""In 1997 Soviet bioweapon facility R-1 7 was looted by black marketeers."" ""The stolen biological agents were never recovered."" ""Today more than a dozen similar facilities remain abandoned across the former Soviet Union with their inventories of biological agents still in place."" ""SIBERIA"" "Give me your flashlight, quickly." "Now you won't be tempted to leave without me." "Don't worry." "We're under the contaminated areas." "Hurry." "Come on, hurry." "Wait out here." "Our Chechen friends will pay us a half million Euros for Pandora's box." "AI-Qaeda will pay me a full million." "The diseased call me the "devil."" "I am at war with that sub-human race who feed off the dead." "They tremble at the thought of me." "I've killed more of them than I can count." "To the diseased, I am the devil." "Who else but God is left to judge me?" "So before you condemn me for any crimes against humanity, just remember that you would not be reading this if I allowed the Diseased, that subhuman race, to inherit our world." "I'II start this book at the beginning so you understand everything." "It doesn't really matter how the world ended." "The "Doomsday bug" got loose and everyone started dying." "Have a seat." "AII right, rookie, you finally get your chance." "You're in." "I'm in?" "You're kidding me, right?" "No, no." "We're short." "Martinez is out, you're the only one I got left." "You're in." "You've got your shot." "Thank you!" "Thank you!" "You won't regret this!" "Yes!" "Don't get too fired up, we only got three games left and that's it." "You're a short timer." "Wait until you see me play." "lionel." "You brought a cell phone to the dugout?" "One second." "Uh, huh." "No, no, no, no." "I'm off the clock." "Get somebody else!" "No, I'm playing tonight!" "Listen, I've been waiting all year for this!" "Get somebody else." "What?" "Okay." "I'II be there in twenty minutes." "Bye." "Why did I answer that stupid thing!" "They said they were going to fire me if I didn't get back to work." "If I would have known that was the only baseball game that I would ever play, I would have quit my job." "I couId've been more than just a benchwarmer." "But I didn't know what was happening until it was too late." "Oh, come on!" "No one did." "Stupid traffic!" "I shouldn't have answered that stupid phone, man." "How stupid can you be, huh?" "But no..." "You had to answer that stupid phone." "You could have been playing tonight this could have been your night, you know that!" "I'm so stupid." "Damn hospital." "Everyone I ever knew is gone and now I'm alone." "But enough about that, you want to know who I am." "My name is lionel Verney and today is Armageddon." "My time is short so I'm leaving this brief record to any remaining human beings who still might exist somewhere in the world." "To you, I leave the history of the Iast man." "The emergency room is full, we canþt take these people." "You guys are stage one." "AII stage one over here." "Iþm sorry, sir." "You canþt go." "please wait over here." "Who are you with?" "You are stage two." "Let me see you, kid." "Ok, take this young man now." "Iþm sorry madam, you have to wait." "Iþm sorry, you have to wait." "AII stage one has to wait." "Someone please help her, please." "I worked at the hospital but I wasn't a doctor or an R.N. or anything." "I was a "C.N.A." That means I cleaned up after patients but I was certified because I handled a Iot of infectious human waste." "I know, too much information." "But that job paid the bills until I got my big break playing baseball." "please, Doctor!" "You're going to have to see an R.N." "I've been waiting six hours!" "Listen, I'm an orderly!" "I just clean stuff up, okay?" "Okay!" "It is a complete zoo out there." "They almost spilled my coffee like forty times!" "floor?" "So what's up?" "I see you didn't get out of here either, huh?" "No, they called me back and you know what?" "I was playing tonight." "So what's up?" "Not sure." "There was maybe ifty people in the clinic when I got in today." "Now there's almost three hundred." "What the hell is it?" "Beats me." "I've got a dozen calls out and all the nurses are screaming for answers." "Gosh, you have really pretty eyes, you know that?" "You're going to have to do a Iot better than that, Romeo." "It's your floor." "Hey, listen, umm..." "We're still on for tonight, huh?" "Getting involved with your co-workers is a risky thing for your career." "What career?" "I should be playing baseball!" "Hey!" "I though you were playing baseball tonight?" "What are you, kidding me?" "Give me that." "Hey Doc, that wasn't very funny." "Shut up and put a damn mask on, now!" "What the hell is up with the Doc?" "Keep an extra mask and gloves in your pockets, it's some kind of contagion." "Listen, I just talked to Eva right now and nobody knows..." "lionel, these patients are dying, fast." "It's something bad." "Don't scratch; don't touch your face;" "and don't put anything in your mouth until you're off the floor and scrubbed." "We don't even know if it's airborne, so put that mask on, now." "And get this patient prepped for the morgue." "Where is your mask?" "I got it right here." "The bedding, everything goes in with the body." "And don't worry about the paperwork, Admin is handling it all downstairs." "Okay." "Your gloves?" "I don't got any." "Where are your gloves?" "You don't have any gloves?" "Ugh." "pull your head out, will you?" "I need everyone functioning here." "I'm here." "One hundred percent, okay?" "No you're not." "Now get that deceased patient downstairs." "This is what I'm talking about!" "That's it, I'm out of here." "He doesn't bite!" "Hey, I've got another one here for you." "well there's no more room at the inn." "You