The explosion must have knocked his sense of direction out of whack, He didn’t know where he was or in which way he was headed. But he kept his head. He kept moving down the street. He knew it would eventually lead him out of town. He passed a man walking in the opposite direction, stumbling along like him. He passed a woman hanging out of a vehicle crashed into a light post. The woman must have noticed him passing by. She made a feeble effort to call to him. Her hand reached up for a moment, a gargling sound came from her throat. But he didn’t stop. He didn’t care about anything except getting out and away from the town.

    After stumbling along for several more blocks, he realized he could breathe a little easier. He thought he recognized a building on his right. It looked like the little repair shop where he took his generator once. Further on he felt a light breeze on his face. Now he knew he reached the edge of town. The air was definitely cleaner here. He tried to take a deeper breath, but it sent him into a fit of hacking and coughing. He spit up something, some foul-tasting substance drawn up from his lungs. Then without even pausing to look back, he started down the road again away from the town.

    His eyes began to clear. The streaks of tears on his face dried up. He saw the mountains ahead, some ten miles in the distance. The man had camped there once, soon after he arrived on the colony. He remembered the fresh air, the cold mountain stream from which he could drink. He remembered how peacefully he slept. Without further thought, the man started for them.

    He had been walking some time when he noticed people standing in the road ahead. He counted one, two, no three people. Their outlines shimmered, an effect of the afternoon heat rising off the road. He rubbed his eyes. When he looked back a minute later, he half expected them to be the same distance away, like a mirage of a pool of water on the road you can never chase down. But they were closer now. They stood watching him as he approached. He could see they were aliens.

    They wore shiny, silver clothes, like thin metal that can be folded. They wore masks which covered their faces. The man wondered if he might not be hallucinating, an after effect of the gas. He could not tell what race they came from. He could only see their large heads, their long arms. He felt a brief moment of panic, then told himself none of it mattered. No alien he ever met was as terrifying as what just happened back in town. Aliens or not, he intended to keep walking down the road to the mountains. There would be clean water there, wood for a fire.

    As he approached, the alien in the middle signaled for him to stop. He realized he was breathing hard, like he just ran a long distance. He wanted to lean against something. He could see the aliens’ eyes now, small and set further apart than a human’s eyes. He breathed a sigh of relief. They were Teladorians, one of the more secretive races that humans encountered in their journeys across the galaxy. But they were not enemies. He tried to remember a Teladorian greeting he learned once. He saw it written on the wall of a spaceport. But before he could recall it, the blood began rushing from his head. He felt his legs giving out.

    When he awoke he was lying on his back. He looked around. He realized he lay on a cot, one in several rows of cots that spread out on both sides of him. The cots were filled with people, sick people. He could hear them coughing, some groaning. Some waved their hands weakly in the air. Others did not move at all. He rolled over onto his side. His head hurt. His stomach hurt. His whole body ached. He felt weak. He knew he could not sit up, even if he wanted to. He shivered and reached down for a blanket to cover himself, but he couldn’t find one.  

    Someone approached him. It was one of the Teladorians, a female. She did not wear the shiny, metallic clothing like those he met on the road. She wore white, loose-fitting clothes that crinkled softly when she moved. She wore a mask, like a surgeon’s mask, that covered most of her face and mouth. But he could see her eyes. They were warm, warm and friendly.  

    “I’m cold,” he said, “I need water.”

    She took something out of her pocket. It was long and narrow at one end, but round at the other. She spoke into it at the narrow end. She spoke her language. He did not know any of the words, few humans did, but he knew what Teladorian sounded like, a quick succession of trills and soft sounds broken up by sudden pauses and drawn out with long hums. It was somewhat singsong in quality, but reminded the man of listening to a transmission that kept getting interrupted by interference. Out of the other end of the object a digital voice suddenly said, “what do you need?”

    She held the round end of the object close to his mouth.

    “I’m cold,” he repeated, “I need water.”

