ANYONE ELSE?: (ANYONE Series Book 2) A post-apocalypic survival novel

by Angela Scott

  The kid still acted as if it might cry, so I grabbed a pair of colorful cartoon socks for adults off the rack and handed it to the baby to play with. The act of diversion worked. The baby focused on the socks and turned them over before shoving them in its mouth to gnaw on.

  I picked up a few smelly candles from the home goods section, Home Sweet Home scent, but figured they wouldn’t provide much light—a lovely atmosphere for sure, but I wasn’t looking for ambiance. I needed to be able to see my hands in front of my face, especially to take care of a baby, but candles would spruce up the smell of the place.

  Several battery-operated lanterns in boxes lined a shelf in the camping section, so I grabbed three of them plus a flashlight and stuck them in the cart with the baby. The kid patted the boxes with its little hands like a drum, entertained and happy by the noise it made. It was nice to see the baby acting like a normal baby, so I let the kid smack the boxes all it wanted.

  I noticed the various camping stoves and propane cylinders, so I took a closer look. I didn’t know much about babies, but it didn’t take a genius to realize bathing a baby in cold water wasn’t going to go over very well. A camping stove would give us a lot of cooking options — warm soup, maybe even spaghetti with marinara sauce or a bottle of alfredo, au gratin potatoes from a box. I had to stop thinking about food because my stomach wanted to hurl. Since I hadn’t tasted anything when I first ate it, I sure as heck didn’t want to taste it when it came back up.

  I wasn’t on a budget of any kind and because everyone knew the most expensive of the brands was the best, I grabbed the box that contained the Coleman Signature Camp Stove and Mini-Oven. Its rollbacked price from $399.99 to $219.65, claimed it was a bargain, a total steal, so I placed it on the bottom rack of the cart along with several propane cylinders and a lighter.

  We were going to live in style with all the perks! No holding back.

  As we passed by the home improvement section, several masks used for painting hung from metal hooks on an endcap. I didn’t think much about them, but only wheeled a small way before stopping and going back.

  I stared at the various facemasks and then at the filthy baby in the cart. Heck yes, I grabbed the most heavy-duty looking of them all and tossed it in the cart, too. A total must need for the task ahead of me. Rubber gloves and a rain poncho followed.

  We passed by the pet section, and I took a moment to check on the animals and make sure they were okay and not causing mischief. To my surprise, both curled up in their animal beds looking cozy and content.

  Boy, my life was weird.

  I smiled.

  A deer and a cat sleeping near one another like peaceful companions was a picture worthy moment, one that would’ve gathered me a thousand or more likes on Facebook and Instagram … back when they were a thing and seemed super important.

  I didn’t want to disturb the animals, so I pushed the squeaky cart to the front of the store. If I remembered correctly, batteries had their own display near the checkout stands. Sure enough, there they were, untouched and plentiful.

  After finding the right batteries, I pushed the cart back toward the baby section. We’d pretty much taken a whole tour of the store, and I knew exactly where to go to grab fresh underwear, PJs, a lovely-looking futon mattress, and pillows and bed set for myself. I couldn’t wait.

  But first things first: the baby.

  Shopping for cool items like a camping stove was easy. Shopping for a baby, having no idea its age, made grabbing the right stuff the first time nearly impossible.

  I’d emptied the cart of the stove, lanterns, batteries, propane, paint mask, gloves, and rain coat before going on a much harder shopping excursion. Who knew bathing a baby and getting it dressed could be so damn difficult?

  Diapers — I grabbed a couple different packages. Wipes for the butt — a must. Baby shampoos came in all kinds. I settled on the nighttime lavender which smelled amazing. White onesies, a towel, a soft-bristled baby brush to scrub the kids matted head, some cream for its butt, some lotion for all its other body parts, and tiny bathtub and wash clothes. I was about ready to tackle bathing the kid.

  I eyeballed a pair of footy pajamas with airplanes on it and held it up for inspection. I also held up pink pajamas with a tutu ruffle on the butt. They looked like good possibilities, but I wouldn’t really know until I tried shoving the kid into one of them. I could be way off on sizes.