know what, just leave them right there for now." "I though like only six people died." "Where did all these bodies come from?" "Six?" "." "You want to know where they come from?" "Pediatrics, eight years old." "And the E.R., and this one was just dropped off by the E.M.T.'s." "well, here's more paperwork." "Great." "I'm going to be here until Thursday." "In just three days, we were down to a skeleton crew with every bed in the hospital filled." "Everyone else ran away or was in one of those beds." "Everyone except the core staff." "I stayed too but not because I was all that dedicated," "I just didn't understand what the hell was going on yet." "Where's Chef?" "." "I don't know but we've got plenty of coffee." "I just want to go home, eat some ice cream and sleep for a week." "I think I've got ice cream at my place." "Hmm..." "chocolate?" "Yeah, I think so." "But if not, you could always put your clothes back on and go home." "No one gets me naked..." "...without a ring, pal." "That is so... so..." "Un-constitutionaI." "That's how I filter out the losers." "I see not everyone left." "Good." "A little Chicken Pox outbreak isn't going to make me run home crying." "It's Pox." "Whatever." "And it's not just small Pox - this strain isn't responding to conventional treatments." "Nothing works on it." "Wait." "I've been here for three days and you're telling me nothing works?" "I couId have been playing baseball!" "Just make the patients as comfortable as possible." "This is something new." "Pediatrics already lost three nurses to this so don't think we're not all at risk." "It may not be airborne but you can get it from any one you touch." "Understand?" "Back upstairs and on the clock in five?" "No." "What?" "You come into direct contact with all the dead bodies in the hospital." "I wear gloves, okay?" "What?" "Stupid Chicken Pox!" "You did this!" "Lady!" "Lady!" "Get off him!" "Everything's going to be okay!" "She, she must have just gone over..." "I didn't see that coming." "It looks like once fever cooks the brain, you can add violent dementia to the list of symptoms." "Cover her up." "Huh?" "She's dead." "Move!" "What happened here?" "We got word back tonight from C.D.C." "And?" "It looks like this bug has got a ninety-nine point nine percent mortality rate." "Ninety-nine point nine percent mortality rate?" "That can't be!" "I've got ten patients in the clinic that have lasted over forty-eight hours now." "I know they're wrong!" "And what about the guy down the hall that can still see, he's got" "the pox scars and everything." "Genetic luck of the draw." "That's all." "There might even be someone out there that's immune to this thing" "but it's going to be a one in a billion case." "You know what?" "I'm not a doctor or an R.N., I really do not need to be here, okay." "You can't hide from this." "Sooner or later, we're all going to get this." "It's just a matter of time." "I didn't stay at the hospital for humanitarian reasons," "I just wanted to be around Eva." "The whole world was dying from plague but she was still there helping people to the end." "Now, I know I fell in love with her during that time." "Eva was an angel in my eyes." "The only real hero I ever knew, well, besides Dr. Adrian." "I'm not just ideaIizing her, she really cared about people, people she didn't even know." "Once Dr. Adrian died, I was so out of there." "I knew there wasn't any hope at the hospital anymore." "But I stayed anyway, I stayed to be with Eva." "Doctor!" "Are you okay?" "No, I'm not okay!" "What's going on?" "The national Guard came and took all the bodies away - in garbage trucks!" "How disgraceful!" "Garbage trucks!" "The national Guard?" "Yes." "They're burning them outside of town, Iike garbage!" "well this is Doctor Adrian." "They're going to burn him like garbage too, believe me." "Put him outside with the others." "But it's Doctor Adrian!" "I said put him outside!" "halt!" "Do not move!" "No, no!" "I work here, I work here!" "Inside!" "Get back inside Back inside!" "As best as I can remember from the news, it was a biological weapon that the Soviets developed in the 1980's." "It was the "Doomsday Bug" with a sixty-six day incubation period so it spread to everyone, everywhere before anyone even knew it existed." "Everyone already had it, even the Jihadists who released it." "That's how the whole world ended in just three weeks, if it really matters to anyone." "It was obvious the hospital was history." "AII I wanted to do was take Eva with me and get far away from everything diseased." "Doctor Adrian is dead." "No..." "My whole family lives up in Phoenix." "I need you to come with me, Eva." "No." "It's too late." "I've got it." "I want you to come with me." "No!" "Don't touch me!" "I'm infected!" "But after I found out that Eva got it, everything fell apart." "I fell apart." "The end of the world got very real for me." "But I never told her how I felt." "I wish that she would have lived long enough so I couId have told her how much I Ioved her, so I didn't have to carry those feelings around with me to this day." "Eva!" "I never found out whatever happened to Eva after she disappeared." "I still have nightmares of running endlessly through the hospital looking for her but never finding her." "Doctor..." "Doctor..." "help me, help me..." "Doctor, listen..." "Who's there?" "It's lionel Verney." "Oh, lionel..." "Have you seen Eva?" "Maybe they took her to, to the pit." "I don't know for sure, I can't see!" "Is there any records or anything?" "Doctor..." "Doctor..." "Doctor..." "Adam?" "Listen, have you seen Eva?" "She's dead." "You're next..." "You're lying." "You're lying!" "Don't let him leave!" "He can see!" "He can see!" "Verney!" "Stop