Alone

I did it, I can't believe I did it! No, despite the date, this is not an April fool. Christ, I'm too excited to write at the moment, will try again later.

April 4th 1998...

Didn't get back to this as soon as I would have liked, too many things have been happening. Been rushed off my feet by how quickly things have developed. I've had the T.V. on for the last three day's. The news has been on almost constantly, all because of me, although it has been getting more sporadic as of late, all because of me! I think I should write down who I am, and what has been happening, just in case someone, in the future, finds this journal, so they can know what went on.

My name is Christopher Arnold, and I am one of the richest men in the world. Not that money matters anymore. Money is now completely worthless. The reason? Well, it's because the Human race has suddenly become an endangered species, and will soon be extinct, and things like that really hit the stock market hard. The Human race will be extinct, except me...

Damnit, there's the phone. Don't these people know when too just lay down and die?

April 19th 1998...

The news broadcasts are even less frequent now, and I don't recognise the newscaster. More than likely the regular ones are dead or dying, and this new one was drafted in as it where, and he did not look too healthy. I guess he had his fifteen minutes a little too late to appreciate it! The phone call was from the government, asking, nay, pleading, to help them in the quest to save the human race. I could, because I'm the one who put it on the edge of that dark precipice in the first place, but I won't. I got where I am today thanks to my not inconsiderable knowledge of Biochemistry. I built quite a large business, maybe even an empire, all in the mane of science. Then, six, maybe seven years ago, I noticed how truly messed up this world was, and how it was all thanks to mankind, the Human Race! It was then I saw mankind for what it really was! A parasite, living and sucking off the environment without giving anything in return, except clouds of noxious gas poisoning the air, oil spills and chemicals polluting the water, nuclear waste and garbage destroying the earth. So I decided to give Mother Nature the medicine she has always needed. It took me six years to develop it, using chemicals from my own laboratories and bacteria I managed to procure (for not an inconsiderable amount of money I might add) from certain government installations. Six years, in which time I also prepared for the day of reckoning. That day was nine days ago, nine days since I administered the medicine the world has needed for so long. A virus, bacteria that I mutated and bred using chemicals of my own devising, when released into the air, has a one hundred percent mortality contaminability and mortality rate. Unless, like me, you have the antidote, and seeing as I was the one to develop it, I am the only one that has it. I am the greatest eco-warrior that ever lived, and the only one that will keep on living. Within two weeks from now, the entire human race will have gone the way of the Dodo, and all the other species that mankind saw fit to wipe out in the name of progress. Only I will survive. I will stay alive to be "janitor" to the planet Earth, to see it pass this period of transition, and to see it go onto a time of tranquillity, where it can nurse it's wounds and restore it to it's former glory!

April 15th 1998...

The T.V. is mainly a test signal now, and that is only on a couple of channels, the rest is just static, as is the radio. The phone is also dead, no tone, just the sound of empty air on the line. I live thirty miles from the nearest city, yet everything is silent. A think black cloud of smoke drifts over the city, more than likely from the looting that the occasional news broadcast had reported had gone on in the city. Typical humanity, even in it's death throes it try's it's best to destroy everything around it. Well, try as they might, they have failed, and nature will triumph, thanks too me.

April 20th 1998...

Spent yesterday evening sitting outside, watching the sunset. It was slightly discoloured from the thick pall of smoke rising from the city. I sat there, with a glass of water in my hand, marvelling at the silence that now dominates the world. It used to be, even at the distance I live from the city, that I could sometimes hear the muted sound of traffic, the sound of civilisation from the smelting pot of humanity living there, feeding off the environment and each other, destroying all around them. But now total silence. I have turned off the T.V., it has no use any more, and I am now running from solar panels I had installed on the roof, as there is no power coming in from outside now. As I said, I am prepared!

May 2nd 1998...

I think it's about time I wrote down what the virus that saved the earth was, and how it worked. I will forgo any lengthy technical formulae and the like, there are notes aplenty in the laboratory. The virus was a mutated strain of various types of bacteria, some harmless, some not so harmless, so, when put together, along with certain chemicals, it formed an odourless, tasteless viral strain, with, as I have said before, a one hundred percent contaminatabilty and mortality rate. It is and airborne virus, so large population centres were easily infected. The smallest screen's and the finest filters could not stop it, and once it had entered the food chain, it was there to stay. The beauty of it is though, it only affects humans. Animals show absolutely no effect when exposed to it. Granted, there may be isolated islands, small communities cut off from what used to pass for civilisation, that are still alive, but in times like this, where such communities are dependant on supplies from the main land, I cannot see them lasting long. so, basically, unless you had an antidote, like me, you died in pain, vomiting blood as your internal organs ruptured. A fitting end to the rapists of the Earth.

