Call it what you want—the end, an extinction level event, the Apocalypse, they all mean the same thing.

It was over.

Civilization as we know it was finished.

As for me, I call it the Era of the Last Pilgrims.

When science failed to halt, or even explain the pandemic that spread across the world, people turned to God. People flocked in their millions. To Jerusalem, to Rome, to Mecca. They walked the Camino de Santiago in northern Spain in numbers not seen since the dark ages. In Ireland, St. Patrick's Purgatory saw an increase of numbers unheard of in its history. The banks of the River Ganges was crowded. Every Temple, Church, Mosque and Synagogue resounded with the voices of the faithful. Everyone was desperate to receive their dying peace.

Countries went dark Whole cities burned. Entire army groups vanished into the jaws of the infected. The panic and confusion of those final, desperate months is seared into the minds of those of us who survived, clinging to the wreckage of the old world as it decays around us.

Welcome to the end.