following me!" "The Diseased chased me for a few blocks before I lost them." "I thought I was going to die just like everybody else but I was immune." "I had no idea what happened to the outside world." "The hospital I was living in was like a cocoon." "You see, not all of the Diseased were blind." "I saw one that could still see." "He took down a group of three blind Diseased and cut one of them into pieces before he could even scream." "It's okay, it's okay." "I can help you." "I can see!" "help me!" "help me!" "Don't let the Butcher get me!" "please don't let the Butcher get me!" "Come on, which way?" "I helped one of the Diseased home before he got killed too, I was so stupid." "Thank you..." "Thank you..." "please, take me inside, take me inside." "He brought me to the storefront where he was living with a group of other Diseased who were all blind." "The keys are in my pocket." "Let me in, please let me inside!" "No way, I'm not going in there..." "I'm sorry." "He can see!" "Get him!" "Get him in there!" "Let me go!" "Damn it, you're infecting me!" "Get him!" "Eat him!" "Eat him!" "They cracked me over the head and dragged me into their filthy nest." "They were all cannibals." "They turned to feeding off the corpses of the ones who died from starvation after the food stopped coming into the city." "They must have finished off the cats and dogs first." "I haven't seen any roaming animals since then, not even rats or pigeons." "Take his pants and shoes so he can't get away." "Where is he!" "Where is he!" "Where is he!" "I'II kill him!" "No one touches him!" "He can see!" "Where is he!" "He can see?" "He can see..." "I didn't kill your brother." "Why would I bring him here?" "Who will be left if we continue to feed on one another?" "We need him." "Robert's flesh will spoil soon." "Then we will starve." "So tonight, you will take us to a supermarket." "If you refuse, you will be our only food." "AII right!" "AII right, I'II take you." "That's right you will!" "I'II take you right now." "They were sick and needed help but all I wanted to do was kill them." "I mean, I felt guilty for my lack of sensitivity but I felt nothing but revulsion for them." "It made me sick to even look at them, smell them or even listen to the phlegm rattle in their voices." "But deep inside, I knew there wasn't anything human left in them." "He's taking us to the burning place!" "Shut up!" "There's no smoke!" "He's taking us to the pit!" "He's taking us to the pit!" "It's a trap!" "It's a trap!" "Once the sun came up, the stink rose with the temperature." "The population of Tucson before the plague was about a million people." "I don't know how many corpses the national Guard carted out of town but it smelled like the most blasphemous stench that ever soiled my sinuses." "In the daylight, I saw how bad it was." "I don't know how many corpses were clustered beside any source of water." "Some fell over and sprayed their guts up right there on the spot, wherever they fell over." "Dying from the plague was a pretty gruesome way to go." "Pain all the way to the end." "The stench was so suffocating," "I ran back to the baseball stadium where I knew the air was still clean and smelled like fresh grass." "baseball season was over, permanently." "At least the terrorists who did this died the same gruesome death as the human race." "I thought I was the Iast living creature" "left alive in the whole city." "I don't know why but I was suddenly overcome with claustrophobia and had to leave that stadium." "And that's when Ray found me outside of the Tucson electric Park in my underwear," "standing there like some crazy person." "I didn't know it then but he thought" "I was diseased and just stopped to put me down with his 12 gage." "Excuse me, you haven't seen any women around here lately, have you?" "No, I'm serious." "No, I haven't." "What's your story?" "I thought I had the whole city to myself." "well, except for those roving gangs of crazies that come out at night." "Say, you're not crazy and messed up, are you?" "Oh, no." "well, that's good." "It's getting kind of late." "Are you going to be okay out here by yourself tonight?" "I didn't think so." "Get in." "I'm lionel." "I'm Ray." "actually, call me, "Titanicus"." "Ray, he taught me everything I know." "This is just crazy, isn't it?" "I was up in the sticks when all this went down." "But I figured, you know what, just make it back to civilization and everything will be all right." "well, I get back to town about a week ago and I'm like, whoa!" "total apocaIypso." "Where did everybody go?" "Where did everybody go?" "What, did you just get here?" "Funny story." "The other day, I'm walking down Forth Avenue, right?" "And they're everywhere." "And I see a group of them all over this poor guy." "I mean they're on him like he's a piece of sushi." "I start walking over and I feel this hand on my shoulder." "So I turn around and it's one of those "things", he could see me." "I mean he couldn't see as well as you or I do but he could see well enough to know that I wasn't infected." "So they got you?" "Huh?" "No!" "I pulled out my 45, put it to the bastard's head and blew his brains out all over the crowd." "And it was that moment I realized, I'm looking at this all wrong." "I need to see it as the glass haIf-fuII instead of haIf-empty." "You know what I mean" "Not really." "They're psychos, right?" "So I'm fighting fire "with fire" - it's "psychological" warfare." "...psychological warfare." "Is this where you live?" "No, we ran out of gas." "What do we do now?" "We go find another car." "This is like the forth car I've had this week." "I change cars like I change my underwear." "Come on." "Shut the door." "So this is your