  “Do you care about gender stuff?” I held both in front of the kid. “Does it even matter anymore?”

  The baby gave me no indication of preference either way.

  Both went in the cart.

  I gave the kid another bottle of formula while I set up my baby transformation station. It took some muscle and a bit of finagling, but I got one of the diaper changing tables down from the display racks and prepped it with the lotions, butt cream, diapers, and clothes.

  I set up a playpen with some blankets and a couple of safe toys that hopefully would give the kid comfort without smothering it. The playpen didn’t look super comfortable, but since none of the cribs came put together, and the boxes looked like they held a million parts, the playpen would do just fine. It had to be more comfortable than the shopping cart.

  It all looked good. The water had heated on the camping stove, which was a lot easier to operate than the playpen. Go figure. I poured it into the kid-sized tub and tested it to make sure it wasn’t too hot. Perfect.

  With a garbage can and a large trash bag ready, the only thing left was to put on my attire and get the messy business of cleaning the kid over with.

  With my facemask resembling a WWII gas mask, the rain poncho, and rubber gloves, I reached in the shopping cart for the baby.

  The kid glanced at me in my outer space-looking getup, bunched up its round face, and bawled.

  “It’s just me.” I picked it up under its armpits and held it out straight in front of me. “It’s okay. I’m not going to hurt you.”

  My Darth Vader voice, coming through the painter’s mask, did nothing to soothe the baby, though it did sound freakin’ cool.

  “Luke, I am your father.” I couldn’t help it. It had to be done.

  The kid was having none of it and kept right on howling. A tough audience.

  “I don’t like this either. The last thing I want to do is wipe poop and pee off another human being, but I’m sucking it up and making it happen. I’m doing all the work here, so cut me a break, will you?”

  Nope. The kid wasn’t going to work with me at all.

  It cried when I laid it on the baby-changing table and strapped it in to keep it from rolling away. It cried when I began peeling off the damp, smelly, crusty set of clothes from its body one layer at a time, tossing everything into the trash bag as I went along.

  I tried giving the baby a toy to keep it entertained, remembering my diversion tactic from before. The kid tossed it on the floor and kept on wailing.

  I hesitated at the diaper, or what was left of the so-called diaper, the final item to remove. It barely held together at the sides. It drooped and sagged so much that it probably accounted for half of the kid’s weight. Seven-pound diaper, fifteen-pound kid—a rough estimate.

  It didn’t take much to peel the rotten diaper away. Even though I couldn’t smell a thing, thank god, the sight of the natural disaster in that diaper caused me to gag several times. All I needed was to puke inside my facemask to top off this wonderful experience.

  Get it together, Tess. Get. It. Together. Oh, jeez. Oh, my gosh. This isn’t right. This isn’t right at all. That’s a lot of poop, but you can do this. Just do it.

  The words to Katy Perry’s song I Kissed a Girl came flying out of my mouth. I started singing, using it as my own distraction, sounding very Darth Vader-like, while I did what had to be done.

  It wasn’t until I’d used a good container and a half of baby wipes, and had sung the song three times, that I even noticed the tiny little boy parts peeking up at me — congrats, it’s a boy! I had wip
ed that kid down, from head to toe, not really focusing on the kid. It was a survival mechanism that helped me get through one of the toughest things I had ever done in my life, and I had seen dead people.

  With most of the poop and grime taken care of, the rain poncho and gloves, along with everything else, disposed of in a trash bag, and the garbage lid shoved on tight, I slipped the facemask off, thinking I didn’t need it anymore. I rested it on top of my head in case I was wrong.

  The baby immediately stopped crying.

  “See? I told you it was me.” I touched his hand, and he quickly wrapped his fingers around one of my own. Kind of sweet, after everything I’d put him through. Cold wipes, poop, and an unwilling baby did not make for a fun time.

  He laid there naked, much calmer, and a whole lot cleaner, but far from being done. We still had a baby tub filled with lavender smelling soap and warm water waiting for him.

