A Lonely Hunter

Isaac wondered what he had done to deserve being the last man alive. A piercing, metallic ping brought his heavy steps to a halt in the middle of the street, fingers tightening on a long iron pipe as he scanned the empty faces of crumbling buildings. The clatter continued until the echoes died away. He had been a good man, a decent man. A man who did the right thing. He had done his job and loved his wife and daughter. How he missed their faces. How he missed any human face.

A low growl emanated from a ruined doorway on his right. Calmly and wearily, he shifted his stance to point his rust covered staff toward the darkened square. He would not hear another human voice again. These were the sounds of his world now. Crumbling concrete, whistling wind, crunching glass, a deafening, voracious silence which could swallow them all when it pleased: the voice of an apocalypse. “Didn’t you know? The world’s already dead,” he whispered toward the door. Silence consumed another moment.

The creature tore out of the shadows with a snarl, lunging for his legs as usual. Isaac brought the thick metal crashing down on its head. The familiar sensation of a cracking skull traveled back up through the pole and into his hands. He grunted as he felt a series of stings in his back. A glance over his shoulder revealed a second creature hissing at him from an empty window, preparing to spit another salvo of spines. There was a sudden, sharp burning at his calf. He cried out, trying to jab at the wretched thing whose teeth were sunk into his leg. Another cluster of stings struck him between the shoulder blades as he flailed in the street.

“Just leave me alone! Damn you, just leave me alone!” Isaac shouted, dropping the pole to grab hold of the creature’s jaws, the silver locket on his wrist swaying to and fro. He pried the mouth apart, gritting his teeth as its own slid free, and slammed its body against the ground. Another sharp crack near his head pulled Isaac’s attention back to the window across the road. The creature shrieked at him once more in challenge. He stooped to reclaim his staff, wincing at the burning in his calf.

It spat another salvo that grazed Isaac’s shoulder. He pushed his way through the window frame, pinning the creature to the wall with the sharpened end of the pole. Its wiry limbs writhed and its jaws snapped as he held it in place, frantically clawing at the air until at last it fell limp. There was only the slow panting of Isaac and the steady crimson drip from the crawler into the gray and waiting dust. “I told you,” he said quietly, gingerly lowering himself to sit on the floor and scrubbing his face with his hand. “The world’s dead.” The voice of the apocalypse drank his words.

With a sigh, Isaac leveraged himself off the ground, powdered concrete and plaster coating his shoulders. Pulling his staff free from the wall, he paused to consider the dust-covered locket. The tarnished silver heart refused to open, no matter how he tried; his fingers simply could not avail themselves of the delicate latch. He had been wearing it as long as he could remember. Some remnant of his past, of a time before the end. With a shake of his head he hoisted the dead crawler across his shoulders. “World may be dead, but I’m not yet.”

One day there had been a bright flash. Isaac had awoken in the ruins of his home, the beams and brick brittle enough they disintegrated to the touch. Everything had become so fragile. Dusk cast its last rays into his eyes, causing Isaac to squint as he crested the hill to his old house which was now only a few stubborn walls. He walked through the palisade of wooden stakes around the perimeter to lower the day’s bounty by the fire pit. “Well, Goldilocks,” he said kneeling down to empty his satchel, “care to see what’s for dinner?”

A disinterested crawler lay motionless in a cage, a shock of yellow fur running down its back. “Come on, don’t tell me you’re not hungry,” Isaac said with a dry chuckle. He opened the cage door, tossing the dead crawler inside. Goldilocks averted her face and moved to the other side. “Awfully prudish, as always. Suit yourself,” he shrugged as he set about lighting the fire. There were still rats and squirrels to be roasted. Months ago he had returned home one evening to find a young crawler collapsed and bloodied on his threshold. Part of Isaac still wanted to be the man that did the right thing. The last man alive should do the right thing. Besides, Goldilocks was different. She was quiet and calm; when he spoke something in her eyes seemed almost to listen.

He slid a charred rat through the bars, which she accepted gingerly. “A fair trade, girl. I keep you fed and you keep me sane.” Isaac leaned back against the wall to watch the thin tendrils of smoke wend their way up into the blackening sky. “Not sure how long sanity is worth keeping, though” he said softly. He glanced over to see Goldilocks had paused with her rat while staring at him intently. Wood crackled and popped, the red glow of the flame painting their faces and the walls. He massaged the silver-hearted locket on his wrist. In these brief moments, the all-consuming silence fell away. “You know, I’ve been thinking, Goldilocks. Why I never saw anything like you before the bomb. People talked about radiation, what it does to animals. Mostly it just kills things, but sometimes—" He turned his face towards her. She gazed back solemnly. “I wonder sometimes what you used to be. You know, I figured maybe dogs or rats or…well, who knows what. The thing is—" He swallowed. “I’ve…I’ve seen dogs a ways off; always too quick for me to catch. And we’re eating rats, all the time.” Goldilocks looked back without answering, her eyes unwavering.