place?" "I thought that you'd get a Iarge estate up in the foothills." "I'm trying not to draw any more attention to myself than necessary." "So what's up with the shirt?" "You want to put some pants on?" "Got any extra clothes?" "follow me." "This is the downtown war room." "Don't touch anything, okay?" "I've got my own little "Feng Shui" thing going on in here, so I don't trip over stuff in the middle of the night." "Here are the clothes." "Take your pick." "It's all green." "Yeah, you're in a military surplus store." "I hate green." "It looks like he's going to need some new underwear too." "Got any shoes?" "Sorry, no shoes." "We've only got boots." "We've got lots and lots of boots." "Oh, crap." "Did you hear that?" "We're never going to get any sleep with that going on outside, are we?" "We own the day but they own the night." "Not exactly." "Wait, wait!" "You're not just going to go out there and start shooting people, are you?" "The moment these things first tasted human flesh, that's when they crossed the line and as far as I'm concerned, they've resigned from the human race." "They're not people anymore, Jack." "They're cannibaIistic, uh..." "Mutants." "Look at them!" "Stop it!" "Get your hands off me!" "They're just people." "They're sick" "and they need our help!" "Oh, stop it." "The twenty-first century's over, Jack." "So there's no one left to jerk off with political correctness." "This is year one and it's us against them." "And if we want to survive this thing, there's two things we really don't need right now." ""A" we don't need any Gays and holy crap, especially no Lesbians, they would be totally, umm, ...superfluous trying to re-popuIate a new world!" "I'm not done!" "And "C" we don't need any liberal stupidity trying to make us feel better about doing whatever it is we have to do to survive." "Yeah, yeah." "I know, I know." "So stop trying to make me feel guilty about blowing the heads off a few lousy mutants, all right!" "You know what your problem is?" "You're just not as "weII-adjusted" as I am." "We'II get you, devil!" "Ray!" "Ray, where are you?" "What the hell do you think you're doing!" "well, there is a little too much "yin- yang"" "in here right now and what we need is a little "zen"." "How many people have you killed?" "Forty-five caliber, 191 1 automatic." "Read that." "How many people have you killed!" "Here it is." "M-16 assault rifle." "Keep this on you at all times." "How many people have you killed!" "I don't know, forty-five, sixty." "I really wasn't keeping score." "Do you realize that they call you the "devil"?" "Yeah, it's part of that "psychological warfare" thing" "I was telling you about." "Why does this have to be about war, huh?" "Why can't we go out and help those people?" "Oh, here it is." "Sun Tzu." "The "Art of War"." "I expect you to read this one, cover to cover by the end of the day tomorrow." "Now, you're tired and I need some quality alone time." "He's a freaking nut-case." "And this..." "Is your new home." "sleep tight, Jack." "That crazy bastard." "So, you read Sun Tzu." "Any questions?" "Why did you hack up my hair!" "Just trying to dial down that" ""village people" look you got going on there." "Don't you ever, ever touch me again!" "Or what?" "You'II shave my legs?" "Don't make such a big deal about it, Jack." "My name is not Jack!" "It's lionel!" "lionel Verney!" "I'II tell you what, if we ever do run into any women, please let me do all the talking." "Is that what you're doing here?" "You're trying to pick up women!" "I know what I'm doing here, what are you doing here?" "Don't be such a neanderthal!" "actually, you're the neanderthal." "You know, a month ago, they would have medicated you." "But now, this world is a kook's paradise and I'm stuck in it with you!" "I'm no kook, Jack." "I'm earth's last, best and only hope." "And who are you, the mutant's best hope?" "You know what, I'm going back down." "History lesson, Jack." "We only became the dominant species because we made the neanderthal extinct but you don't feel too bad about that, do you?" "The exact same thing is happening right now, only you're dropping the ball on the entire human race." "Better get with the program, Jack, or you're going to be just as extinct as the neanderthals, buddy." "Ray and I really started to get on each other's nerves until things went to blows by the third day." "I was keeping track." "You were keeping track?" "Of what?" "How many shopping days left until Christmas?" "You know what?" "That is the Iast wise crack" "I'm going to take from a "Neo-Con" NeanderthaI!" "Or you'II do what?" "You stupid, liberal nut sack!" "You made me do that." "Nice shot." "You're such an idiot, you know that?" "Get up." "Get up!" "I can't." "Why?" "I..." "I don't know." "Your ribs?" "Uh, yeah." "Don't try anything stupid, do you understand?" "You're infected!" "So now you know..." "Why the hell didn't you tell me?" "Why do you think I brought you here?" "You're such an idiot." "We've only got a couple of days for me to teach you everything I know." "A couple of days?" "You have hours to live." "Are you sure about that?" "I've seen a hundred of these people." "I work in the medical field, I should know." "Get me my vodka." "I can't believe you." "Go get me my vodka." "I can't believe you." "And read the book, lionel!" "What?" "Swear to me you'II read the book!" "Yeah, whatever." "The next day, I buried Ray in the park under the shade of the palm trees." "Okay I'II read the book." "Now shut up!" "Once he knew he had the plague, he saved the human race the only way he had left." "I still miss him." "Ray stockpiIed everything but food." "After three days without eating," "I was so hungry, hungry enough to go