End of Humanity

THREE

By midday I finished my chores. The water was gathered and purified. I double checked the locks on the doors, made sure the outside shutters on the windows were shut and that on the inside the windows were boarded up.

I spend the rest of the day upstairs in my room. There is a crack in the shutter and a space where the window isn't boarded up, so I can look through the hole and out onto the lonely strip of road.

No other houses are on this road. My mum and dad built this house just before I was born. I don't know why they chose this land to build on, but I appreciate it now because I have only two groups of Lunatics walk on this road, one group with six and the other with seven. They didn't walk up to the house they just passed through.

I sit on my desk chair and peek through the window. As usual the road is abandoned. I walk to the bookshelf and grab one of the books. I've read every book in my shelf at least three times. That's what happens when you don't have electronics or internet.

The random book I chose was, ironically, about aliens. The green, light bulb head aliens. It was my sisters book. She loved sci-fi books like me, we would recommend books to each other. Amanda started reading novels when she was nine, the same age I turned over my Dr. Seuss books and traded it for a narrative.

Mandy and I were so much alike. She was so happy, energetic and... well, alive. But now she's buried under piles of dirt in the backyard near the pond. Mandy deserved so much more than that. She should've had a proper burial, same as my parents. I would do anything for me to be dead and her to be alive. However, she wouldn't stand being alone, and she didn't know how to garden like mum and I.

I wish Mandy or my mum or dad never became a Lunatic. I wish they didn't try to kill me, forcing me to kill them. I need to remember it wasn't them who tried to kill me, it was the virus. I need to remember I didn't kill my family, I killed virus infected people using my family as a meat suit.

Sometimes I wonder if I should end my life now. It's bound to happen. The aliens will take over the Earth and the humans will become extinct. But then I remind myself that my mother, father and sister died because of the Watchers. They wouldn't want me to give up, they would want me to fight and try to survive.

About an hour has passed. My legs are starting to go numb from crossing them on the blue swivel chair. I start to stand up when I see a shadow walking down the stretch of road. I fall to the ground. I peek a look through the window. I wasn't seeing things when I saw a shadow. There is a person running down the road to my house.

I don't know if it's a male or a female. I grab the knife from my bedside table. I haven't seen a Lunatic without a pack before. Maybe it isn't a Lunatic, maybe it's a human.

My hopes start to rise. If it is a human I'm not alone, I'm not the last of my species. The figure keeps advancing towards the house. Their image gets clearer. A teenage girl.