  I picked him up, planning to finish bathing him and getting him ready for bed in clean clothes and a fresh diaper, when he chose that moment to pee all over me.

  Chapter 25

  The kid sucked away at a pacifier, content and peaceful. He lay on his back, covered in blankets, his head turned to the side, watching me. He lifted his tiny hand and pressed it against the mesh side of the playpen.

  Earlier, I had dragged a futon mattress across the store and placed it right next to the portable crib, so I’d be close by while we slept. If he woke in the middle of the night, I wanted to hear him. I had decked out my new bed in a fancy comforter set with matching sheets, pillow case, and blanket with a blue and black zebra pattern, feeling more comfy and cozy than I’d felt in a long time. Except for being inside a Walmart, it almost seemed normal.

  I rolled to my side, adjusting my blankets around me, and placed my hand flat against his. Only the mesh screen separated us. His little hand felt warm and real.

  “In the morning, we’ll figure things out.” I tickled his palm. He must have liked it because he didn’t pull away. “We’ll come up with a plan tomorrow.”

  He continued to look at me behind his long thick lashes as he blinked.

  “You’re pretty cute when you’re not covered in poop.”

  He totally was.

  He had a thick head of dark hair, and in the morning, I planned to add a dab of hair gel and create a faux mohawk, make him look badass. But his eyes, large and round, got to me. They were gorgeous, almost too pretty for a boy. Not that a boy couldn’t have pretty eyes, because they could. It just didn’t seem fair.

  He lucked out in the gene pool as far as baby cuteness went. I’d never really had much to do with kids or babies, but I’d seen enough in passing to know there were some ugly ones out there. This kid had a leg up on those other kids. Well, he did until all those kids disappeared.

  What a depressing thought.

  I pushed that darkness from my brain and focused on the kid who seemed intent to focus on me.

  “I wish I knew what you were thinking.” I tickled his palm again. “I can tell you’re smart. You have intelligent eyes for a baby. You’ve probably seen your fair share of bad things, too, haven’t you? And you’re not even one year old yet.” He fit in the nine-month jammies, so I guessed that to be his age. “I’m sorry about that.”

  He’d never know that life shouldn’t be like this. He was too young to realize things were different less than six months before. As I thought about it, I realized maybe he was lucky that way. He’d never know how good it used to be and wish for things that would never happen. This life, this new way of living in chaos and destruction and loneliness, was all he’d ever know.

  Unless something changed.

  “You should go to sleep.” I pressed my hand fully to his again. “Tomorrow’s going to be a busy day.”

  I turned out the lantern near us, rolled over with my back to him, and closed my eyes.

  Yes, tomorrow would be a busy day.

  I had a whole lot of crap to figure out.

  A loud boom cracked overhead. I flew into a sitting position.

  What the hell?

  I whipped my head around in the near dark, trying to understand where I was and whether to fight or run.

  Everything about the previous day slowly came back to me, as I took in my Walmart surroundings.

  Another boom broke above me, barely giving me enough time to recover from the first one. A flash of light filled the interior of the store, enough to make out shapes of clothing racks and displays. Then everything fell into darkness and silence again.

  What is going on?

  I glanced over at the baby. He didn’t move.

  The noise had been loud enough to freak me out twice and pull me out of my sleep. In the distance, Callie meowed. It woke her as well.

  Not the baby.

  He lay there, undisturbed.

  Oh, my God. Oh, my God.

  I knelt on my bed, reached over the playpen, and placed my hand on his chest. “Are you okay? Please be okay?” Had he starved to death? Did I not feed him enough yesterday? Had he suffocated on his blankets? Choked? Stopped breathing?

  To hell with the booms and flashes of light.

  I jiggled him.

  He startled awake, his arms flying out to his sides in terror. He settled when he looked at me, but the expression on his face seemed to question, “Why are you waking me up? That’s rude.”

  My heart settled a little, and I let out a long breath. “You scared me, kid.” I couldn’t believe he slept through the noise.

  A third boom blasted loud. I fell back onto my butt and looked all around again as the store lit up for a half a second.

