‘Only One?’ by Daisy Collins, age 14

It had been one month since it happened. One month since I lost everything and everyone around me. The explosion claimed the lives of every soul on the planet.

 

Apart from mine.

 

I had been rejected by death himself, but at what cost? The explosion left the temperature consistently above 30 degrees, food and water as scarce as a blood moon, and only the strongest plants alive. To make matters worse, I could only find remains of society where there used to be major cities – which tended to be hours apart. My sense of direction had severely diminished, and as a result of this I just referred to everything as “over there” or “just past the cactus”.

 

It’s not even like I need to refer to places at all, but I thought it would be beneficial to at least keep myself sane whilst I’m still here. Of course, it occasionally felt a bit odd being the only person to feel anything after it happened, but I was starting to settle and acclimatise to my situation. In fact, recently, I had been learning how to dodge death’s icy grip and efficiently survive. For example, I’d been learning how to make a fire to keep the flame burning for longer so I wouldn’t freeze to death when the sun goes down every night. Dodging death was difficult at times, but I was getting used to the earth’s daily routines. I thought I was finally getting the hang of it.

 

But for some reason it felt different.

 

I had started to feel movement, but not from the wind. It almost felt… human? But surely that was impossible: I was the only living being left on this dry, orange ball. The first time I felt it I brushed it off my shoulder like I usually brush off rogue weeds carried to me through the wind. The second time I was starting to get a bit suspicious, but by the third time I was sure that something was off. The thing that was keeping me up at night was how I was sure there was almost no life left. I was sure that I had travelled across countries since the explosion, yet I had not come across any sign of human life, so I assumed there wasn’t any left. Nevertheless, I couldn’t let it bother me, or I would lose focus and death would have won.

 

Quickly, I began to forget about the weird movement, and instead I focused on surviving again. One day, I was exploring the ruins of an abandoned service station in the pursuit of food. It was then I finally experienced what could be argued as the scariest moment of my life. Scarier than the explosion. Expecting the worst, I turned round and my heart jumped out of my skin. I was almost certain that it was death himself arriving to claim his final victim, but then…

 

“Help!”