There is nowhere to run. No one could escape it. The end times have come for them all and no one who has ever lived could have saved them now.
A young woman raises her heavy head up to the sky with dull eyes and examines the world above her. Pollution from the Neon-Waters War has burned away the entire atmosphere. Now the universe lays naked for all of mankind to witness.
She accepted the fate of the world many years ago, when the glowing blue screens in every home notoriously warned them of this day. She had eaten up every word that dropped from the reporter's lips. Yet still, knowing that today has finally come, she can't help but think it all feels so surreal. As if she were sitting on her cozy sofa watching a copy of herself live out an alternate reality.
Instead she is sitting alone on this degrading rock that will no longer be called "Earth". Not a single soul remembers her face. There is no heart beating of rhythm in mourning of her. She laughs at the thought that there could be someone on the other side of the world thinking identically, but could it also be that she's the last one? She will never know. She has lost count of the days she last saw a living person.
Anyone with access to a bunker or basement retreated there and anyone who had affiliates with NASA attempted to catch a ride with them to the Mars colonies. A news van in her city was able to stay on air a while after society began to crumble in the initial panic. She saw people get burned to ashes as they desperately tried to break their way into a rocket, some small groups charged their way into the facilities demanding to be taken up next. The van didn't last long after that, the last footage it ever caught was the mawling of its small crew as people took to scavenging and plundering anything they could.
Before long, the oxygen began burning up as the atmosphere continued to decay. People began dropping off like flies. Entire cities seemed to suffocate at once.
The little woman has only survived so long due to the oxygen tank she found in a nearly destroyed laboratory; it was only half full to begin with leaving her with only hours left of life. And in these last hours she's decided on a single thing, she has but one wish before she says farewell.
She wants to hear her voice one last time before she's gone. Before the ultimate destruction of the world. Even if it's odd and raspy, even if she stutters or croaks, she needs to hear it.
She hasn't heard her own voice, or anyone's, in days. Talking to herself would waste the little bit of oxygen she has left and as is human nature, she is stubborn to keep delaying the inevitable. She's forgotten her voice and she thinks she may not remember how to speak, but that is but little whispers in her head violently attempting to drive her mad. She knows she can still talk if she so wished but she doubts it nonetheless.
She's exhausted now, and weak as a twig off a dead tree. She is unable to move from her spot in the swirling dirt of an old city she can no longer recognize.
It has been a hell of a life, quite a short one too. Who knew she would only be twenty years and already courting death.
Her chest begins to ache and burn, she can see the galaxy exposing itself above her. It's almost majestic in a hellish sort of way. She struggles to pull the last of the oxygen from the tank.
The burning ground is becoming unbearable. Her blazing skin exacerbates her parched throat.
If she is to speak then now is the time. But what is there to say and of what worth would it really be if she couldn't hear it through the pain that would certainly come with it?
Her vision steadily goes black as the world closes in on her and her mind fades into emptiness. The immaculate silence overwhelms her.
The last breath of mankind rises toward the stars, damned to forever roam the cosmos. Blessed to be reborn in some distant galaxy.
Prey our race does not commit the same atrocities lest we be condemned to this fate endlessly.