  This time the baby cried, not full on howling, but enough to let me know he wasn’t happy. Whether his sadness came from being awakened by me or from the noise, I had no idea.

  The store continued to stand. All the walls remained intact. Three booms and we hadn’t been obliterated yet. I still had no idea what was happening outside or what that even meant for us. Should we look for cover? Just sit here? What?

  I reached into the playpen and lifted the weepy baby into my arms. He settled down and quickly wrapped a long lock of my hair in his fist, his way of making sure I didn’t disappear from his view again.

  Hooves and meows came down the aisle toward us. Apparently, we were all afraid. I looked at the baby. Well, some were more afraid than others. He sucked on his pacifier and laid his little head against my shoulder, my hair still in his hand.

  “I don’t know what’s going on, guys.”

  Callie rubbed against my leg and then stretched upward, wanting to be held, too. I bent and lifted her into my other arm.

  With each flash of light, a boom followed. It occurred every thirty seconds, so I didn’t bother grabbing a flashlight as we slowly made our way to the front of the store. We’d wait for a blast of light, scramble a few steps, wait in the dark, and then walk a few more steps when the store lit up again.

  There weren’t windows in Walmart, only the sliding glass doors at the entrance. A large part of me wanted to find a place to hunker down and hope that whatever it was would soon go away. Instead, we stood on the safe side of the glass doors, a few feet back, looking out across the dark parking lot.

  A wild display of lightning bolts danced in the sky. Thunder roared around us. Lightning zigged and zagged across the blackness, a dozen bolts or more at a time in a spider-web effect. The thunder didn’t seem as though it could keep up. For every six or seven cracks of lightening, we’d get one large boom.

  I kept waiting for the rain to fall. Where there was thunder and lightning, there was usually rain. Rain never came. I’d had enough of rain on the mountain, stuck inside a hiking hut with a stinky deer and rotten cat, to be grateful the crazy storm hadn’t brought wetness with it.

  “This doesn’t look good.” I shook my head. “This doesn’t look good at all.”

  And as if to prove just how right I was, a dart of lightning struck one of the light poles in the parking lot, cr
eating a shower of sparks and smoke. The pole snapped at the base and slammed to the ground with an equally resounding thud.

  Monstrous clouds swirled in the sky, twisting and turning, producing more lightening. In the distance, a black cloud swayed side to side, lower than the gray clouds. It hovered midway above the ground, coming closer. While the gray clouds moved slowly, the dark cloud proceeded at its own pace. It grew in width as it traveled nearer to us, but it didn’t act like a tornado. It didn’t connect to the sky and clouds above, it didn’t funnel, and it didn’t rotate.

  It floated, and it danced. Yes, danced! It shifted and fluctuated, becoming almost mesmerizing instead of terrifying to watch.

  But as it drew closer, growing bigger and thicker in size, I took several steps backward. The deer moved with me. Thunder continued to roar, but the flashes of lightning became muted as the black cloud continued toward us.

  “Oh, crap.” I pulled out of my trance, realizing that though the black cloud had an essence of beauty, it was also coming right toward us.

  All we could do was wait.

  Dark specks splattered against the glass. Not the consistency of rain or hail, but rather of a substance that stuck and smeared, blocking my view.

  Above us, the roof tinkled, small pings plunking against the metal like a bucket of marbles poured over piano keys. In between the booms of thunder and the speckling of darkness that covered the glass, I could’ve sworn I heard the chirping of crickets. Lots of crickets.

  The baby lay his head on my shoulder and played with my hair, oblivious to it all.

  I wished I could be oblivious.

  The thunderous booms blasted overhead, unrelenting, as pinging plucked at the roof and pecked away at the glass doors. The doors held. The walls held. The roof held. Whatever the black cloud was, it didn’t destroy us. It took away our outside light by covering the glass and skylights completely.

  I squeezed my eyes closed. “I don’t know what to do,” I whispered. “I really don’t know what to do.”

  Thunder boomed, lightning flashed, and crickets chirped.

  I hated this.