“That is sort of what I asked Ryherd. He told me that we do it to keep up appearances. To keep what little stability and control we still have over the town, and to keep our sanity. We play this role until we die, or we run out of bodies to collect. Ryherd said that the more of a constant routine we can give people, the saner they stay,” Kyle told her.
“People have to have goals, something to look forward to. If they don’t, if they are left to stop and think, they will fall apart. These jobs aren’t the best, but they are a goal. Seeing the death every day makes you a little numb to it. It becomes the norm in a way,” he continued.
Eve watched him and thought that she didn’t need a reason to go on, God had given her one. If Caleb hadn’t been left for her to care for, she would have gone crazy or worse long before now. She was sure.
Part II: Surviving
My head’s been spinning of months.
Thoughts, images, noises moving around inside.
I have played friend, lover, sister, daughter, aunt
for so long,
I don’t know which is the real me.
I play savior most of all.
Is that who I really am?
Answering every call for help.
Racking my brain for the best ideas
or the quickest solutions.
I think I’m the one in trouble now.
Maybe I’m the one in need of a savior.
--- Savior
I – Alone
Eight months after the sickness began Eve woke up alone. Well, as alone as she could be with an eight-month-old child and what, she was assuming, was a six-week-old embryo growing inside of her. At first, Eve couldn’t bring herself to call it a baby. Not after all that had happened. Not after the end of the world officially happened, and she was left completely and utterly alone.
In the four months since the wedding, life had been everything but blissful for Eve and Kyle. By the beginning of July, the town’s—hell, for all Eve knew, the entire state’s—population had dwindled to about ten people. Most of whom had ended up living in her house. Ella was the first among their immediate group to pass away. She died suddenly a few weeks after the wedding. Ty refused to talk about it.
By the fourth of July, there were only ten people left. Captain Ryherd was, as far as they knew, the only member of the United States anything left. Besides Ryherd, there was Eve, Kyle, Caleb, Andrea, Ty, Austin, Ray, Libby, and Sofy. The last few were random stragglers Eve had only recently become acquainted with.
On the fourth, Ryherd announced that he was disbanding the clean-up crew. The power was still on, though no one really knew why. Ryherd guessed that the reason was because of the new hydro-dam. As long as the water kept flowing, he surmised, and no large storms came through, the areas receiving its electricity from the dam should be fine for a long while. Having the power on was great because it meant that they could spend a good bit of their now ample free time watching movies, playing video games, telling stories about their individual pasts, reading books, and doing other things to pass the time.
Unfortunately, their days of burning bodies were long from over. Sofy hung herself. Ray drank himself into alcohol poisoning. Libby got a stomach virus going out to her grandmother’s house. Her grandmother had lived two cities to the north of them, and Libby hadn’t seen her in months. She had wanted to be sure that the woman was dead, and to see if any of her distant family had come there seeking the head of their family. She brought the virus back home with her and gave it to Ryherd and Austin.
By August, Richardson’s population was down to five: Eve, Kyle, Caleb, Andrea, and Ty. How the rest of them missed the stomach virus, they would never understand.
Eve found her dead one morning the first week of August.
----------
Andrea rarely slept passed eight, so when the grandfather clock in the downstairs hall stuck nine, a tingle of worry crawled up Eve’s spine. She lifted her head and cocked it to the left, listening to the chiming of the clock. She strained to hear Andrea moving around somewhere in the house. When the last chime rang, Eve rose from her seat, turned to the door leading to the hallway, praying that she would see the other woman coming into the room.
“I’m going to check on Andrea,” Eve said to her husband in a low slow voice when the other woman did not appear. “Watch Caleb.”
“Eve?” he asked, looking up from his plate as she pushed her chair back.
Eve didn’t hear him say her name. Didn’t hear the worry in his voice. She had focused her entire being on the door and its lack of movement. With every step, her body became alive and alert waiting for the door to move an inch in a sign that there was life in the house. Waiting to be reassured that the other woman had simply slept in. Knowing that any second Andrea should be pushing it open and saying in her sweet southern voice, “Morning, ya’ll.”