    He didn’t hear anything, but she nodded. From the side of his cot, she removed a hose. She motioned for him to put it to his mouth. He sucked on the end of the hose. Cool water filled his mouth. While he drank, he noticed she adjusted a lamp hanging over him. He felt his skin get warmer. Until then he mistakenly thought they were lying out in the open. But now he realized the sick humans had been gathered under a canopy of some sort.    

    “I need medicine,” he said.

    The Teladorian spoke into the device.

    “There is no medicine for this sickness,” her digitalized voice came back.

    He couldn’t keep his eyes open any longer. He felt himself drifting back to sleep. He listened to the sounds of all the sick humans around him. He wondered what it was that hit the town? Had they been attacked? And why were the Teladorians here? He slipped off into unconsciousness wondering about the answers to those questions.

    When he awoke next, he was being lifted into some kind of land vehicle. After a few minutes, the vehicle started moving. He head still hurt. His body still ached, but he felt somewhat better. He was not cold as before. Next to him a man he did not recognize lay on another cot. The Teladorian female sat nearby.  

    “How do you feel?” she asked, using the same device as before.

    “Better. Where are we going?” he asked.

    “To a hospital,” she answered.

    The Teladorian female later told him that he and the other man in the vehicle with him were the only survivors from their town. Only two people out of a population of nearly three-thousand! He found it hard to believe that everyone had died. He remembered the faces of those who befriended him since he moved to the colony- the old woman next door who always gave him tomatoes from her garden, the Chinese man at the hardware depot who seemed to know every item in stock, the handicapped veteran down the street who took such good care of his dog. He wished he could have had another chance to thank them.

    The vehicle took them to a small city about 20 miles down the road. The Teladorians moved them into a ward room on the ground floor of the city’s main hospital with about twenty other people. He remembered visiting the hospital for a physical examination when he first arrived on the colony. There were mostly men in the ward room, a few women, but no children. The people stared as the Teladorians wheeled him into the ward room. He could see by the look on their faces that they had suffered the same ordeal as he did.  

    Once the Teladorians left, the others began to ask questions. Where did you come from? What happened? How many survived from your town? Everyone in the ward was a stranger to him, but he quickly felt a common bond between them. He spoke freely like one speaking to an old friend, not pausing to measure his words. For someone who grew up without brothers or sisters, he thought he now understood what it felt like to have siblings. They were a family born of a common background….humanity. They shared a common name….. suffering. And they now looked to each other for support to face the unknown that lay ahead of them.  

    Eventually the ward quieted down. They began to take turns talking. From the many stories it was easy to see that the colony had been attacked. But by whom and for what reason nobody knew. Since they were the only survivors from dozens of locations in the region, they estimated the gas attacks probably killed tens of thousands of humans in their colony. They talked about what they should do. Some wanted to take action, but nobody could even get out of bed. In the end, the consensus was that everything would get sorted out as soon as the military arrived. And everyone seemed to be expecting them soon. Some put their heads down to rest. Others continued talking in smaller groups. The man lying next to him motioned for him to listen.  

    “I used to fly this route,” he whispered, “from Beta VII to this colony. I was a star pilot before I retired. It will take the military more than a week to get out here even if there is a ship in this sector.”

    That night he could not sleep. The Teladorian female came over and sat on the end of his bed.

    “How are you feeling?” she asked.

    “Better,” he told her, “I’m getting better.”

    “By tomorrow you will have a relapse,” she told him.

    “How do you know?” he asked.

    “I am a doctor.”

    She was right. By the next morning sounds of coughing filled the ward. The Teladorians brought lamps in, placing them over each bed. It was all too familiar. First, he noticed his head hurting, then he began to feel cold. Next his throat became dry. By that time his head was pounding. He rolled from one side of the cot to the other, stretched his legs and curled them up, but he could find no position comfortable for more than a few moments. He heard someone vomiting. Next it was his turn. Someone moaned on one side of him. Someone cried on the other side.

    “God, help us!” he heard a man shout.

