A famous freeway runs alongside this warehouse. Through the window in the wall I can still see my car where we finally ran out of gas and ditched it along the side of the road. Already, only two months later, it is being rotted out by the invisible forces of seasons and time. The gas is better served in here, for the generator. I've nowhere to go anyway. I can close my eyes and picture so many places in the world I've only ever seen in books or movies. Places with beaches, or with snow. I want to be there. But they aren't what I have in my head anymore. The beaches are deadlocked with blizzard and the snowy peaks are bone dry. And then vice-versa all over again. Deja vu all over again.
Mary is gone. All of her gone. No bones. No clothing. I found a bobby pin in the dirt and it may have been hers. She wore them. But I found it deep, coated my fingers up to the nail. Could have been there for years, fell from the head of a child playing in the dirt before there was an industrial park here. It is in my pocket now.
I spent the day arranging and rearranging my supplies. It makes me angry to think of how little I have to survive on and how much longer I might live, so I won't write it and do my best to keep it out of my head. Spent many a long hour pacing the length of the warehouse. The heat grows inside every day and outside feels like an oven on 450 and even when there is no low-hanging fog, the heat tricks me into seeing it...three bottles of water each and every waking hour just to keep from passing out.
Last part of the light hours I propped my elbows on the window in the wall and stared out. Took the time to contemplate the silent freeway and I could almost hear the cars that used to charge up and down. I could almost hear them. But they are not there...
I am almost certainly not the last living person on this planet. I doubt that very much. But miles have been turned into journeys of days and states and countries have become flatland Everests, stretching on for longer than we can imagine. Those other people, for me, now they're aliens on distant planets, millions of light years away. And for them, I am an alien too and despite our wrenching suspicion that intelligent life elsewhere exists it is simply a matter of distance and time.
We are all alone now.
