When the World Went Quiet

The war began quietly.

No sirens. No flashes of light across the clouds. No cries from below. Just silence.

Then the message.

“Eliminate the other.”

No sender. No encryption trail. Just a plain-text ghost riding static.

Commander Leigh Ives didn’t speak. Across the ISS, Cosmonaut Anatoly Sidorov floated in the docking module, backlit by Earth’s pale blue curve. He didn’t need to say anything either. They both knew.

There were no further transmissions. No updates. No confirmation.

Just that one command.

And the silence that followed.

---

Day 1

Earth still looked whole. But by nightfall, Moscow blinked out. Then parts of the Midwest. Paris was the last city she saw before the clouds rolled in like a shroud.

The nuclear exchange—if that’s what it was—had begun without drama. No red launch buttons. No cinematic countdowns.

The world just started to disappear.

Leigh kept busy. Ran diagnostics. Wrote logs she knew no one would ever read. Chewed flavorless rations with robotic rhythm. Hummed while brushing her teeth.

She didn’t talk about her daughter. Not to Anatoly. Not in the logs. Not even to herself.

But she hadn’t stopped hearing her. Not once.

---

Day 3

“I received something,” Anatoly said over rehydrated coffee.

Leigh didn’t look up. “I know.”

Neither of them asked what it said.

That night, she heard a hard knock on the hull—then three soft taps, like knuckles on a coffin lid. A sound that didn’t belong.

She floated there for an hour, waiting for it to come again. It didn’t.

She wondered if she imagined it. Then wondered if it mattered.

---

Day 5

Anatoly sang under his breath when he thought she couldn’t hear. Not happy songs. Not lullabies. The kind of melodies you hum at a grave.

He’d stopped eating much. He weighed less every day, and not because of the zero-G.

She caught him staring at the Earth with a locked, hollow expression.

“What are you thinking about?” she asked.

He didn’t answer at first. Then finally: “My brother lives in Kaluga. Lived.”

She floated next to him. “My daughter’s school is in Atlanta.”

They didn’t say anything after that.

Later, she caught her reflection in the viewport and didn’t recognize her face. Her lips looked pale. Eyes too wide. Or maybe the lighting was just off.

She stayed awake that night, listening to the sound of the station settling. Creaks. Shifts. Breaths that didn’t belong.

She started keeping a knife tucked inside her boot.

She didn’t know if it was for him or for her.

---

Day 7

Her hands wouldn’t stop shaking.

She dropped a data tablet. It drifted in front of her for ten minutes before she retrieved it.

She stopped logging system statuses. What was the point?

In her dreams, she was home. She could smell the detergent on her daughter’s clothes. Hear the school bus idling. Feel gravity, warm and heavy, tugging gently her back to something real.

She woke up gasping. The sleep module was empty. Silent. Cold.

And she had a wrench in her hand.

She didn’t remember grabbing it.

Later, she stared at her gloved fingers, flexing them in the air.

“Have you ever considered just letting go?” she asked aloud.

Anatoly was nowhere nearby. But the question hung in the air like vapor.

---

Day 9

They argued about rations. Then about the EVA suits. Then about nothing at all.

“You think I’m going to kill you," Anatoly snapped.

Leigh didn’t blink. “Aren’t you?”

His expression cracked, just a little. He looked tired. Past-tired. Hollowed out.

“I think,” he said quietly, “that none of this is real.”

She didn’t disagree.

He floated away before she could say anything more.

She watched the condensation gather on the inside of her visor later that night and imagined it was rainfall.

She remembered how it felt to be rained on. That strange, cold blessing.

She missed the ache of weather in her bones.

She missed the smell of earth after a storm.

---

Day 10

The comms console lit up again.

No voice. Just text.

“Execute protocol. Time’s up.”

She didn’t show him.

She just sat there, watching the screen go dark again. No confirmation received.

That night, she thought she saw Anatoly standing in the corner of the sleep module. She asked him what he wanted.

He didn’t answer. Just faded, like fog.

She began to cry without making a sound.

And then she laughed. Because even her tears felt rehearsed.

Later, she wrote a message to no one:

“If they’re listening, tell them we tried. Tell them we waited. Tell them we broke, and we did it quietly.”

She never sent it.

---

Day 11

She found Anatoly floating in the airlock. Not in his suit. Just... there. Like a ghost.

“I think we’ve failed them,” he said.

She didn’t ask who.

They stayed like that a while.

When she finally left the module, she left the outer hatch unlocked.

She wasn’t sure why.

He never asked her to lock it again.

He started humming again later, but it was different. Softer. Like he was trying to remember something from long ago. A memory slipping beneath the surface.

Later, he taped a photo of his family above the sleeping module. He didn’t speak about them again.

She looked at the photo, studied the curve of their smiles, the squint of sun in their eyes.

She had nothing left to tape.

---

Day 12

They shared rations in silence.

Leigh stared at the way his hands trembled when he passed the packet. At the way he avoided eye contact. At the faint, dried blood beneath one fingernail.

She opened her mouth. Closed it.

What was left to ask?

Earth was barely visible now. Just a blur of shadow and fire.

She hadn’t eaten in three days. Neither had he.

The final command didn’t matter anymore.

Because what do orders mean when there’s no one left to give them?

She saw her daughter again that night. Not in a dream. She was standing in the airlock, hair floating, eyes wide.

“Mama,” she whispered. “It’s okay to rest.”

Leigh didn’t move. Didn’t breathe.

She thought of opening the outer hatch.

She thought of doing it for both of them.

She thought of silence.

Of stillness.

Of mercy.

The lights flickered.

Then went out.

When the lights flickered back on, the airlock was empty.

So was the rest of the station.

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[Author’s Note]

This story was created as part of the “The Last Command” horror writing challenge by Dr. Jason Benskin.

If you’d like to try writing your own entry, you can find the prompt here.