The Last Day On Earth (Book 1 of The Galaxy Series)

Chapter 1

I have heard the curious stories of a place called home.

Supposedly this is a place of safety, security, love, and happiness. Things that my generation has never experienced.

I did, however, grow up in a place once called Indianapolis, and I only know this because of the old, rusted green signs stating what that city used to be called that were used as material to make houses liveable. The huge, worn-out printed papers that held images of people in uniforms and carrying thick wooden sticks were still hanging on the side of the Assignment Station the last time I was there.

The few elders I knew in my childhood said the place was once called a stadium, but I still do not know what that means. I still hope that I will figure it out one day.

Truth be told, I could go on and on about the place I grew up. I could go on endlessly about the cramped living arrangements of the house I lived in, the way the sun would hit the Tower and blind us as we worked ourselves into exhaustion, the feeling of desolation we all felt every day despite being surrounded by each other and the Wasps, and more still. But there would be no point as I am no longer in Indianapolis.

Looking ahead of where I was walking down an old highway, I could see another Tower gleaming in the early morning light. I had finally made it to another old city; a smaller one, to be sure, but a city nonetheless.

A sign with new paint on it said "Welcome to Bloomington". It baffled me that someone would bother making a new sign for a city at a time like this, but I decided not to worry about it. It wasn't really my problem, after all. I just hoped there were a few humans left here that could point me in the right direction toward another old city - Evansville. That was where a group of humans were using the left behind technology of the Wasps to build one of many spaceports around the globe in order to leave the planet before the Wasps either came back or something worse happened.

As one of many who grew up during the Wasps' occupation of Earth, I can't imagine anything worse. Of course, granted, I can't imagine anything much better than the day we woke up and they were just gone. It was a joy the few remaining elders finally experienced as the first generation born into the occupation, and a confusion that all generations after were left with. We didn't know what to do with freedom and many of us in my age group just...sat there, for days, waiting for the Wasps to return and give us orders. Tell us what we were supposed to build for them, who we were going to mate with, and when we were going to die.

Luckily the smartest of humanity were left alive as well, using their skills as the engineers, architects, and scientists of the Wasps to promise to build ships for all humans to escape the planet on. So many jumped at the opportunity to leave, and many have already left seeking a new world.

I am one of the few who remain, desperate to make the last flights off of Earth.

A woman looked over at me as I entered a large building with a sign that read "open beds". "Hello, need a bed?" She opened a ledger book that looked similar to one that I had seen the Wasps use when they took down my name at the Assignment Building only days before they vanished.

"Yes," I told her, "but just for a few hours."

"Okay sweetie." She wrote something down in the same symbols as the Wasp language. Not surprising as most of us couldn't read or write our own language until recently. Hell, it was a miracle we could speak it. "Name?"

"Tiffany Belmonte."

"Age?"

What a weird question, but I guess she just wanted to make sure I wasn't too young to be out on my own. "Twenty-six."

"Alright. I'm making breakfast here soon if you want to wait, or you can go up there now and be back for lunch." She closed the ledger. "Either way, you need to wash up. You look like you've been playing in clay."

"I, uh," this was a bit embarrassing to admit, "I slipped in a creek a few hours ago."

The woman sighed and handed me a key. What? "I'll show you to your room, then the washroom."

My room? Surely she meant the room I was sharing with several people. Or maybe there wasn't enough people here for us to need to share a room. That would be a change. I just followed her in silence until I unlocked the door and saw only one bed and a single candle on a desk. "What? Only... Only one bed?"

She smiled and watched me set down my bag. "Yeah. My friend found an old book about how to run a place called a 'hotel', and we figured since humans had been forced to share small spaces for so long, that maybe we could provide enough relief and space for our guests to have time to themselves."

Oh! I didn't want to tell her that I was getting more than enough time to myself traveling, so I just thanked her and followed her to the washroom.

It wasn't anything extraordinary, just a large handmade wooden tub over some smoldering coals. The same kind of bath I had been using since I was a child. I climbed in and proceeded to scrub and peel off the limestone clay stuck to my skin until what remained was as red as could be. I scrubbed off my clothes too, laying them flat to dry as my long brown hair did the same.

As I waited, my mind wandered back to the days before the Wasps vanished, as it often did. Despite the change for the better, I sometimes missed the days when I lived to serve them. I knew what life was going to be, day in and day out. I was supposed to have been assigned a mate and tasked with having a child with him, something many of us actually looked forward to. Even the smallest feelings of companionship with a specific person were more than welcome.

What was I going to do now? My promised companion was probably far away or dead, the few people I considered friends were gone, and I was alone for the first time in my life. No one to tell me what to do or where to go. I had no sense of direction, nor any idea who I was supposed to be as a free woman.

I guess all I could do was continue forward and hope I gained purpose on a new planet, with a group of new people. Hopefully, I could.

Finally, when my clothes and hair were mostly dry, I reclothed and made my way back to my room.

I stopped before I entered, though, smelling something good coming from downstairs. Probably the breakfast that the nice woman said she was going to be preparing.

My stomach grumbled as I just decided to make my way back downstairs to eat.

I only needed a few hours of sleep to keep going and I had plenty of time to make it to Evansville before the final ship took off into the sky. I could eat.