A short story by Ninjamaster131

Once upon a time there was a person named Bill. He was an accountant at a well-known fortune 500 company. Every day Monday through Friday he woke up at precisely 5:45 AM, ate breakfast, showered, shaved, went to his favorite coffee shop to get a double espresso, and arrived in his office at precisely 6:45 AM. He chats with his coworkers for 15 minutes before wandering toward his tiny cubicle. From 7:00 to 12:30 he sits at his desk and works. At 12:30 he walks to his favorite restaurant which is a block from where he works and eats lunch. He orders the same sandwich with the same toppings every day. His sandwich has lettuce, tomatoes, cucumbers, mayo, pepper jack cheese, turkey, and jalapeños. He returns to work by 1:30 and continues his mundane job until 3:00. At 3:00 he drives to the gym and exercises vigorously until 5:00. After that, he drives home to his modest sized apartment. Bill has no family. Most days Bill cooks himself dinner and eats it while watching the 6:00 news. Sometimes he goes to a nice restaurant alone. He spends the remaining of his evening thinking about work problems and goes to bed at precisely 9:30. Then he wakes up at precisely 5:45 AM, and the whole thing happens all over again. Get ready, work, lunch, work, exercise, relax, and repeat.

But when Bill woke up today, it was no ordinary day. Today was Bills 40th birthday. He had been working at his job for the last 17 years. Today when Bill woke up he thought of something he didn’t normally think about. He thought about his daily ritual. He thought about how old he actually was. Bill was having a midlife crisis.

Bill woke up at precisely 5:45AM. Instead of getting ready for work as usual he packed all of his belongings.

Joe, Bill’s manager, noticed that Bill was late for work. He didn’t show up at all that day. In fact, Joe would never see or hear from Bill again.

Bill had all the belongings he intended to take with him by 11:00. He didn’t know where he was going. He had just realized he had been blinded and gotten too comfortable with his boring life.

Bill drove. He picked a direction (west) and drove all day. He pulled into a McDonalds parking lot to sleep that night.

Bill did this for three days.

Then the terrain started changing. Bill noticed that the flat farmland was turning into a mountainous region. Bill liked it.

Bill decided he wanted to live in the mountains. He drove down a rural, gravel road into the mountains. It was very apparent nobody had been here for many years. Several times he had to get out of his car to move fallen trees from the road.

Bill finds a nice place to camp. He eventually wants to build a cabin. Bill used to love all of those survival shows on the Discovery channel so he improvised.

Bill survives and thrives, eventually builds a cabin, and lives in isolation for many weeks.

Weeks turn into years. Instead of crunching boring numbers all day he improves his garden, goes hunting with the bow and arrow’s he’s made, and catches fish from a nearby river. He’s never seen anyone since arriving.
One day Bill gets very sick. Bill thinks it’s probably some bad berries he ate. He decides he needs to get medical attention or he will probably die. He finds his car, long and forgotten, covered in overgrowth. He finds the keys still in the ignition and the car starts. Bill is surprised that the car works.

He drives out of the forest that he entered long ago. He drives to the nearest hospital. Bill walks into the hospital but nobody is at the reception desk. He looks around a little and doesn’t see anyone. He even went to a few different floors, but nobody was there, as if everyone had left overnight and didn’t come back.

Bill eventually got over his illness. But he was perplexed as to where the rest of the world had gone. He drives from city to city. He doesn’t see a single soul, a single body, anything.

Bill spends the remainder of his life traveling from city to city, looking for some sign, any sign of humanity, besides the empty shells of buildings and slowly decaying infrastructure.