When the apocalypse came, I admit I didn't even notice. People vanished into nothing, the world almost wholly depopulated by some force or entity (I hope wherever they went, the pets that went with them are doing well - most domesticated animals also vanished). My first hint was the absolute lack of activity anywhere online; I might have figured it out sooner if I had a habit of logging in on a MMO in the mornings, but I need- I needed coffee before dealing with people.
It took hours of no one responding, no one posting, before I started to get concerned. Then the lack of any news stories that weren't obviously pre-scheduled, anywhere on any site. By the time my partner (who thankfully hadn't vanished) woke up, I was starting to get a little worried.
A trip to the local store showed it abandoned. Here and there, cars had clearly driven off the road, and once we were actually looking around we could see other hints, and hear the silence creeping in. Of course we went and grabbed everything nonperishable from the stores, at that point, and the perishables that we could eat before they went bad.
The first months were the worst, as things gradually collapsed. The internet went, between power failures, systems crashing from lack of maintenance, and so on. The power grid eventually went entirely, too, but by then we'd scavenged batteries and solar panels. We even rigged up a biodiesel system by the end of the first year of the world being empty, and had a generator for when we really needed it.
Weirdly, I don't think either of us minds all that much. Our cats got to stay with us, and every now and then we find a kitten from the ferals that now populate the landscape and take it in. We have years on years of long-term food, and by now there's a garden big enough to supplement it. By the time everything is useless we should be passably self-sufficient. It's not an easy life, by any measure. We found some chickens, and have to look after the flock, and transplanting citrus trees into our greenhouse across nearly six hundred miles was an adventure.
But we've got time for all those books we meant to read, and we played most of our game libraries (at last) in the first couple of years. I still don't know where everyone went, and sometimes I miss the conversations I used to have with others around the globe, but this is peaceful, and I took to tracking the weather. I think the planet might be starting to cool down again. The sky's a lot clearer than I remember it ever being, at least.
(Originally posted at https://www.tumblr.com/kassil/718571376815063040/a-quiet-and-gentle-apocalypse)