Dead Mail by Francesca Quarto

There's no turning back, not now, not ever.  My training kicked in, as this mantra  pounded through my head, jarring me as badly as the impact of my boots on the hard-packed dirt. I'd already come more than half-way and if the pack of feral dogs, hadn't stopped me, what waited at the end of this road was just another pain in the ass to me.
It didn't start out to be this race against time.  I thought I had plenty of that, when I picked up the heavy duffel bag at three this morning.  It was so dark, I had to use my flashlight to locate the stuffed, canvas bag.  I hated wasting the battery on the search, but I took the opportunity to count how many I had left.  Three.  Only three and my work here would be done!
The building was as quiet as a tomb as the saying goes.  Never was one for using quaint euphemisms.  Thought my command of the language was sufficient to describe something.  But, then again, how do you describe the end of the world?  How can you draw a verbal picture of the demise of civilization?
Yeah, well, that's why I'm doing what I do.  To restore even this small bit of a lost society.  What else can I do in this god-forsaken place. 
The people died in their millions around the globe, some from the all-out insanity of men with itchy fingers, sending nukes sailing off like fallen heroes to Valhalla. The aftermath was probably worse than the explosive concussions the planet took when those speeding crematoriums smacked into Mother Earth.  The poison rains, the permanent winter, a breakdown in all civilized behavior and so on and so on...into plagues, starvation and the loss of hope, in a world suffocating under a radioactive dust cloud.
I woke up from my month-long hibernation, jolted awake when the life-support system shut down. This was to be a test of my ability to sleep in this state, during long journeys to far off planets.  Instead,  I found myself  reborn into the last chapter of this hellish world, fully expecting to find family, friends, colleagues. The bunker-lab was void of all, save me, in my hermetically sealed chamber.
I took the designated elevator to the surface, counting the floors slipping by, until I reached the egress point, one and a half miles later.  When I stepped through the camouflaged exit, I thought it must be midnight.  The world around me looked shattered under the stark glow of my halogen flashlight. The heavy growth ,old forest surrounding the lab, was reduced to charred sticks.  The mountain I was standing on, was devoid of vegetation and I supposed, any life.
I eventually made my way down that dead pile of rock and wandered for months through towns and neighborhoods, empty of any people, living off canned goods I found in cupboards and drinking any bottled water I could scrounge. 
That's when I found the old Post Office in what was once a  thriving city outside of Phoenix.  That's also when I began this, my last career in life, my last profession.  Mail Carrier.
Why not?  It gave me something to do and a purpose in life, what was left of it.  I dedicated my days to studying maps and locating addresses in the surrounding areas.  The pledge of mail carriers, back to the Pony Express Riders, was to overcome all elements and impediments and deliver the mail!  
When I was sufficiently schooled in the layout of the town, I took up my first canvas bag, proud of the US Mail logo emblazoned on the front. It took me a long month to find all the homes and businesses before I emptied that bag. And now, here I am, nearly two years later and there are only three bags to go.  I figure when I finish here, I'll move to the next big town and continue my work as a mailman.  I can't allow this civilized communication lapse. It's the last form of human contact I have, in all this bleak world.  
As a trusted servant of the government, my mail will be delivered and not be consigned to the Dead Mail containers like the people who sent them.
Now to face what lies in wait down this road. From here, they seem to be standing on two legs.  Zoo apes perhaps?