Nothing Ever Happens Here (I.P.)

They tell me the year is 2020. No-one knows any more than that. That's just what it said on the desk calendars, the diary entries, the Blackberrys and alarm clocks, when the sun flared up with a sudden fever and shot bolts of raw heat into the night sky, sending all of civilisation shuddering, useless as matchstick houses, to the ground.
Since then we've all lost count of the days.
I look up from where I'm perched on the roof of a burned-out car. The sun has long since sunk into its dying place below the horizon and the sky is bloody, a haze of chemicals and gases. It used to bring tears to my eyes to look at it, remembering the beauty of the world we used to have. I guess I've got desensitized to it now.
There's not a lot to do. Unless you've got something to drink, or something to take to send you drifting, just to escape the boredom for a while, the Revolution is the only option. Basically they're convinced the old people are to blame for the end of the old world and torture them and kill them out of revenge, or boredom, or other feelings. They're probably right, but I don't want to get mixed up in that kind of thing. They fit you with a gun or a knife upon joining. So far I've managed to avoid being recruited. Which is probably a good thing. So many people my age have signed up that they've run out of ammo freebies. When Rikko joined they gave him a broken beer bottle. Huh. Real incentive.
There's a place down the road which used to be a pharmacy. Of course everyone looted the useable stuff and kept the rest to trade for supplies, favours, whatever. I know a girl who sells her body for medication. She doesn't do it out of choice, she's diabetic.
The pharmacy has another function now. We all call it different things. One of the older guys calls it Paradise. There, amongst all the broken glass and the psychadelic swirl of oils on the floor, you can lose your memory. I only went there once. With my boyfriend. I tried to stop him, but he couldn't get used to the new life, couldn't adjust. He doesn't know me any more. Sometimes I go and see him, take his hand, like I did when the needle went in. He sits for hours smiling vaguely, childlike. Occasionally I bring him something brightly-coloured, or with an interesting texture- a metal bottle cap found embedded in the dirt, a scrap of plastic wrapping from something called 'Super R-pp-l'- as a distraction, because he gets scared when he hears the shooting. It sometimes makes me wish I could be so easily pleased.
Somewhere behind the huts of corrugated iron and chipboard a round of gunfire tears the dull silence to pieces. There are screams, high-pitched like an animal, but they don't last long and the black charcoal outlines of the city don't burn with a sudden flaring light, like they do when someone sets off a bomb. Which is good, because it means I don't have to bother to move. Hopefully it's no-one I like. I no longer bother to hope that it's no-one I know. When there's so few people left in existence you get to know them all pretty fast.
There's something scrawled on the wall opposite. I narrow my eyes to see it clearly in the murky half-light. "We thought we were gods".
A baby was born in the settlement this morning, a little girl. Her mother has been crying silently all day, holding her close. Markus offered, quite kindly, to kill her, quickly and painlessly, but she said no. I wonder if she'll change her mind. I know I could never bring another life into this kind of hopeless world. It's why I don't let anyone touch me no matter how bad the loneliness gets. Not any more.
Sugar and Dan are having wild hot sex on the remains of the car seat and they're making the roof vibrate. If I squint I can just about make out the glint of a gun from the other side of the sandbanks demarcating our territory. Curled up on the rusted iron, I sigh and stretch out, imagining I can still see the stars. It's going to be another long, long night.
Nothing ever happens round here.