He stood alone, wondering if he was the last man alive.
How could a man be more alone than this, standing at the end of the world,
with thunder rolling over the ruins of mankind,
the first drops of chill dripping from a leaden sky,
with only his memories to occupy his dimming eyes?
He had known loneliness before, that heavy isolation that can only be felt in a crowded world, a separation from the flow of vitality like a discarded treasure at the bottom of a well.
That loneliness that touches every human life, clutched tight like like a heart attack, owned and owning.
What a fool he'd been, back when the world still lived, to think himself apart from mankind, a thing aside, wallowing in self-imprisonment, detached from humanity and unable to connect with even those he touched, others who knew his isolation and thought it was their own.
We all cried for contact, he mused, and knew we all wept for our own detachment, tears dripping down our hearts in icy streams, spattering on the plinths of our identity, staining the basis of our selves.
Now he knew what it meant to be truly alone, awash in the poisonous tears of man's dead world.
As the frigid drops of rain began forming black rivulets down his unseen face, he scoffed at his hubris and decided that he was still a fool. Fool for all the time he'd wasted in solitary embrace apart from humanity. Fool for all the time he would yet waste seeking human contact he'd never sought when it was available.
As if there were anything else to do.
He wiped the rain from his brow, noting that his hand faded into obscurity before it fell to his side. How much longer until the milk across his eyes became tar? Would his vision die before his quest, leaving him too blind to finish?
There was irony in the thought that others might be searching, going blind like him, wandering close enough to touch, but passing too far away to see.
One more mile, he thought. Perhaps that next ridge will reveal some sign of humanity, something other than slate ashes and umber bones.
Could he really be the last human alive?
What did that make him? Was he even a man, if there were no others? Or, being the last, had he become something else?
Something less?
He was not ready to be Alone.
To be the Last.
He tasted the ashes on his lips as he resumed his sodden march down the crumbling road.
This place once had a name, but he didn't know it; the toxic rain had blurred the maps like it had dulled his eyes. Places didn't need names any more, he was just headed south. Every place was south; every road led south. Every direction was south.
He didn't have a name any more, either. The last man on earth didn't need one.
He stopped.
He desperately needed a name; how else would he know if he encountered someone else?
He'd been so alone, he'd forgotten what names were. He only remembered South.
So he took it for his name.
