Alone

by Jennifer Reynolds

  “But what if it doesn’t have anything to do with what is happening. What if it’s something we can fix?” Eve had tried to argue with her mother, but Sadie would hear none of her daughter’s reasoning.

  “Honey, I’ve never felt anything like this. I feel like something is…well anyway. God will take care of me. If it’s my time to go, then I’ll go gracefully.”

  “But what am I supposed to do? What if I get sick? What about Caleb?” Eve started to cry.

  She kept trying to put the thoughts about what would happen to Caleb if she and her mother both died suddenly out of her head, but they kept reemerging. She couldn’t come to a good solution, and that fact pained her. Her entire family was gone. The Child Services Department was a thing of the past. She had thought about asking the lady at the voucher counter, or perhaps one of the police or military officers that were always patrolling the area what she should do with him, but she could never muster up enough courage to actually ask.

  “Shh…don’t think about it. God will take care of everything.”

  Eve buried her head in her mother’s lap and began to sob loudly.

  “How can you have so much faith in the midst of all of this horror?” she asked her mother.

  Patiently running her hands through her daughter’s hair, Sadie answered, “I know my God loves me. I have peace in knowing that when I leave this world I’ll be forever wrapped in the blankets of God’s love. Now sit up, I want to talk to you a minute.”

  Wiping tears from her face and trying to control her sobbing, Eve did as her mother asked.

  “Now, I don’t think I have much time left so I want you to write down everything I tell you to do.”

  She handed her daughter a note pad off the nightstand. Eve began to cry again. When her daughter’s sobs began to dwindle, she continued. “I want you to put me in that cream colored dress I wore when your father and I renewed our vows on our thirtieth anniversary.”

  Eve forced herself to stop crying so that she could write in a legible handwriting.

  “I want you to make sure I’m wearing these rings.”

  She reached over onto her nightstand and picked up a small silver trinket box Eve had given her for her birthday last year. Inside was her wedding set, the anniversary ring Ross bought her when they renewed their vows, and a mother’s ring that had all of her children’s birthstones in it.

  “Is there a place next to mom where you can put me?”

  Eve nodded.

  “I want you to put me next to her. Then I want you to read this passage over me.” She reached over and took her bible off the stand. Eve opened it up to the section her mother had marked, and quietly read the passage. Tears welled up in her eyes again.

  “And you know what song to sing.”

  Sadie didn’t say anything more. She didn’t have to. In the last few months, Eve had learned the morbid routine.

  Later on, while her mother and nephew were napping, Eve went down to the basement to get the shovel, then she went outback and dug up the section of earth that was right next to her grandma Yana. After she dug the grave, she went back down to the basement to get two planks of wood to make her mother’s grave marker. Sadie had very specific instructions as to what she wanted written, well, painted on it.

  Eve’s mother died shortly after dinner that same night.

  Eve had taken her supper, but her mother had barely touched it. After a few spoonfuls of the potato soup, Sadie laid the spoon down on the tray and asked Eve to take it all away. With shaking hands, Eve withdrew the tray and carried it downstairs.

  Caleb was still in the sleeping-all-of-the-time stage, so as soon as he was down for the night, Eve took one of her mother’s favorite books up to read to her. The historical romance novels her mother loved were a little too mushy for Eve’s taste, but she endured for her mother’s sake. She had to skip over certain sections that were too graphic for her to read to her mother, but she was able to make it through about two chapters before her mother began to wheeze.

  Eve laid the book down and crawled up into the bed with her, whispering, “I love you,” as she snuggled up to her. Sadie didn’t reply. Sadie never even opened her eyes in acknowledgement.

  After about ten minutes of the horrible wheezing, her breath stopped. Eve started to cry again. Slipping her hand down her mother’s arm, she felt for a pulse. When she didn’t find one, she curled her fingers into her mother’s hand. She lay there cuddled up next to her mother for a long time.

  The dress Sadie wanted Eve to bury her in hung in the back of the closet zipped up into a thick plastic dress bag. She hung the dress on the back of the bedroom door before going into her mother’s bathroom. There was a large plastic bucket in the tub that Eve had been using to give her mother baths with the last few nights. She filled the bucket with hot water and soap.

  Lugging the large bucket into the bedroom, Eve stood for a second deciding how she would go about this process. The sheets would come off the bed; that was the first step. That step was going to be the hardest. Every step after that would come easily, and she didn’t think any of this should be easy.

  The deceased soiled themselves when they die. That was a hard fact, she understood, but she couldn’t bear to think about her mother this way. Fortunately, as she worked, she realized that this part of the business had become so routine for her that she was able to block it from her memory. Eve didn’t want her last memories of her mother to be this, so she mentally pictured herself sitting downstairs surrounded by Doyle and her family playing cards. In her head they were all laughing and carrying on over some old story or joke that had been told one too many times, but was still hilarious.

