The Last

by Hanna Jameson

It’s the not knowing that I can’t stand.

‘A lot of people confuse movement with progress,’

It’s hard to articulate how much it weighs on you, when everything is always cold.

History is only the sum of its people and, as far as I know, we could be the last ones.

‘That’s an extremely calm response to the end of the world.’

‘Why, after all, should we expect God to punish the innocent with more life?’

‘I use humor to cope with the abyss,

‘I think science can explain how but not why.’ ‘There doesn’t have to be a why – why is for children.’

It was the best imitation of contentment I had come across since my time here,

We stockpiled hope now, hoarded it within us and hoped it was enough to tide us over until the next time there was a break in the cloud cover.

I sometimes feel that there might be more people in the hotel than we know about.

it was hard not to feel a sneaking suspicion that we were all meant to be here. I know this is just one way in which the mind seeks to re-establish control, searching for meaning in a largely random and uncaring universe.

Sophia handed me a spoon. It tasted like another life.

I just feel that human life still means something. It means something more than just … surviving by any means necessary.’

Kids didn’t need to understand everything you said. Kids just knew if you were happy to be around them or not.

The only meaning we might have left as a species – indeed the only thing left that might matter, that might keep us motivated to get up in the morning – is in the small acts of human kindness we show each other,

he had given me some moments that made this lonely hellscape feel bearable for a while.

‘Maybe I’m already dead, mate. Maybe this is the other place, and that’s why I can’t die.’

She’s going to outlive all of us. I realize that now. She gets it, in a way that the rest of us still don’t. We’re playing catch-up, dealing with the new world that has been thrust upon us. Tomi has become it.

She looked at me. ‘Before this, did you even know you were brave?’

‘It’s like we all woke up from the same nightmare.’

What were any of us searching for anymore? We had always been propelled by this illusion of progress, toward a utopian ideal, whether that ideal came from religion or democracy. But that was all gone now. The propellers themselves had blown.

Nuclear weapons were falling onto the cities and buildings and statues and bridges that had, in some cases, stood for centuries. We had looked at them every day and thought they were permanent, and now they were turning to dust.

History had ended,

I think it was Stephen King who said that the sum of all human fear is just a door left slightly ajar.

There are no ghosts in this hotel, just the ones we’ve created for ourselves.

‘Has nuclear war been as bad as you thought it would be?’

This was the feeling of being part of the food chain.

It wasn’t happiness. It wasn’t peace. But sometimes, for us, it had been quiet.

If you don’t make the decision to love, every day, it’s an easy thing to forget.