Chapter One:-
The hardest part wasn't the silence; it was the humming.
Arthur sat on his porch in the suburbs of Ohio, a lukewarm cup of coffee in his hands. It was 10:00 AM on a Tuesday. Normally, this was the hour of lawnmowers, distant highway drones, and the rhythmic thwack of the neighbor's kid hitting a tennis ball against a garage door.
Now, there was only the hum of the sun. It was a sound Arthur had never noticed before—a low-frequency vibration of heat on asphalt, unobstructed by the vibration of human life.
He looked at his phone. 0% battery. It didn't matter; the towers had gone dark three days ago, right after the final, frantic emergency broadcasts. They hadn't ended with a bang or a political speech. The last voice Arthur heard was a local news anchor in Cincinnati, her voice cracking as she told her viewers to "Go home and hold the people you love."
Arthur hadn't had anyone to hold. He had stayed in his armchair, watching the snow on the screen until the power grid finally gave up the ghost.
He stood up, his knees popping—a sound like a gunshot in the stillness. He walked to the edge of the driveway. The street was lined with cars, most of them neatly parked. That was the strangest bit. People had mostly made it home. They hadn't died in the streets; they had simply... stopped.
A movement caught his eye. A golden retriever was trotting down the yellow line of the road, a discarded bag of bread in its mouth. It paused, looked at Arthur with amber eyes that held no recognition of the tragedy, and kept going.
"Good luck, pal," Arthur whispered. His own voice sounded like gravel grinding together. It felt heavy, like it didn't belong in the air anymore.
He went back inside to grab his rucksack. He couldn't stay here. The water pressure was dropping, and the silence of the house was beginning to feel like a weight on his chest. He needed to find out if "the last man" was a literal count or just a feeling.
As he reached for his keys—a habit he realized was now useless—he heard it.
Clang.
It was faint, coming from three houses down. The sound of metal hitting metal. Arthur froze. His heart, which had been beating at a sluggish, mourner's pace, suddenly kicked against his ribs.
Clang. Clang.
It wasn't the wind. It was deliberate. Someone was working.
Arthur didn't run. He was too afraid that if he moved too fast, the hope would shatter. He walked, his sneakers soft on the pavement, toward the Miller house. The garage door was halfway open.
"Hello?" he tried to say, but it came out as a breathy wheeze. He cleared his throat and tried again, louder this time. "Hello? Is someone there?"
The clanging stopped.
A shadow moved behind the gap in the garage door. Arthur reached the driveway, his hands trembling. A face appeared in the darkness of the garage—pale, smeared with grease, and wide-eyed with a terror that mirrored his own.
It was a man Arthur didn't recognize. Maybe a cousin visiting, or a squatter who had moved in when the world broke. The man held a wrench like a weapon.
"You're real?" the man asked. His voice was wet, like he'd been crying or hadn't drunk water in days.
"I think so," Arthur said, his eyes stinging. "I'm Arthur."
The man dropped the wrench. The sound was deafening—the most beautiful thing Arthur had ever heard.