30 Days After Humanity

Day 1

"The loneliest moment in someone's life is when they are watching their whole world fall apart, and all they can do is stare blankly." ― F. Scott Fitzgerald

7:00 am

My iPhone's alarm chimes for the 3rd time. I reluctantly drag myself out of a peaceful slumber and my warm bed. Strangely, my mother has yet to yell at me for not turning off my alarm. I quickly shut it off and get dressed. I stretch and yawn into the first pink rays of light. Even weirder, I hear no water sounds coming from the shower. My father is not taking his daily morning shower. Shoot. Is something going on? I shuffle into my parents' room. There is no one there. What is going on? Are they out for some emergency? I pull out my phone and call them, belatedly noticing that their phones are still on their bedside tables. I check the garage and driveway through a window. Both our cars are still there. this is getting weirder by the minute. Their shoes are there, and the burglar alarm is undisturbed. How did they leave the house? This was impossible. Why have they disappeared?

7:30 am

The initial shock of losing everyone has hit me. Albeit, I'm known for being calm and calculated at the most stressful times. I'll need to eat to survive, so I heat up some milk and have breakfast with oatmeal cookies. While eating I open my laptop to check emails. What I see shocks me. My desktop wallpaper has been changed. Apparently Windows has a sort of extinction-level event alert system integrated. It is displaying a short message that overnight, billions of people worldwide had disappeared survivors were to report in to their respective government via a webform. I filled out the short form and was quickly replied to from the Canadian government with a quick email saying that I should report to the nearest city within 24 hours, that martial law had been declared worldwide, though there were apparently hardly any countries with a military to enforce it. The email also mentioned that public transit was now nonexistent, so I was to drive to the city center in Toronto with whoever was still left in my neighborhood and meet in the Rogers Center, a big dome, where we would receive further instructions. A quick Google search resulted in only 400 people left in my city. There were only 6000 people confirmed alive in the greater Toronto area, though a further 400 might show up in the next day or so. Yikes.I make quick calls to everyone on my contacts list. No one picks up. This one-in-one-thousand thing is really getting to me.

8:00 am

I prepare to head out into a cold winter morning. I dress warmly, grab my phone and keys, and our truck's keys. I warm the truck up, and take it down my desolated street. This is so weird. As I get onto a main road, I see the carnage ensuing last night's drivers who disappeared while on the road. There were fires burning everywhere. I see one vehicle slowly rolling down the road with no driver. The usual Monday morning traffic has been replaced with quiet streets with no soul in sight. I stop by my local gas station and top up my tank to the brim. I fill up two-gallon tanks with additional gas. You never know when gas will start running out. I go into the adjacent supermarket and grab as much pre-made food as I can. Not like anyone would care. It was all going to waste anyways. I make several trips to fill up the back of my truck, and set off down the secluded highway heading downtown.

9:00 am

Even though the highway has burning and crushed vehicles strewn along the shoulders, traffic is non-existent until I near downtown Toronto. The usual morning rush-hour traffic has been replaced with an eerie silence. I finally witnessed firsthand the isolation and desolation of a world with a drastically reduced human population. I pass by a driver erratically swerving all over the place. Looks like there were still certain idiots left in the world. I pass an inconsolable mother, heaving wracking  sobs on the side of the road, her babies presumably gone. As I near the Rogers Center, I start to see more traffic. Downtown Toronto shocks me, with the lack of people and burning wrecks of cars along the sides of the highway. What has become of my world? I set the hands-free in-car phone system to call every number it can find in my phone. Time and time again, I get this message: "The voicemail service you have customer you are calling is not available at this time. If you reach the customer at a later date,  get them to enable their voicemail, and initialize their mailbox. Thank you." Damn, why do none of my friends have voicemail?