May 6th 1998...

I have spent the last two days in the city, surveying the damage and destruction caused by the looting that occurred during mankind's death throes. The roads of the outskirts of the city are dogged with cars, their now dead inhabitants trying to flee a plague that could not be out run. Street upon street of metal tombs, making makeshift graveyards for the dead of the city. Some fires where still burning in the city centre, and they made the going dangerous in places, but I saw enough to get a picture of what must have gone on around the world, and what may still be going on in places. Shops and stores looted and burnt out. The bodies of people killed not by the virus, but by the riots and anarchy that followed in the virus' wake.

All it did was the show me that what I had does was right. Mankind would have wiped it self out anyway, given enough time. I just helped it along, and saved the rest of the world from being caught in the blast of the human race's self destruction!

May 10th 1998...

It's 3:15 in the morning. I have just woken up screaming from a nightmare I do not remember. It's the first nightmare I have had since I was a child. I do not think the nightmares where about what I did. I have no conscious feelings of guilt about what I did, and I believe it was for the greater good. What did I was not murder. Does a doctor get accused of murder when he give's his patients antibiotics to kills a virus that might be fatal? NO? So then the same must apply to me. To paraphrase a line in a film I once saw, mankind was the disease, I was the cure. So, no more nightmares. I will not allow this to plague my mind any longer.

May 15th 1998...

I did not count on the loneliness. I am coming to realise that humans, myself included are social animals, and that no matter how much I kid myself, sometimes, I crave human contact, I crave it like a drug addict would crave for a fix if deprived for too long. I will stay strong though. The saviour of the Earth will not weaken.

May 19th 1998...

Impossible, this is impossible. I was sitting on the porch, savouring the breeze, and what should I hear, but a horn, maybe a car horn, coming from the direction of the city. It was faint, but unmistakable. I do not understand it. I have been to the city, it was deserted. No one, absolutely no one could have survived the virus. Nevertheless, I have a gun, a rifle, and I am going into the city to find whoever made that noise, and I am going to do what the virus could not. I am going to kill them.

May 22nd 1998l...

This is most frustrating. I have spent the last three days in the city. I hunted high and low, yet I could not find anyone. I begin to think that I maybe imagined it, but this raises questions I do not wish to think about. There must have been someone in the city. I have come back to get more provisions, then I am going back, and there I will stay, until I find and kill this last survivor of an extinct race.

June 1st 1998...

I found nothing, no evidence of anyone still alive. I cam back because of other dangers that now roam the city. The seventh day I was there, I was cycling through the city, when I pack of dogs, turned feral during these last two months attacked me. I managed to make it into a house , leaving the bike outside, where the dogs, half mad with hunger, tried to eat the rubber off the wheels. I decided to wait, to see if the dogs would leave of their own accord, but after twenty four hours, I realised that they where staying put, so, with great sadness, I went up the stairs with my gun, and started shooting them, one by one, each gun shots echoed down the empty streets, until they where dead. One or two ran away, so I let them go, I have no desire to kill them, in a way, I had made them what they where. I decided that the city was too dangerous, I had not wiped out mankind to be killed by a stray dog, so I found a new bike, and left the city. I will not go back there until the world has changed from a place dominated and tamed by humans, to one where nature makes the rules.

June 5th 1998...

In some ways, the death of mankind is extremely liberating. I no longer bother getting dressed, there is no point. The social constraints we put upon ourselves no longer applies. I don't have to worry about the neighbours popping round. They are the best neighbours I have ever had actually, and they are awfully quiet. I wonder if they have come down with something. I hope it is nothing serious!

June 8th 1998...

Someone once wrote "Loneliness weighs heavy on us all", and if they didn't, they should have done, because it's true. I am lonely, but above that, I am bored. I thought I new what boredom was, but I did not, until now. I wake up each day, looking at another day of nothingness. Sunsets may be beautiful, but they quickly lose their appeal if you have nothing else to look at. I forgot myself yesterday, and went to switch on the television, before I remembered that there was no more television, no more films, no more programmes, no more soap operas...well, I suppose I should thank god for small mercies. So, in a sudden fit of depression I threw a vase through the television screen. Quite a satisfying bang it made. Then I went on a sort of blackout, a mental hiccup if you wish, and when I came back to my senses, I was dismantling the cooker...with a hammer! Luckily I did not do much damage, and it still works, but I must now seriously consider my mental state. but I refuse to believe that I am going mad, the saviour of the earth will not falter.

