The Last Man on Earth

by Philip Gilliver

There was a time not so long ago when he could remember Alicia saying to him, 'I wouldn't touch you with the longest possible barge-pole. Not if you were the last human being on Earth.'

Apparently he was too weird and too boring. But the words hit his heart like a javelin which had been thrown by an angry heavyweight shattering it into a zillion pieces. Tom had had it bad for Alicia since he could remember and her words were much more poignant now, as he quite literally was the last human being on earth. The only survivor.

It all happened so suddenly and without a single clue. He remembered laughing and taking impromptu swigs at a glass of chilled lager but that was it. Alcohol never did agree with him. A few sips and his head would be swimming. He remembered falling over and his eyes coming together as if his lids were highly magnetised. But when he opened them again, or to be more specific, when the cold and the light caused them to open, he was outside in the street and there wasn't a sound or a soul to be found.

His first thought, and it didn't feel at all wrong thinking this, was there had been a nuclear war. Not surprising, he recalled something hitting him in the head like a huge stone. He got to his feet and squinted along the main road. Nothing amiss, nothing burnt out. Although there were parked cars along both sides that had their doors hanging open as if there had been some sort of mass exodus from the city. No, this had to be something else. Some sort of gas attack, but then why was he so immune?

Tom sniffed at the air seeking out signs of something unfriendly and airborne. No, nothing unsavoury hit his flaring nostrils at all. In fact the air smelt as sweet as it never did before. Like there had been a great world cleansing. Perhaps that's it, he thought. We had done so many horrible things to the planet and now it had got it's own back on us. And somehow I was spared. Me, the one who sits alone in a semi-darkened room at parties skimming through the CD collection while the sudden scarcity of alcohol causes total chaos to break out everywhere else. The one who always said 'sorry' whenever he trod on an ant. Tom Wiltly was nice, and that was all anybody had to say about him. Being nice came as natural to him as being alive or breathing.

For instance:

It would have been such a minor thing to anybody else but to him it weighed on his mind like a ship's anchor. It must have been six years ago now and still it bothered him, that dreaded giving directions experience.

'Excuse me mate!' this voice laden with a broad Scottish accent bawled at him from across the street. Tom smiled. He knew what it was by the tone, somebody needed help and he was the one to give it. So the sound of the man's shouting gladdened his heart making him feel like Superman flying to the rescue of somebody hanging off a railway bridge.

He knew about giving directions. You had to be calm, speak loud and clear and use recognisable landmarks so that the driver can place visual things in his head to aid his (or her) memory. Tom bounded across the road to where the lorry was waiting engine revving, hissing and rumbling away on it's powerful suspension. His face was alight and his lips formed a broad arc underneath his small pudding of a nose. 'Yes mate!' he said with measured confidence.

'Cotch Road!' the driver bellowed.

'Cotch Road?'

'Aye! I'm after the breakers there. The breakers yard!'

Tom sighed. 'Oh I see,' he said. 'You mean “Coch” Road. Coch is the Welsh word for white. There used to be a Welsh dairy there at one time by Owen White. He was a councilor. The road is named after him.'

'Whatever. Can ye tell me how tae get there or wha?'

Tom took a deep breath and nodded. 'I certainly can sir. Take a left at the bottom there. A right past The Old Boot public house. Then head towards the gas works, then it's right from there, up the hill. Once you are at the top you'll see a road which doesn't really look like a road, but it is. That will be on your right. Go down there and you'll see it as plain as day on your right.'

The driver thanked him and he felt like he usually did once he had been helpful and the smile which adorned his face got even broader confident that there was nothing on the entire planet that could cause it to fall from his face. However this was never to be the case, because just as the truck emitted its almighty hiss and the engine roared up taking the whole thing off down the road, something hit him in the face like a cold, steel frying pan wielded by an angry chef.

'Left!' he cried. 'Damn! Left not right!' He turned to see his unwary beneficiary of his kindness disappearing out of sight. 'Wait!'

