Last Town of the Living: In a Future World, the Final Humans Are Trapped in a Walled Village, Besieged on All Sides by the Zombies Humanity Became

Not so long ago—back when news still updated every hour and traffic still piled up at red lights—there was a man named Mel.

Mel was not old, but his heart was worn-out. People say if you had seen him before the world fell apart, you’d have thought he was ordinary: he went to work, drove his car, watched TV, and came home to a small apartment and a cat.

But long before the virus and the monsters, there was another wound in his life.

I. The Wife and the Truck

Mel loved his sister’s little girl, his niece. His older sister, Bellan, was kind and generous. Whenever he had free time, Mel took his wife to visit them. He played with the child, tucked her in, then he and his wife slipped quietly back into the night.

One evening, after kissing his niece goodnight, Mel and his wife got into their car to go home. The streetlights glowed dull yellow, the engine hummed, but the air in the car was heavy. His wife was quiet—too quiet.

Mel kept asking what was wrong. Finally, she said it.

“I want a child.”

She explained that every time she saw Mel holding his niece, something in her ached. She wanted a child of their own. The words hit Mel like a sudden slap across his carefully ordered life. He wanted children too—but not yet. He told her they needed to be more stable first, get money, secure their future.

Their voices rose. Small fears mixed with old frustrations. They argued.

In the middle of it, his wife’s hands slipped on the steering wheel. The car swerved into another lane, almost crashing into another vehicle. Mel grabbed the wheel, twisting it. Tires screeched. The car spun.

It skidded, turned, then came to a stop.

They sat there, breathing hard, shaking. Alive.

They barely had enough time to feel relief, to glance at each other with wide eyes, when, in the distance, a truck’s headlights flared.

The truck did not stop in time.

Metal screamed. Glass shattered. The world went white and then black.

People say that under the flashing ambulance lights, amid blood and gasoline, fate took from Mel the thing he had not yet learned to cherish: the wife who wanted to give him a home filled with a child’s laughter.

A year later, Mel lived alone.

Alone with a cat.

II. The Virus and the Invitation

By then, the world had started to cough. Not the usual flu cough—this was something else. On TV, red banners screamed: “New Virus Spreading,” “Unknown Variant,” “Avoid Contact.”

Scientists called it a strange pathogen. The first variant didn’t kill quickly; instead, it twisted people’s minds. Infected people became aggressive, violent, like an invisible switch had flipped and let something savage out. Their eyes went dull, their words broke apart, their acts made no sense.

Experts debated. Politicians hesitated. But ordinary people understood one thing: staying indoors was safer than stepping outside.

Mel watched the news, but barely listened. After the crash, death had already moved into his living room; no virus needed to knock.

He still drove aimlessly, wandering through places he used to visit with his wife: old streets, familiar cafés, the riverbank where she had once bought a small boat and then never used it.

One day, he decided to sell the boat. Objects of a life that no longer existed.

He took a buyer to the river, showed him the boat, signed a few papers. That was that.

On the way back, he stopped at the supermarket.

Inside was chaos: people grabbing everything—rice, canned food, water, medicine—shoving items into carts until they overflowed. Rumor said the government would soon lock everything down.

Mel stood in the middle of the frenzy and only picked a few things—enough for a few days. For someone who had already lost everything, the urgency wasn’t as sharp.

That night, he video-called his sister.

The screen lit up with Bellan’s face and his niece’s bright smile. In a world unraveling, that little rectangle of light was a piece of heaven. Mel’s heart warmed for the first time in a long while.

Bellan told him her husband—a soldier—had received orders to move to a distant island. They said the island lay outside the infection zones. The army was building bunkers there, stocked with clean water, farmland, food, and medical resources.

“You have to come with us,” she said. “We’re family. It’s too dangerous for you alone.”

Mel refused.

He said he was used to his home, the ghost of his wife in every corner. But Bellan knew her brother too well. She pressed harder, reminding him that besides her and her daughter, he had no one. She talked about dinners together, about raising his niece in a place untouched by the virus.

Finally, Mel nodded.

Bellan sent flight details, directions, times. All he had to do was get to the airport, board the plane, and let the military handle the rest.

None of them knew that night would be the last time the world still worked properly.

III. Second Variant

The next morning, Mel drove toward the airport, radio on. The newscaster’s voice was no longer merely worried. It was afraid.

The virus had evolved.

The second variant didn’t just cause aggression—it turned people into something close to predators. They bit. They tore. The infection spread through blood and wounds, multiplying unchecked.

The government’s message narrowed to one line: “Stay at home.”

Mel arrived at the airport.

He wasn’t the only one who thought escape lay in the sky. Hundreds, maybe thousands, stood in lines, dragging suitcases, carrying children, clinging to hope that a plane would carry them away from the invisible enemy.

