The Last of the Living

by Stephen Sipila

  "Oh Christ I'm going to miss you."

  "You better get used to it, what do you think you're going to do when I am the first woman on Mars? That's what this whole mission is about, to see if a human can survive in space long enough for a full duration mission to Mars. If we prove that that is possible I might be one of the first in line to perhaps be on the mission."

  "We will worry about that when we come to it."

  "But as soon as I get back from this mission we will be married, so if I do end up being the first woman on Mars you can say that you are married to the Martian girl."

  "I will be counting every day until you return."

  "And I will be doing the same."

  Amy began to cry as she remembered that last night they spent together. It was the loveliest evening of their lives and she had been counting every last day just like she had said. And now she finally returns only to put a bullet in her fiancé's head.

  But suddenly she had a thought. "Washington, Washington DC, yes, that's it. If there are any survivors that is probably the best case scenario as Washington DC is effectively protected against all sorts of threats, and if there is any type of functioning government left or military that would be the place to go. Maybe it's a long shot, but I think it's my best option. But I don't think that I can get there in this lifeboat. I am going to have to go to the last place I want to be, I am going to have to go back to land."

  Chapter 13

  May 16, 2028 9:57 AM Eastern standard time.

  After resting for the last 24 hours straight Amy decided that this would be the day that she would attempt to make landfall once again. It was early in the morning so all of the creatures must have retreated to their shelters for the day, so she figured she would be safe as long as she found some place to go by nightfall.

  She reached the shore of Atlantic City and thought she would check there to see if there were any survivors or any type of useful supplies. She removed all of her personal belongings from the spacecraft and figured that that would be the last she would see of it. Her plan was to try and find some type of vehicle that she could use to travel to Washington DC. She figured she would travel during the daylight and make sure she was in some place safe before nightfall where she wouldn't have to worry about the creatures attacking her.

  Taking her supplies with her and dragging them in a cart that she managed to find, she found that the boardwalk was in a deep state of disrepair. The floorboards were mostly ripped up and only the seagulls seemed to inhabit the city. She saw no signs of dead wildlife or anything like that, so she figured that was a good sign that where she was is safe.

  One of the first places that she came across was the Trump Taj Mahal Casino which was littered with all sorts of debris and was almost inaccessible, but just out of curiosity though she decided that she would check it out and go inside.

  As soon as she walked inside she found it was very dark and the floor seemed to be littered with money. People must have dropped dead while they were gambling their lives away and now money was completely useless, how ironic. It was kind of hard to move inside of the casino because it was in such a state of disorder and chaos.

  She turned and saw a big ripped up banner on the wall that said, Trump 2016 make America great again, and began to laugh. "Well we all know how that turned out!" She decided to tear down the banner.

  That was when she turned around and saw what she had most feared. She saw hanging down from the ceiling in the next room were a bunch of cocoons. She very slowly and quietly backed out of the room and closed the doors while keeping her gun drawn at all times.

  Leaving the casino as fast as she could she eventually came across a parking lot, and it seemed like most of the cars were still intact. Since the cars were parked at the time they must have been spared most of the destruction as no one was actively driving them as the bombardment occurred.

  After looking around for a while she came across a Humvee. By an amazing stroke of luck she stepped on something on the floor and found it looked like the keys. She held her cross up and stroked it a little bit. "Maybe you really are looking out for me." She picked up the keys and opened up the door. She got inside and and put the key in the ignition and turned. "It works!" she shouted as it started up. "These things are gas guzzlers but it should be enough to get me to Washington. I had better get out of here before whoever dropped these keys comes looking for it, even though they probably have been dead for about two years."

  She loaded up her supplies into the Humvee and thought that it would be a good vehicle for navigating a difficult terrain. It was highly versatile and it would probably protect her from any attacks by the creatures. And by an even more amazing stroke of luck it had high-intensity headlights, the type that would most likely frighten the creatures off if she was unfortunate enough to encounter them.

  It was really slow going navigating the highways but as she drove around and saw no signs of any of the creatures or any other life she began to feel confident that she was safe. But the silence was rather creepy to her so she decided to turn on the radio, only to remember that of course there were no radio transmissions going on. But as soon as she tried she was assaulted with a loud blast of heavy metal music that caused her to hit the brake and almost have a heart attack.

  "Jesus Christ I hate death metal!" she said as she ejected the CD. "That totally scared the crap out of me; it was like a bunch of Nazi soldiers were coming right out of the CD to assault me. I guess I will just have to deal with the silence."

  About an hour later she came across something even more interesting. On the side of the road appeared to be an abandoned trailer. She decided to get out and investigate.

