“No way…,” Nick’s mouth grew into a wide grin as he scanned the list of recent posts; the latest was made within the past hour. “There’s people…,” he leaned his head back in the chair and exhaled peacefully.
Three years ago zombies overran the world. Last year, Nick lost his last human friend due to an accident; he’s been traveling alone ever since. The zombies weren’t much of a threat for longer than a few months. During his travels with the group, Nick learned that zombies are only dangerous if they’ve just eaten. As time went on zombies became easier to avoid. Partly because they grew slower the weaker they were, and partly because there were fewer of them.
Now, Nick sat in front of a computer with hundreds of strangers willing to listen. The moment he connected to the internet, the web browser loaded a page without any input from Nick. It was a public forum with dozens on the first page, and dozens of pages after it.
After Nick’s moment of relief, he turned his attention back to the page. He checked the dates first, because he did not want to get his hopes up. Now that he confirmed it was active, he checked some of the topics.
“Top Ten Things to do Alone on Earth!” was the first post. It was followed by, “Sharp Services: Help After the Apocalypse” and “You’re the last person on Earth. Now what?”
“Well I’m glad someone thinks it’s funny,” Nick shook his head at the titles. He glanced down the list but they were all variations of the same themes. With a shrug, he clicked on the second post that offered help.
“Oh, come on!” Nick whined when the page looked like another joke post.
“Are you the last person on Earth? Has an apocalypse ravaged humanity? Click here for help! Sharp Services will immediately dispatch someone to give you the help you need.”
Nick stared at the link for several seconds. Objectively, he had nothing to lose; but, his ego was hesitant to take the hit anyway. Even if no one ever saw proof that he clicked on it, every fiber in him was screaming, “Don’t be a sucker!” He stood from the heap of cloth and scrap that he half-shaped into a chair and paced around the small room. It was easy to pace around, Nick had been cleaning it when he found the computer. He organized the scraps into useable and unusable piles leaving plenty of room to walk.
“What’s gonna happen? Nothing, that’s what,” Nick said. “I’m going to click that link, then wait like an idiot for nothing to happen.” He completed another lap around the computer then looked down at the screen.
“Don’t be a moron,” he grumbled, sighed, then sat down again. “I don’t need dignity when I’m dead anyway.” He moved the mouse and clicked on the link. A message popped up.
“Thank you for turning to Sharp Development in your time of need. An agent will contact you shortly, please stay near the computer. “
“Yeah, right,” Nick chuckled. Then, a knock came from his door.