  The next half hour was a blur clouded in the fake family memory. Once she finished, and she changed her mother into the dress she had picked out, Eve sewed her into her favorite comforter. She would bury her mother in the morning, not that night. That night she needed to cry, to sleep, to gather her strength and courage. The next day and all those that would follow were going to take all of her strength to get through.

  -----

  As she laid her mother into the bottom of the hole, silent tears rolled down her cheek, while Caleb lay snuggled warmly in his stroller sleeping. She couldn’t recall carrying her mother down the stairs and out of the house. As a matter of fact, later when she tried to think back to that day, she would’t be able to remember much of anything about it. It is funny how a person’s mind works. But it was probably for the best that she didn’t remember much about that day.

  Eve began to pray as she shoveled dirt onto her mother’s body. “The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.” Her voice was raspy and quivering, but the words continued to come and the dirt began to fill the shallow grave. “He maketh me to lie down in green pastures: he leadeth me beside the still waters. He restoreth my soul: he leadeth me in the paths of righteousness for his name’s sake.”

  As she began the second stanza of the Psalm she was quoting, she had to stop shoveling. The words still came, but at that point, she was crying them. “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death…I will fear no evil for thou art with me…thy rod and thy staff, they comfort me…Thou preparest a table before me in the presence of mine enemies…thou anointest my head with oil…my cup runneth over…Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life…and I will dwell in the house of the Lord forever.” By the end, she was stammering and murmuring the words, but she was determined to finish them all per her mother’s request.

  When she was able, she went back to covering her mother with dirt.

  By the time the hole was full, Caleb had woken, and he wanted Eve to hold and feed him. She let him fuss until she had the makeshift wooden cross firmly in place at the head of the grave. Slinging the shovel into the backyard, she picked him up and stood with him over her mother’s grave.

  Eve had many talents, but singing wasn’t one of them. But on that day, she didn’t care that she lacked this talent. Her moth
er had asked her to do this one last thing for her and she would do it. The words came out soft and low at first, but she picked up volume as the emotion behind them filled her.

  “A- ma- z- ing Grace, how sweet the sound,

  That sa- ved a wretch like me...

  I once was lost but now I’m found,

  Was blind, but now I se- e.

  Caleb lifted his head up off her shoulder, the best he could, to look at her as she sang. Eve’s voice carried throughout the neighborhood. She was sure there was no one left to hear her, but if there was some lone survivor listening, she hoped her off-key singing soothed them.

  On the following Monday, Eve didn’t bother to go into work, and no one from the delivery crew came to check on her. She wallowed in her grief for weeks with only Caleb as her tether to the world.

  IV – Clean-up Crew

  World Weekly News

  Tuesday, April 16, 2024

  Washington D.C.

  Deceased United States President responsible for the Death of Billions

  By Carol Hardgrove

  Senior Staff Writer

  Washington D.C. An unknown source leaked documents yesterday that officially linked deceased U.S. President Darren Thornton and deceased Vice President Christopher Black to the creation and distribution of the virus that is steadily killing the planet.

  The current U.S. Government is insisting that they had no idea of the president’s intentions. They are promising that they still have some of the scientists that created the virus, along with many others, working on a vaccine.

  They have released data showing the chemical components that make up the virus to all countries that still have the power to work on a cure. Unfortunately, at the rate that people are dying, a cure may not come in enough time to matter.

  As it is, the world has officially shut down. Few businesses are in operation. Only about twenty percent of the remaining farms have enough livestock to produce meat or enough workers to harvest any crop. No schools are open. Even fuel trucks have ceased delivering.

  Within another month, the entire world will almost surely cease to exist…

  For the first few months of 2024, nearly every newspaper across the board printed the same information every day. All held pages of obituaries and lists of business closings. All of them were trying to answer basic questions such as, what to do with the sick or dead, and what to do to simply survive. Eventually, the newspapers themselves became hard to come by. This lack of distribution was why many of those who had survived never read the above article about Thornton and Black’s involvement, never knew the real reason behind it all.

  This article was found in D.C. some ten years into the new world. This issue appears to be the last issue the paper put out.

  -----

  In April, Eve discovered that her co-workers from her short run with the delivery crew were correct when they speculated that there was another group cleaning up behind the scenes. About midday on a Tuesday afternoon, she heard a knock on her front door. This simple rapping of knuckles on the thick wood was as loud as a firecracker. Life had been uncommonly still around Richardson. She hadn’t heard the sound of a vehicle, a gunshot, or even another person’s voice in weeks; therefore, the sound reverberated throughout the house.

  She and Caleb were in the kitchen having lunch when the knock came. Eve’s head jerked in the direction of the noise, and Caleb began to whine. Giving him his pacifier to quiet him, she took him into the family room, put him in his playpen, and shut the door on him. After she had composed herself enough to answer the knock, she went to open the door. As she went, she grabbed one her granddads shotguns out of the hall closet.

  Looking out the beveled stained glass window of the front door, she could see a van a lot like the one they used when she worked with the delivery group parked in front of her house. A tall guy with dark, brown hair was talking to a group of people, as he walked back down her walkway.