  She approached the trailer very slowly and cautiously and found that the door seemed to be open. As she looked inside everything looked as though it hadn't been touched in a while. She was still taking no chances though as she kept her gun drawn the entire time. After slowly and carefully searching for any signs of the creatures or their cocoons, she concluded that it was safe. And on top of that it was a pretty nice trailer. She cleaned out the pantry of all the rotten food and hoped that the smell would air out later. But for now this was a lucky find as it would be nice to have a home away from home.

  Attaching the trailer to the Humvee took a little bit of time but she felt that it was well worth it. By late afternoon she had almost made it to Washington but saw that it was starting to get late. "I better not take any chances," she said as she drove the Humvee off the road and into an empty field. "This looks like it will be a good place to stay for the night. It's far enough away from any major city, so if the creatures come out at night to hunt I should be safe."

  She got out of the Humvee and went to the back of the trailer and into the bedroom where she laid down on the bed. The sheets hadn't been cleaned in at least two years, but that was probably the best she was going to find, and under the circumstances just being able to lie down in a bed reasonably assured that she was safe was a luxury she wasn't expecting to have, and it was one that she felt thankful for. She wasn't sure if she was quite a believer yet, but she said a silent prayer to Maria and then sat down to go to sleep for the night, all the while feeling completely sure that she would never be able to fall asleep under the circumstances.

  "It's going to be a very long night," she said, but not long after her head hit the pillow she was completely out like a light

  Chapter 14

  May 17, 2028 12:35 PM Eastern standard time.

  Amy woke up to the warm sun on her face filtering in through the window. She woke up with a start when she realized where she was. She quickly looked around and remembered what had happened.

  "Well I am still alive, so I guess the creatures left me alone last night," she said as she rubbed her eyes and yawned. She then looked at her watch to see how late it was. "I can't believe I slept so long. I was hoping to get off to an early start today to do my exploring. But at least now it is bright and sunny out and that should keep th
e creatures away until later in the evening, plenty of time to do some exploring and get back to a safe spot before that."

  After eating a brief and light brunch she decided she had better start heading for Washington DC. She was hoping that she would find more supplies there, as well as some survivors. Although she hadn't received any radio transmissions from anywhere on the Earth, she still felt the Washington DC was probably the best chance of finding anyone left alive. The White House and the Pentagon and places like that all had shelters stocked to survive a nuclear Holocaust, so they should have been able to survive this.

  As she was driving she began wondering what she would find in the city. If there was any type of government it could very well be authoritarian in nature, but she supposed that was better than starving to death out in the wilderness, and she could deal with that possibility if and when it came up.

  The other thing she began to consider was the fact that the bombardment began so suddenly and unexpectedly and wasn't showing any immediate signs that it was dangerous. So even if people found it to be suspicious it was likely that anyone observing it in Washington DC probably wouldn't have taken shelter from it, including the president and his staff. So if it got everyone else on the Earth it was highly probable that the majority of people in Washington died just the same as everyone else before they even knew what was happening.

  But she wanted to stay optimistic. She didn't quite have a second plan if Washington proved to be a dead end, so she figured she would deal with that problem when she came to it. For now she would just keep up the hope that she would find something worthwhile at her destination.

  When she first reached the outskirts of the city she found lots of unoccupied military vehicles as well as numerous high-intensity weapons just lying vacant on the floor. But once again she saw no evidence of skeletons or anything of the like. Most likely these had been deployed during the bombardment as a precaution only to succumb to the same fate as everyone else on the planet. Still she took the opportunity to pick up some more heavy-duty weapons just in case she needed them. Why let them go to waste?

  As she started exploring she saw familiar sights such as evidence of an airplane crash and many buildings that looked like they had been completely burned down. This was true of every city that she had come across so far and it was most likely the result of the sudden death of everyone rather than intentionally set. With everyone just dropping dead fires would naturally break out and there would be no fire department there to put them out. So that didn't necessarily get her too concerned right away.

  She paused and began to laugh when she saw something she never expected. She found herself in front of the movie theater advertising an all-night George Romero movie marathon for the night of the bombardment." How's that for irony," she said as she got out and looked around. But that was when she noticed something different about the movie theater. She went up to the wall and felt some holes. "These are bullet holes."

  She drew her gun and went very slowly into the movie theater expecting to find large numbers of cocoons. But she didn't find what she expected. When she got into the first theater she saw the inside appeared to be burned but someone had put the fire out before it consumed the entire movie theater.

  "Somebody burned this place down and put the fire out before it burned down completely. That must have happened after the bombardment."

  Looking around the rest of the theater she found it to be in a similar state. It appears the inside of the theater rooms had been set on fire but then the fire had been put out. Whoever burned this place up did so in a very systematic way as though they were burning it room by room and then putting the fires out right afterwards. Whoever did this had a specific plan in mind. It was not a random fire because the lobby and other areas did not show similar signs of burning.

  "There might be survivors here after all," she said as she slowly exited the theater. She went next door to a pizza place to find that it also had evidence of gunshots, as though some type of firefight had taken place.

