the silent shore
by greensilver
--
He walks the shore until dusk, when Saturn begins to set and the moons - both of them - slowly begin to rise. Neither of them bears any resemblance to the moon he knows. One of them just sits on the horizon, half-concealed by the clouds; the other, smaller moon rises far too fast, wreaking havoc on the ocean spread out before him. The smaller moon looks almost smooth, the familiar impact craters of his own moon replaced by what looks, even from a distance, like ice: Europa, maybe.
At sunset, when the ice moon is already nearly at its pinnacle and Saturn has completely disappeared from view, Zac finds slightly higher ground, lies down on the sand, and closes his eyes.
He wants to sleep, wants to shut off his brain, wants the tide to wash him out to sea overnight; anything would be better than waking, anything.
When the sun rises, he still hasn't slept, and the tide hasn't even drawn near.
The clouds look like balloons on strings today. He doesn't want to give a lot of thought to what perversions of science might be making the clouds form like that, but his gaze keeps drifting back to them as he walks; they look like mushroom clouds frozen in time, locked in a single instant, and it unnerves him. The clouds unnerve him more than Saturn, actually. The proximity of Saturn is so absurd that he can't quite wrap his head around it, but the clouds are still clouds: close to reality, but off by a few meters.
The shoreline stretches from one end of the world to the other with no signs of stopping. The scenery never changes, never varies; to the left there's nothing but ocean, and to the right, there's nothing but sand. Every step he takes feels exactly like the one before it. If it weren't for the sun slowly traveling through the sky, he could easily just be walking in place, frozen just like clouds.
He's headed north, he thinks. He doesn't have any actual reasons to believe that - no map, no compass, not even familiar constellations - but the direction he's headed in feels like north, and that's as good a reason as any to head in one direction instead of another.
By midday he's starving, ravenous, and this time around, there aren't exactly abandoned stores nearby to raid. He peels off his shoes and socks, rolls his trousers up to the knee, and wades into the ocean, looking for fish.
He doesn't really expect to find any. If Joanne's theory about the fish eggs was right, then the existence of fish the last time around has to be a non-repeating event of a sort; the ones they caught weren't old enough to lay or fertilize eggs, so there shouldn't be any fish now.
But something moves through the water, proving him wrong. A thin, silvery shape skims over his right ankle, and then circles back to do it again, like it wants to make sure he's real.
He crouches down to look at it, ignoring the way water immediately soaks his trousers. Not a fish; a tadpole.
If he waits here long enough, eventually, there'll be frog legs for dinner.
He wades back out of the ocean, grabs his socks and shoes, and continues on down the shore, letting the fine white sand coat his legs.
---
He'd never seen hair that color before; it was just stunning, almost unnatural. She didn't seem like the kind of girl who got her hair color out of a box, but he couldn't be entirely sure - she was difficult to pin down, and maybe this was just one more way he'd already misjudged her. Maybe she was the kind of girl who got her hair color out of a box, maybe that stunning red had a serial number attached to it; maybe her personality itself was just as fake, just a gloss over whoever she'd been before.
Zac had given that idea some thought, himself: she hadn't known him in the old life, and no one was around to tell her how he used to be - he could be anyone, act like anything. He could tell her the mansion really was his, pretend he was someone important, pretend he owned the radio station that had broadcasted his messages. He could be a whole new person, and she'd never know the difference.
But he couldn't stop being him, not even for the sake of upgrading to a better model.
Case in point: his face was still wet from crying into her sweater, her face was still wet from crying on his shoulder, she was vulnerable, he was a mess, and all he could think was, God, her hair--
He wanted to kiss her. The only thing stopping him was the fact that he didn't know if he wanted to kiss her, or if it was just that she was the only one around to kiss.
She cupped his face in her hands, pulled it up to hers, and touched her mouth to his lightly, almost delicately.
"I know what you're thinking," she said, her thumbs stroking up and down the sides of his neck. "You're thinking you're damned lucky to be the last man on Earth, right? Well, here's a news flash for you, pal - for all we know, there could be ten men just one island over." She touched her mouth to his again, just as lightly. "I guess that makes you damned lucky to be you."
He pulled her down off the chair, and she slid right into his arms, all too willingly.
---
The water is fresh, with a slightly mineral taste to it. He put off drinking any for as long as possible, thinking it would be saltwater, but that was idiotic; he should've at least tasted it before rejecting it out of hand. Now he can't get enough, he's just scooping handful after handful into his mouth, and the only thing that slows him down is the need to keep half an eye out for tadpoles.
He doesn't want to accidentally swallow one.
The ice moon is on the horizon, which means dusk is about a half-hour out. If last night was any indication, tonight won't be all that cold; his jacket will be enough to keep him warm, and the tide won't reach the low dunes that divide the shore from what looks like a desert.
