I took Jane out of the city where we were staying, and headed for the open country. We ran and stumbled over the fields, with the roar of the planes above us. We hid in ditches. Jane was cut down by machine gun bullets in one raid. Perhaps she was fortunate. She missed the atom bombs the next week, and she missed the hydrogen bombs a week later.
I wasn't around when they dropped the H bomb. I was in central Canada, and heading for open country. But I heard the noise, I saw the smoke. They had bombed New York.
After that, everyone threw the biggest bombs they had, as fast as they could, at anything that might be called a target. Radioactive dust followed, and bacteria followed that. Gas was used, some stuff that hung close to the ground for days; only a good sized storm or two would blow it away.
At this time I was heading North. Most of the traffic was South, because there was a famine in the North. But I figured I'd rather take my chances with starvation than with the bacteria and dust. As it was, the germs almost got me. I was sick for a day. I wanted to die. If I'd had a gun I would have shot myself. But I lived, and the bacteria never touched me again.
I joined up with a few men below the Arctic Circle, but had to leave them. One of them fell sick a day after I joined, and another followed him. I figured I was a carrier, so I left in the night, still heading North.
They bombed the North, too, to make sure no one got the pitchblende. I ran through the woods; I hid in caves. At night I would look at the moon, and the little sprinkling of stars left across the sky.
After the fourth year I didn't see any more human beings. I didn't have time to look. All my day was spent filling my belly. It was a full-time job, just to gather grasses, and perhaps kill a rabbit with a stone. I became pretty handy with stones.
I didn't even know when the ten years were up.
To sum up, I don't suppose I'm the last man on earth. There must be others, hiding in caves in other parts of the world, waiting on islands, on mountaintops. You can check my story with them, if you can find them, but I think you'll find it pretty accurate.