look for anything I couId find." "The stores were all picked clean, so I started looking inside deserted apartments and buildings." "I found food but I almost didn't make it out of there alive." "Someone's here!" "They're stealing our food!" "only the municipal power grid was powered by the big nuclear power plant out in the desert." "Everything else was fed from the power plants in town." "The street lights still worked until the bulbs burned out." "But I was going to be living in the dark once the generator ran out of gas." "There were no more washing machines." "When I needed clean clothes, I just pulled something off the rack." "I smelled a little better but I still didn't have any food in my stomach." "I couldn't just lay there and starve when I knew there was food out there waiting for me." "The only thing standing between me and starvation were those Diseased people." "A Iot of them." "I beat myself up because I couId have taken Ray's gun with me." "I couId have been eating that night, if I knew how to use it." "Everyone is afraid of guns, even the Diseased, so I sat up all night, learning how to use that pistol." "You want to steal our food?" "Not all of it." "Anything but dog food." "Let me show you what we do to thieves." "Can you see this?" "We have guns too." "Drop it!" "Drop it!" "I will shoot you!" "Now you can eat them." "Don't try anything stupid." "We know who you are!" "We know where you live!" "Those diseased were mostly blind." "They had no chance against me." "The Diseased knew where" "I lived so they burned me out the very next day." "I knew they mistook me for Ray because someone painted "burn the devil" on my door." "Ray must have made a Iot of enemies." "I wandered the city looking for a car with keys still in the ignition." "I wanted to drive up to Phoenix where my parents lived to find out if they survived too." "If wasn't affected by the plague, maybe they weren't as well, if it was a matter of strong genes." "I also want to leave the stench of death hanging over Tucson behind me." "I followed the smoke rising in the distance to the pit where the national Guard were stationed." "If anyone was still alive, I thought it wouId be them." "But all I found were bodies, all dead from plague." "almost a million bodies were cremated in hundreds of garbage containers." "Just the month before," "I was sitting behind all of them in traffic, cursing at them for driving slow in the fast lane." "I didn't know what I would find up in Phoenix so I armed myself with a few grenades and an automatic rifle." "The body armor wasn't a bad idea either." "For all I knew, Phoenix was ten times more dangerous than Tucson." "I stayed off the interstate." "I thought it was probably jammed with cars and roadblocks, so I raced up the back roads." "half way up there, Phoenix was gone in a thermonuclear flash, along with my family." "Oh, my God." "My God." "My God." "Phoenix..." "The blast was so strong, even 50 miles or so away, it flipped my Hummer all the way over." "I wouldn't have survived if I was driving anything smaller." "The suspension was totalled and the engine quit working." "Phoenix was gone, so I had to make the Iong walk back to Tucson on foot." "I knew it wasn't a good idea to walk through nuclear fallout but neither was sitting in the Hummer breathing it in all day." "If my family wasn't already dead, I'm sure they were now." "Who the hell would do something like that?" "What the hell happened?" "It was a mystery." "I must have walked about ten miles before I passed through the aircraft graveyard where they stored all of the mothballed jets in the desert." "I wish I knew how to fly," "I couId have just climbed in and flown any one of them anywhere." "Maybe there were survivors just like me in Mexico or Canada?" "I had just seen a nuclear blast and lived, one of mankind's greatest scientific achievements and there I was walking under the shadows of the giants that could fly around the world as fast as a bullet and they just sit here, Iike dinosaurs." "I wondered if these jumbo jets would be just as impressive as the pyramids in a thousand years, now that mankind has been thrown back into the stone age." "A desert full of Dinosaurs." "Where there's a corpse, there were always car keys." "And sometimes, even a full tank of gas." "The dead didn't bother me anymore, it was the Diseased who weren't dead yet," "Iurking in every shadow, that bothered me." "It's amazing what you can get used to." "When I got back into the foothills," "I decided to stop and check out one of those big fancy houses that I always wondered about, just to see for myself how the other half lived." "I never left." "I made it my home, I claimed it." "This palace was my new home." "I wish Eva had been able to enjoy it with me." "I had to stop thinking about her, she's dead and crying over her wasn't going to bring her back." "I knew that." "They say, idle hands are the devil's workshop and there's something to that." "In just two weeks of living alone by myself," "I completely broke down." "I couldn't stop thinking about Eva." "Wasn't this everything she could possibly want out of Iife?" "Living here like this?" "This is so unfair that I would have everything I ever wanted, all that meant nothing to me all by myself, without her or anyone else to enjoy it with." "So I drank myself into oblivion to numb my despair." "I fell asleep drunk, woke up drunk, just to get drunk all over again before cycling through the same old thoughts that made me want to get drunk all over again." "After a while, I couldn't keep any food down." "I didn't care." "Everyone I ever knew was gone." "My whole world was gone." "I had nothing to live for and I just wanted to be with