She breathed in deeply, trying to catch a whiff of Andrea’s Vanilla Bean lotion. Her ears focused, desperate to hear the creaking sound of the hundred-year-old stairs that led up to the second floor as Andrea came bounding down them. Eve moved closer to the door, her eyes watching the antique handle, willing it to move, to turn.
When the handle didn’t move, Eve watched her own hand move from her side and inch toward the knob. Amazement and fear crossed her mind as she watched her shaking hand find the handle. She could feel the cold metal under her fingers, but didn’t know if she had enough control to twist it.
Everything in the world slowed. The noises Caleb made behind her as he tried to feed himself, the words Kyle said to him in praise for such a good job were muffled, distorted as if they were rooms away instead a foot or two behind her. The door swung at her fast. She hadn’t thought she had pulled on it all that hard. Actually, she hadn’t realized she had pulled on it at all.
Sidestepping the door, she turned to look back at the table. Kyle turned and gave her a happy little smile while Caleb slung oatmeal at him. Eve watched a glob of the gooey mess slide down Kyle’s cheek and his eyes widened in pretend shock. Watching them was like watching a dream she was trying desperately to hold onto but that was fading fast.
Eve turned back to the door and stepped into the hall. Every click, click, click of the clock echoed in her head, loud and vibrating. The silence of the outside world was deafening. The knowledge, the understanding of what she was going to find, of what she was about to walk into, made the silence even worse.
She ran her hands over the wood paneled wall. Feeling every line, every crack. Her house-shoed feet didn’t make a sound as she walked to the foot of the stairs. Eve wanted to call out Andrea’s name, but fear kept her lips pushed tight. The risk was too great. If Andrea didn’t answer, she would never make it up each and every step she was beginning to climb. Never make it to the woman’s room to see for sure. There was no other alternative, not in the world she now lived in. Any break from the norm was a sure sign of death. From the second Andrea didn’t come down to breakfast, Eve knew, whether she wanted to believe or not, she knew.
The muscles in her legs begged, pleaded for her to stop. They felt heavy, weak, tired from the miles of walking they had done in the last few seconds. They didn’t want the stairs, not after the long walk. She forced herself upwards one step at a time. Her eyes landed on every painting that hung on the wall. Her hands felt every notch and curve of the banister. But she saw nothing. Felt nothing. A fog was settling in, hazing her eyes, keeping them unfocused while seeping into her mind and clouding her thoughts, her memories.
Seconds that felt like hours passed before she reached the bedroom door. The door was cracked slightly, and when Eve looked in she saw Andrea lying comfortable in bed on her back with the blankets pulled up to her chin. A rush of relief flooded her at the content look on the other woman’s face. She was all right. She was fine. Andrea looked so peaceful that Eve almost didn’t go to her. But when Andrea didn’t turn those big blue eyes her way, the nervous bats in the pit of her stomach began flying again.
There was no other choice, she had to go to her, had to find out for sure. Her body protested. It wanted, needed to rest. It had done so much already today. It was tired. It wanted to simply sit down on the floor and rest. Eve forced herself to go on. Just a few more miles and she would be at the bed. Just a few more hours and she would know the truth.
Slowly, inching the covers away from Andrea’s face and neck, Eve could see that the other woman was dead. There was no life in the woman and there hadn’t been for a while. Her skin had already begun to pale, and her limbs where stiff when Eve tried to turn her wrist to feel her pulse. There wasn’t one, just as Eve knew there wouldn’t be. Pulling the covers back up to the woman’s chin, Eve turned and left the room.
Slowly, she took the first floor steps down to the hallway that ran the length of the house. Kyle and Caleb were still in the kitchen, cleaning up after breakfast.
“Morning sleepy he…” Kyle started to joke as he turned his head away from the sink full of dishes to greet Andrea. His words stopped when he saw Eve. She looked nearly as pale as Andrea had. Her eyes were glassy. Her stare saw nothing.
