were muffled beneath the hunger of the desperate.

The suburbs did not hold out much longer. Onceneighborhoods had been thriving with laughter and the scent ofbackyard barbecues; now, the only smell in the air was charred humanmeat. Fathers, who once protected their families, became hunters oftheir own. They started with strangers, then moved to their friends,and then, when the supply ran out, their own children.

Mothers, those nurturing figures who once rockedtheir infants to sleep, were the worst of all. Starving beyondrational thought, they turned to their own flesh and blood,justifying it as an act of survival. To them, there was no morality,no God left to judge them. Only the gnawing emptiness in theirstomachs and the soft, tender flesh of their offspring.

The strongest were the ones who embraced the madness.They formed hunting packs, roaming the highways in gutted-out SUVs,weapons fashioned from rusted steel and broken glass. They trackedthe smell of roasting meat, knowing that if they found fire, theyfound food.

They did not kill swiftly. No, that would bewasteful. They kept their victims alive as long as possible, slicingonly what they needed, cauterizing the wounds so the meat stayedfresh. Eyes wide with terror, the captives could do nothing but watchas their bodies were harvested piece by piece.

The remnants of the military, those who had survivedthe initial collapse, attempted to establish safe zones. But therewere no safe zones, not anymore. The refugees who stumbled into theiroutposts weren’t looking for shelter; they were looking for theirnext meal.

People clung to the past, hoping that some form ofgovernment, some semblance of order, would rise from the ashes. Buthope was just another word for weakness. Hope got you killed.

A man named Jeb Dawson, once an accountant inColorado, now led a tribe of flesh-eaters through the remains ofDenver. He had once been a man of ethics, of discipline. Now, heruled through blood. He kept trophies of those he had eaten—teethstrung around his neck, dried tongues tucked into his belt. To him,this was not a fall. This was evolution.

He had seen families turn on each other, seendaughters slit their mother’s throats, seen fathers roast theirsons over open flames. The taste of human flesh was no longer taboo.It was currency. It was survival.

New York had become a towering necropolis,skyscrapers transformed into slaughterhouses. The rich who oncelooked down on the poor now hung from hooks in their own penthouses,gutted like pigs. Wall Street traders, their bodies flayed and soldby the pound, lined the windows of what were once luxurious offices.

Los Angeles burned, the Hollywood sign barely visiblethrough the black smoke of mass cremations. The celebrities, thosewho had once commanded millions with their voices and faces, had beendevoured long ago. The ones who had fled to their mansions in thehills were hunted, dragged back, screaming, to the city they hadabandoned.

There had been whispers of an undergroundresistance—scientists, farmers, those who refused to partake in theslaughter. They had barricaded themselves deep in undergroundbunkers, stockpiling food, praying that the madness above would pass.

But starvation does not recognize walls. And whentheir food ran out, when the screams echoed down the tunnels, whenthe scent of flesh filled the air, they too fell.

They had called themselves the last hope. Now, theywere just another feast.

Twenty years had passed since the collapse. The oldworld was forgotten, replaced by this new, carnivorous reality. Thesurvivors no longer dreamed of a better future. There was no future.There was only meat.

The few remaining humans who had not succumbed tocannibalism were hunted like animals. They lived in constant terror,moving only at night, whispering prayers to gods who no longerlistened.

They had seen what happened to those who resisted.Their bones lined the highways, their skulls cracked open andemptied. There were no graveyards anymore. There was no need.

In the end, it was not war, nor disease, nor climatechange that ended America. It was hunger. And hunger never dies.