Prologue
"Sage, look at me." my mother calls out in a weak whisper.
"I-I can't." I cry out in the ugliest, ear piercing sob.
Pathetic, you're pathetic
my mother holds out her pale hand, trying to tell me she loves me with the last fleeting seconds she has left.
Worthless, can't even look at her. You're worthless.
I finally turn to her and hold her lifeless corpse in my arms. Hunching over her body I try to calm my breathing but nothing works. I'm a failure, I couldn't save her.
I couldn't save any of them.
my mother, Jude, died on my nineteenth birthday.
She died just like the rest of them did, just like my brothers and my father.
The virus killed them, just like it killed everyone. everyone except me.
My dad was the first of us to get sick. By the time he passed almost half the population was dead. Then came the quarantine. My brothers were sent away when my mom and I got sick. They told me they would come back- they promised, they lied.
I don't really know why I didn't die, I wish I did. Maybe I won some virus lottery, or maybe God had a sick sense of humor. Either way I watched everyone perish, I saw how the government slowly stopped trying to help the sick and left them to die in their homes. I watched it all by myself. I watched it all alone.
My name is Sage Jordan, I am the last human on earth.
I wake this morning how I wake up every morning. screaming and crying from a nightmare, only it wasn't a nightmare, it was real. I shuffle my way over to the broken, dusty, mirror hung crookedly on my wall. looking at my reflection I don't recognize the stranger staring back at me. She's unhealthy pale from never going outside, and has become very lean from working out all the time. I try to put my; greasy, uncombed, blonde hair back up in a ponytail, all the while staring at my huge eye bags, thanks to the restless sleep I get every night. I don't bother changing out of my white tank top and leggings, what does it matter anyways.
It's been a year since my mother died, it's my twentieth birthday. Yet, it's not a day to celebrate my life, but a reminder of how alone I truly am. I buried both my parents in the backyard of our small, one-story house and I haven't been outside since. That all is changing tomorrow though.
My father, Robert, was one of those people who thought Russia was going to bomb everyone. In fact, when he was sick he said he thinks the Russians poisoned him because he knew too much. I used to tease him about all the food he had stored up in our one car garage. Now, I thank him. Since we had enough food to feed a small army I haven't had to leave the house to get anything for almost a year. Until Tomorrow. I only have enough food for one more day and enough water for two.
At first I was thinking of just going to a store, getting what I needed, then coming back. As I thought more and more I figured I should probably live somewhere with freshwater, somewhere I could grow fruits and vegetables. There's just one issue.
I'd have to leave them.
The two bodies six-feet underground in my backyard. The two bodies who would never leave me, never run away from me. That's what I was essentially doing, running away.
I am a coward.
staring at my; lifeless, dull, green eyes I eventually come back down to reality. I continue on with my day, And just like that, I shove those nightmares to the back of my mind. The nightmares that torment me everyday.
Nightmares that are too real to be lies. I killed my parents, I killed my brothers. That was the truth, I was reckless and I destroyed everything that I loved. I destroyed everyone that ever cared about me, now it's just me and these thoughts that never stop racing through my head. I guess that's what I get for living while they couldn't though.
looking out the window of the living room I spot two graves under a dead orange tree, how ironic. After a couple moments, I finally tear my eyes away from the depressing sight and walk to my punching bag that's in the corner of the room. Then I do the only thing I can do, I punch, I destroy.
