The Last of the Living

by Stephen Sipila

  Walking up the steps was a real ordeal as her legs still felt really weak. She didn't know how long it would take her to re-adapt to Earth. She had done this before after coming home from other space voyages, but never for as long as she had been gone. Being the record holder for the person who has spent the most time in space might come with a lot of problems that she had not anticipated. Space was not good for the human body and she was really learning that now, and she could only hope that the damage she had done to her body was not permanent.

  "I can't worry about that now," she said as she continued up the stairs, pausing to rest every couple of moments.

  After what seemed like an eternity, she reached her floor to find that most of the doors on the apartments were kicked in or broken down, and she saw a couple of dead birds drained of blood in the hallway, which really set her nerves on end. But she wasn't going to turn back now after she had come all this way.

  Slowly entering her own apartment with her gun drawn in front of her, she saw her familiar living room, as though someone had broken into the house. The furniture was torn apart, the televisions smashed in and the bookcase knocked over. Pretty much everything in the house was broken or lying on the floor and all of the windows were broken as well. She could sense a terrible smell in the place as though something had died, which almost caused her to vomit again, but she managed to stop herself.

  Looking on the floor she found some of the family photo albums and saw a broken framed photo of her with her fiancé, David. She also found his framed certificate for significant contributions to the field of virology, of which he was extremely proud, lying on the floor like a piece of trash. She gathered up his award and their engagement photo and put it in her bag.

  Next she went into the kitchen to look on the refrigerator to see if David had left her any type of note. Whenever he went somewhere or had something to tell her or she had something to tell him they would always leave a note on the refrigerator. Of course if the Apocalypse occurred he probably wouldn't have had time to write anything on the refrigerator, and at any rate he wouldn't have expected her home for several months, but if he knew he was dying he might have composed some type of final message to her.

  Looking at the refrigerator she saw that there was nothing on it but that there were some magnets on the floor. She opened the refrigerator up but quickly closed it when she found it was full of rotting and decomposing food, just like everywhere else that she had searched that contained food. She couldn't help but run to the sink and gagged a little bit.

  Finally she went to the bedroom which was when she suddenly stopped short in her tracks. On her bed was what looked like some type of giant white cocoon that was hanging down from the ceiling. "What the hell," she said as she pointed her gun at it and slowly approached.

  When she had gotten close to it she could see that there was some type of a figure inside. She went over to her desk where she always kept a penknife and she used it to cut open the cocoon. As soon as she did so she saw one of the creatures was inside and appeared to be sleeping. Then she jumped back in horror as she realized its eyes were opening.

  She ran back up against the wall as she pointed the gun in the creature's direction. She was about to fire as it slowly crawled out of the cocoon that then she stopped. She recognized that face. "David?"

  The creature began drooling and hissing at her.

  "David, it's me, Amy."

  All the creature did in response was snarl. But she was sure that it was him. She could recognize his face even if he was now covered in pock marks, extremely pale and bald and appeared to be decaying. As she looked upon his deteriorating naked body she suddenly had a flashback to the last time they had made love the night before she was set to go into quarantine before being launched into space. She would recognize that body anywhere.

  "David, no," she said as she still pointed the gun towards his head.

  David, or what once was him, looked at her with his glowing red eyes with a small glimmer of recognition.

  "Please David, you must recognize me. I know that you must still be in there somewhere. I love you."

  The creature jumped towards her and before she even knew what she was doing it was on top of her drooling a horrible smelling liquid onto her face, causing her to begin to gag again. Using all of her strength she managed to push the creature off of her, quickly aimed her gun and fired right into its head.

  The creature let out a loud shriek as it fell to the floor and began dissolving into a puddle.

  Amy threw the gun to the side and began crying. "I just murdered the man I loved more than anyone in the world." She turned to the side and vomited, this time fully and painfully.

  As she was crawling around on the floor she came across another familiar sight. It was David's engagement ring. She picked it up and put it on her left ring finger. She then went to her jewelry drawer and grabbed her own, which she had decided to leave behind on Earth, not wanting anything to happen to it while she was in space. She also looked through her drawers and took a couple of objects of sentimental value, such as some photos, including one of her cat, who with great sadness she felt most likely had been killed by one of those horrible creatures, possibly even David himself; her journals as well as David's, a flash drive full of pictures, videos and typed versions of her journals. She put all of these things in a bag she took out of the closet. She then gathered up a few of her favorite pieces of clothing, a necklace with a picture of her and David inside and a few other little things, and added them to her collection.

  "This is all I have left," she said as she picked up her bag and flung it over her shoulder.

  She took one last look at her destroyed apartment where she had just killed the man who had once been her fiancé, and began running down the hall and kept running straight down the stairs pausing only very briefly when her legs began giving out.

