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

by Angela Scott

  It was everywhere, and it was on my mind. A lot.

  And to watch Cole or the baby succumb to any of that, to watch them die like I’ve watched Dylan and Marco die, I couldn’t do it. Not again.

  I wanted certainty, one hundred percent certainty. Until I could guarantee I had that, we weren’t going anywhere.

  Maybe I’d never see Dad or Toby again, and that was a chance I took by being so strict, but if they knew my circumstances, they would understand.

  I had to believe that.

  “Say cheese.” I held up the camera, not even waiting for either of them to look at me. I made sure both Cole and the baby were in the view finder and clicked the button. The undeveloped piece of film slid out.

  “Okay, that’s enough bubbles for today.” Cole placed the cap on the bottle and picked the baby up, holding him like a football. The kid didn’t seem to mind. “The deodorant I’m using chaffs my pits, so I’m going to grab something different. I’ll take Bob here with me, give him a ride on the bike. As a bonus, it might tucker him out and he’ll be ready for his nap when we get back. Do you need anything?”

  I shook my head.

  The deer scrambled to her feet from her resting place on the carpet next to the couch and followed Cole. “Looks like the deer is coming, too.”

  Pavlov’s classical conditioning in effect.

  Anytime someone climbed on the bike, the deer’s ears perked up. She liked to prance along, which was good for her. It gave her exercise. Maybe she thought the bike was a skinny mechanical deer. If she didn’t try to bolt in front of us, we were good with it.

  “Wait a minute.” Did I hear Cole right?

  “Did you think of something you needed?”

  I waved him off. “No, but what did you call him?”

  Cole adjusted the baby’s bike helmet. “Call who?”

  “Him, the kid.” I pointed at the baby while still holding the slowly developing picture. “Did you … did you name him?”

  “You mean Bob here?” Cole tightened the shoulder straps of the baby seat and clicked the buckles into place before giving his helmet a little pat. “Yeah, I gave him a name, because it’s time he had one. We can’t keep calling him ‘the kid.’ How would you like to be called ‘the girl?’”

  He had me there.

  “Okay, fine.” I slowly approached him. “But why Bob?”

  Cole gave me an odd look and shrugged. “Why not? It fits him.”

  “Fits him how?” Not that I had anything against the name Bob in general, but really? He was a baby, not an old man.

  Again, Cole looked at me weird. “Haven’t you noticed how his head jiggles? Like those dolls you put on dashboards? His head is huge compared to his body. He can’t help it. Hopefully he’ll outgrow it, but right now?” He shrugged. “It is what it is. Don’t tell me you don’t see the resemblance.”

  A large part of me wanted to pull the baby from the bike seat, hug him, and protect him from this foolishness. “You’re comparing him to a bobblehead doll?”

  “Hey, you’ve had the kid all this time, almost two weeks. You had your chance.” He kicked up the stand and threw a leg over the bike, straddling it. “You shouldn’t question why I named him Bob. It’s a fair and decent name, by the way. Think Bob Dylan, Bob Marley, Bob Ross, Sponge Bob, Bob the Builder, Side Show Bob. Wait, scratch that last one. Not a good example, but you get the picture. What you really should be asking yourself is why, after all this time, you didn’t name him?” Cole pushed off on the bike and headed down the aisle with the deer trailing behind. “Think on that, and we’ll be back in a bit.”

  Damn Cole! As if I didn’t already have enough to think about.

  I watched them turn the corner at the end of the aisle.

  He did have a point. Why hadn’t I named the baby?

  I cursed him inside my head again.

  Introspection sucked. Nothing good came from looking within. Not really. It only succeeded in making a person feel bad.

  I hadn’t named the kid to protect myself. My selfish prick of a self.

  If something happened to the kid, if I couldn’t protect him, then by not giving him a name, keeping that barrier between us, then maybe it wouldn’t hurt as much if I lost him.

  But I realized something in that moment.

  Cole had taken the baby to the other side of the store. The first time I’d been separated from him since the old lady pushed the filthy shopping cart at me, and I missed him.