Then the loudspeakers crackled.

All flights canceled.

Airport closed.

No country was willing to risk outsiders bringing the second variant. The skies shut like a trap.

Within minutes, order dissolved. People screamed, pushed, banged on counters; despair erupted into chaos.

Mel’s phone rang.

“Go home,” Bellan told him. “They’ve closed it. Home is safest now. Just lock up and stay inside.”

He agreed.

He turned his car around.

The road from the airport was a frozen river of vehicles: cars bumper-to-bumper, horns blaring, curses thrown through open windows. Some drivers abandoned their cars and walked.

After hours of no movement, Mel did the same.

He took his cat, left the car in the snarl of traffic, and walked toward the city on tired feet.

When he finally reached his apartment building, he saw a scene he never thought he’d see outside movies: police, soldiers, containment pipes, vans for the infected. A neighbor, bitten by the new variant, was being restrained, his eyes wild, his mouth dripping blood, snapping at anyone near him.

Mel watched for a moment, then climbed the stairs up to his door.

He locked it. Blocked it with furniture. Shut the windows tight.

Outside, the world tried to contain what had already escaped.

IV. A Dead City

Bellan called again.

They had reached the island. There were bunkers, safe zones, guarded gates. His niece laughed in the background, unaware of the danger burning through cities far away.

She warned him not to trust the local bunkers in his own city.

“If they put too many people together in one place,” she said, “all it takes is one infected person slipping through. Then everyone underground is trapped with the virus.”

Mel listened.

He went to the supermarket again. This time, there were no lines at the cashier, no receipts. Just wild crowds looting shelves, ripping items out of each other’s hands. Money had dropped in value below a single can of beans.

He grabbed what he could—cans, bottles, anything unspoiled.

On his way back, he saw a group of police trying to restrain another infected man. The man broke free and sank his teeth into an officer, dragging him down.

Mel’s instinct surprised even himself.

Instead of running, he snatched up a piece of wood and swung it.

The infected turned on him, eyes animal-like, jaws snapping. Mel fought, stumbling backward, swinging wildly.

The bitten officer, bleeding, drew his gun.

One shot.

The infected dropped.

Mel rushed to help the officer, but the gun barrel swung toward him.

He understood.

The officer had been bitten. He knew what would happen next. He didn’t want it. He pushed Mel away and ordered him to go—now.

Mel ran.

Behind him, a single gunshot cut through the sirens and distant screams.

Back in his apartment, he double-locked everything and pulled the curtains shut. This time, with his hands and his heart.

Down in the streets, buses arrived. Soldiers banged on doors, ordering civilians onto transport vehicles bound for government safe zones. Families climbed aboard, herded toward underground shelters they were told would keep them safe.

Mel turned off his lights.

He did not answer the knocks.

He let the world believe he had gone with them.

Soon, the hallway grew silent. The engines faded into distance.

A city of hundreds of thousands shrank to one man and one cat, high above empty streets.

V. The Old Woman in the Wheelchair

Time was no longer measured in calendar days, but in the number of cans in the cupboard.

Mel ate smaller portions. Shared some with the cat. He stood at the window and noticed the sky looked clearer now that the traffic had stopped.

Cell service died. The internet went dark. The videos he recorded for Bellan remained stuck on his phone, never leaving his pocket.

When he reached the last cans, he realized that if the virus didn’t kill him, hunger would.

So he opened his door.

He went downstairs, searching other apartments. Most were empty, doors hanging open, rooms ransacked. It was like walking through the shells of old lives.

In one apartment, he stopped.

An old woman sat in a wheelchair by the window, legs unmoving. She hadn’t been able to reach the buses. No one had carried her. She remained behind, watching the world evacuate without her.

Mel asked if she had food.

She shook her head, but her eyes brightened as she spoke of the building’s past: which families always overshopped and hoarded, which doors were usually locked, which corners might hide forgotten supplies.

Old people don’t just hold memories; they hold invisible maps.

Using her hints, Mel found a few more cans, some rice, a couple of bottles of water.

He carried the food back to her apartment.

He could have kept it all.

He didn’t.

They cooked and ate together, portioning the food carefully. Each bite was both nourishment and borrowed time.

As their stomachs filled for the first time in days, they started trading stories. Mel spoke about his wife, the truck, the argument in the car. He confessed something that made him feel ashamed even as he said it—that a part of him was relieved his wife didn’t have to witness this horror.

The old woman nodded and said the old saying: “Everything that happens may be for the best, in ways we don’t understand.”

They slept.

One night, the old woman’s dusty radio crackled to life.

A soldier’s voice came through: “If anyone is still alive in the city, come to the safe zone. We have food, water, shelter. No one will be turned away.”

Mel’s heart wavered.

The old woman shook her head.

