The Sole Survivor
The blast was, perhaps, the safest I’ve felt in a long time. For one crystal clear moment the danger could be understood, predicted, and prepared for. When the sirens went off, I stormed to my basement and huddled under a table in a duck and cover. For that long, brief moment, all I could do was cry. Cry, and pray to any god that would listen.
But there was no God listening. At least not anymore. Perhaps he never existed, perhaps he left when we decided to blast his creation to smithereens, perhaps he was atomized in the blast. Whatever the case, he did not hear my plea. If there was a god listening, he would have let me die.
The bright light of the flash shot through the one window in my basement, bathing the whole room in light. The whole world seemed to tremble and the air was filled with such a mighty blast of sound. Trailing this great blast was the sound of tree trunks snapping, walls collapsing, cars flying. It was as if the earth had split, and for but an instant all the screams of hell had been released to the surface. It was beautiful, it was horrific, and it ended just as quickly as it had began. That long moment passed and I was left alive. Petrified, but alive.
For three days I was motionless, afraid that if I moved I would turn to dust. That my survival was a fluke. That I could not possibly have outlasted armageddon. In the end, it was hunger that drove me from my safety, and thirst that drove me from my home.
The dread I felt walking into this world was oppressive. For as I gazed over the horizon of this new world, there was nothing. No birds chirping, no car engines burning, no children at play. The world was filled with the rubble of what was, and yet it was filled with nothing.
There was a river near my house, it couldn’t have been clean but I did not know where else to find water. As I stumbled through the ruins of the world, I wept dry tears. All around me were the portraits of mankind’s last moments. Burned into the concrete and the walls. The shadows of our species suicide. Mothers holding their children, men running for their lives, children trying duck into sewer drains. All of it marked on our world. All of our shame la bare.
When I reached the river I knelt down to drink from it. The fallout soaked water burned in my stomach and I was left there, writhing in pain. When I could finally stand the sun was setting, so I stumbled to a nearby house. I wish I had looked at it, seen its glow, felt its warmth. Just one more time. I went to sleep that night not knowing the sun would not rise again.
If I didn’t know better I’d have thought that the heavens had abandoned us, but really it was the ash of that final war blocking us from view for the entire universe. Our species had been accustomed to hiding our shame before fixing it long before the war, so it’s unsurprising that our last great act would do the same. Unfortunately for me that’s left our world hard, and cold. So cold. But at least the cold numbs the pain.
I wish I could say the hunger was the worst part, or the thirst, or the pain. But the worst part of this great torture was the truly crushing loneliness. I feel as if I am the sole survivor, the only one cowardly or unlucky enough to run and hide instead of stand and die. If only I could speak to all the philosophers and poets who thought they had experienced loneliness before me, just so that I may beat them for their whiny foolishness. They could not possibly know the loneliness of being the only member of an endangered species of one. The loneliness in knowing that no matter what you do, you will live and die alone. The loneliness of knowing that you will never hear the voice of your loved ones, you will never hear the voice of strangers, you will never hear the voice your enemies. You are now, and forever, truly alone.
The nausea was weak at first, but in timeit would consume my very being. I cannot eat and I bleed from the cracks of my rotting skin. I would tear it off if I could somehow move, but my muscles have deteriorated and the great pain of movement is not one I can overcome. I don’t know if I’ve lived like this for a few days or for ten thousand years, my sense of time faded long ago. Or, perhaps, it faded very recently. I know-I hope I will die soon. But now overlooking the ruins of our world, now in this existence of agony, now before my certain death I do not cry and I do not pray. I do not pray not because I know that no one is listening, but because I know that there is no where I can go worse than this hell we created.