  Name or no name, I missed the kid.

  Crap. Crappity, crap, crap.

  Yep, introspection sucked.

  I lifted the Polaroid picture. The baby’s big grin stared back at me. It captured him just as he was about to touch a bubble. Perfect timing. Name or no name, I was all in.

  I sighed and walked to the couch. I slipped the camera strap off my neck and placed the camera on the coffee table next to the bubbles and unfinished jigsaw puzzle. I slid open the tiny drawer on the end table and pulled out a stack of Polaroid pictures. Not the ones from before Cole had shown up, but all the ones I had taken after. About six or so.

  I flipped through them, one at a time. Then flipped through them again.

  Just like in the picture of the baby and the bubble, everything appeared clear and easily identifiable—the couch, the rug, the table, the baby, the bed, the playpen, Callie, the deer. Everything was clear except Cole.

  The pictures developed as normal, the colors coming to life, but wherever Cole appeared in the frame, that small portion remained cloudy with a rainbow border encircling it, as if it were trying to develop but then stopped.

  I’d shown him the pictures. Cole only shrugged it off, insisting the film must be damaged or expired. The current picture of the baby and the bubble came from a fresh package. I had checked the dates — good for three more years.

  I laid the stack of pictures on the couch beside me, picked up the camera, and took my version of a selfie. I held the film when it slid out, even blowing on it a little to make it develop faster, though I doubted technology required human breath as part of its process.

  When it developed most of the way through, without any cloudy spots, I slumped back against the couch. Yeah, I looked like crap. It was somewhat depressing, but that wasn’t why I felt deflated.

  Cole was lying to me.

  He was lying about everything.

  I placed more canned peas and carrots on the tray of the baby’s highchair. Bob grabbed at them with his uncoordinated hands and shoved fistfuls into his mouth. I could hardly keep up with him. He had a hardy appetite for sure, and I was grateful for it, especially having witnessed his listlessness and near-death appearance when I’d first met him. If he kept shoveling it in, I kept feeding him.

  Indulge away, kid. Indulge away.

  Cole did his best to eat the tuna casserole I’d made for dinner while Callie perched on his lap with two paws slapped on the table next to his plate. Every time he lifted a forkful, she craned her neck, following the fork, meowing when he placed it in his mouth instead of giving it to her.

  I chuckled. “I told you not to give her any.”

  She’d sat next to his chair, looking pitiful, and despite my warning, Cole had placed a bit of his casserole on the floor for her. After that, he hadn’t been able to get her off his lap. It didn’t matter that her food bowl contained a cat version of tuna casserole. Nope, peasant food. She wanted what Cole had and nothing else.

  “Your cat is awful.” He pushed her face away from his plate. She was inches from nabbing a piece. “Worst cat ever.”

  I laughed again. “I know, but it’s the end of the world. She might be the only feline left, so what are we going to do?”

  “Train her, maybe? Teach her boundaries.”

  “Good luck with that.” I poured more warm soda in Cole’s glass and then topped off my own as I watched them. “But I’d sure love to see you try.” I placed more peas and carrots and a handful of dried cereal on Bob’s tray. “Cole?”

&nb
sp; He didn’t look at me. He was busy trying to fight a cat and eat at the same time. “Yeah?”

  “If I ask you something, something really important, will you be straight with me?”

  Again, he didn’t look at me as he answered. The cat had all his attention. “As straight as an arrow.”

  I laid my fork on my plate and leaned forward. “Why aren’t you telling me the truth about who you are?”

  “Oh, for crying out loud!” He scooped up Callie in one arm, his plate of food in the other, and placed them both on the floor. “Fine, it’s yours. Are you happy now?”

  Callie took a few greedy bites before looking up and giving a victory meow.

  “Cole? Did you hear me?”

  He settled back in his chair and stared at me over the kitchen table. “Yes, yes I did. I see you’re being serious, and I can appreciate that.”

  I nodded. “I really want to know the truth about you. Where did you come from and why are you here?”