  The creatures must sleep in those cocoons during the daytime, she thought, and she didn't want to wake up anymore of them. It was already 4:30 PM and she wanted to make sure that no matter what happened she was back to her ship before sundown.

  While she was running down the streets she realized that she was quickly running out of breath and feeling increasingly dizzy. "I have to slow down," she said putting down her bags. "But I have to get back to my ship; my life might depend on it."

  That was when she saw the object of her salvation. It was a motorcycle parked on the side of the road and apparently it hadn't been completely destroyed. She managed to start it up, threw her bags in the sidecar, and began to carefully navigate around the debris. Even though the streets weren't clear, the motorcycle would allow her to get back without exerting herself too much.

  Along the way she drove past Central Park where it seems an airplane had crashed. She wasn't going to stick around to explore, for all she knew it was full of more of those hideous creatures who seem to have inherited the Earth.

  "It's almost sundown," she said as she finally saw the Seaport on the horizon. As the sun slowly began to set she heard a loud shrieking off in the distance. "I'm just going to make it," she said as she drove over to the spacecraft and rapidly loaded her bags back inside.

  As she was climbing up the ladder one final time to get into her ship she felt something grab her leg and she responded by kicking it hard in the face. It was one of the creatures. She wasted no time in grabbing the gun from her side and firing into its head. From the top of her ship she could see in the distance what looked like an entire horde of the creatures in pursuit.

  She opened the hatch of the ship, got inside and quickly began pulling the ship out of port as she heard scratching at the side of the walls.

  "I know what to do," she said as she pressed the button to cause all of the lights on the ship to light up at full intensity. She could hear the creatures shrieking as she maneuvered the ship to shake them off like barnacles. Looking out the window she could see them drowning in the ocean. "So they don't like water either, I will make su
re to remember that."

  She took one final look out the viewing port at New York City, the sun setting on the city that never sleeps, as its new inhabitants woke up and shrieked at her from the Seaport. If she never saw them again it would be too soon.

  Chapter 12

  May 15, 2028 8:35 AM Eastern standard time.

  Amy woke up still feeling very weak and tired even though she had somehow managed to sleep practically all night. She found that she had a temperature of 99.7° and didn't really have all that much of an appetite. She checked her bandages and it didn't seem like she had an infection, but she still was clearly not well. She didn't have all that much in the first aid kit that would be of much use for any type of major illness, but she attributed all of this just to the fact that she is still not used to being on Earth again.

  "If I don't start getting used to being back in the gravity field of the Earth I really am screwed," she said as she did some simple exercises and took her vital signs again before lying back down.

  As she tried to sleep off her fever she decided what she should do next. She had gone far enough out to sea that now New York City was just a distant sight on the horizon. She felt she was safe as long as she was out in the ocean where those creatures did not seem to be able to reach her. So far she had identified two weaknesses – they hate light and heat, and they also hate water and apparently can't swim. That might explain why when she found the boat on the way to the city the other day there were no creatures onboard. Philip Lanchester and his family might have transformed into those creatures and then starved to death or drowned out at sea and then dissolved like all of the other creatures.

  "I can't believe I live in some type of world that's full of undead monsters," she said as she sat up and laughed before becoming serious again. "My logical scientific rational mind is really being challenged by the existence of such creatures. I almost feel like I should be brandishing Maria's cross at them." She held up the cross and fingered it gently. "I guess you have kept me safe so far."

  As she thought more about it she supposed it wasn't completely irrational. If an alien race was trying to invade, bombarding the planet with some type of toxic spore that would rapidly kill most of the population would be a good strategy. Then these creatures would finish off whoever survived and probably eventually kill themselves off. But they had been surviving for at least two years now and there seemed to still be a lot of them. Whether any more invaders were coming she had no way of knowing, unless these creatures were the invaders somehow. But she doubted that an intelligent alien species capable of interstellar flight would be a race of devolved creatures. Whatever these creatures were they were of only limited intelligence and they seem to be there solely to kill off any life that they happen to come across.

  But all of that belied the bigger concern. Now that she knew what they were, sort of, how was she supposed to survive? If every major inhabited area is full of these creatures she wouldn't be safe anywhere. But she couldn't give up just yet. New York City might not have been safe, but that didn't mean that there wasn't some pocket of survivors somewhere. No matter how extensive the bombardment was, even after two years at least a couple of people must managed to survive somewhere, that was her only hope. But then the question was where were the survivors and how would she know where to look?

