I was all alone.

The cold air touched against my skin. I looked around at the devastation around and inside me. What were once beautiful green trees have been reduced to dead grey pricks in the copper dirt that had once been grass. I look to my right and see what had used to be a lake but was no more than a dried up crater. I turn my head up and gaze into the grey overcast sky. It had taken me nine hundred and eighty seven years to see that it was all gone. The world, my world, was gone.

I was all alone.

I stumbled into a street, or what used to be one. Sunken in concrete buildings and dismantled wooden structures lie all around me. Centuries of wear and tear have removed almost all labels from signs and paint from houses. What were once called cars were now metal statues embedded into the concrete below them. These were once streets filled with people, filled with life.

I walked into the most stable building in the ghost town; an old green wooden farm house. The interior was borderline immaculate. The moment I walked in I noticed the grand piano in the corner, the old television against the wall, and the various odd knick knacks that people had around back in the day.

I turned down the hallway, its walls filled with dusty paintings. I walked up to one and brushed the dust off, revealing a picture of a happy family in front of a lake.

The father was wearing a polo shirt and cargo shorts, he was rather large, and had balding brown hair. His smile was crooked and some of his teeth were missing.

The mother had a beautiful white summer dress on, and she made a curtsy pose for the camera. Her shoulder length blonde hair blew in the wind that had been immortalized on film.

One of the children, the older daughter, was wearing a t shirt and jean shorts. She was carrying a small shield shaped wooden board. She was wearing thick rimmed glasses.

The other child, a younger daughter, was crying. She was wearing a one piece swim suit, the water up to her waist. The camera went off in the middle of her tantrum riddled scream.

I set the photo back and went down the hallway to examine the house further. I found some old cassette tapes from the twentieth century, but nothing other than the living museum of an older, much simpler time. I made sure to put everything back just how I found it. Even if it was found lying on the ground, that’s where I left it.

And then I entered the garage.

To my initial surprise I had noticed the brown 1980 Ford Bronco in the middle of the garage. My continued surprise was when I noticed the four skeletal corpses sitting inside the Bronco. Two adults and two children; I fell to my knees and the tears began to well up. I couldn’t contain it anymore. So to an audience of corpses, a family immortalized through death, I cried. I cried to those who could not listen, and it all came flooding back.

As I left the farm house and continued down the ever growing colder tundra I thought of little Marley Burrows and her humble father. I thought of how she trusted me, how she had became my friend, and how for just a little while I even envied Hanson Burrows for his fatherhood. She was the daughter I’d never had. And what did I do when we were ambushed by those raiders? I ran.

I thought about Emmanuel Stevenson IV, the jolly chap who had kept me company those many months. I thought about how much I ragged on him and never quite showed my appreciation. He was a good heart and a better shot. He even gave me the clothes I’m wearing to this day. And what did I do when we were ambushed by the Eternal Protectors? I ran.

I thought about Solomon, the man who showed me that angels really do exist. A man of composure and serenity, he showed me so much about how to be at peace with one self. In hindsight I wish I had taken more of his advice. He introduced me to Mandy.

I thought a lot about Mandy. She was the woman I loved; the one that got away, so to speak. She was tough as nails and not afraid to show it. She was a true leader and visionary of her time. I wish I had told her the truth. I wish I had never hurt her. And what happened to her and Solomon when the village got attacked? I ran.

It was as I said before, I am the ultimate coward. I have become so good at self preservation that I have been doomed to spend an eternity alone. Everyone around me will either learn to hate me, or will die before they have the chance.

As night fell upon the wasteland I found refuge under an upside down vehicle half submerged in sand. I snuck underneath it and closed my eyes, resting my body as much my soul.

And then something touched my neck.

I jumped up, my eyes bolting open. In front of me was a body, a dead one. He was sitting in the driver seat, but his head looks like it had been caved in from the front end, and that’s when I noticed the barrel sticking out of the dirt.

I crawled out of the car and towards the dull steel barrel. I yanked on it, pulling out an old shotgun. I shook it free of all dirt, dust, and sand, and checked it for ammunition. There was one slug remaining. I closed my eyes.

It could all be over right now. Enough with the cowardice.

I’ll tell you right here and right now, I didn’t stop myself. It isn’t as if I had been refreshed on my passion for life, or as if I realized that it had been better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all. Although I did learn these things, the only thing that stopped my life from ending right then and there was because I slipped.

That’s right, I slipped. Right before I pulled the trigger I heard another gun go off no more than a few hundred feet away. It was deafening, and this caused me to slip and fire off my one and only round into the sky above. I could have prayed that the rounds of the slug fall into my back from above, but with the second firearm going off I had more to worry about.

I headed towards the area I had heard the gun shot from, and after walking a few minutes I found a very familiar group of raiders.

The two surviving goons that I had encountered months ago were standing by the corpse of a man in a bloodied white dress shirt. Between the two raiders was a beautiful, wide eyed, black haired woman wearing an identical jacket to my own. She had a protruding stomach, but wasn’t all that fat. That’s when I realized that she was pregnant.