His Final Thoughts

I hoped I would never have to hear that sound - the mass emergency alert built into every phone. Try a hundred phones all at once, in a huge, echoey airport.

A state of international emergency had been declared - the literal end of the world. Yellowstone had erupted, that one event that everyone is told will spell certain doom, but we try not to think about. The initial explosion will have already scorched a sixth of North America. The plume of ash and caustic gasses will choke the rest, and then hide the sun for a hundred years, casting the Earth into another ice age.

I was supposed to be headed home for the holidays. Claire and the boys would be waiting for me. They begged me not to go, just like they did any other time I was sent on a business trip, much like six and four year olds are known to do.

I remember back - the day Claire announced her first pregnancy. We were both eighteen. I was terrified, but even then I promised I'd never let my kid down, and give them the life I'd never had. They don't tell you then - to provide that life for your kids, you need to sacrifice yours, and be prepared to never see them. Promotions mean better toys, clothes, food, and vacations, but at the cost of your time, and opportunities to make memories with them.

I try Claire's number, but it's already too late. It no longer exists. Just like that, I'll never see my family again.

Around me, the other passengers begin to panic. They start by pacing around, demanding they be allowed to board so they can get where they need to go. They don't realise that the crew and staff at the airport are human too - why should they risk their own lives to get people home? I don't blame them. In a few hours, there might not be a home to go back to. In a few months, there won't be anything anywhere.

Then, crowds flood for the exit. Someone shouts about it being safe in Australia, India, China. There are vaults, and bunkers, and old mineshafts. If the pilots won't fly them, they'll fly themselves. They'll take a train, a bus, a boat, they'll drive, they'll swim. Humanity will survive, it has to, we've yet to see the android revolution and the zombie apocalypse... This isn't how our species is supposed to die.

People steal, fight, smash and grab. What use are bottles of whiskey and wine at the end of the world? What use is money? Morality? They do things they never would've done. A man convinces a stewardess to sleep with him - pretty soon there's a big group of them heading up to the frequent fliers' lounge. A woman jumps onto the baggage conveyor - apparently she'd always wondered what the room on the other side is like, no matter how much the staff protest that she could be killed. Well, the only things differentiating staff by passengers now are the uniforms.

So many children are abandoned. Toddlers scream and cry, kids travelling alone are left to fend for themselves, and teenagers huddle against the walls, sobbing. My heart aches. I see my boys' faces among them. I want to call out, "Dylan! Caleb!" If just one kid has one of their names, looks even a little like them, it might be enough. But I'm frozen in place. I can't speak. I might as well be dead already. Maybe a part of me has died.

The horde break through the glass doors and dissipate onto the runway. Some jump from the roof - no point dragging it out, I guess. Carnage remains. Bags, trolleys, suitcases, bodies. People are stupid when desperate.

I am left sat on my own, ignored, overlooked, my phone slipping through my fingers. I wish I could wake up. Any second now, a mass text will go out telling everyone that it was all a test, a prank. Everything will go back to normal.

Minutes pass, and an old man takes the chair next to mine. I never learn his name, so I call him 'Death.' He offers me a very expensive cigar and a swig from a hip flask containing a delicious whiskey. He tells me he was waiting for his son to arrive - that his plane hasn't landed yet. Yet. As if it ever would. I tell him about my family waiting back home. Waiting. As if they were still alive. And he apologises.

"It's not fair that I've been able to lead a full life, and you've barely started yours."

No, it's not fair. Nothing is fair. Life isn't fair. God is not merciful. If he exists, he is a psychopath.

I don't stop my tears. The man holds my shoulder as if I were his flesh and blood. It was kinder than anything I had known from my own father anyway.

I think of him. Why I promised I would do better for my own kids - be better. I hate that some of my final thoughts should be of him, after I swore to be rid of him forever. His grating voice still haunts me, and my throat tightens any time I smell his cologne. My father-in-law wasn't much better either. My eyesight was never quite the same after he threw his fist my way - also the day Claire found out she was pregnant. After that, he never got to meet his grandsons. Neither of them did. I take a moment and wonder if I should have let them. If they'd known the apocalypse was coming, would they have changed? Sought forgiveness? Would they act anything like this stranger who shares a drink with a man at the end of the world?

But I don't need to waste my energy on them. I should be grieving for my wife, my sons, my friends. Yes, they deserved my tears. They deserved to be among a man's final thoughts.

I write this in the back of my diary - that which I once used to keep track of meetings and holidays. What purpose are 'work hours' and 'vacation days' now? They have no meaning, as if they never existed - just echoes on the wind. I'm starting to wonder if that whiskey was laced with something. I wouldn't be mad if it was. I want to sleep, and I want to leave. My survival instinct kicks in, telling me to go, to find shelter, to live as a mole person and start a new life underground - to keep humanity alive.

No, it isn't fair. And it was purely by chance that a world-ending volcano should decide to erupt at this very moment. It is by humanity's design that I be separated from my family in their final moments, though humanity came about by chance too, so is anything fated? Practically a hundred thousand years of human history, and this is how it ends.

Regardless, I smile at Death. I finish his hip flask and fall asleep on his shoulder like I am once more a child, his son. The darkness will come soon, but I'm not sure I'll be around to see it. I'm ready to die. I'm ready to be with my family.