  He was quiet but kept his eyes on me. We sat that way for quite a while, saying nothing, watching one another.

  Bob and Callie went on eating, enjoying themselves without much care to the staid interaction taking place between Cole and me.

  “I only want answers,” I said, breaking the silence.

  He nodded. “You want the truth?”

  “Yes.” I was ready. I was ready for whatever he planned to tell me.

  Slowly, he scooted forward in his chair and rested his arms on the table. He lowered his eyes for a moment as he took in a deep breath and released it. He clenched and unclenched his hands.

  Then he looked up at me and in one of the best Jack Nicholson impersonations I’d ever heard, he said, “You can’t handle the truth.”

  Chapter 32

  Cole pushed away from the table, all hints of Jack Nicholson gone. “You know, if you spent even a fraction of the time trying to figure out where I keep my magical fairy dust and focused on what we’re doing and where we’re going, we’d have been on our way by now.” He leaned on the table as he looked at me. He cocked his head to the side and squinted one eye. “You should really be a writer, Tess. You’ve got the imagination for it.”

  I stood and leaned on the table, too. “You’re not going to do this. You’re not going to brush me off and make me feel as though all these strange occurrences are only a coincidence with nothing else to them. This isn’t my imagination, and you know it. Who are you, Cole? What are you? Really?”

  I didn’t break his gaze. I wanted answers, and I was determined to get them.

  We watched each other from either end of the table, neither of us blinking.

  Finally, he shook his head, and flopped back into the chair. “Fine,” he said. “What do you want to know?” He motioned for me to sit and waited until I did.

  Really? I won? It seemed too easy. I approached with cautious optimism. So many questions filled my brain. As I sat there with him across from me, waiting and watching, all the questions blended and jumbled together.

  “You have me where you want me, and yet, a good sixty seconds have passed in silence,” he said. “Are all females this confusing or is it just you?”

  I nodded but, then I shook my head. I wasn’t confusing. “No, I’m only trying to sort all the questions I have for you. I have a lot.”

  He released his breath slowly. “Goody. I can’t wait.”

  “Okay, first question. Perhaps the most important of them all.”

  He raised his brows in anticipation.

  “What are you? Tell me the truth.”

  He smiled. “Ah, an easy one. I’m just like you. Homo sapien, but of the male variety. A very nice, top of the line male variety, I might add. I try not to brag, but since you asked for the truth, I felt the need to be very specific.”

  “Cole, come on.”

  “What?” He shrugged. “You asked, and I answered.”

  “No, no games. Be serious.”

  He shrugged again. “Jeez, I thought I was. You asked the most important question and I answered it. What more do you want?”

  “I want to know if you’re my guardian angel.” There. I said it. Right to the point, because with Cole it seemed I had no other choice but to be blunt.

  He tossed his hands up lightly. “Sure. Why not?”

  I slapped the table with both hands. “I’m not asking if you will be. I’m asking if you are.”

  “Here’s the thing,” he said, not seeming to be bothered by my heated display. “No matter how truthfully I answer you, you’re still going to hound me until you get the answer you want. I know it and you know it. Why not skip the whole beating around the bush and just say yes? Yes, Tess. I have been sent here by the big man in the sky to watch over you, your awful cat, the weird deer, and Bob. I’m here to protect you all with my super homo sapien abilities. I keep my badass cape hidden, much like Superman, to keep my identity secret. But darn you, you pesky kid, and your mighty sleuthing.” He snapped his fingers and winked. “You figured it out.”

  Fine. He wanted to play it that way. “Okay, so basically you’re saying that you’re nothing special?”

  He gave me an incredulous look. “I wouldn’t necessarily say that. I feel like I’m extremely special as in a rare gem kind of way.”

  Yeah, he was a special kind of something all right. “You’re just a guy? An ordinary man and nothing more?”

  “I’m far from ordinary, but as for the ability to leap large buildings, see through walls, and bend metal with my mind, then no, I’m an average Joe with limited skills.”