Tom ran for miles trying to find the driver to apologise for his little directional faux pas but to no avail. The man had gone for good, what is more he will never forget the events of that day as long as he lives.

So that was how Tom Witley was, nice. And it was for this reason that he finally decided that it was his niceness and his obvious inability to cause any harm to any other life form, that it had been divine intervention that had spared him. The nice gene had been his saving grace. Good being the ultimate force and triumphing over evil. That was why good guys always win the day rather than bad guys in movies.

Even when he was hungry later on that day did his honesty shine through. He visited a corner shop and took a chicken pie out of the refrigerator and put it in the microwave oven for a few minutes to warm up. Before he left he put two pounds fifty together with a note from paper he used from a note pad. He included enough money for that as well. He placed it in the till just in case the owner should suddenly come back to life. Mr Patel would probably hated the idea of making a return from the dead to find that he was in serious danger of becoming bankrupt from want of payment for a small pastry item.

He left the shop without a single fly on him. Stepping out into a brave new world he drew breath again and sat on the steps of the shop to finish his food. After his hunger had gone and his stomach was satisfied that it was full enough, he looked around him at all the empty buildings, and he knew they were empty, this voice inside him told him. He thought about his next step very carefully. What did Robinson Crusoe do? There was a priority in a situation such as this and it suddenly hit him that he had done the second one first. Find shelter and then locate your food source.

And so for the rest of the day he dipped in and out of the houses looking for somewhere to bed down for the night that suited him. It had to have a bed with a hard mattress not a soft one and it had to have a south-facing sofa. And he didn't do stairs, not with his poor balance. Otherwise it would feel all wrong in his head and he just wouldn't be able to settle at all.

Finally, he did find one. Just before dark he was lounging on a leather sofa in one of the old people's bungalows by the railway station. For the first time in his life he knew that he could just sit there with all the doors open and wander in and out whenever he pleased in the knowledge that he could remain unhindered and completely safe. But through force of habit he locked the doors anyway and even checked the ones on all the windows before he went to bed.

For the sake of his sanity he slept on the sofa. It didn't feel right sleeping in other people's beds. Not without their permission. Even if they did dematerialise like everybody else on the planet. He took a couple of blankets from the airing cupboard and coiling himself up in the fetal position slid them over him covering him from the ankles to the shoulders. After a couple of hours the heating packed in and he coiled up even tighter making a warm ball of flesh under red tartan. Then for a brief amount of time at least, he was able to enjoy a little sleep.

Rat-at-tat-tat!

His eyes snapped open and his head jerked up from the cushion. Nothing, he thought. It was all in his head. He was always doing it. Sometimes he would be flat out and he would hear the phone ring and he would awake to find it was just something he'd dreamt. He ignored his overactive imagination. 'You are silly!' he told himself and felt his eyelids clashing together again.

Rat-at-tat-tat!

No that was definitely something. His head shot up again. 'Hello?' It was coming from the window. He gazed across to the closed curtains behind the now redundant television. 'It's a tree Thomas,' he told himself. 'No need to panic. Just a tree. If it were another person I am sure they would have the decency to introduce themselves at a more godly hour. Not at..' he squinted at the clock on the wall. There was just enough moonlight on it to see the time. 'Quarter past-four in the morning. Something has been caught by the breeze and hit the glass that's all.'

But no, he thought afterwards. That was far too rhythmical to be a tree branch. That was was a definite knocking pattern. Like there was a mind behind the action or something.

Rat-at-tat-tat!

There it went again. 'Hello? Is there anybody there?'

There wasn't a sound. It it had had been a person who in their right mind would want to frighten you out of your wits when you were at the most vulnerable? His heart was pounding now but he just had to look. The Wiltlys were a very curious breed, whose motto was always if you have an enemy, look him in the eyes, know his face before you run away.