Looking past Eve, he strained his eyes, praying that he would see Andrea, making all of this a sick joke. Eve could be a good actress, when she wanted to be. Therefore, for one quick second he believed that she and Andrea were putting on a show to mess with him. It was plausible, though they had never played this horrible a trick on him before. Eve wasn’t the type of person to think of such things, but Andrea was.
He ran passed Eve, who didn’t notice his presence, heading straight for Andrea’s room. The door nearly came off its hinges with the force of the shove he gave it. His feet froze at the foot of the bed, refusing to let him get any closer to her body. The face looking up from the blankets was soft, in a stone statue sort of way. Her normally sun-burned skin—Andrea never tanned; she always burned, peeled, and burned again which was why she almost always had indoor duty—looked as if she had never seen the light of day.
A full minute passed before Kyle could bring himself to approach her. Tears welled up in his eyes. He had known Andrea for only a few months, but it felt like a lifetime. They had become instant friends, brother and sister, working for the government. They had bonded to one another as if they had known each other all of their lives. The bond had been so great that many were surprised that he had fallen for Eve.
Andrea hadn’t been though. She had loved Kyle as much and in the same why that he had loved her. Never once had she thought of him romantically. He had been her brother the moment they fought over the keys to the van the first time they had ever worked together. He had been one of the main reasons she had come to live in Eve’s house. She had seen his love and worry for Eve that first day, and knew he could do nothing about it, so she volunteered to stay and watch over her.
When her mother had died, Andrea had moved into the apartment next to Kyle and his friends, and when she had come to live with Eve, he had wanted to come also, but his obligations were with the friends that he had actually grown up with. Her feelings weren’t hurt; she knew he would be where she needed him to be, when she needed him.
As for Eve, she hadn’t been surprised the two weren’t a couple. She had seen them outside of work, and she knew what their relationship was like. She had never even asked Andrea about them. Eve had had two older brothers, and even though they weren’t as close as they probably should have been, there was a large age difference, so she recognized the mannerisms.
Pulling the blanket up to cover her face, Kyle knelt beside the bed and cried loud and hard for his sister. Eve stood in the doorway of the kitchen lost in her mind until Caleb, tired of being in his highchair, knocked his sippy cup onto the floor. The noise the cup made when it hit the floor hadn’t really been that loud, but it had been loud enough to startle Eve back into reality.
Kyle had already cleaned the tray, so she unlatched it, laid it onto the kitchen table, then unbuckled Caleb and carried him to his playpen in the family room. Popping one of the Rug Rats movies into the Blu-ray player, and making sure he had plenty of toys, Eve climbed back up the stairs.
She entered the room soundlessly and went to Andrea’s closet. In a morbidly yet normal conversationally sort of way, Andrea and Eve had talked about what they wanted the other to do in the event that they didn’t die together, not that they expected to. There was a particular outfit Andrea wanted to be buried in. Eve didn’t have such an outfit. She told Andrea and Kyle to leave her in whatever she died in, if it was presentable, that was. She didn’t think God would bring her into heaven in her human clothes, so she figured it really did not matter.
There were certain other accessories and things Andrea had wanted Eve to put on and bury her with. Making as little noise as possible to avoid interfering with Kyle and his grief, she quickly moved around the room gathering these things. When she had it all, she laid it out across the foot of the bed. Kyle looked up at her then, his face streaked from tears. She went to him, wrapping her arms around him tightly. She wanted to cry, but the tears wouldn’t come.
“I’ll go start the digging,” he whispered. “Where is Caleb?”
“He is in his playpen. He should be fine for a while. I have the monitor,” she tapped the white walkie-talkie that hung from the front of her jeans pocket. “If he cries I’ll get him.”
Kyle stepped out of the room. Eve listened as his footsteps echoed down the stairs, down the back hall, and out the door. Once she was sure he was settled into his routine and wouldn’t be coming back upstairs, she went about her work.
After Caleb had his lunch and lay down for his afternoon nap, