The Last of the Living (8 page)

              They also appeared to be completely nocturnal, which might be why she never saw evidence of any of them from space. When she had been surveying the Earth with satellite photos she had been taking pictures of the cities during the daytime, when these creatures must have retreated to someplace where the sunlight would not bother them. And she had no doubt that they were definitely the predator she had feared that had drank the blood of the dog and the squirrel.

              That was when she began to put everything together. "Pale nocturnal creatures that drink blood, hate the sunlight, and only dissolve when you blow off their heads or light them on fire. They are almost like zombies or vampires, or vampire zombies, zampires maybe? That's kind of a stupid name, but that's what I am going to go with for now."

              She then reasoned that these had to be the result of the bombardment. They didn't seem to be very intelligent, but they did seem to be humanlike and not so much extraterrestrial. Perhaps the virus had turned all of the infected into these creatures. That could explain it. If the humans who were affected by the virus turned into these creatures and these creatures dissolved whenever they got killed, it would perfectly explain why there wasn't any evidence of human bodies anywhere. And it could also explain why she hadn't seen any larger type of animals. These predators obviously would feed on any type of large creature, leaving only small animals like dogs, squirrels and birds left alive. And if all 8 billion or so humans had turned into these creatures and have been feeding for the last two years there might very well be very little left alive.

              "I might be the last living human being on the Earth after all," she said to herself. "The question is, what do I do about this? I am clearly vastly outnumbered."

              When she had gathered up her things and stockpiled as much ammunition as she could carry, she decided that she had better get out of the city before nighttime came. Although she really wanted to bring the flamethrower with her, she thought that it would be too difficult to carry and didn't know how much fuel it had. She thought the easiest thing would be to take a couple of handguns that she could keep with her at all times in case she encounters any more of these creatures on the way home. She wanted to get as far away from the city as possible, because with 10 million New Yorkers that is a lot of potential creatures out there, even if plenty of them migrated out of the city after turning into those things.

              "This must be the second wave of the invasion," she said as she walked outside of the gun store and looked around. Once again she saw no evidence of all the chaos that had taken place the night before. These creatures left no evidence of their existence behind, and that made them all the more frightening as they could completely cover their tracks.

              As she began to walk back towards the Seaport she suddenly paused. "I can't go back just yet." Her apartment was not that far away, and although it could be dangerous, and although she still felt rather weak and sick, she couldn't leave the city without looking to see if there was any evidence her fiancée had survived. Perhaps he lived long enough to leave some type of message for her. It was a long shot, but she would never be able to live with herself or move on if she didn't check.

              "I guess I will just have to be quick about it," she said as she began walking in the direction of her apartment.

              Along the way she was very careful, constantly looking in every direction with her gun drawn at all times, but fortunately she did not encounter any of the creatures, so she must be correct about them being completely nocturnal. That was one thing she had to her advantage.

              When she finally arrived at her apartment it was already about 3 PM, but she was so glad to see her old home for the first time in years that she smiled for the first time in a long time, then began to get watery eyed and wiped away a tear. She realized that her vision was still blurry beyond what could be attributed just to the fact that she had been crying.

              "Great, the last thing I need is to be visually impaired," she said as she rubbed her eyes, not thinking that would do much good. She was still convinced that this was probably an adjustment to the Earth after being in space for so long, and she would just have to hope that it would wear off eventually. As far she could tell whatever virus turned people into these creatures hadn't turned her into one, although the fear that that could happen was always in the back of her mind.

              She went into the lobby of her old apartment building to find that it was filled with debris as well and that most of the glass had been broken. She found a couple of dead animals that seemed to be drained of blood, and for a moment she thought about turning back. "No, I've come this far," she said as she continued to proceed with caution and entered the stairwell. "It figures I would live on the top floor."

              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 sure to remember that."