The Last Man Left

I walked along the quiet street.

Some leaves blew and rustled through the grass and I just kept walking. Mostly because I had nothing else to do.

I’d been alone for a while.

Sometimes I’d see a hint of the old world. A movie poster for a film never released. Decorations for a holiday never celebrated.

I couldn’t remember the last time I’d seen a person.

If I had to guess I’d put it at two years. And really that’s guessing because I’m only vaguely of what day it is most of the time. I mostly just go by the seasons.

But the last time I saw someone was at least two winters ago. There were three of them. I assume it might have been a family since one of the people was smaller and stayed behind the other two, but it was a long way off and they disappeared quickly. There are times where I question if I ever saw them at all, or if they were just ghosts conjured from my imagination. I did find a heart shaped locket lying on the ground.

And so I kept walking in my silent world.

It’d been two years since since I’d seen anyone and at least five since I heard another person’s voice.

I still recall that day.

There was a group of us camping at the edge of a small town. The lack of resources and the calamities forced many people into refugee camps, but then they ran out of supplies so a group of us left while those that remained fought tooth and nail over the remaining supplies.

We took what we could. There were at least ten of us, maybe eleven, it’s getting hard to remember.

Times were getting rough back then. We’d eaten the food we’d grabbed from the camp. We’d couldn’t find any wildlife for a long time. Most of it had been driven off by the camp.

And so we were left eating pine needles and drinking water from a dirty stream.

I made the decision one early morning to head out. I figured things would get bad. In the beginning it was best to have a group for some protection but now it was a liability. It was too hard to find food for a large groups.

I grabbed my bag and few essentials.

I thought I got away cleanly but I heard her voice just as I made it to the edge of camp.

“You’re really going?” she said.

“Yeah.”

“No goodbye?” was all she said. I didn’t turn back around.

A few weeks later I went back to check on them.

But the entire camp was wiped out. I don’t know who or what did it. But I stayed to bury the bodies and then left not wanting to find out who attacked them.

And so it was a silent world from then on. Only the music of the forest to keep me company.

I followed a squirrel for about forty yards but I never got close enough to hit it with my bow.

I wandered along a country road until I found a small town. For a long time I avoided any kind of settlement but now I didn’t have to worry. Homes used to mean people and people meant trouble and now they were just phantoms of the past, monuments to a time that was never coming back.

I walked right down main street, and felt more like being on stage than in a small village. I walked and walked until I found the local cemetery.

Being that I had nothing better to do I strolled into pay my respects. I walked up and down the rows looking at the names and dates and feeling sad when the dates were too close together.

There was a large monument in the center. I guess it was a former important person. I sat on one of gravestones near it figuring whoever it was wouldn’t mind now. I set my pack down and ruffled through my things.

I found what I was looking for at the bottom of the bag.

It was a bag of jelly beans I took from a house two years ago. I saved it thinking that I’d share it when I finally found another person.

But it was looking less and less likely. Something about the cemetery made me realize that was never going to happen.

So I opened the bag.

And for the first time in five years I laughed at how ridiculous it must have looked and I just thought to myself, This is how it ends. The last man on Earth eating jellybeans on a gravestone.