June 12th 1998...

My mental health is fine. I have spent these last few days taking things easy, looking at myself from an objective viewpoint. I believe I have it under control now, it was nothing, just a slight aberration, that was all, it was nothing!

June 14 1998...

I have just woken up, I thought it was another nightmare at first. But it is much worse. I had fallen asleep on the porch, and what had woken me was noise, noise coming from the city. And lights, strange lights, lighting up the night sky. The noise sounded like gunfire, but that's impossible, I checked the city, and there was no-one there. Unless they have come from else where...but no, everyone is dead, everyone died, thanks to me.

The phone is ringing, it made me nearly jump out of my skin. Damnit, why can't they just stay dead?

June 14th 1998...

It is early evening, and the city is silent and dark. No strange noises or lights coming from it. I can not say when they stopped as I have been in the cellar all day, keeping calm and staying relaxed. The phone is now in the bin, and under the table, and in lots of other places I should imagine, as it broke quite well when I hit it with the hammer. I calmed myself down though, before I destroyed anything else, and I retired to the cellar. I slept most of the day, and when I came back up, the noises and lights had stopped. I think I am safe here from whoever is in the city. They won't come all the way out here, and they definitely could not know I am here!

June 18th 1998...

After four days of quiet, the lights and noises have returned. I am inside the house, looking out at the city. The city is almost lit up like it was before all this happened, the night sky bleached with the light from the city. I have stocked up the cellar with provisions, just in case something happens. I don't know what to expect, but I am prepared for anything. I am looking out towards the city. A string of lights has left the city, I wonder what they could be. I shall watch them for a while, see what happens.

June 19th 1998...

I think it is the nineteenth. I do not know the time, there are no windows in this cellar, and I neglected to bring some kind of time piece. The lights I saw yesterday (or was it earlier today), where vehicles, cars, comings to this hours. How could they have known? I had turned out the lights inside the house, they could not have known I was here, but they did, some how, and they are coming here, looking for me. I have not heard anything since coming down here, and I think I slept I little, I cannot remember. But I have heard no noises from upstairs. I should go up and find a clock or something, but they could be waiting up there, waiting for me, so I will stay here, nice and safe...

June 21st 1998???

I do not know how long I have been here, three or four days I would guess, but I cannot be certain. I just sleep when I am tired, and spend my waking hours doing nothing much. I have all the basic facilities, planned ahead you see, just in case. Remembered everything but a damn clock, not even a wrist watch because I enjoyed walking around naked. Damn fool me. But, I suppose it is for the best. If I had a clock I would spend all my time watching the seconds tick by, and that would surely drive me mad. Still no noises from upstairs but I know that they are there, waiting for me, waiting for my nerve to break, but they will have to come to me. I remembered my gun, and there is only one entrance to this cellar, which is hidden, but, if they find it, I can hold my ground here, and pick them off as they come through the door. We'll see whose nerve breaks first!

Late June 1998?

It must still be June, not that much time has passed, but I am no longer sure. I feel strangely disjointed. Anyway, there has been a change in the stalemate. A little while ago I heard some glass breaking, and now I can hear things being moved around upstairs. They are inside the house, probably got bored waiting and have come in too look for me. I doubt they will find me, but they survived my virus, so who knows. In a way, I hope they do find me, they may be immune to a virus, but I doubt they are immune to a bullet. Eddie tells me to for a head shot, he say's that's the only real stopper. who is Eddie I hear you ask. Why, he is my friend, he was once a mouse I think, but he changed, he still looks like a mouse, but he talks to me, especially after I give him some food, and he advises me on my situation. He is a great help, if only he knew the date!

I don't know the date. I believe that time, for me, is now endless. There are no longer days and nights, just the glare of the cellar light bulb, and, I fear, I will not be seeing that for much longer. Blotches have started to appear on my skin. This is the first stage of the virus...my virus. The creation is turning on the creator. I think it must have mutated even more, beyond the original virus and antidote. If I had access to my laboratory I could no doubt fashion a new antidote, but I cam trapped in this cellar, unable to leave as there are people waiting for me...

Eddie has just arrived. He has told me that, seeing as the virus will kill me anyway, I might as well take a few of those waiting upstairs with me. I think that is a dammed good idea. I will save one last bullet for myself. I will kill myself before the virus takes me. Here I come you bastards. God Save The Earth!

Keith can be e-mailed at cms-office-user@news.salford.ac.uk

Return to the Aphelion main page.