  She had quite a few supplies but not anything for the long term. Her spacecraft only had enough fuel to hopefully make it to shore. Right now she was just drifting and not going anywhere but she would have to find some more fuel soon. She had enough food for about a week or two or longer if she rationed it. The return vehicle was only meant to be a temporary shelter for astronauts returning to Earth. It wasn't designed for people returning to a post-apocalyptic world. Eventually she would have to try going back on land and she would have to find some way to survive off the land. Any food that was left was probably rotten or eaten by scavengers by now. She could always hunt for her food, even though she was never fully an outdoors person. She had gone camping a couple of times and that was about it. Her astronaut training had prepared her to survive in a harsh environment, but again there was always the expectation that she would be rescued in a short time. If she was the last, or one of the last people on the Earth, then there wasn't going to be anyone coming to help her. Even if there were other people in the world absolutely nobody knew where she was or who she was. She would have to be the one to find them.

  Her headache was still killing her and she really wished that she had some unexpired aspirin. Her health didn't concern her as much as the creatures did. She figured that if whatever she had was permanent it would kill her anyway and there was nothing she could do about it. She thought it was more proactive to worry about things that she could control.

  Still feeling rather gross from the day before, she decided to go skinny dipping right outside of her spacecraft again. She felt she was probably safe in the ocean as long as there weren't any type of vampire or zombie sharks. Suddenly she felt like she was in some type of bad science fiction film and something was just going to come along and eat her while she was conveniently naked.

  Luckily no such thing happened and the ocean remained her friend for now. The water felt really cold against her skin but it seemed to have done the trick and helped to break her fever.

  After getting back inside and getting dressed in something more clean and comfortable she suddenly felt much more relaxed and decided that she would try eating just a little bit to get her strength back. Fortunately she was able to eat without vomiting again. She had vomited enough for one day. One thing that post-apocalyptic movies frequently neglect is the fact that after most of the human race had died the Earth is probably going to smell pretty damn awful and there will be a lot of stuff that will be making you vomit on a regular basis.

  While she was relaxing she suddenly realized that she was wearing the outfit that she had worn the last time she had gone out with David, the very night that he proposed to her. She could still remember that day perfectly as one of the best days of her life.

  They had gone out to a fancy restaurant to celebrate one final time before she was set to go on her longest space mission yet, two years on the international space station. She had steak and lobster and just thinking about it now made her mouth water, as she had not had that for the entire time she was on the space station. One of the bad parts about being an astronaut is that the food was less than spectacular and most of it had to be eaten through a straw, although at least they had been successful with their small little garden up there, so they were able to have fresh fruit and vegetables on occasion. But life in space sort of forced you to be a vegetarian, and she was a person who was quite fond of meat!

  She remembered how David had proposed to her. She thought it was really corny but very sweet at the time. He actually put the engagement rings on the lobster's claws. It was a good thing he popped the question before she started eating or she might have swallowed those rings!

  As she remembered that she rolled David's engagement ring around in her hand. That was all she had left of him. The one person that she cared about most in the entire world and she was the one to end his life. She knew that David would never want to live as a monster like that, so what she did was probably an act of mercy, but she could still never live down the fact that she had killed her fiancé.

  David would have been the type who, had he survived, would have been trying to find a cure for these creatures. She actually remembered one of the final conversations they had had the night of his proposal after they had slept together for the final time.

  "I think that for every ailment out there that there has to be a cure," David said as he ran his fingers through her long hair. "That was why I was inspired to become a virologist. When I was just a teenager growing up in Africa my sister contracted an incurable disease and I thought, why did that have to be so? I feel that with enough time and focus every virus can be conquered."

  "I admire your optimism and you
r humanitarianism, and you have done more for the field of virology than an entire team of scientists would, so I can honestly believe you when you say that there is a cure out there for every virus. And I think it's also very possible you might be the one to find them."

  "Maybe with the proper funding!" he laughed as he stroked her cheek.

  "Proper funding would be nice, but don't underestimate yourself. You came closer than anyone else to curing the Ebola virus."

  "Maybe with enough funding I could have cured it completely."

  "Even if you didn't cure it you created the most effective treatment for it, it really is a huge injustice that you did not win a Nobel Prize in medicine. If it were not for your treatment the outbreak of the virus caused by that terrorist attack in Washington DC would have killed far more people. You really are a national hero."

  He kissed her on the forehead. "Don't underestimate yourself either. You are probably America's most popular astronaut right now. I have no idea what the hell I'm going to do while you're away for two years on that space station. You're going to have to leave me some really racy photos of you to give me sufficient masturbation material while you are away!" He burst out in heavy laughter.

  "Well as long as you don't go cheating on me."

  "I thought that by getting engaged I would keep you from cheating on me!" he said with more laughter.

  "I don't think there is much chance of that. There isn't really a whole big variety of people to play the field with up there in space."

  "What about that astronaut, Anatoly, who is supposed to join you in a couple of months. He has sort of a reputation."

  "He's not exactly my type."

  "Maybe you will encounter some little green men."

  "Green isn't my type, I like my men the way I like my coffee, hot and black."