The article sets out to investigate elements of post-apocalyptic temporality through a reading  of Cormac McCarthy’s The Road. While research on The Road has repeatedly engaged with  the novel’s temporal predicament, what calls for closer attention is the intertwining of the  milieu of mental and material remnants with the perceived lack of future, as well as the relation of these past and future horizons with the position of the reader. In particular, the article elaborates how issues of futurity raised by The Road concern both the compromised future of the post-apocalyptic world and the cancelled future of the fictive pre-apocalypse, as well as the relation of post-apocalyptic speculation to the future of us the readers. Through seeing how the protagonist’s model for future necessarily lies in the past, and how that past has paradoxically lost its future, we also understand how deeply our concern for future has to do with upholding the significance of the present. Ultimately, the article contributes to a broadly applicable articulation of post-apocalyptic temporality around the notion of future anterior (“what will have been”).