He should probably keep walking - he has to get somewhere, find food, find shelter - but exhaustion is catching up to him, finally, and all he wants to do is lie down and sleep.
He settles himself on the crest of a dune, pillows his head on his arm, and closes his eyes.
Sleep should come - he's so tired, so damned tired - but it doesn't.
Instead, he lies awake again, thinking about the Event.
In retrospect, blowing up the lab was a stupid idea, beyond stupid. Bringing down one lab probably wouldn't have brought down the entire grid - God only knows how many redundancies the Americans built in. And if he hadn't blown up the lab, he wouldn't be stuck here, on this impossible beach, staring at Saturn and Europa.
That much, he's sure of. The timing was too clean to be coincidental. He's here because he drove the truck; if Api had driven the truck like he'd probably have volunteered to, Api would be lying on the sand right now.
He's here because of the explosion.
He's here alone because the explosion wasn't big enough.
He doesn't know if the Event will happen again, or when; this time around, he doesn't have any tools to measure it. Maybe it'll just keep happening, repeating over and over until he finds himself standing upside down on Mars and breathing in poisonous gases as easily as oxygen.
Or maybe next time will be the last, and the universe will finally fold in on itself like it seems to want to.
He's pretty sure he'd prefer that. One quick, clean death would be easier than the infinite number of perfectly timed deaths it would take for him to keep going, to keep him hopping from Event to Event. And each time he made it through, each time he died, the odds of finding anyone else left alive would get exponentially smaller.
It's possible - improbable, but possible - that someone else got through both Events, that someone else died twice.
But three times? Four?
He might not be the last person on Earth yet, but one Event from now, he almost certainly would be.
---
"This is your place?" Api looked around the foyer of the mansion, measuring everything with his eyes, right down to the wall hangings. "You really must have gone crazy."
Zac could feel himself tensing up, couldn't stop it; he wasn't sure that he'd ever be able stop it. Maybe the rest of their lives would be like this, just one long, drawn-out battle, with Joanne between them like a line in the sand.
"What's that mean?" He said, his voice carefully neutral.
Api shrugged. "You had your pick of everything, and you picked this?"
"It's ... big," Joanne said, like that was anything resembling an actual compliment. She'd liked it well enough before, when they'd sipped wine together on the balcony - but this time she was seeing the place through Api's eyes, and it was clearly coming up wanting. "Spacious."
"Yeah, it's a whole lotta space to be alone in," Api said, glancing sideways at Zac.
Zac had the feeling that Api hadn't meant that as an insult. Maybe he was right; maybe it was pretty stupid to react to being the last person on the planet by moving into the most obviously empty place you could find.
"The computer is this way," he said, and took the stairs two at a time, leaving Joanne and Api to trail behind him.
---
On the third day, he comes across a stand of trees on the beach. Even from a distance, they don't look like any tropical trees he's familiar with; when he gets up close, he finds out that they're apple trees, laden with ripe red fruit.
He tears down the first apple he can get a hand on, inspects it for bugs, and brings it to his nose to make sure it smells right. When the clouds are inside out and apple trees grow on ocean beaches, there's no sense in biting into something without checking it first.
The apple smells fantastic.
He eats so quickly and sloppily that half his face gets covered in streaks of juice, and when he's done with each apple, he carelessly tosses its core into the ocean. A few messily slurped handfuls of water take care of his thirst and the juice at the same time, and afterward he drops right down onto the sand, thoroughly sated.
The moons are already above him. He's come to think of them as Joanne and Api: Joanne racing across the sky, Api perpetually looming on the horizon.
Their presence comforts him, lets him delude himself into thinking that he isn't entirely alone.
For the first time in two days, he sleeps.
---
Zac was pretty sure that Joanne was in love with Api.
Joanne hadn't known Api all that long - none of them had known any of the others all that long - but she seemed to gravitate toward Api, like Api was the only thing in the world exerting any pull on her anymore. Zac knew that wasn't entirely true; he knew she still cared about him, he could see it in her eyes, in her smile. But he was just some random man she'd met at the end of the world, and Api was - different.
If Joanne and Api had met under other circumstances, with people all around them, they still might've connected; Zac was almost positive they would have.
So that was it, then. They were still three, but just barely, and soon enough they'd be two and one. Zac would be alone again, the last man on Earth again, but this time it would be infinitely more lonely; instead of just being alone, he'd have to see them together and know he was alone, consciously know it, all the time, for the rest of his life.
As he flattened the truck's gas pedal, Zac told himself that he was doing it to save them, to be a hero; but deep down, he knew that heroics had nothing to do with it.
He was escaping. Again.
Maybe he'd be a little bit more successful, this time.
--
Author's Note: Written for Wallwalker in the Yuletide 2006 challenge.
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