  “You’re not sent by God or come from some other world?”

  He hesitated. “No, those things only exist in your mind, Tess.” He pointed at his head. “Only in your mind.”

  I nodded several times. “I’m just trying to understand all of this, so you’re going to have to give me a minute.”

  “Take your time.”

  “If none of this weirdness is anything more than chance meetings, and nothing of a divine nature, for lack of a better word,” I said, watching him for a reaction, “then basically you’re pretty much a stalker.”

  He stared at me, unblinking. “Angel to stalker. Wow. That’s a huge jump, don’t you think?”

  I shrugged. “Everywhere I go, you seem to be there. Even now. The world is totally a mess, like big time mess, and we happen to end up in the same valley, in the same town, in the same Walmart after we parted ways over a month ago.”

  “Well, it wasn’t by design, I can tell you that.” He placed a few more cereal pieces on Bob’s tray, not taking any of this seriously. “I’m not sure how we happen to run into each other over and over. Believe me, I keep running all these scenarios over in my head, too, and wondering what I could’ve done different.”

  “You didn’t follow me here?”

  “For you and me both, it would be a hell of a lot easier to say yes, but, no, Tess. I didn’t follow you. I’m no angel, as a life time of mistakes can attest to, but I’m definitely no stalker.”

  I released my breath. “It just doesn’t make sense. The probabilities of any of this, even a fraction of everything we’ve come through together, is impossible.”

  He rested his arms on the table. “A lot about life doesn’t make sense. Impossible things happen all of the time, like long-lost identical twins running into one another in an elevator on the way to the top of the Empire State Building on their first visit to New York. Stuff like that? It shouldn’t happen. The odds are completely against it, yet it does. Not a lot, but enough to throw logic into a tailspin and make scientists cry.” He leaned back in his chair again. “I don’t know why we keep coming together like we do. Focusing too much on the mystery isn’t going to get us anywhere. We need to embrace the crazy and figure out what to do next. That’s the most important thing.”

  He was right. I needed to embrace the crazy, swaddle myself in it.

  If he were something more than what he claimed to be, what difference did it make in the e
nd? If he were an angel or something more, what exactly would I do with that information anyway? Who would I tell? Would I tell?

  In thinking he was something bigger than this world, I thought he could keep me safer. And who wouldn’t want their very own angel?

  If he were just a man, a weird strange man, and I was just a kid, then all of this became a lot scarier. It all just got real.

  “Do you have any other obscure questions for me, or can I be done here? My butt demands that I bounce on that giant yoga ball over in sporting goods.”

  “No, I’m not done. I’ve got more questions.” Maybe he wasn’t an angel, but I still didn’t know much about him.

  “You know you’re killing me, right? Little by little.”

  I waved him off. “Where did you grow up?”

  He sighed and nodded. “Let’s see, that’s kind of hard to pin point. My mother was a Springsteen groupie, back in the late seventies and eighties. We traveled wherever he traveled. Lived out of seedy hotels and the back of a Volkswagen bus until I was about twelve or thirteen, when I began to act out like adolescent boys who hate living in a van with their mother tend to do. I went to live with my dad and stepmom in Ohio. See? Nothing astronomical here. Pretty basic stuff.”

  I watched his eyes for signs of lies. Either he knew how to play the part, or he was telling the truth. “I wouldn’t say Springsteen is basic stuff,” I said. “That’s kind of cool in its own way.”

  He eyed me. “Do you even know who Springsteen is?”

  “Yeah, Born in the USA. That’s probably the only song I know, because I heard it on different commercials and advertisements, but I’ve heard of him.”

  “Now, imagine hearing that song a few thousand times while growing up. At least a couple times a day, cassette quality, with the windows rolled down because the van doesn’t have air-conditioning and Arizona is a hundred and eighteen degrees outside.”

  Bob tossed his plastic spoon on the floor. I bent, picked it up, and handed it to him. He used it to tap out a baby beat lightly on his tray. “I can assume you’re not a fan like your mom?”