1 One of a Kind

Right foot forward, then left. As went the endless march of Henry Salinger, the last man on earth. He was reluctant to accept that he was the last, as would any sane person. It was hard to believe that out of seven billion he was the only one left alive. Yet there he was. Right foot forward, then left. As went the endless march.

A small, smug part of him had always known that the human race wouldn't be wiped out by natural disaster. It would be unlike them follow the lead of species past. Humanity had always been destine to destroy itself. The only creature to commit self-cannibalism until it was dead. It was said that nuclear war would cause the end of the world. He supposed it did, if he was to sum it all up neatly. The bombs killed alright, killed in their billions, yet billions more still stood. The bombs were the match that sparked the fuse. It was the wind, the tinest of winds, that carried the plague across the continents.

Scientists called it radiation. Henry wasn't so sure. If Henry was the type of man to engage in conspiracy he'd say someone somewhere put a little something extra in their bomb. Clearly they didn't think burning whole cities was enough. It didn't matter. What mattered was that it made people sick. What mattered was that the doctors didn't know how to stop it. What mattered was that by some cruel trick of fate Henry found himself completely immune.

One in a million. Heck on in four billion, the remaining population when the dusts settled and a make shift government had been formed. The medical profession was all over him. Testing, experimenting, trying to work out what gift he possessed. Most would be reluctant, he was eager. He virtually volunteered. Anything to save the people he loved. No luck, no definitive answers. No cure lay in the body or the mind of Henry Salinger.

So people fell and people died. Everyone died. As days grew into weeks and weeks into months Henry Salinger, medical impossibility, found himself roaming a desolate global in search of anybody who might have made it through. A survivor, someone like him. Perhaps even someone who got better. He never found anyone. The world was filled with nothing. Nothing and silence.

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Well, almost silence.

Henry had picked up an abandoned two way radio what felt like a hundred years ago. He'd searched the channels for someone to talk to but all he got was static. Then came the numbers. Just a few months back they'd started out of the blue.

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At first he thought he'd stumbled on some old military channel from before the bombs. Number stations they used to call them. He was sure that it was just a string of numbers, some code he would never understand. Then he noted the pause, almost like a breath. It was likely pre-recorded, it was impossible for someone to stay up 24 hours reciting numbers, not to mention boring. Yet it drew him in, kept him from tuning out. One string of numbers, one pause just long enough for a breath, and now something new. A second breath, two more numbers.

53,12

Coordinates, the location of an old housing estate. Henry was sure of it.

So he marched on. Right foot forward, then left. This time with a real purpose, to find whoever was sending the message.

The coordinates started coming in November. He found that estate in late December, new years eve. Nearing midnight in fact. Almost poetic, Henry thought. The housing estate was empty. Homes sat vacant, cars rusted where they had been parked. Henry reached the coordinates. Just another house, one identical to the others. All except the red, spray paint graffiti. He didn't stop to red the words. He didn't care for the rambling of a long dead loiter.

As he turned to leave, discarding his frankly useless radio on the dusty road, he heard a fate click. It was so quiet that an ordinary man would never hear it. In the silence though even the slightest flap of a butterfly wing carried. It was the click of light, a bright yellow that was now shining from a lower room window. A cynically part of him believed it was a sensor. The rest of him was filled with a revived feeling of hope which was only stoked by the letters on the wall. Two words that he now read clearly. Like a switch flipping inside his head the numbers made perfect sense.

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He'd been so convinced that it was some indecipherable code, something that the likes of him would never understand, that he'd over looked the most basic code of all. Simple numbers to letters.

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Infection free.