I’ve lived on this planet for thirty-five years. When I first came into the world, the human population was pushing 10 billion, but our numbers have considerably decreased since then. We’re down to two, not two billion, not two million, just two. 

Me and him.

I was in seclusion for ten years on this now forsaken Earth. Ten years thinking I was alone. Ten years spent roaming the earth and doing whatever I pleased. In silence. It’d been tough at first, coping with complete isolation. To be honest, though, I’d never been much of a social person. So I didn’t look for other humans, I accepted and even welcomed the thought of being alone. I tried not to think about what happened to them, or why I was left behind. Maybe it was better that I didn’t know.

I lived in this content state for ten years, a lonesome apocalyptic Queen, ruling over her silent domain. The giant-like forms of wind turbines and the occasional animals being my only company.

Until I met him.

A flash of black invaded my peripheral vision as I took shelter from the rain in an old Audi. I’d been trying to catch some shut eye while I waited for the rain to stop, but sleep just wouldn’t come. The sun hadn’t gone down yet, so the sheen of his hair had appeared extra vivid in dusk’s light. I contemplated calling out to the man, as he was the first I’d seen in years.

I decided that I’d take a chance and stumbled onto the concrete, searching my surroundings. I called out to him; I hadn’t used my voice in months, so it sounded foreign to me, not as firm as I remembered.

He came out of the alley adjacent to the car. He was about my height and he was looking at me with a confusion that I was sure reflected that in my own expression.

“Who are you?” I tried to ask him, but it was clear on his face that he was having difficulty understanding me.  “Do you speak English?”

“Uh,” he hesitated, voice thick with an accent I assumed was Eastern European.

“My English, not so good.”

“Where do you come from?”

“I am pilot, I come from România.”

When I asked him if he’d seen any other people on his travels to what used to be Germany, he just shook his head. What were the odds of us coming together? I figured it must be fate.

But fate tended to be pitiless.  

We spent the next couple of days roaming the nearby city together, trying to communicate. We were able to understand each other for the most part. He was a quiet man, dark eyes always watching me warily. I figured that his unease was normal, considering the situation. But that was my first mistake, growing comfortable with his presence, and the second, mistaking his strange behavior for wariness.

I woke up one night, hearing him muttering to himself in his mother tongue. I asked him what was wrong, and he didn’t answer. That was when he lunged at me with a knife.  I screamed to no one, grabbing the hand that held the knife, and thrust my palm into his nose. He yelled, and at that point I managed to wrestle the weapon away. He was sloppy, but determined, by what I didn’t know.

Throwing the knife, I pinned him down on his stomach with his hands behind his back, blood from his nose pooling underneath his head. “Why?”

“The world is mine. I cannot share,” he said scowling up at me, his green eyes burning. 

Suddenly scared to death of this man, I immediately jumped up and ran for my car.

I escaped that night with only a few bruises, underestimating the capabilities of him and his determination.  In the end, he would track me tirelessly for five years, in numerous cases almost taking my life. It was clear that he would not stop until I, his only competition for custody of the Earth, was eliminated.

Today, I decided that I would let him catch up with me.

I thought maybe we could talk, do anything to try and quell the hatred he felt for me. But when I faced him, the expression he had looked more to me like a rabid animal. As always, he was going to try to kill me. But for the first time, I pulled my own weapon first. 

We struggled and our weapons collided, but neither of us would give so I leapt back.

Running back at me, he swiped at me with his machete; I ducked and slashed at him with my axe.

  I felt my blade slice through flesh. I saw red. Blood, but it wasn’t mine.

He dropped his weapon, clutching at the wound. I pitied him, but not with the kind of pity he probably would have preferred. What I had in mind liberated him from the mad, greed driven pursuit he’d been on for five years.  I brought about mercy, mortally damaging the man’s skull.

A couple hours later, sitting under the colossal frame of a rusted wind turbine, I look up at the overcast sky. Fear’s long, bony fingers no longer squeezed the life out of my chest. This freedom from fear was liberating. Rays of light began to pierce through the blanket of clouds.

The rest of my life will be lived in peace, and once I die, the world will heal from the damage we’ve inflicted on her. I no longer call myself a lonesome apocalyptic Queen, but the woman who’ll escort the Era of Humanity off of Earth.

My only regret is that I will not be able to see the Earth mend and reclaim herself, for herself.