The end of it all

I had posted this on Sulekha some years back. After the recent doomsday talk, thought of posting it again here.

The end of it all

The snakes were a bit tentative. "Are you sure this is going to work?" A little viper barely half a feet long asked it's neighbor. "Yes, perhaps," hissed its cousin a few feet away. Every snake in the planet, lethal or otherwise had started crawling to places where the walkers dwelled. They were the vanguard of the army of everything that lived on this planet, save the walkers1. One mission to bring an end to all the commotion created in the last 5000 years when the walkers multiplied in large numbers. Walkers, that's what they called members of a 6 billion strong species.

Everyone had a role in this assault. Alligators crept out of marsh lands and moved into the open, where they could see lights inside the homes. Moving in the dust meant a lot of pain for these beings, but they were determined to play their part. They had sworn...to the collective consciousness.

Cows had already begun the work in a subtle manner, a few moons ago. Unaware of the looming threat, the walkers just called it "Bovine spongiform encephalitis" or the "Mad Cow Disease." When the plan was first hatched, there were many who said.."but it won't kill the walkers." The little ones2 said, "yes, but we can kill the cows. It will be the first blow to their food resources."

Many who attended the conclave were apprehensive of killing their own kind, but this opposition was dealt with by a long winded answer from the lone bovine participant, "we are already being killed. They even have a fancy name for us...beef...and the truth is everyone will perish once this is over. Or even otherwise, at this rate. Let's be the ones to start it. We will die for this place which we all call home." And then her voice rang out loud...

"Milk might be a thing of the moo,
Udders might fallllllllll...
But the kind that moves on legs two
will be the first ones to crawlllll"

Yesssss...."Death to walkers" cried all of them. The collective consciousness of the planet was in motion. The chain could not be broken now. The spirit of Mother Gaia3 felt pain for the first time in millions of years. It never felt this bad, when the walkers first started mining, blowing up, hunting, killing and raping its crust. "It had to be done. Everything would have to go. Fresh life would take its place, even it meant a long wait."

Gaia shivered, and tall water waves spread out from the oceans to different parts of the world. She let out steam through the cones of hills that the walkers had long deemed to be dormant or dead. Tremors rocked the little planet at regular intervals of days.
The little ones struck again later, this time on chickens. Billions of chicken, virtually manufactured for consumption, had to be culled. This was followed up by an attack on plants, the willing conspirators. They started to wilt. No fertilizer, no pesticide seemed to work. Food baskets of the world were in danger of being barren wastelands. Then there came the uncountable number of dead fish floating on the water bodies of the world. Boats found it difficult to wade through foot thick layers of dead fishes. Stench filled the air as they started to rot. The winds carried the foul reminder deep into the hinterlands. The walkers went around covering their noses with wet cloth to avoid the stinging smell.

At the final meeting, the mood was sombre. "Today is the end, and we have planned it good. They themselves would help us a bit," said the spirit. "Can we have one more of the water waves?" asked a tiny dog, the best friend of the walkers. "One?" she replied and smiled.

Tremors rocked the planet. The germ warfare research center in Kazakhsthan and Biological Weapons Institute at Fort Detrick4, Maryland were the firsts to be ripped apart by the strength of the tremors. Then the snakes started crawling.

1 Men
2 Virus
3 Spirit of the planet Earth
4 Random un-researched crap