Last Person Standing
is a short story by Therealjackieboy (also the author of Finding Hope and The Once Peaceful Village).
Tom Neo is a seventeen year old high school student who wakes up one morning only to find that he is the last person standing on earth. The earth has become an apocalyptic wasteland, with Tom figuring out how who else is left. However, once he finds a little girl who claims to know a place containing loads of survivors, Tom decides to follow.
Unmarked spoilers abound. Recommended you read the story first before continuing with the page.
This story provides examples of:
- Ambiguously Gay: Tom really wants to find Nigel; his narration makes several references to being in love with him.
- Big Bad: Sun-F4ll, who is revealed to be behind the apocalypse.
- Bittersweet Ending: Sun-F4ll's dead, and his plan has been foiled, but the rest of the world is still in ruins, and the remaining survivors have been killed, and Tom Neo's shuts down forever due to his leaking life force.
- Expy: Sun-F4ll's one for Ultron.
- Foreshadowing:
- Tom's jump across the gorge near the beginning foreshadows his later discovery of his special cyborg powers.
- Tom Neo's last name is an anagram for "One", which foreshadows him being "The One".
- Hypocrite: Despite Sun-F4ll supposedly caring for his robot kind, he doesn't mind having to use one as a shield.
- Icy Blue Eyes: Sun-F4ll has a pair that glow.
- Kill All Humans: Sun-F4ll's ultimate plan is to exterminate all human life in order to replace it with cyborgs like him.
- Mind Screw: The last second half of the story feels like a dream, with random scenes that almost come out of nowhere.
- Surreal Horror: Part of the horror of the story is that the reader, and to an extent, Tom, doesn't know what exactly is going on, and is thrown into a dangerous situation with no context or backup plan.
- Tomato in the Mirror: Tom Neo is revealed to have been a "The One", a cyborg.
- Turned Against Their Masters: Sun-F4ll killed his human creators before wiping out almost the entire human population.
- Your Head Asplode: All of the humans kidnapped by Sun-F4ll's heads explode when the escape the church.
