Hannah Billings, Human

Hannah Billings, the last woman on earth, thought she was crazy when she heard banging and scraping coming from her pantry. There’s no way someone is rooting through my stuff. There’s no people around here for thousands of miles. She went to go double check anyway.

When she nudged open the door of her storage room with her foot, she almost forgot to bring the barrel of her gun up as well. There was a person in her food storage. A tall male, from what she could tell from the back, with sandy hair, similar to her own, who was busily stuffing several sacks full of her food. He turned slightly to reach a different shelf, and Hannah’s jaw dropped even further. He had a scar on his chin, a scar Hannah would recognize anytime and anywhere, even in the aftermath of an apocalypse. She had given it to the owner, after all.

“Tyler Billings?” Hannah asked, loudly and incredulously. The man turned around, startled. “I am the last person on earth, and I happen to run into you? Of all the people the universe could have picked!” She lowered her gun as the man’s face broke out into a huge smile. 

“And of all the people I could have picked to steal from, it just so happens to be my little sister! Today must be my lucky day!” Tyler said, setting down his sacks of food. Hannah rolled her eyes. 

“Welcome to Happy Hour,” Hannah said, setting several tall bottles of liquor down on her kitchen table. She popped the top off one and took a swig. She eyed her brother, sitting across the table. “Long time, no see, Tyler. Where’ve you been? Find a premium government-sponsored place to watch the world end?” She gestured at the empty, barren world around them.

Tyler smiled grimly at his sister. “You know I was ‘Designated Survivor’, Hannah. They sealed me in a bunker for three years. I finally left after I realized that there was no point in staying to head a country that no longer existed. I got out and learned I was quite likely the last man on earth.” Hannah snorted, then took another drink. 

“Decades of global warming and a global pandemic leading to food shortage wars, which escalated rather rapidly into a global war with WMD’s, followed by rampant poverty and disease, killing off 99% of the world’s population, with the remainder dying from radiation poisoning or natural causes, will do that to you. Make you the last human on earth, that is.” she took a swig after each item she listed. Tyler stared at her, a little horrified. “Don’t tell me you didn’t know how the world ended, Ty.”

“I was aware. Senators stay informed so they can best make decisions for their constituents. You just know that drinking that much will kill you.”

“That’s the idea.”

“You don’t want to die here, drinking.”

“It makes no difference to me how I die. How’d you find me, anyway? I’m one person in a world that used to house billions. I can’t imagine that was an easy task.”

“I used the UN microchip database. Remember when they microchipped the last million people on earth to keep track of the human population and try to get the species off the endangered list?” Hannah nodded, remembering how annoying the UN representatives had been, and how ironic it was that humanity was finally paying collective attention to the endangered species list, now that they were finally on it. “I looked up people I knew before I went into the bunker. Most of the list came back ‘stopped transmitting’ or ‘no data found’ except for you. I plugged your coordinates into my navigator, and here I am.”

“You also looted my pantry.”

“A man’s gotta eat.”

Two hours later, Hannah had finished her bottle and was well and truly drunk. That’s the way she preferred it. It meant she didn’t have to think, or interact with the world. It was easier to block out the world when her brain was comfortably settled in the fog of alcohol. Tyler hadn’t touched his bottle. Hannah supposed Senators didn’t drink, as it would look bad to their constituents. 

“Can I tell you a secret, Ty?” Hannah slurred across the table. Tyler leaned forward. “You’re right. I don’t want to die here. It’s too empty. Too dead. I don’t want the last thing I see to be dead buildings that used to be inhabited by long-dead people. I want to die somewhere green. Or live somewhere green. Living and dying are all the same these days. You remember green, don’t you, Tyler?”

Tyler nodded sadly. Then Hannah laid her head on the table and fell asleep.

When she woke up, she was moving. Quickly, in a vehicle. That she wasn’t driving. She sat up quickly, and caught sight of Tyler’s face in the rear-view mirror of the vehicle. 

“Where are we, what did you do, and where are we going?” Hannah said tersely.

“We are halfway to our destination! I borrowed a solar-powered RV, loaded you and some food into it, and started driving. We are going somewhere green.”

“Why?”

“I want to die somewhere green, too.”

Hannah was completely sober when they finally got to Somewhere Green. Tyler hadn’t packed any of her alcohol. She had started calling it “Somewhere Green” in her head because neither she or Tyler knew what it was actually called. Landmarks and road signs had disappeared ages ago, when governments started collapsing. 

Hannah stepped out of the RV into a scene she never thought she would see. The land was beautiful and green. She stood near the edge of a cliff, the ocean roaring hundreds of feet below. The wind whipped at her hair, her clothes, her being, and carried parts of it away into the sky. Occasional raindrops fell from the clouds above her, and she laughed as she stood, soaking in the world, instead of trying to block it out.

“How did you find this place?” she called to her brother, who was similarly engaged.

“I hacked the Google satellite!”

Hannah laughed even harder. “Leave it to Google to still be useful after the end of the world!” This made Tyler laugh harder as well, and standing with her brother on the side of a cliff, laughing into the wind, Hannah remembered what it was to feel alive. To be a person, not a member of an almost extinct species, not The Last Woman On Earth, or the last number in a data set only computers would see. She was Hannah Billings, Human, and she was alive. She spun with the joy of this thought, arms spread wide, as if she was hugging the entire world.

Hannah soon found herself hugging her brother, to both of their surprise. “Thank you for reminding me what it’s like to live,” she said.

“Thank you,” her brother replied. “For reminding me what it’s like to love.” Hannah smiled for the first time in several years. Then she turned and yelled into the wind.

“Thank you, universe!”