Excerpt: The Last Guy On Earth Who's Not A Zombie

*Ping Ping Ping*

Jake lay halfway in the cabinet under Mrs. Gray's kitchen sink tapping the pipe joint into place. He hoisted himself out with a grunt and stood up. "I'll just be about fifteen more minutes."

Mrs. Gray's orthopedic shoe clad feet took her a prim step backward as he passed. "Fine." Her high pitch revealed her annoyance.

Jake's broad shoulders hunched down in self-consciousness. He knew how others saw him, a gruff and grubby necessity to be tolerated when their sinks and toilets backed up.

On his way down the crunchy stone path to the work truck, a low-rider rumbled past, spewing rap music in its wake. Jake muttered his annoyance and leaned into the truck bed for the needed wrench.

A sudden *pop* made him jerk his head up in time to see the afterglow of what he supposed was an explosion high in the stratosphere. A meteor? Airplane? Two more bursts flashed white like exploding stars. These two made no noise and not even a breath of smoke.

An eerie stillness crept over Jake in a way he couldn't put in words. He looked up and down the deserted street. Forgetting the search for the wrench, he stood motionless and baffled.

"Anyone else see that?" His voice fell dead, like muffled shouts into fog. A foreboding loneliness clutched his chest, like a child losing site of his mother in a store.

He turned and jogged back into the house, just to make human contact. Before he could open his mouth to call out to Mrs. Gray, he spotted her lifeless form on the linoleum floor in the kitchen, her mouth and eyes wide in mute shock.

He pulled out his cell and punched 911 and put it to his ear. He looked at it with brow furrowed. He tried the house phone. Dead too. Bewildered horror crossed his face.

He shoved his useless cell phone back into his pants and sprinted outside and to a neighboring house. The door was open. Jake could see into the living room. The legs of a prone figure stuck out from behind a brown suede sofa.

Jake stepped backwards, Aliceble to breath.
He spun on his heal and raced to his truck. He threw open the door and thrust himself into the driver seat.

He turned the key.

Nothing.

He turned it again.

Nothing.

His hands dropped into his lap. His heart beating in his broad chest seemed the only thing stirring. Now he understood the eeriness he'd felt earlier. The city was dead. No voices, music, cars, air conditioners or motors of any sort. The hum of human activity had ceased.