Dustin held Ashley in his arms as they stood on the balcony awaiting their inevitable demise. They looked out across the horizon as they waited helplessly for what was about to come. Their life together was about to be cut short, but there was nothing they could do. They stood in silence as they watched the nuclear reactor in the distance as they awaited their fate. Why tarnish what precious little time they had left with meaningless words?

     The threat of nuclear annihilation had loomed for years, but it had seemed almost unreal. Year after year they had lived through a bombardment of terrorist threats, but nothing had ever actually happened. Until this morning when a warning had been issued over the television and radio that the terrorists had set missiles to hit several major nuclear reactors around the world.

     For most of her life, even though Ashley had heard all the threats and the sensationalized panic of the media surrounding the threats, she had lived in a state of quiet apathy toward the promise of nuclear annihilation. On some level, she had even been anticipating it. She didn’t have much to live for anyway, and had felt almost nothing for anything or anyone else. But that was before she met Dustin. Suddenly her life had meaning, and now, in the face of their impeding doom, she felt a deep sense of remorse. Before, her life had felt meaningless, and she never been overly concerned that the world could come to an end at any moment. These things happen, she had thought every time she had turned on the news, it’s just a part of life. But now, she felt as though she was somehow being cheated out of a life that had just begun.

     Her thoughts turned to the life that she would never be able to have as she stared blankly into the sky. She and Dustin would never have a family, would never have children, would never grow old together. For the first time in her life, she finally had some sense of what she wanted out of it. But now that was all being taken away from her in an instant. There was so much left undone, and only moments left to live. Ashley looked up into Dustin’s eyes for what seemed like an eternity as she pulled him closer to her.