everyone else, on the other side." "Heaven. whatever that means." "Where ever everyone else went." "I couldn't stand being alone anymore." "I was going to check out like Ray." "I think sometimes you have to give up your old life before you can start a new life and I had to start all over," "leaving everything I once was behind." "That was the Iast day of lionel Verney." "Just like ray said, it's "us against them"" "like when we made the neanderthals extinct." "So I started reading Sun Tzu's "The Art Of War" every day until I knew how I was going to exterminate the Diseased so humanity could get a fresh start." "I went back to the pit and armed myself then I stashed those weapons in the trunks of cars strategically throughout the city." "Then I was prepared for a prolonged war, at times and places of my own choosing." "I still had to train myself to kill them without any hesitation, just like an exterminator spraying a nest of roaches." "I Iooked one right in the eyes the first night and I killed it." "That helped get me past thinking of them as people." "That first night of the war, I Ieft a clear message." "I let them know that the devil was back in town." "After that, they began to hide." "And I knew they were afraid." "The diseased who could still see went out at night, scurrying in the shadows like rats, too terrified to go out during the day because of the "devil"." "I sniped at them from rooftops, in the alleys they once thought were safe." "I blew off so many heads that I became very bold, and stupid." "One night, they baited me and almost got me." "They lured me into a trap and I had to fight for my Iife." "It's a good thing they're in such bad physical shape or I'd be dead by now." "I read Sun Tzu twice but I still didn't understand it all." "Back then, I couldn't help but see the diseased as people sometimes, even if they weren't really people anymore." "They'd kill me if they had the chance, so don't feel sorry for any of them." "They're all diseased, psychotic cannibaIs." "But I didn't know if I couId kill the very young ones then, until one night, I saw them eating a corpse's organs" "like it was "Night Of The Living Dead"." "Shooting it was the most merciful thing" "I couId do for them." "I know that sounds really twisted but it was merciful." "believe me." "I must have killed at Ieast 100 of those things in the first few months." "Back then, I thought I killed them all off because I rarely saw them out in the open anymore." "But the corpses kept disappearing, so I knew that they weren't all dead." "After they ate all the cats and dogs, they cannibaIized the blind, the weak and the frail." "Not all of the Diseased were blind and crippled." "The best fed ones were almost healthy, not Iike me but still healthy enough to be dangerous." "I took back all the high places from the Diseased." "But I never found any of them above the second floor of any building." "It must have been too painful for them to climb many stairs." "Anything above the third floor in any building would make a safe place to hide if I ever found myself out-numbered or cornered." "By the end of the first year," "I lost count of how many of those things I killed." "I thought I was invincible and I got careless exterminating so many every week." "What I didn't count on was the ratio changing." "I mean, once the blind and weak ones were all gone, all that were left were the strong ones who could still see, to some degree." "It was a Iot more dangerous than I realized." "I found out that they were now hunting me down." "That took me completely by surprise." "I made so many stupid mistakes all at once, it's a miracle I'm still alive." "If the diseased were hunting for me," "I couId use that against them somehow." "Sun tzu said," ""To secure ourselves against defeat lies in our own hands, but the opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself."" "and I would give them that opportunity." "He hides behind locked doors." "He's up there, in the light." "I began setting traps for them because I knew if I couId kill off their strongest, their numbers wouldn't mean a thing." "Sun Tzu said, "A general is skillful in attack when his opponent does not know what to defend;" "and he is skillful in defense when his opponent does not know what to attack"." "I doubt the leader of the Diseased ever read Sun Tzu but who is leading them?" "I stopped mourning Eva around this time because I became too consumed with planning my attacks to think about her anymore." "It was a welcome relief to feel..." "Nothing." "I went back to the pit where the gasoline trucks they used to burn the bodies were parked." "Sun Tzu said," ""When the force of the flames have reached its height, follow it up with a swift attack on your enemy"." "If I couldn't find out where they were hiding," "I would have to destroy every dark place in the city they might use to hide and begin a fire storm that spread throughout the warehouse district." "The warehouses had basements;" "the Diseased preferred those old buildings because they were easier to defend than a business or a residential building." "But I knew they were all fire traps." "I used that to my advantage." "Sun Tzu said," "" If your enemy is taking his ease, give him no rest;" "if his forces are united, separate them;" "attack him where he is unprepared;" "appear where you are not expected." "In almost two years of war," "I thought I had killed off at Ieast a thousand of the Diseased." "I should have kept a body count because there were still some out there I didn't know about until I stumbled right into them." "When I found them like that, I'd kill them deader than hell." "You're not stealing our food!" "I don't want your food." "Take our