So it was the thought of genes again that once more governed his imagination. Casting the blankets to one side, nicely onto an adjacent chair, he moved slowly to the window. Just one more time, he thought. Just one more time and then I'll open the curtains and look. He tried to compose himself the best he could, closing his eyes for a moment to focus, breathing slowly and deeply and awaited that infernal noise. After standing there facing his invisible enemy for ten whole minutes he finally gave in to the idea that it was just his mind playing tricks. Perhaps it was some part of him that longed for another soul to communicate with. It would make more sense that it should happen now. When it was dark and his mind was settled and his subconscious was left to wander beyond its mental boundaries.

Yes that was what it was. Man is a sociable creature and it wasn't natural for him to be alone. This exercise was something to remind him what stage three in the Robinson Crusoe survival guide. Find life. To repopulate the species.

At last he was able to breathe a welcome a sigh of relief. Turning back towards the sofa to finish of his sleep he raised his eyes skywards and said thank you.

However, this was to be proved to be a little premature.

Rat-at-tat-tat!

This time it seemed louder and more urgent and it didn't seem to be his ears that picked it up but his heart which pounded out the rhythm all by itself, and for some inexplicable reason his legs started moving back towards it. He blamed curiosity, it was always going to be his undoing. This was the first time though that he thought of it in a negative context. After all, it had been his curiosity of everything that had helped him to learn so much. The downside of which was that it made him an utter geek and no barge-pole wielding female would touch him.

He turned on his heels and looked towards the curtains. Perhaps it was just his eyes but he could have sworn that they shimmered. The window must have been open and the wind was getting up. Looking at them and wondering whether he should investigate or leave it until daylight, he took out a handkerchief and mopped his brow and began moving towards it all. Suddenly the wind began growling outside which made them flap quite vigorously. This made him leap back on the sofa where he curled himself up into a big ball. For the next hour, not being able to sleep he found himself staring at that spot, giving the occasional thought to making a run for it. It was either something really big or absolutely nothing at all.

By then the curtains had settled again and there was no noise. He got up again, this time making it all the way to the window. He had finally gathered up enough courage to close the window. But to his utter amazement it hadn't had been opened.

Convincing himself that it the rat-a-tatting must have been a tree branch after all and the curtains had caught a draft through the floorboards, he placed a tentative palm to the glass. Then happy that his hand was actually safe he placed his cheek and looked into what was a small back garden. In the glow of the moon mixed with the yellow street lamps he noted, a rickety path running zig-zagged into the blackness at the bottom, an overgrown lawn and white, plastic garden suite which looked as if it had been standing there for centuries, as in the light you could just about make out green mould down the chair legs. The table had what looked like bit marks in it.

But this interesting spectacle didn't last all that long, just as he was soaking it all in, and thinking how serene it all seemed, another face met his on the glass and he retracted with a positively infantile scream. The face which hovered on the other side as if it wasn't attached to anything, was long, pointed, pale. The eyes darkly rimmed to match its black lips and the hair greased back and shining. The nose which was as pointed as the chin tilted downward as it touched the pane.

'Go away! Leave me alone!' He screeched. The face then retracted itself from the other side of the glass, and an appearance as if it was somehow disappointed with the reaction it had got frowned. A gloved hand then appeared and a finger beckoned him to come outside.

Tom didn't know why he did it, it wasn't going to solve all that much, but he lunged forward and closed the curtains again on it.

For the rest of the night he stayed on the sofa in an upright position with his hands clutching his knees. The lighter outside it got, the safer he felt, and even though the window he had been staring at all night was obscured by red velvet cloth, he just knew that it was now safe outside.

Now that it was daylight again he thought about the next order of business, to find life. Not like that thing that came in the night, life that wanted to co-exist. Life that wasn't going to take advantage of the sudden lack of order in the world and commit murder just for its own gratification. What was at the window in the night was, he thought, not entirely dissimilar to the apocalyptic cyber-punks from the Mad Max movie trilogy.

However after breakfast, which was to his delight bacon, eggs and fried bread after viewing the contents of the kitchen cupboard, and before going out into the outside world again, he took a small arsenal of implements with him; a sturdy wooden rolling pin, a carving knife (an electric one but he didn't think it mattered), a pepper pot and a kebab skewer. He stashed all of these in his trousers and as a safety measure locked all the doors with a ring of keys he had found hanging on a brass hook on the inside of the door. The tiredness in his eyes as they hit the sunlight as he took the first step made it difficult for him to focus, and he found himself going to the gate almost blinded.

