The last girl in the world

I unzipped my weatherproof jacket and threw it open as a cool breeze swept through the residential street. A bright spring morning turned into a sweltering afternoon as I started on my third hour of walking. I thanked the forces of the universe for the small closet full of clothes and shoes, all in my size, at the townhouse I had stopped in the night before. It had been a while since I switched out my wardrobe.

I always travelled light, there was no use in carrying a heavy backpack full of supplies when I would inevitably find more. There was a whole world of stuff just waiting to be used and as the only person around to use them, I was hardly scared of running out.

The only things I kept with me always were my phone and charger, currently turned off as it was getting harder to find working electricity, a first aid kit with a small supply of antibiotics and a journal and pen, mostly for noting down the days. Obsolete perhaps but knowing the date had become a weird sort of comfort, a lifeline to a world now vanished.

It was April 19^th, a Saturday. The roads should have been packed with people shopping, visiting friends, going about their day. The parks should be full of excited children. There was no sound. Only my trainers on the concrete and the rare bird calling for a companion.

Yeah, good luck with that.

I’d walked miles and miles, looted supermarkets, slept in front of log fires in country estates, wondered through house after house, got drunk in dingy pubs, hell I even went into a Safari Park… mistake. Not all animals are gone.

Not like humans, well, except for me.

It took a week. Only one week for a society that built itself up over countless centuries to come tumbling down. And no one knew what caused it. At least I don’t think they did, I can’t exactly ask anyone now.

The first Surge happened on a Tuesday in December, a few weeks before Christmas. One second I was sitting in a lecture hall at the University of Edinburgh, laughing with my friend and the next I was on the ground trying to hold my brain inside my skull.

It was like being on a rollercoaster, that feeling like you can’t move your neck. G-force, I think. Only it was so strong it felt like an out of body experience, a dizziness that flipped you around over and over, worse than falling into bed drunk after a night out. Pressure from every point of my body begging to push inward, inward, further and further. Every migraine I’d ever had, vibrating inside my skull. And when it stopped, finally, every fibre of my being felt… absolutely normal.

Except when I looked around, half the class has disappeared.

I turned to my friend. I could still see the indent her knees made in the carpet, that her fingers made digging into the cushion of her chair. But she was nowhere.

Of course everyone’s first thought was nuclear bomb. Not knowing what that would actually feel like, it was the simplest explanation, until we found out it was a global phenomenon.

The news broadcasts were full of contradicting reports, fingers were pointing all over the world. Our leaders accusing and being accused. There was talk of actual nuclear retaliation that week, but no one knew where to aim.

My family in Birmingham survived the first surge, but travelling had become a blood sport and since I didn’t have a car, I stayed put, reassured by my mom that everything was fine.

The next day when it happened again, things took a greater turn for the worse as rioting and looting began.

I called my family, no answer.

I called again and again. My mom, dad, sisters, brother…all rang out. Every message on social media left unread.

That was when I decided to take action. I went back to the lecture hall, the last place my tutor had been, found her purse still hanging on a rack at the front of the hall and stole her car keys. My capacity to feels guilt was buried deep beneath the absolute terror of events happening around me.

I drove as far as Hexam, a small town not far over the border of England before the car ran out of petrol. No station had any fuel left. Some were even abandoned, lights still on, music still playing over the speakers.

The third and fourth day were the most horrific. Now expecting the next Surge, people really began to panic. Outright lawlessness began when the Prime Minister declared Marshall Law and was seen not long after boarding a private jet. I took refuge in a caravan park on the edge of the town while civil war reigned down all over the country.

By day five there weren’t enough people left to bother fighting. I ventured out to a supermarket to stock up on what I could. The few people left wondering the streets were so traumatised they hardly noticed me.

I met a guy called Andy in the tinned soup isle. We were wary of each other at first, but soon started talking and decided to find a car to drive to Birmingham together, he had family there too. We drove all day, trying to find our way through the masses of abandoned vehicles, until the next Surge hit.

We both survived.

On the night of day six, we broke into a farmhouse in Stafford and slept side by side in a stranger’s bed.

When I woke that morning to the seventh and final Surge, I was alone.