food!" "Take our food!" "Stop shooting!" "Stop shooting!" "If there were any Diseased left," "I thought they can't be much more than a handful but something went wrong." "They started taking pot-shots at me." "It wasn't just one sniper but it wasn't a coordinated attack either." "It's a good thing their vision isn't what it used to be or I'd be dead right now." "I couldn't let them get any more organized than they already were." "They only needed to get lucky once." "I didn't know how they got those machineguns," "I didn't leave any behind at the Pit." "Burn!" "AII of you burn!" "So I burned and kept burning every place in the city they could possibly hide but they are still out there." "only the most cunning and strongest of them are left." "I hope it's only a few of them." "My luck may not hold out any longer than my ammunition." "The Diseased have discovered my weapons stockpiled around the city." "They're now using my own weapons against me." "I'm down to only a few weapons, everything else is gone." "Tonight, I either win this war or I lose it." "I know that someone has to have organized them." "I first have to identify their leadership then destroy them." "That is my plan." "Wipe out the leadership then mop up the few that remain." "There can't be that many left, probably no more than a dozen of their strongest." "I know that God has spared me alone for this holy purpose." "I may be the devil to the Diseased but to the human race," "I am the divine instrument of deliverance." "AII the odds are against me but I am not afraid." "I know that this has always been my purpose." "I will go down from this mountain and destroy my enemies." "But first, I will pray to my God for the strength and the courage to do this great and terrible thing." "I am just one man but while the Diseased labor to move and strain to see," "I will strike down at them, Iike lightning, with the fury of the archangel." "Who are you?" "I'm the devil." "Who's your boss!" "The Butcher!" "well you tell the "Butcher" that I'm coming for him tonight and there's nothing he can do about it." "Do you understand?" "Now get out here!" "Now!" "I don't know what will happen from this point on." "So I am leaving this last page blank but I will later record my victory against the Diseased." "But if this last page is never written and no one ever reads these words, then you ghosts of humanity will know that" "I lost the battle to save the human race and this journal is the obituary of our kind." "What are you doing in here!" "The "devil" is coming to kill you!" "Anyone who stays here will die!" "So you led him right to me!" "Get out of here before I kill you!" "And leave the "devil" to me." "I also pray that I will not be, The Last Man." "You were caught in the act of cannibalism." "You understand why the penalty is so severe, don't you?" "Your rules mean nothing without food!" "Your clan is mine, witch." "Your "civilization" is over." "Everything that was yours is now mine." "Where's the Butcher." "Where's the Butcher." "I can't hear you, I can't hear you!" "I'm not going to ask you again." "This is your last chance." "Where is the Butcher!" "Where is the Butcher?" "The Butcher!" "Thank you." "Oh, ho, ho." "Come closer..." "Over here, devil..." "No, don't shoot!" "Don't shoot!" "please!" "Eva!" "No." "Stay back." "No, no, no don't." "Eva, is it really you?" "Leave me alone!" "No, Come with me." "Come with me, Eva!" "No!" "Eva, Come on!" "Come on, Eva, Iet's go now!" "No!" "No!" "No, Iet go of me!" "Eva!" "Come on!" "Let go, please!" "Come on!" "please leave me alone!" "Let go of me!" "hold tight, baby." "I'II get you out of here." "I can't believe it's you Eva." "Are you hurt?" "Did you get hit?" "It's me, lionel." "So you're the "devil"." "lionel Verney, the nightmare pIaguing my people." "No." "I'm still lionel, the Iast "human being" at large." "Don't you know what you've become?" "You're a monster." "I do what I have to do, to eat and stay alive." "The right for humanity to survive." "I wish that you survived  I have survived." "I've been reborn." "Reborn?" "Have you looked at yourself in the mirror lately?" "I led over a thousand of my people before the Butcher took them from me." "This is who I am and who I will be again." "How many have you killed to steal their food!" "I don't keep count." "well I keep count." "And you killed four hundred and sixty-six of my people." "You're the evil one." "Not us." "Your "people" are nothing but diseased cannibaIs." "They deserve to die." "You're lucky I didn't kill you." "You came to kill the Butcher and you had him, but you let him go." "Why?" "Because finding you was more important." "You threw off my plan." "I can deliver him directly into your hands." "Now, why would you do something like that?" "What's in it for you?" "The scars the plague left weren't only on the skin but on the brains and organs of many." "Insanity, impotent men, barren women." "The Butcher is a cannibal and that's why he must die." "And that's why I want you to kill him." "But that's what you want too, isn't it, lionel?" "You, and me, together, we can lead them but you must stop killing my people." "Can't we find a way to live together?" "It can be ours, you and me." "If we could just stop the pain and misery." "I'm sorry but this is necessary." "You'II get your chance to kill the Butcher." "I promise you that!" "Step aside." "lionel, can you hear me?" "Do you want to live through this?" "Then first there is something you need to do if you want my help." "Yeah." "Just give me a minute." "Listen very carefully." "You have to kill the Butcher in front of the whole clan." "He's out on the balcony." "Do you understand me?" "You're going to get me out of here right