Outside, while bombs exploded and the Never Connected wore untanned hides made of what flesh they could steal from the fallen, the only glow in the air was that of impromptu funeral fires. Screaming mothers watched piles of babies collapse in on themselves, bones burned weak — they could not pull away, could not be pulled away by the frantic hands of husbands, fathers, family who grieved as well, but still desired to live. In the end, their bodies joined those of their children, and the Savage Ones took delight in seeing metal corroded with bile, wires severed, electronic panels dimmed. The only light was their sacred Fire, the uncontrollable heat and flame they wielded as death to the ones who had been so long cocooned in safe chambers of thought and information.
When the Apocalypse came, the dark claimed the world, and the Savage ones laughed and danced in primitive glee while some who had paid exorbitant amounts of credits lay in a blissful state of connection, ignorant of the physical world around them, even as the power went out and life support systems failed. Even as their consciousnesses could no longer drop back into suddenly dying bodies. Even as a thousand, a thousand thousand of them were caught mid-load, and simply winked out of existence, caught in a backup loop that would slowly run down as battery cells faded.
There were very, very few now who did not understand that an End was coming, and it was coming quickly.
On the longest night of the year, in the violent dark, he kept his eyes open so that those with him could see the LED behind the iris on the left; so long as it remained lit, that one single star amidst a twilight of thought and a world of destruction, there was hope that more than simple fire would remain to light the world in the days to come.