“Where there are many people, there is much sickness,” she said. “In those bunkers, they can lock you in. One infected person and you’re all trapped together. Here, at least, you have the choice of how you die.”

Mel didn’t argue.

He just looked at the remaining food and water and thought about the day it would run out.

VI. The Safe Zone That Wasn’t Safe

The next morning, he made up his mind.

He told the old woman he’d take her with him to the safe zone. Safety might be an illusion, but starvation was certain if they stayed.

He packed their supplies. Prepared to move her chair.

Then he went to her room.

She was gone.

On the table lay an empty blister pack of pills and a note: thank you, sorry, good luck.

The old woman had chosen her own way out. She preferred death on her own terms to the possibility of becoming one of those creatures—or dying slowly in a crowd underground.

Mel stood by her chair for a long time.

Then he gathered himself, left her with a few cans as a kind of farewell offering, though she had no use for them now.

He walked out of the building again, alone with his cat and his grief.

He headed toward the safe zone marked by the soldiers’ call.

In one street, an infected woman lunged at him from behind a car. He shot her. The noise echoed, calling more infected from nearby alleys.

He had no choice but to run.

He found a motorcycle, miraculously still functional. He tied the cat’s carrier on the back and sped through the empty streets, the engine’s roar bouncing off shuttered buildings.

He reached the safe zone.

There were no gates open in welcome. No orderly soldiers.

There was a crowd.

Not of survivors. Of infected, swarming around the entrance, clawing at walls, jaws chomping at the empty air.

The safe zone had fallen.

He turned the bike, tried to flee, but the wheels slipped, and he crashed. The cat remained safe in its cage, but the motorcycle was too damaged to start again.

He grabbed the cage and ran into a patch of trees.

The forest led him to a riverbank, where small houses and boats waited silently.

He slipped into one house, escaping out the back to mislead the infected.

Down at the dock, he found a motorboat. He climbed aboard, but the interior was smeared with dried blood. Something terrible had happened there.

From the shadows inside the boat came a small sound.

He followed it.

A child sat there.

Or what was left of one.

The child had already turned, eyes clouded, skin pale, teeth bared.

Mel froze.

He had always loved children. He had dreamed of a baby with his wife. He adored his niece. Now, in front of him was a broken reflection of that wish.

He couldn’t bring himself to shoot.

He backed away slowly, left the motorboat, and chose a smaller, cleaner boat.

He pushed away from the dock and started downriver.

On the water, he recorded a message for Bellan, explaining that even the government’s safe zones had fallen. So many had turned that no one could count anymore. If he had gone into the bunker, he might have turned too.

Bodies floated along the current, turning slowly in eddies like the remains of unfinished prayers.

VII. The Ship of Survivors

After hours on the river, a ship appeared in the distance.

Mel waved and shouted.

Guns pointed at him from the deck. In this new world, strangers weren’t people—they were potential carriers.

Mel raised his hands, voice cracking as he told his story.

They finally pulled him aboard.

On the ship, there was a small group of survivors. Among them was a pilot named Ben, who treated Mel decently. He gave him a bed, a room, some food.

Mel asked if there were any other survivors out there.

Ben shook his head.

“Just you,” he said. “You’re the only one we’ve picked up.”

That night, as Mel lay awake, he saw something at the edge of his vision: a family clinging to the ladder on the side of the ship, calling for help.

He assumed, of course, that the crew would bring them in, as they had brought him.

The next morning, he asked Ben.

“What family?” Ben frowned. “Maybe you were dreaming. Nobody came last night.”

Mel didn’t believe him.

He went down below deck.

There he found them: the same family, locked behind bars, eyes tired and afraid.

He broke the lock.

A man from inside grabbed him, begging to know where his wife and daughter were—missing from their group. Mel had no answer. He could only free the ones he could see.

The noise of breaking metal brought armed crew members on the run, guns raised.

Just as they were about to shoot, Ben appeared, killed one of his own men, and shouted at Mel:

“You shouldn’t have done this.”

But secrets, once exposed, can’t be put back.

With no choices left, Mel and Ben helped the freed family reach a rescue boat. Shots rang out. One of the men was hit. Ben took a bullet in the shoulder.

They managed to escape anyway.

Just barely.

VIII. The Haunted Hospital and the Helicopter

Mel steered the small boat toward shore, Ben fading beside him.

He dragged Ben into the nearest hospital.

It was empty of living staff. No doctors, no nurses. Just dark corridors and the shuffling of turned patients.

Mel dragged Ben onto a stretcher. Ben told him he had to remove the bullet or he’d die.

Mel had never done anything like that. The thought of cutting into someone made him dizzy. But he began searching for supplies—needles, scalpels, antiseptic.

In the medicine room, a turned doctor lunged at him. Mel shot it, the gunshot booming through the halls.

More infected heard.

He ran.

