"Last Human"

 

“Last Human”

            My name is Colonel Dwayne Phillips…and this may very well be my last moments on Earth…or whatever’s left of it.

            I’m making this report from one of their prison cells. Alongside me is Private Darren from my platoon. He’s only 20 years old – too young to die in the way that’s waiting for him and me. He was 13 when the Wash happened. That was just seven years ago, and now it’s 2030.

            Where does the time go?

            Most of the human population was wiped out in the invasion. Me and Darren are the last humans left and unwilling to be test subjects to our foreign captors – beings in white jumpsuits with white angular helmets that mask their features. Their suits were baggy enough to hide their body types, like wearing trash bags or bed sheets, so you couldn’t even tell which was male or female.

            Darren and I spent months in that cell together, exchanging stories about our lives before the Wash. He shared way more than I did. He admitted that a lot of his time was wasted in his young life, playing on his Nintendo Switch at home and in class, barely paying attention to his parents or his teachers. He was often labeled a “thug” because of the fights he would get into, both in school and in the streets, and made a living off selling drugs. That last part explained how he was able to afford the Nintendo Switch.

            As far as my story, I was about Darren’s age when I first enlisted in the Marines, deciding to do better with my life than stay with my alcoholic of a mother. My father died when I was just nine, and I had no one else left but my mama. My drill instructor – Gunnery Sergeant Harland Davis – was the closest I had to a “loving” father. I learned a few days ago that he was abducted by the white sheets and died in their barbaric testing.

            Darren and I both agreed that the so-called “Great Pandemic of 2020” was nothing compared to the Wash. Yeah, people suffered a great illness and many died, but the scale of the Wash was greater. Almost all humanity was wiped out.

            The sheets came for Darren today, removing him from our cell.

            I did everything I could to calm him down as they hauled him away by his arms and legs. My best words of encouragement were “We are strong! We are proud! We are human!” They were the words of our platoon. I repeated them a few more times, my voice carrying across the dark, lifeless corridor past the steel bars of my cell. They’d be my last words to Private Darren.

            With him gone, I’m now the last human.

            In my temporary solitude, I wonder what the Earth will be like once I’m dead. My frame of mind pictures a world populated by the sheets – the colonists – reshaped in their image. It’s what they always wanted, of course: to own everything that was never theirs to begin with. Once they’ve killed me, I’m sure they’ll have it.

            Some commotion from outside breaks my fantasy, returning me to reality.

            Gunshots…screaming…explosions.

            Someone is raiding the underground facility. But who? I thought me and my platoon were the last line of defense against these monsters.

            Amid the chaos, one of the sheets rushes in my cell and holds a gun to my head in a desperate attempt to shoot me in cold blood. “Consider this mercy, boy!” he says beneath his white angular helmet, squeezing the trigger.

            BLAM! The shot rings…but it’s not from his gun.

            He falls dead before me. The whiteness of his suit now stained with the red of his blood. Apparently, they do bleed the same color as us.

            My savior was someone in a black biker helmet and uniform.

            One of the rebel sects that we heard about. We thought they were a myth.

            “Are you alright, Colonel Phillips?” It was a woman’s voice muffled beneath the helmet. I figure as much from her shape. Unlike the sheets, the rebels’ uniforms hug their every frame. She removes her helmet in front of me. Long, flowing gold locks drop out. Her face was young – presumably mid-teens – and had very little makeup. Her eyes are aquamarine and a few freckles dotted across the bridge of her nose. “Lieutenant Miranda Stevens, sir,” she told me. “We’re here to bring you home.”

            I see more of her squad storm into the area, one of them coming into my cell and inspecting the body of the sheet Lieutenant Stevens executed. They remove his angular helmet, exposing his lifeless face – a man in his fifties, balding with a brown goatee that has flakes of grey in it.

            “Nice one, Stevens,” the other rebel congratulated, removing his helmet to reveal the face of an Asian man in his thirties with black shoulder-length hair and a chiseled jawline.

            By now, you’re probably wondering why I claimed to be the “last human,” when there are so many others still left on the Earth. The answer is simple: I’m the last human of African-American lineage. The Wash removed a majority of the black population of Earth. We died out from a virus that’s a super-aggressive form of melanoma. All other races survived but, ever since the Wash, they’ve begun warring for control of the planet. Darren and I were of one army of black men and women. Then there were the sheets, consisted of people of European decent that held onto beliefs from a bygone era. Last were the rebels, who were predominantly Asian, Latin, and Native American with a younger generation of Europeans that want a better world.

            Regrettably, I don’t believe the war will end anytime soon.

            If anything, we’re just prolonging the inevitable extinction of all races.