    The Teladorian doctor came by, checked him several times, but she said nothing. He knew the location of the water tube. He knew the routine. All afternoon it continued, the minutes crawling by. Every time he felt like he could endure no more, he endured it. The sounds of the ward gradually became background noise. He felt like he was trudging along a road of endless turns, trying to go faster to reach the end, always hoping the next turn would be the last. But at each turn he found yet another. Into the night it continued. The monotony grew to such a crescendo he thought he might burst. Then the pounding in his head began to subside. Chills stopped racking his body. It was over. It was over. He tried to sit up. He wanted to dance. But he felt the weakness in his joints. The ward became quiet again.  

    The doctor came by and gave him some juice to sip. It tasted wonderful.

    “I am going to take a sample of your blood,” she said.

    “Are there going to be anymore relapses?” he asked.

    “No, the worst is over,” she said.

    “Then we will be able to leave this place?” he asked “We can go back to our homes?”

    “No,” she said, “we are taking you on to another hospital. These others are all dead.”

    It took awhile to sink in. All these people, all these brothers and sisters in his new family, they were gone. Tears came to his eyes. The Teladorians left him alone in the ward. He began to weep. Why did he keep living while others around him kept dying? It didn’t make sense. In anger he told himself he didn’t want to go on anymore, not if it meant watching others die. What good was it to be the last man alive?

    Transport to the next settlement passed in a blur. Before he knew it, the Teladorians were carrying him into another hospital. The Teladorian doctor accompanied him as before. They took him by elevator to one of the upper floors. His brain was running so fast he didn’t even check what floor they got off on. They wheeled him into a large room with three other humans. There was a young woman in one corner and two men on the other side. The men looked surprised to see him, but they smiled.

    When the Teladorians left, the men began to talk to him. They asked him where he came from. One of the men came from a distant settlement south of the equator, a distance of over three thousand miles. The other came from the main space port. Both had the same story he did. They were survivors. They had watched hundreds, maybe thousands of their fellow humans die along the way.

    “What about her?” the man asked, pointing at the woman.

    “She won’t talk,” they told him.

    The two men wasted no time in telling him their theory of what happened. They believed that the Teladorians intentionally set a virus loose on the colony. One of the men was a scientist who studied diseases. He was sure of it.  

    “Why would they do that?” he asked them.

    “Teladorian physiology is very similar to human physiology,” the scientist said, “I believe they are looking for a cure to some disease.”

    “Perhaps it has become a plague on their home planet,” the other man said.

    The man thought how the Teladorian doctor always seemed to know about his condition.  

    “So you think we’re something like guinea pigs, lab rats?” the man asked.

    The scientist nodded. “Teladorians are known for their arrogance, their lack of concern for other races.”

    He had not known that, but he thought back to the first day. Except for the female Teladorian, he could not recall an act of kindness from one of the Teledorians. They took care of the sick humans. They turned on the lamps to keep them warm. They brought them food or drink. They cleaned up their vomit. But they did not seem to show any compassion or sympathy for them.   

    “But they must know this will mean war?” the man asked.

    “Yes,” the scientist nodded. “We have thought about that. But perhaps they are so desperate, they are willing to take that chance?”

    The man thought about what the scientist told him. He thought about what he should do if it were true. He felt his strength returning. He guessed he might be strong enough now to overpower the doctor, but how far would he get? And where would he get weapons from? They would need weapons for protection….. to fight. The Teladorians he saw only carried translators and medical devices. 

    The next morning the female Teladorian came to take his blood.

    “Why was it necessary for so many humans to die?” he asked, quiet enough for the others not to hear.

    She glanced over her shoulder to make sure no one was nearby. “Everyone on my planet is dying,” she said.

    “But….. but…..  you’re a doctor,” he said.

    She did not say anything more, but he noticed how she put the vials of his blood into a row marked green in the case she carried. He saw other rows of vials, some marked red, blue and orange.  

  “You will not suffer anymore,” she told him before leaving.

    That night the three men talked about their options. They agreed to try escaping, although no one knew much about the hospital building or the city for that matter. They got up several times during the night to try out their legs. They were still weak, but they felt they could at least get down the stairs. They agreed to try the next day when the Teladorians left them for several hours in the afternoon. At least they wouldn’t make any noise bumping around in the dark. But the next morning he found his two conspirators dead.

