Snowbound: Short Story

By James Loscombe

The last man on Earth has company

He has been alone since she died. Since they all died. He wants to believe that there are other people out there, but the evidence suggests that isn't the case. He comes to accept that he is the only one left, until the morning when he wakes up to find that it has snowed and there are footprints beneath his window. He follows them in the hope of finally finding other people like him, but the longer the chase goes on, the more he questions what he is seeing and his own sanity.

Snowbound is a story of survival and regret set after a devastating apocalypse.

• Language: English
• Publisher: James Loscombe
• Release date: Jan 16, 2019
• ISBN: 9781386615293

James Loscombe

James Loscombe has been publishing under various pen names for the last five years. He lives in England with his wife Tamzin and their sons Jude and Oscar.

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I wake with a start. Her dark eyes and pale face are so fresh in my mind that she seems to float above me; the phantom of a girl who I could not save. I am breathing heavily and sweat has stuck the white sheets to my naked body. More and more, recently, I have woken from this same nightmare. The relief that it is over is tempered by the return of my memory and the realisation that I am still the last man on Earth.

I lay on my back staring up at the white ceiling and wait until my breathing returns to normal. I begin to shiver in the cool morning air. I roll onto my side and sit on the edge of the bed facing the window. The flimsy yellow curtain lets most of the light through. The faux-wood floor is cold on my bare feet and I fumble around for the shoes I left there last night.

With my shoes on I stand and walk to the window. The room seems brighter than usual, it is either a particularly sunny day or I’ve slept later than normal. I have not been good at keeping track of the time or date lately. With no one else around it is only important that I know when the sun is going to set, so that I can be back in my cave before dark.

I pull open the curtains and close my eyes to shield them from the brightness. I feel as if I have been caught in a spotlight and am suddenly aware that I am naked.

The last few weeks have been cold, often bitterly so. On more than one occasion I have been out gathering food and had to stop to find extra clothes. I’ve been running the heating all day and have been considering gathering wood and trying to light the fire.

Now, as out the window, I see a crisp white sky and, more than that, the ground is also crisp and white. At a certain distance it becomes difficult to tell where one becomes the other.

It is no longer snowing but it has been.

I lean against the window frame and stare at the changed world. The houses appear to be made out of icing and dusted with confectioner’s sugar. The field opposite my window is invisible beneath several feet of snow. If it wasn’t for the fence separating them, it would be impossible to tell where the field ends and the road begins.

As I stand at the window, feeling the cold seeping through the glass, I struggle to take it all in. It seems impossible that all this has happened while I slept. It is not until I