text: I never got lucky before. Never won anything. Used to buy the lotto tickets, every paycheck. Just $20 in scratchers. Anna in Accounting won a cool thousand my first week there. I played for 5 years and never once won. Course, Anna in Accounting is dead now. Same as everyone else. I spent the last month of the world in a cell. Oh, they didn’t call it a cell, they called it a research wing. The Red Death had already killed half the globe by that point. Asia was pretty much gone, North America was right behind them, and Europe was down to only 1 in 4 alive. 100% mortality rate, they said. No one could survive it, they said. Then there was me. I put on the mask as I prepare to leave. Gotta wear the mask. Maybe it’d be better if I left the city, but can’t leave the city, so gotta wear the mask. Sure, I was the Last Hope for Humanity, the One that Lived, or so the papers said, but doesn’t mean I can’t get sick. Just not the Plague. One in ten billion chance, apparently. I grab my shovel. The irony is, the Red Death started because some nutjob in Japan thought he had found the key to immorality. A retrovirus that would completely halt the natural aging process. And this nutjob? He decided that this was a gift to humanity, he didn’t want money or accolades, so he made the goddamn cure to age into a contagion, stuck himself with it, and took a flight. Tokyo to LAX. LAX to O’hare. O’hare to JFK. JFK to Heathrow. Heathrow to Charles DuGalle. Charles DuGalle to Moscow. Moscow to Dubai. He died in the terminal in Dubai, after having spent six hours walking around each of those airports, contagious as all hell, and all on the weekend before Christmas. “Fucker,” I mutter to no one as I shoe away some crows. They’re big bastards now. I’ve started calling them Crovus Rex. They don’t seem to mind me much, but they watch me. Read an article once, before the plague, about how damned smart crows were. Seems with us gone, they’ve been getting smarter. I hear them cawing at each other all the time. I think it might be language. Sometimes I think I can understand it. That one sound, a Caw with a harsh start and a slight lag at the end? Sort of a Kchraaaaw? I think that’s me. I wonder what they think of me. I grab my newest find and shove it into the wheelbarrow. Funny side effect of the Red Death? You don’t decay, bacteria don’t eat you anymore. You just bleed out and then sit there. Mummified. That bastard mummified the whole world. Except me, although he still kinda did. Everyone else died. Unless something kills me, I never will. No one could figure out why. Just a fluke of genetics that kept me ticking. The wheelbarrow’s heavy now. Time seems funny these days. Goes by so fast. Maybe it’s just because I’ve had so many days they blur together even while I’m living them. Either way, time to head out. I’m in New York, right now. Obviously. Well, maybe not. Dunno who I’m talking to these days. But I get out of the city, and then I walk a ways more. Been in New York for...for awhile. Couple hundred, maybe? Just about done here, though. Ahead of me stretch the Stones. I try to include a name when I can. Find it in wallets. Well, what’s left of them. It’s getting harder and harder as things decompose or get lost. If not, I put some details. Anything I can make out. “Wearing Red.” “Woman With Four Rings.” Anything, though it gets harder and harder to make it out each time. Still, I think I’ve got maybe a week or so left. Then I’ve buried the entire state of New York. Oh, I’m sure I missed some, and I’m sure the animals have eaten some. Some of the graves are no more than a fingerbone. But I keep digging. There isn’t anything else to do. Humanity may be dead, but it’s gotta be buried too. And I’ll be the Gravedigger.