The Last Human (a novel)

ever caught the disease, he had died. There was nothing that anyone could have done about it. But because of everyone's intense awareness of symptoms and the rigorous testing program, people who had contracted the disease were being discovered earlier and earlier, early enough, in most cases, to prevent others around them from being infected.

Now the last best hope of humanity was to catch the infection by testing in the hours before it became contagious and isolate the infected person, albeit to die, but at least not to spread it. And even this did not totally halt the spread. It seemed to spread through the very air, carried by some yet unknown vehicle.

This had lessened considerably as population declined, including, of course, infected population. And now the entire global population was counted in the thousands. The several billions of people who had presumably breathed the Baghdad virus, or some contagious component of it, into the air were now gone. The mysterious spreading that seemed to be through the air itself had almost, but not quite completely, come to an end.

With the rigorous testing program and isolation in air-sealed quarters of anyone found to have been infected, the virus was now almost completely under control. Population had stabilized. And there were even some untested hypotheses for cures being circulated.

Therefore as dreadful as the isolation facility was, it also represented a small hope and success. Idris and Lionel were casually looking at it with that in mind.

"Twice-a-day testing caught it," Lionel said. "Funny how Clara noticed something strange."

"I guess," Idris said sorrowfully and quietly. She looked at the isolation facility and then back at her husband. "When my mother died in one of those about a year ago, we didn't find out until a telegram came." She let go of Lionel and stepped away to point at the facility building while shaking her head. "But this! Watching Alfred die day by day through a window and not being able to touch him."

"It's over, Idris. At least the rest of us tested negative."

"They're not going to find a cure now anymore, are they."

"No. I doubt it. All they know is it's not spore-forming. But it's able to survive on things and apparently in the air for up to six months."

"So Europe's safe now? Because everyone's been dead there for over a year?"

"We're pretty sure."

"What about a few people wandering around out of communication with anyone, out of satellite image view? They could catch it. You'd have viruses alive and active for another six months."