The First To Be The Last

It was a plan sure - but not mine. Not by a long shot.

It had been a brutal affair. Listening to the world die. Listening to constant wind and crying out, the burning heat of flames and apocalyptic sirens. Now don't get me wrong. We all saw it coming. Like the most cliche ending to the most cliche story. People stopped fighting the disease and the crumbling government. People like me gave themselves up for experiments of all kinds. Only... that's where I went wrong. That's where my story changed. The cursed day I let them put me in this box, so long ago I’d forgotten what real air felt like on my skin.

I could, however, vividly, remember the first day. The day they stripped me down and put me in this white pair of overalls. When they painted my nails white. Did my hair quite nicely. They fed me and got me to the peak of my health. I had muscles tracing down my arms and legs and I could see without glasses. I thought it was the best decision ever. Until the box came. Until they showed me to the glass box. About the size of a barn - if you can remember what a barn was. I know they haven't been used for centuries. Anyway, I'm pretty sure the government spent the last of what money they had on the thing. It was my own biosphere. Indestructible. And, just for a flourish - could not be opened. Not by a natural disaster or a human or a sledgehammer. Not by emotion either. Or so they thought. Oh, how many days I spent sobbing. Clawing at the wall as they took their daily observation notes. I forgot what other voices sounded like. What anything sounded like. I had food and water and a bed and four books. That was my life. Every day they came and observed. Injected the air with things. Maybe they found entertainment in my slow onset of insanity. At the time, all those years, I thought that was the experiment. See how fast someone could lose their mind.

Well, boy was I dead wrong.

You see all it took was the world ending for me to figure the whole thing out.

I was a pawn. I was some sort of punished criminal. Maybe both. All I know is that I've been walking around this town - or what's left of it - for a day now. And I have concluded one simple thing. I am the last standing person on this earth. Well, I shouldn't say last.

I'm pretty sure he’s alive too.

I got the paper from inside one of the logs they kept about me. And let me tell you the satisfaction of rooting through their stuff now that they are all, well, dead, is quite gratifying. Anyway, I saw this alarming entry that has deeply unsettled me.

Turns out, I'm not the only person they put in the glass box. They, according to their words, found the two people with the perfect vitals and stats and shoved them in these containers. Not to try experimental drugs or conduct phycology experiments. But to make sure two people survive.

And the thought of that just makes me hope and pray the other kid didn't make it. I mean, if he did, I'm quite literally living the joke everyone made in the third grade.

‘If I was the LAST person on earth...’

Fill in your own blank.

I stooped down to pick up a can of corn. Which remarkably, had remained intact. Carefully using a knife I had scavenged yesterday I popped that sucker open. Drank it like water and puked it up like water. Lately, I couldn't eat anything without getting nauseous. Except for a donut. I had a donut two days ago and it was more than delightful.

I peered at my watch. Thirteen minutes. I had to get to the next city before sundown. That was my plan anyway. Take it day by day, town by town. Get as far away from here as possible. Shoot I’ll walk all the way to Canada if I have to. Anything to get as far away from survivor number two as possible. I was not about to willingly cross that bridge. And, if we are being totally honest, what if he's not even aware I exist? Or what if I find other people?

Suddenly, and completely unexpectedly, a shotgun blast snapped me out of my train of thought. My muscled seized and before I knew it I was diving into the nearest store and cursing. Not because I had been shot at, no that's happened before.

But because that meant someone was alive.

Intending to run across the street, I eased out from my doorway and ran halfway across before I saw him staring back at me like a terrifying idiot.

He clearly had picked up the shotgun from some house somewhere. It wasn't his. He had never shot it before just now. How did I know that?

Because he too was dressed in white overalls. Bare perfectly manicured feet. And not a scratch on his body. Just like me. He was the other box boy.

Standing right before me.

“You can't shoot for sh-”

“Language.” He hollered back.

Suddenly, I hated him even more.