Just when he thought he was done, a hand yanked him into a side room. A nurse—still human—had pulled him out of sight.

She and another woman with some children had been hiding in the hospital, doors and windows barricaded, surviving on whatever they could scavenge.

She saw Ben’s wound and got to work.

While she dug the bullet out, Mel went upstairs, looking for a way out of the city altogether.

He asked her if there was a helicopter or plane. She showed him a helicopter on a lower deck—a last hope surrounded by dozens of infected outside. Walking out there now was almost suicide.

In that hospital, Mel realized something else.

This was the same building where his wife had died after the crash. The walls still remembered his footsteps as he had carried her in a year before, begging for time to be turned back.

He walked through the hallways and saw flashes of that day.

He whispered apologies to her—for not saying “yes” to a baby sooner, for believing there would always be more time.

On the rooftop, overwhelmed, he broke down in tears.

Then his phone buzzed.

Signal returned, briefly.

Messages poured in. Among them, videos from Bellan describing life on the island—food, water, his niece laughing, the virus still far away.

Hope flickered.

He replied immediately.

Gunshots echoed below.

A gang had found the hospital, shooting any survivors they saw and looting supplies.

Mel ran back to the nurse and the others and warned them.

“We have to reach that helicopter quietly,” he said. “If the gang gets it, we’re trapped here forever.”

They prepared to move. On the way, a zombie attacked one of the nurses. Mel killed it, but she was badly bitten. She insisted they leave her behind, saying she’d hold off the infected.

Mel, the remaining nurse, Ben, and the children pushed on.

They reached the open yard between the hospital and the helicopter. Zombies crowded the area. They improvised barricades—beds, tables, furniture—using them as mobile shields.

One of the wheels of a cart jammed, scraping loudly. Zombies turned their heads, drawn by the sound.

They surged closer.

The nurse grabbed the kids and sprinted toward the helicopter. Ben started the engine. Mel stayed behind to hold back the infected.

The gang appeared, guns raised.

Mel tore down another barricade, letting a wave of zombies crash straight into the gunmen.

Screams and snarls mixed.

In the chaos, Ben lifted the helicopter. The nurse threw down a rope ladder. Mel jumped and clung on as the ground swarmed with teeth and hands reaching up.

They flew.

IX. The Island That Wasn’t Safe

High above the ruined city, Mel called his sister.

Her voice was no longer calm.

“Don’t come here,” she said. “The virus has reached the island. It’s not safe anymore. There’s no point.”

Those words felt like the air had been punched out of his lungs.

Below, city after city slid by, broken and burning. Every “safe zone” they’d passed had been overrun. Humans had fled to bunkers together, and the virus had simply followed them inside. It liked crowds.

In the stories people tell about Mel, this is where the storyteller usually leans in and lowers their voice:

“They flew on toward the island anyway.”

Because Mel had nothing left except his promise to his sister. The virus might be there, but so was she. He didn’t choose the safest place; he chose the place where his family was.

Some say military jets appeared, flanking the helicopter, their guns ready in case the craft showed signs of infection. The island was no longer a promised land—just another battlefield between desperate survivors and cold protocols.

What happened after that?

X. The Legend of the Man, the Cat, and His Choices

No one knows exactly what happened after their helicopter vanished beyond the clouds.

Some say Mel landed, found his sister and niece hiding in some underground shelter, and together they set out again, searching for a quieter corner of the world where the virus hadn’t yet reached.

Others say the helicopter was shot down, because orders were orders, and Mel and his group became wandering ghosts over the sea, forever searching for an island that didn’t exist on any map.

Still others claim Mel did reach the island but didn’t stay—choosing instead to spread a different kind of cure: not a chemical vaccine, but the idea that piling terrified people together into underground boxes might not be the way to survive.

And the cat?

In every version, the cat survives.

On ships, in houses, in hospitals, in helicopters—it is an unbothered witness to Mel’s choices, to the loneliness of a man who had lost everything but still kept trying to save others.

People tell Mel’s story as a kind of parable for our time of pandemics, bunkers, and “safe zones”:

That sometimes being alone in a dark apartment is safer than crowding into a place called “shelter.”
That kindness doesn’t guarantee a longer life, but without it, the days you live don’t mean much.
That the decisions we postpone—like having a child, saying “yes” to love, calling a sibling back—might be the ones we never get to fix.

They also say that somewhere, among the many empty cities with boarded windows and abandoned cars, if you pass by a tall apartment block and see one window just slightly open with a cat meowing inside, you should pause.

Maybe, up there, beyond the cracked glass and peeling paint, there’s still someone like Mel—telling his story to an imaginary niece, about a time when a virus forced humans to learn the hard way that the most important thing isn’t just staying alive…

…it’s how we live, and who we refuse to abandon, when the world starts to end.