  Wanting to see if it was a fluke or not, she went to most of the remaining areas and found that many of the places had a similar pattern. Large open places had evidence that someone had been burning them and putting the fires out immediately afterwards before the fires burned out of control and burned down the entire city.

  When she suddenly had a revelation. "The cocoons!" Why hadn't she thought of it before? The burning patterns indicate that they were burning something in the room and melting it down. Whoever had survived might have found cocoons and used some type of guns or flamethrowers to burn away the cocoons where the creatures lived so that they wouldn't have any place to hide. And if they had done this to several buildings in the area then it meant that somebody out there must have survived to do it.

  But as she looked around she saw no indications that anyone was trying to communicate. There were no signs that said survivors or where survivors could meet up or any evidence of a large number of people being in the area. If she had to guess it seemed like the work of one solitary individual or a very small group at the absolute most. But they didn't leave any signs of who they were or what they were trying to accomplish.

  Finding no clear evidence that the person was still around, she decided it was best to leave and head towards her target, the national Mall. The very center of government would be the most likely places to have survived, if any place had.

  After navigating a difficult terrain, she finally came to the national Mall. She went over to the Vietnam Memorial and that was when she saw another sign that was suspicious. A big chunk of the wall had been blown away as though it had suffered an explosion of some kind. Looking on the floor she saw what looked like discarded rocket launcher shells, and it looked like they might have been fired fairly recently.

  As she continued up across the reflecting pool she saw something even more disturbing and shocking. Floating in the water was what looked like skeletons, the first skeletons she had seen. Whoever had produced the skeletons must have died after the bombardment had taken place.

  She also saw more signs of dead animals that looked like they were fairly fresh. This was unnerving because it meant that the creatures could very well be around, even though so far she hadn't seen any signs of them. But it was getting to be late afternoon now and if she didn't find anything soon she felt it would be best that she retreated from the city to take cover for the night.

  As she continued to survey the land she finally saw something that gave her pause. There was the fact that the Capitol dome appeared to have collapsed, but then she saw something as she closely approach the Lincoln Memorial. She approached it and as she looked up at Abraham Lincoln she noticed something distinctly different about him. There was a big banner wrapped around him that said "Dave was here" on it.

  "What the hell?" she said as she scratched her head. And just as she was about to turn around she felt a tap on her shoulder.

  Chapter 15

  Amy jumped up and turned around and found herself face-to-face with someone wearing a full wrap around his face complete with aviator goggles as well as heavy gloves on his hands. She quickly pushed him down, took out her gun and pointed it at him.

  "Who are you?!" she shouted she kept her gun trained on him.

  The man put his hands up. "Don't shoot, I'm human." She could only vaguely make him out because all of the wrapping around his face.

  "Prove it, show me your face."

  "I don't like to take my wrappings off."

  "Why not?"

  "The germs."

  "What germs?"

  "The space germs!"

  "You mean from the bombardment? Are the germs still in the atmosphere?"

  "I don't know, but I am not taking any chances. But can you put the gun down; I'm not going to hurt you."

  Amy reluctantly lowered her gun. "I'm sorry, I was just being cautious as I thought you might have been one of the creatures, one of the Zampires."

  "Zampires?"

>   "It's what I've been calling them; it is short for zombie vampires."

  The man laughed. "I've been calling them Vombies for the same reason."

  "Vombies!"

  "Hey it's not that much different from Zampires."

  "Why don't we just call them the creatures to make it easier?"

  "I can live with that."

  Amy put her gun in its holster and extended her hand. "I'm Amy Takahashi."

  "I'm David, David Washington Smith; I am the President of the United States, the second black man to hold that office." He did not extend his hand. "Sorry if I didn't take your hand, I'm a little bit paranoid about germs."

  "It's okay," Amy said as she put her hand down. "I guess you must be the Dave who put up that banner on the Lincoln Memorial. Last I remembered you weren't the president."

  "Everyone else in the world is dead, so I figure that I am next in the line of succession. Not that there is much of a country left to rule over. You're the first person I have seen since the creatures appeared. How did you manage to survive all that time?"

  "I could well ask you the same question."

  "Ladies first."

  "I'm an astronaut. I survived on the international space station for two years until just a couple of days ago when my supplies were running low and the station started breaking down and I decided that I had no choice but to take my chances back on the Earth. You're the first living person I have seen who wasn't one of those creatures as well."

  David scratched his head before snapping his fingers. "You're the astronaut. I used to follow you on twitter. I knew your name sounded familiar from somewhere."

  "It's a small world I guess."

  "A very small world, far as I know we are probably the only two people left on earth. But weren't there other astronauts with you on the space station?"

  "Yes, that was true. I was with astronauts Anatoly and Maria, but unfortunately they both died in space."