What if you were the last human on Earth?
By
Grover
10/22/11
Standing back from the window, so I wouldn't be seen, I stared outside using my binoculars. Studying how the aliens moved and their facial expressions, I practiced in the mirror. It had to be absolutely perfect so I would fit in.
Food was running low, and making midnight supply runs was proving more and more difficult. I was running out of options, and had no choice, but to make a brazen public appearance to get what I want. In theory, if I kept my mouth shut I should pass.
Turning to the mirror, I'd paid that price. While the rest of the world was being re-made, I'd mostly escaped, mostly. My body was completely hairless, and was androgynous as a 10 year old boy. At least I still had eyes, ears, a nose and mouth. Sighing, I didn't want to admit even that had been taken away from me. It was debatable that I was lucky or not in stumbling into that walk-in freezer.
From the few other survivors, I'd learned that it'd served as a faraday cage protecting me from the final part of the change. In fact, I was the very rare partial transformee. I looked just like one of the invaders, but I still had my own thoughts.
Not that any of the others trusted me, but at least I found out something about what happened. Well, what Doc thought had went down. Von Neumann probes were robotic machines sent to another star system programmed to find a friendly planet and prepare it for later arriving colonists. He thought these went a step further and changed us into bodies for these aliens to later inhabit.
All I knew was that everyone I knew was gone. My family, friends, neighbors, and even my own body, everyone was all gone. As far as we could tell, about 90% had been changed like me into some kind of female drone sorta like some hive insects. The other 10% were more sexually mature looking queens and princes. What we did know for dead certain was that those who got the full treatment were no longer human. They spoke a different language and behaved completely in ways no human would.
However most of those behaved like robots, but that didn’t keep them from reacting to an unmodified human. They immediately attacked us like madden dogs. Who needed ray guns when you out numbered your enemy thousands to one?
Later we saw the real aliens, or anyways a Prince that had been possessed as Doc called it. No one could mistake one for a drone. They moved with an arrogance that said it all. They were the conquerors, and Earth was theirs.
Slowly even our cities were changing being rebuilt into something different, inhuman. The weird angles and curves of those buildings were never designed by an earthly architect. Sure Doc and the rest tried to find out more, but each time anyone went out fewer and fewer returned.
Now it was just me, all alone.
Hell, I even thought about ending it all. What did I have to live for? I wasn't a man any more or even human, just a sexless female drone. But I couldn't do it. The will to live was still part of me. That gave me hope that something human lived within me.
If this was some SF novel, I would be infiltrating the alien ship, but I wasn't like that. I was only a normal guy not a computer programmer, solider or super spy. Hell, they didn't even have a ship that I knew of. Just everyone started changing without any kind of warning.
It hadn't escaped me that tonight was Halloween, but please excuse me if I'm not in the mood. The holiday just isn't the same with real monsters having taken over the world.
I ate and drank my fill of water, and then waited. After nature called, I would take my chances. Hell, I even bathed to wash away all the scents I could.
Finally, it was time.
I wasn't feeling fear, but a strange numbness.
Opening the door, I stepped outside.
Comments
Alone
Ending, or beginning of a new word.
May Your Light Forever Shine
May Your Light Forever Shine
Cool idea for a movie
I've always been a big fan of the last-person-in-the-world genre. It's tough to come up with a new way to go down such a well travelled path, but I don't recall seeing anything quite like this. Maybe a bit "Invasion of the Body Snatchers"-ish, but imho, still different enough to be unique.
Two thumbs up (three if I had 'em).
.
Short condensed tale, Grover. Well done and I wonder...
Somehow I keep thinking back on this as not just a horror sci-fi but more of an allegory on being different, of being TG, of being in a body and world that does not fit you and finally being forced to *pass* in that Alien world to survive a little longer.
I mean he is still human but barely, androgynous, sterile, family gone ... his few friends have disappeared one-by-one.
Works either way. Equally sad, almost hopeless... his despair is palpable.
John in Wauwatosa
P.S. Been re-reading some of your stuff recently even Miki, your Whateley fanfic I contributed on the ending of. Damn you are good.
John in Wauwatosa
I agree with John.
He said it all, really.
Dorothycolleen
Alone - Another Great One
Grover,
This is the third story I've read from you and even though it's a short one (more to come?) I still loved it. I don't know how you and Julie O do it (keep on coming up with ideas) but I love it. Sad story in a way but still a good one. Have you ever thought about writing a novel and publishing it? Maybe on the Kindle store?
Barry
Bleak
Gosh, I don't see any way out of this, maybe there isn't, unless there's some real humans eeking out an existence down in the sewers. But then not all end of the world stories have to have a cheerful ending. About the best she could hope for would be finding it possible to alien society and escaping detection on a day to day basis ........ Be funny if one day months or years into this she and they discovered that almost everybody else had retained their own personality and was faking it too fit in too, unlikely but a good allegory for totalitarianism. This was one of the bleakest alien takeover tales I've read since Thomas Disch's THE GENOCIDES; and a darn fine creepy story for the spook season.
~~hugs, Veronica
What borders on stupidity?
Canada and Mexico.
.
Alone
Hi Grover,
With the way humanity has treated this planet, such an invasion might, not only be better for the Earth, but also completely justified. I like John's comment about this being allegorical for 'different' folk coping with society in general.
Typically GREAT stuff from one of the magi of words. Thanks Grover.
with love,
Hope
with love,
Hope
Once in a while I bare my soul, more often my soles bear me.
Short and Hard-hitting
I'd never give up. I'd try to find a way to stop them or die trying. What would you have to lose?
Thanks and kudos.
- Terry
I wonder what the
I wonder what the transformation did to his/her hormones. I mean your character feels to hopeless and unmotivated. It's not like s/he has anything to loose.
Maybe enter a nuclear bomb shelter and blow up earth... Ah damn, she isn't suicidal. But that might work to blackmail the aliens.
I hope you'll continue this interesting story.
Thank you for writing,
Beyogi
Great story Grover!
I'm glad to see your muse is getting active again. I agree with John about your Whately story and would LOVE to see you do another Superhero storyline again.
Ironically the line I liked best in this was the fact it's a halloween story and they're not really in the mood with the real monsters around.
Nice stuff.
*Big Hugs*
Bailey Summers
Alone
Interesting beginning. And brings to mind Stephanie Meyer's The Host, for some reason... (which I've only started)
The ending here is like an Alfred Hitchcock tale,
Leaving what happened to the imagination of the reader. This is good, and ends right the proper moment. Thank you for sharing.
"With confidence and forbearance, we will have the strength to move forward."
Love & hugs,
Barbara
"If I have to be this girl in me, Then I have the right to be."
"With confidence and forbearance, we will have the strength to move forward."
Love & hugs,
Barbara
"If I have to be this girl in me, Then I have the right to be."