And I haven’t seen a single person since.

Eventually I made it to Birmingham and found my childhood home empty, the same as everywhere else. Something about walking down the street I had played on as a child, round the corner I had fallen off my bike, onto the drive I had raced up every day after school, was different.

That was the first time I really noticed the quiet. It was so quiet. My breath sounded like an echo. Every door closing was a bang.

I was so insignificant, one tiny little person on a vast planet. The world that had always seemed so small suddenly grew to its full size around me. I never knew, until that day when the only real measure of distance was my own footstep, just how big it really was. I had Megalophobia for the Earth itself.

Surprisingly, the power grid didn’t just shut down and the internet didn’t vanish. I don’t know why I thought it would, too many end of the world movies. But for a while it was normal… not so much now. The last time I had connection was two months ago. I was scrolling though X, trying to find an update in the algorithm, when I saw an old post. It said, ‘If we’re the last people on earth meet me at the British Museum, gotta to be some ancient tablet that can help us.’ Trust people to make jokes online when the end of days was literally happening.

It was posted just after the first Surge. Five million people liked it. I thought, why not? It’s not like I have anything better to do and honestly, I was afraid to stop moving.

Which led to me to London. Without reliable google maps it had taken we a while to find my way over countryside, towns, cities. Whilst walking, biking and driving if I could find a car that wasn’t burnt out or dead, I had made it.

It was starting to get dark when I decided to stop for the night in central London. I walked into a supermarket, doors long smashed to find something other than protein bars. Walking down the dark isles, making sure to stay away from the smell emanating from the once frozen meat fridges, I was surprised at how much was left untouched. With a convenience shop on every corner in London, not all of them had been wiped clean by looters.

I grabbed a packet of dried pasta, a few tins of tuna and some matches from the cigarettes and lottery kiosk. If there was one skill I’d taught myself in the last four months, it was make a fire. That or raid a camping shop for a portable gas stove.

That’s when I heard it.

A noise. One that didn’t come from me. A thud, like something falling from a shelf. Immediately, a shiver worked its way through my spine, making my neck numb. My stomach jumped into my chest before bottoming out like a drop tower at a theme park.

There was never any noise. Just the wind and my own thoughts.

Of course, at some point things will start to decay and collapse, or maybe I knocked something off balance without noticing.

That must be it, I convinced myself. There was no one else but me.

The next morning, I found myself walking over Tower Bridge. I had been once as a child. When the bridge had ascended up and broke apart in the middle, I gasped clutching my mother’s arm, certain something had gone horribly wrong and everyone was about to plummet into the murky brown of the river below.

Now the bridge stood flat and still and vacant as I walked to the middle of the Thames. I thought of everyone who had been there on that day, gone. Every car and bus and tourist who had marvelled at its brilliance, gone. Descendants of those who built it over a century ago, gone.

The sun illuminated the glass of the buildings throughout the city, making me squint.

Quick as a flash in the corner of my eye, I saw movement.

My head swivelled fast, catching a spot of black disappear on the roof of a building behind the docs. A bird? Unusual maybe, but possible. I’d been seeing more as the weather got warmer. But it didn’t look like a bird, it looked like… a head. Ducking.

No, I was paranoid. If there were someone else here, in this city, why wouldn’t they show themselves?

I yelled into the ether, “Hello?” My voice cracked with disuse. I yelled again, “Hello?” Echo’s reverberate around the city.

Maybe coming to the Capital had been a mistake. Cities had a way of bringing my solitary existence into hyperfocus. Not like in the country, where I could waste the days away in a big private house, pretending that life continued on as normal outside, and my family would be home soon.

Taking a deep breath, I decided to do what I came here to do. Even if it seemed ridiculous, I’d spent four months travelling here. I wasn’t leaving until I was absolutely sure there was no one else.

It took another hour to get to the Museum, unable to stop myself from looking over my shoulder the whole time, listening to the silence, waiting for it to break.

The iron gates where wide open. I walked through the stone courtyard, up the steps and beneath the colossal columns.

Ice slithered through my veins. Stuck to the glass door was a polaroid. Taken from a distance but I had no doubt. It was me standing on Tower Bridge.

I was not alone.