    “What happened to them?” he asked the doctor, feeling numb.

  “They died in their sleep,” she answered.

    “I will too?” he asked.

  “No,” she said, “you have passed the seventh night.”

    “The seventh night…” he started to say, but his voice trailed off.

    He could not believe it. They came so far, suffered so much. For what? To die in their sleep? And what about him? Once again he managed to postpone his appointment with death. He who never won anything in his life now seemed to be on a winning streak. For what prize? To learn it took seven nights to beat this thing? To be one of the only survivors of a colony of a hundred-thousand living souls? What next? He felt his energy drain from him, despair settling in. He lay there too numb to do or think anything.

    He barely noticed the doctor at his bedside until he felt the needle prick his arm. That was real enough. She took his blood, placed his vials in the green row as before. He saw the other vials lined up in blue, red, and orange rows. They were all there. Just as she finished, several Teladorians he never saw before entered the ward. Right away he noticed a tension between these newcomers and the other Teladorians. The newcomers wore silver, metallic suits, like those he met on the first day outside of the town where he lived. A voice in the back of his head said, “military”.

    Several of the Teladornians came forward and raised their voices against the newcomers, one even stood barring their way into the ward. A brief shouting match ensued with the newcomers winning. The newcomers now entered the ward with confidence. They looked at him, but they went to the woman’s bed first. Another argument broke out. The woman began to shriek. The female doctor taking his blood left him and hurried over to the woman’s bedside. Now all the Teladorians were standing around the woman’s bed, their backs to him.   

    In that moment the man considered making a run for it. He would have to sneak by the Teladorians and out the door. It was tempting. He wanted to run free once more. But he knew even if he managed to get by them, once they found him missing, he would not get far. Then he noticed the case of blood samples. The doctor left it on the stand next to his bed. He saw the vials in the green row, his green. He saw the blue and red and the orange. He reached over and quickly switched them   

    When he finished he closed his eyes and lay back. He felt the softness of the pillow, the coolness of the bed on his feet. He opened his eyes only when he heard the Teladorians at his bedside. The human woman had stopped shrieking. There was no sound coming from her corner of the ward. The newcomers, the military men, stood at the end of his bed. They had removed their masks. For the first time he saw the full face of a Teladorian- small, thin mouths set low, almost where a human would expect the chin to be, little bumps in the middle of the face with two slits for nostrils, small eyes set further apart than human eyes beneath a smooth, broad forehead.

    The man looked into those eyes. They glared back down at him. They were not the kind eyes of the Teladorian doctor he became familiar with the past week. They were cold, calculating, used to seeing harsh decisions carried out. Looking into those eyes, the man knew he would not escape from the ward that day. He understood now he was the last piece of evidence, the only survivor from a colony of tens of thousands, the lab rat that lived. His biology beat their bug, but he also knew his luck had finally run out.     

    “It is a good day to die,” the man said to the newcomers at the foot of his bed, “wouldn’t you agree?”

    The doctor fumbled with the translator.

  “What did you say?” she asked him.

    “The woman, the human woman is dead, isn’t she?” the man asked.

  “Yes.”

    “I understand,” he said.

  “I am very sorry,” she said.

    “I am too,” the man said, “I hope your children stay safe.”

    One of the newcomers handed the doctor a long, metallic object which looked like a fat fountain pen. She held it in her hand for only a moment, then she leaned forward and delivered the poison into the man’s arm. The man smiled at her. He smiled at the other Teladorians. He would not go screaming and kicking.

    The doctor set the translator on the stand. She picked up the case of blood samples.

  “Get those to the lab at once!” one of the newcomers commanded her.

    Most of the Teladorians moved off, but two of the newcomers remained at the foot of the man’ bed. They looked down at the last human, the last survivor of the colony, watching him fade.

  “Return him and the woman to the places where they were first found,” the senior Teledorian said, “then completely sterilize this room. There should be no evidence left that they were here. Nothing. Make it exactly the same as the other sites.”

  “Yes….”