Isaac rolled on as though a dam had broken, eyes blurring. “I don’t see people, Goldie. Nowhere. Not one living person. How is it I’m the only survivor? And no bodies, no corpses, no skeletons. All the places I’ve walked, all the buildings I been through…where did they go? Goldie,” he walked over to the cage, putting his face against the bars. “Goldie, were you…did you used to be…?” The words caught in his throat. She began keening, pawing at the door. “No, no girl, I’m sorry but…I can’t. I can’t be alone.” Kneeling to the ground with his face in his hands, Isaac began to sob. “God help me, Goldie, I can’t be alone.”

~ ~ ~

“Please. Please, just let me out,” sobbed Sylvia. Leaning her arms against the bars she hung her head, her disheveled blonde hair falling down around her. She knew it was pointless. He never understood. How she was still alive she could not say. He stood as tall as any two men, a mass of gray flesh and warped, bulging muscle. You could feel his footsteps shaking through the ground from over a block away, striding through the ruined city with an uprooted street lamp over his shoulder. Machetes and sledgehammers were scratches, bullets were beestings, concrete walls were paper. No one ever walked away from the Walker.

His swollen skull lay face down in the dirt, shoulders heaving with guttural noise. She did her best to ignore the bloodied corpse he had tossed into her pen. Months ago Sylvia had escaped a nightmare that only humans could make, stumbling her way towards somewhere familiar, somewhere safe. She had woken to the distorted face of a giant. He would sit with his back against the wall, his head reaching to where the ceiling once stood, pulsing veins and twisted contours lit by the hellish glow of the fire pit like the man-eating demon he was. Some nights he would rasp and rumble at her in indecipherable tones with a throat whose vocal cords had long withered away. Sylvia hugged her knees to her chest. Ever since the bombs fell she had been afraid. Fear was a prison you never escaped no matter how you ran. Running home had been all the hope she had. Now she was trapped once more, watching a weeping giant until he finally exhausted himself and sleep took him. Soon it claimed her as well.

“Hey there, Sylvia,” broke in a hoarse whisper. Her eyes snapped open, heart pounding in horrified recognition. The man crouched near the cage grinning at her. “Didn’t think we’d find you? Come on, we were having so much fun before you left.” Her voice deserted her as she scrambled back, her darting eyes registering the laughing faces she had fought to forget. “No need to worry, we’ll save you from the monster. We brought the silver bullet this time,” he chuckled, pulling a worn bazooka into view. “Then you can come home with us. You’d like that, right?” he said, reaching his hand through towards her face. Sylvia finally grasped her voice and screamed, screamed to reach the stars. One of the others snarled, “Shut her up, or he’s gonna—“

The night shattered with a roar.

~ ~ ~

“Get the hell off her!” screamed Isaac. The crawlers had surrounded Goldilocks, standing atop her cage and clawing through the bars. “You get the hell off of her!” His staff swung thunderously sweeping aside their crunching bones, his feet stomped on splintering heads and limbs. There were more of them than he had ever seen, an entire pack. The bites were adding up around his legs. Some dropped onto his shoulders to tear at his neck. The burning spines peppered him from every direction.

None of it mattered. “Not her, damn you, not her!” he bellowed. He tore them loose from his shoulders, teeth and all, smashing them into their fellows on the ground. His legs propelled him through the feeble walls of his once home, the shrieks of the crawlers stifled by falling bricks. And then came a flash. Isaac blinked, his ears ringing. His stomach felt warm. His legs felt weak. One of the spine-spitters crouched next to Goldilocks, hissing with triumph. Isaac could see her shivering in the back. Rage surged through him, driving blood through his veins, driving foot in front of foot until he stood over the crawler. The beast frantically tore at his knee as he bent down to grasp its skull between his hands and press. Its squeal rose in piercing pitch, the silver locket on his wrist dancing, until Isaac felt something collapse between his palms. Dimly he heard the rest run shrieking into the darkness.

His eyes were growing as dim as his ears. Isaac fixed on the bright hair still in the cage. One thing left. The last man left should do the last right thing. Crawling to the door, he haltingly undid the bolts. So tired. So cold. Gasping, Isaac nudged the door open with his hand, vision narrowing as he looked up at Goldilocks from the ground. Never had gone out on that walk with her. “There you go…girl…there…you…”

~ ~ ~

Sylvia set her shoulder against the door to widen the gap as the hulking frame grew still. Kneeling down she rested a hand on one enormous finger, tugging the chain around until she held the silver heart. Tenderly she undid the latch to reveal the weathered picture of a blonde-haired, smiling little girl. She pulled the locket loose, tears falling onto cold, gray flesh as she held it to her chest.

“Goodbye, daddy.”

The voice of the apocalypse drank her words.