Everyone is Missing

It started off fun, but got very old, very fast. When everyone on the planet disappeared except for you, it really re-defines the word ‘independence’.

Here’s what happened.

A few weeks ago, I woke up went all the way through my morning routine and plunked down at my computer for the next three hours. I didn’t notice anything different. Things were a bit quieter then usual, but I didn’t notice. It was when I went for my lunch walk that I began to realize that things were peculiar. Or at least more peculiar than usual.

The biggest peculiarity was the lack of people. I saw no people walking through the hallways in my apartment building, but that was pretty normal. As soon as I stepped outside, there was no traffic, no movement, no people. Cars and buses and strollers and bikes were all frozen, but empty. It was as though at one specific moment all time stopped and people were plucked from their cars, disappeared into thin air.

Except me.

I have to admit that at first, I was pretty excited about the whole situation. No more awkward interactions with people. No more sharing of, well, anything. I walked for a few hours just to make sure that this was actually happening. Not another soul in sight. I hesitantly stepped into a grocery store. It was empty. I made a lap of the store just in case. Even looked in the stock rooms.

Nobody.

I ate like a king. I walked around some more and enjoyed the silence.

After a few days, I started missing people. Not people in general, that was fine. My people. My family and friends. Where had they all gone? Why was I the only one left here? I desperately wanted to see all the people from my life in something more than just memories. I went to a hotel down the street from me and tried sleeping in a new room each night. But I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t shake the feeling that this was just a dream and I needed to just wake up.

There was a lot of freedom of being left behind. There was also challenges. If you needed to do something that you didn’t know how to do, you had to just figure it out. That’s how I learned to hot wire a car. I found a SUV with a full tank of gas and stocked the backseat and trunk with food and supplies. I would like to say that hot wiring a car was as easy as it looked in the movies, but it took me a while. Movies, I remembered to put that on the list: learn how to operate a movie theatre projector. I had a list going and it was growing longer by the day. It was a list of things that I needed to teach myself. For example: start a fire, hot wire a car (done), fly a plane, etc.

I drove south which seemed to be the most obvious choice. Even though we were heading into summer, I didn’t want to be caught up here when the snow started falling. I drove and drove, switching cars when gas was low. I saw no one, no movement, no sound. You start to get used to it, the natural hum that the Earth makes below your feet that you didn’t realize was always there. Whenever I stopped to take a rest, I turned off the car, let the engine settle until there was silence except for the light rustle of wind. The thought always came to mind: was this actually happening? Or was I sitting somewhere in a padded room completely living inside my head? Whatever answer I came up with didn’t matter, I just kept going.

It was on one of those rests when I heard something unnatural, something I wasn’t used to anymore. I heard someone else. I clocked the car way into the distance as it approached. It barrelled right towards me, stopping on a dime within spitting distance. The car was so dusty that I couldn’t see through the windshield.

The door finally opened and out stepped-