During the day he searched for living souls. Checking as many homes as he could, but being respectful to their absent owners he drifted carefully in and out almost like a ghost, keeping every belonging in its proper place. And when his legs got tired and the moped he found outside the Post Office with the key still in the ignition was too much for him he promised himself that when he was finished with it, he would fill the tank back up just in case the human race made a sudden reappearance and its owner came back for it.

The moped gave him more scope and he was able to get the outer rim of the city in practically no time at all. There he stopped at the bypass with the engine switched off listening out for life signs. Not even a bird or a barking dog or a bleating sheep for miles around. He carried on regardless. The wasp-like sound of the engine cutting through the blank air with not a sound to compete against it. He had managed five miles before he finally gave up. Convinced now after surveying a local farm, that not even livestock survived whatever it was that had happened while he was asleep. He stopped by the metal gate by the farmhouse considering his options. Horribly, painfully he reached a sorry conclusion, and no matter ho many times he repeated this in his head, he always came to the same one.

The only way of getting the answer was to ask the scary bloke in the city. He was the only thing alive that could give him the answer. With a heavy heart he pointed the bike back in the direction he had came and returned to the house where he had stayed the night before. It made perfect sense, the man knew that that was where to find him, so that was where he would show himself.

That night to the glow of an electric lamp and armed with everything he had found in the kitchen, he sat coiled up sitting at the table. This time, and it hurt him to do it, he left the back door open and staring at it, defying, daring something to enter. About eleven he thought he heard something which sounded like a foot scraping against a footpath, sat himself upright. With the rolling pin in his left hand and the kebab skewer in the right he glared at the door and waited for something to come bursting in.

Nothing so sudden. He was aware of something on the other side of the door. Where there had previously been a circle of blue light from the moon, there was now a black splodge in the outline of a pair of legs. As soon as he had noticed this the aluminum handle creaked as it was turned down gently and then with a slight shove there as a gap in the door which was filled by a shiny black shoe.

As if it was possible to sit any more upright in the chair as the figure entered the kitchen. Tom's hand hit the switch on the wall to his left and the room was engulfed by light. The figure was completely visible now. A tall thin man in a black waist coat, a white shirt with red stripes down the arms and a black string tie. Tom couldn't make up his mind whether or not he looked as menacing as he did through the window the previous night, probably not.

On seeing Tom this close his face broke into a smile, and he didn't know if this was a good thing or not. This could have been to show himself to be friendly or to show his pleasure at being allowed in by his prey so trustingly.

'Right!' said Tom. 'I want to know who the hell you are and what the hell is going on around here!'

The man smiled even more but said nothing.

'Why are there no people? Has there been a war while I was asleep? Is there a virus, an epidemic, what?'

This time, to his surprise the man laughed quite loudly. He shook his head and said, 'Dear oh dear Tom! You really don't know do you?' He turned to the side and to a blank space on the wall added. 'Shall we put him out of his misery?'

There was a rowdy cheer from out of nowhere. 'What was that?' asked Tom, his face screwed up into a ball.

The man pulled up a chair and sat straddling it in front of him. 'Right!' He said. 'Thomas, I want you to do something for me. Look me straight in the eyes and listen to the sound of my voice.'

'Why?' said Tom. 'What are you going to do?'

'You'll see!' said the man. Tom did as he was told and looked straight at him. There was nothing to fear, he thought. He had his implements. 'Good! I have your attention.' Then quite rapidly and before Tom could think about what was going to happen said, 'Three…two…one! Awake!'

Tom had absolutely no idea he had had his eyes shut all this time, but he had. He woke up sitting on a plastic chair on a wooden stage with an audience which were in hysterics at what they had just seen.

Tom Whiltly on his stag night, being humiliated by his friends. But if course that was all the idea of his future bride Alicia, who had suggested it to the best man.