now." "You wouldn't make it past the guard without my help." "What do you want from me, Eva?" "only three of our women remain fertile." "But I'm not one of them." "The plague left all of our men sterile." "AII the men, except you, lionel." "How do you know?" "I couId tell, You reacted..." "That's why I brought you here." "You're the only successful mutant I've seen, maybe the only scar-free mutant in the world You're wrong." "I'm not a mutant!" "...You haven't been exactly human, for a while now." "You weren't immune, you're just a successful mutant." "One in a billion." "You're a genetic wonder." "And now you have the chance to save what's left of the human race with your undamaged genes." "You can become the father The father of what?" "Freaks?" "I don't think so." "You, lionel, are the one in a billion case that Dr. Adrian talked about." "There's no war left to fight, my dear friend." "The killing stops tonight, after the Butcher is gone." "The cannibalism ends and we can raise a healthy, unscarred generation." "Outside, those three women are waiting." "tell me I can send them in to you and then you can kill Victor and be the patriarch that butcher could never be." "With three mutants?" "No." "hell no!" "It's not just your life in the balance, it's all of humanity." "You need to do this to save mankind." "On your decision, we all live or die." "After you've fertilized the women," "I will take you up to the balcony and you will kill the Butcher." "Don't be afraid." "You are blessed to be the matriarchs of our people." "No!" "I saw him." "He's going down sixth street but he was a little too fast for me." "He's heading north on sixth." "Do you hear me?" "North on sixth." "Shut the hell up, I'm not blind!" "I'II find the devil and kill him!" "Do you know who I am?" "Then move." "You hear that?" "Hurry up!" "I know." "We only got one shot at this." "I can see them coming, hurry!" "They're coming, hurry!" "They're behind you, run!" "Get in the plane, get in the plane!" "Who are you!" "Who are you?" "talk!" "talk!" "What are you doing here?" "Where did you come from?" "What are you doing here?" "Say something!" "That's a nuclear bomb, isn't it!" "hell yeah, it's doomsday!" "No!" "Don't touch him!" "Here's your one in a billion female, lionel." "And she came to kill us all." "She's just like you, a monster, a creature of contempt!" "Can you fly this thing?" "Let's go!" "Come on, Eva!" "Eva, come now!" "Eva!" "Go!" "Now!" "Eva!" "Eva..." "You were more human than I ever was." "I am a monster." "Five minutes to blast!" "Get up here!" "Don't touch that!" "Don't touch anything!" "We don't have time to climb, hang on!" "I've never been this close to a blast before!" "Are we landing?" "No, we're crashing!" "pull up!" "Go left!" "No, I mean right!" "Oh, no!" "No!" "Wait until the fallout settles." "How long is that going to take?" "Six, twelve weeks?" "Do we have any food or water?" "No." "Are there any other survivors?" "No." "Just you and me." "We didn't think we'd find another immune case like us." "Like you." "What do you mean, you're "immune"?" "I was never infected." "I'm not a Scab." "I'm completely human We both have it, lady." "You're infected, aren't you?" "Everybody has it, including you." "It's just that some of us survived it a little better than others, that's all." "Six weeks?" "We're not going to survive six weeks." "No way." "We're going to die." "We have to leave." "Scab!" "Don't touch me, you're infected!" "It's just you and me, disease or no disease..." "But it really doesn't matter, does it?" "Your genes are corrupt!" "You've degenerated into something subhuman!" "Listen!" "Listen to me," "I thought I was immune too but we both have it." "Don't you understand?" "Stop it!" "Listen, don't you understand?" "We are what we hate." "It turned us into genocidal maniacs." "We might be the Iast two people in this world." "This has got to end now!" "No!" "We took out L.A., San Francisco, Phoenix, we killed millions of Scabs so that you wouldn't inherit the world!" "Let humanity die off with dignity." "Get out!" "Get out!" "Ray!" "You were wrong!" "It was never "us against them"." "We seIf-destructed!" "What did you think?" "We were going to make little Scab babies together?" "At least I know what I am, I'm still human!" "You don't even know what you are!" "You're wrong." "I'm a man!" "Eva was right." "That woman in the plane is exactly like me, normal looking on the outside but diseased on the inside another bIood-thirsty monster." "I believed that I alone was spared to carry out this divine purpose, saving mankind by killing hundreds of people in the name of God" "but I was just committing genocide all along." "I'm not the hero I was so sure I was." "A hero would have sacrificed their own life to save the lives of other people." "That was Eva, not me." "I answered my own prayers with self- delusion and my own hatred for those people that deceived me into believing that God wanted me to kill them all." "Yes, I won the war, humanity is finished, it's extinct!" "But it was really the devil's jihad, just like every other genocide in history." "The Diseased were different from me, so I slaughtered them, but they were still people." "I systematically killed those people like I was exterminating bugs, but they were still people." "Anyone who wasn't like me, I killed in the name of God." "But God had nothing to do with me killing hundreds of people in his name." "God had nothing to do with me killing those last three women and sealing the doom of the human race." "Now I know how bad my mind has been diseased." "Now I know that I was the monster all along," "I wasn't humanity's salvation I was its damnation." "I am the Destroyer of mankind."