I have a very low tolerance for boredom and often think I would have missed out on books entirely if Id grown up in the Internet and video game age. Now I enjoy books for people of all ages, including children.

It's hard to plan for what comes next when what comes next is not something you planned for.

But if I'm it, the last of my kind, the last page of human history, like hell I'm going to let the story end this way. I may be the last one, but I am the one still standing. I am the one turning to face the faceless hunter in the woods on an abandoned highway. I am the one not running but facing. Because if I am the last one, then I am humanity. And if this is humanity's last war, then I am the battlefield.

I will teach you to love death. I will empty you of grief and guilt and self-pity and fill you up with hate and cunning and the spirit of vengeance. I will make my final stand here, Benjamin Thomas Parish.

He asks me what happened to my leg. I told him I was shot by a shark. He doesn't react. Doesn't seem confused or amused or anything. Like getting shot by a shark is a perfectly natural thing in the aftermath of the arrival.

Sarcasm doesn't appear to work on him. If that's true, I'm in trouble: It's my normal mode of communication.

If I had faced it then, I wouldn't be facing it now, but sooner or later you have to choose between running and facing the thing you thought you could not face.