Last 2

My skin felt like it was being charbroiled. Red and blistered, it baked under the morning sun despite the countless layers of cloth I'd draped over myself to protect myself. I'd looked a few miles back and reminded myself of a lobster.

I continued hiking over the ravaged planet, the naked trees and the dry, cracked ground were constant reminders to keep going. I had to find shelter before I died out here.

Stumbling, I cursed myself for not resting back at that cave I found about three hours ago. But I'd convinced myself I'd get farther if I just kept going and would be able to find shelter quickly when I needed it.

I'd needed it an hour ago. Good job, Hailey. You're DUMB.

I was sweating through all my layers, wanting so badly to take them off, but knowing if I did, I'd die. I was searching desperately for shelter, panicking. I had ten minutes tops before I became so weak I wouldn't be able to move. And five minutes before I started hallucinating.

"Help me," I murmured soundlessly, forgetting for a single goddamn moment that there was literally no one around to help me. As far as I knew, I was the last person alive. Ever.

See, the world ended about ten years ago, when I was twelve. It took another two years for my parents, friends and brothers to die off, leaving me alone to hike through this expanse.

The government, back in the day, had released this gas that messed up a lot of things. It soaked into trees, plants, grass, the earth, and began killing everything. People were warned to stay away from the orange gas that hung in clouds everywhere. Soon nature was demolished in North America. Then it spread. At first it didn't really affect humans. Sure, if you breathed it in you got a cold, or if you passed through it, your skin would get a tad itchy, but it didn't kill.

Then it did. Sometimes the gas didn't hang in heavy enough clouds for it to really affect your skin, but when you breathed it in, it'd cause you to go crazy and start killing everything and everyone. If you held your breath, but walked through a cloud, it would burn your skin and cause you to swell up and die.

Happy.

I encountered these clouds often enough to where I was constantly breathing through a scrap of fabric and mummifying myself to keep it away. I rested at every single place I could find in the daytime. A cave. A hut. Anything. At night I hiked and hiked. Before, I'd simply been searching for people. I'd stayed at some really nice house at the edge of a cliff for seven years. Then I got off my lazy ass and went to go find something out there.

But a few months ago, I found an abandoned town. There was a handwritten note to someone named John. It said that apparently there was a rumor that the Amazon rainforest had not, in fact, been hit and that all survivors should head there immediately. I'd been hiking ever since.

I found a car weeks back that had worked so I used it, getting along nicely until it ran out of gas. Back on foot. I'd reached a desert somewhere in the world and could only hope I was heading in the right direction with only a compass to guide me.

I swayed, dizzy. This was it. Because of one, stupid mistake, I was dying.

Good job. Now Earth would be empty.

A hut flickered into existence just over a dune. Great. Now I was hallucinating.

Or was I?

I hurried along, feeling myself weaken even more as I forced myself to close the distance. I was crying from the effort to keep going. It was a HOUSE. God, please just help me get a little closer. Just get to the house, please.

I fell, the gritty and burning sand making the tears spill over. I gasped weakly, trying to crawl.

"Dammit," I mouthed. And then I was engulfed by black.

I woke up on blankets, comfortable and not quite so hot. My layers had been stripped off and I felt kind of wet. I opened my eyes and blinked in amazement.

I was in the house. I was IN THE HOUSE. WHAT?

Sitting up, I swayed slightly, looking around. It was nice. Dirty, but overall the best thing I'd seen all day. Rubbing my forehead, I realized I WAS wet. Someone had dripped water on me so I didn't feel quite so crappy.

Oh, shit. I had found PEOPLE. SHIT.

"I would be careful if I were you," a voice said. "You're in a fragile condition right now and in no shape to be doing anything other than blink really."

I jerked my head around. A BOY stood there. Well, a man, a tad older than me perhaps. But all the same. Still male.

"What?!" I mouthed, horrified.

"You're a mute?" he asked, blinking.

I made a face at him and mouthed, "Duh."

"Ok. Um. I'm sorry."

I shrugged, examining him. He was clean, which stunned me. Where was his source of water? His thick black hair hung past his ears, shaggy. It looked kind of like he cut it himself. He had the dreamiest brown eyes I'd ever seen and a nice, rugged jawline.

"Name?" I mouthed, super obviously.

"Dylan Freesey. And yours?"

I shook my head, frustrated. I hadn't always been mute. But when my mother and father died, I screamed until my voice gave out. It never came back. Or maybe it did, but I just hadn't used it in so long that I had forgotten.

"Wait a second." He left the room, only to come back a moment later with a pad of paper and a pen. I hadn't seen one in what felt like forever. I took them gingerly, afraid. At first my handwriting was sloppy but as I wrote the last letter of my name, it had improved.

HAILEY WOODS.

I shoved the pad at him. He took it, read, then looked up, crooked grin appearing.

"Hailey Woods, you have no idea how glad I am to see you," Dylan said. "I kind of started thinking that perhaps I was the last one. Last person left."

I nodded and pointed to myself. Me too.

"Where are you headed?"

AMAZON RAINFOREST, I wrote. I HEARD THE GAS HADN'T SPREAD THERE AND ALL SURVIVORS WERE ORDERED TO HEAD THERE.

"How do you know that?" he demanded.

RAN ACROSS A HOUSE WITH A NOTE IN IT.

"Can I go with?" he blurted.

I gave him a funny look. PLEASE DO. I HATE IT OUT THERE, ALL LONELY.

"You need a few days' rest though. You can't just throw yourself out there as soon as you can. You're still damaged."

Damaged. I was damaged. Huh. How utterly fitting.

OK, I jotted down quickly, my hand tiring. My head hurt and he caught me quickly as I slumped, laying me gently down on the blankets.

But, wait. I still had so many questions I needed to ask him. Like, um, where he came from and how he wound up here, and. . . .

I passed out before I thought any more.

Dylan stared at the sleeping form of Hailey Woods. It was amazing. After all these years, he'd finally found another person. She was his personal angel.

Her dirty brown hair was splayed softly on the blankets and her huge, crystal eyes seemed to stare right through him. He would admit, though. He almost cried when she told him she was a mute. He yearned to hear another person's voice so badly and the only other person (maybe) on this wasted planet was mute.

He rubbed his eyes, going to go stand by the sink in the kitchen. The faucet didn't work, no surprise, but there was an underground well that he pulled water from on a daily basis. That's where he been heading when he found Hailey, passed out and near death. Of course he'd saved her.

Dylan couldn't tamp down the feeling of hope that had swelled up inside him when she said there was a chance others were in the Amazon rainforest. Perhaps his boyfriend?

He walked over to the counter where a stained, wrinkled picture lay. It was of him and a good-looking black dude kissing. Jacob. He had been in South America when all this shit happened and Dylan was now looking for him. He had to hope he was still out there, even though deep down he wondered profusely if it was worth getting your hopes up just to have them plummet miserably.

It didn't matter. Hailey and Jacob were all that mattered at this point. Hailey could maybe take him to Jacob.

Dylan rubbed his hair, thinking. They'd leave in three days. That was enough time. God, he hoped he could do this. He hadn't traveled once since getting here. He was too scared.

That was ok. Soon that would all change.

He went into his room to go pack. It was about time.