  The entire group was wearing coveralls, boots, gloves, and what looked like some kind of an oxygen mask hanging around their necks. Opening the door, she pointed the shotgun in their direction. Eve wasn’t sure which one noticed her, but as the two at the back of the van turned toward the house, one of them let out a loud yelp. The sound was somewhat feminine, but it could have come from either one of them.

  “What can I do for you?” she inquired unsure of what else to say.

  “It’s all right, miss. We’re not here to hurt you,” the dark haired man informed her. He had turned around at the yelp, and had taken a few steps toward her.

  “I’ll be the judge of that. Everyone step away from the van so that I can see you.”

  The two at the back of the van looked from her to the dark haired man and back again.

  “Don’t look at him to tell you what to do. You do as I say. I’ve got the gun.”

  He nodded anyway, and the two stepped away as a third stepped into her line of sight.

  “Anyone else.”

  The dark haired man shook his head. And made to step forward.

  “Don’t.”

  He stopped.

  Eve examined them for a long moment, taking in their outfits and their demeanor. After a long moment, she nodded to them as if to say I’m going to trust you because there is no one else.

  “I would ask if you were delivering food, but I’m guessing by the way you are dressed that you are looking for bodies,” Eve finally said, slightly lowering the shotgun.

  The group visibly relaxed. Even though the chances of Eve actually taking them all on at once was slim, and they all knew it, their compliance was enough to reassure her and them.

  “You’re correct. We aren’t delivering food. I’m guessing that there are no dead bodies here,” the man closest to her confirmed and began to move forward. As the dark haired man walked closer to her, she could see that his eyes were as dark as his hair.

  “Oh, no, there are dead bodies here. I’ve just buried them outback. You guys hungry? Caleb and I were just about to have lunch. You’re more than welcome to join us.”

  No one moved except tall, dark, and handsome, and he only took a few more steps up the front steps. Eve guessed he was in charge. Noticing that no one was following him, he turned around and motioned them to come on into her home. One of the figures nodded at him, and he and another walked around to the back of the van.

  Eve lifted her shotgun again at this.

  No one commented on her sudden reaction.

  When the two came back around, they were carrying a large red and white cooler. She lowered her gun again.

  Standing in the front foyer, they made introductions. The dark haired, dark eyed guy’s name was Kyle, and the others were Ty, Andrea, and Ella.

  “Welcome to my home. The dining room and kitchen are right in there. Make yourselves comfortable. I’ll be right back.”

  Eve slung the shotgun over her shoulder and went into the family room. She didn’t really trust them. She would be foolish to, but she had to try to make nice for as long as possible. They were the first people she had seen in weeks. If she didn’t make an effort they might leave her all alone, and she couldn’t chance that, especially not since she had Caleb. If they were the last people alive, then at least they could care for Caleb if something happened to her. He was a responsibility she didn’t want to place on someone else, but the alternative was unthinkable.

  When she came into the dining room, she was carrying Caleb and a highchair. Not paying any attention to the stares she was getting from the group, she set the highchair next to the chair she would sit in and went into the kitchen. She came back to the dining room with Caleb still in one arm and a bowl of Ramen Noodles in the other. Eve continued to pretend not to notice their looks. She put the bowl of soup down, put Caleb in his high chair, and took a jar of baby food and two spoons out of the apron she was wearing around her waist.

  Laughter rang in her head as she thought about the apron and the baby food in it. She mentally laughed because
of the fact that this whole event had made her very domesticated. She laughed because she was acting as if having a baby around was a normal part of the apocalypse. For her it was, but for the rest of them it was not. They had more than likely not seen a living child in months.

  Her new guests continued to watch as she sat down to feed him. Opening the jar and spooning out a bit of liquefied peas, she continued to ignore their looks. When someone made a throat clearing noise she looked up, thinking the person was trying to get her attention. Kyle was the one who had made the noise. Taking a good look at the expression on his face, she could tell he wasn’t clearing it to get her attention, but to get his people’s attention. When they each looked in his direction, he motioned for them to eat their lunch.

  “You will have to excuse us, but he is the first infant most of us have seen in at least three months. Alive that is,” he said, looking back at her.

  Eve nodded her head, but said nothing.

  “What’s his name?” Kyle asked, obviously having forgotten that she had said his name just minutes ago.

  “Caleb.”

  After that, they ate in silence, purposely holding off conversation until after they had finished eating.

  “When I was working with the delivery crew we heard rumors about a clean-up crew. Is that what you guys are doing, cleaning up this mess?” Eve asked, helping Caleb hold a bottle to his mouth.

  “Yes,” Kyle replied, as he assisted the others in packing up their food. “Though now we’re doing it during the day out in the open. There’s no need for us to be discrete anymore.” He didn’t elaborate on why. She knew why.

  “What exactly do you guys do? …I mean…to have to wear such outfits,” Eve asked.

  “Basically we do what our job title says we do. We go from home to home cleaning out the deceased, shutting off the power, clearing the surrounding land and streets of bodies, and searching for survivors.”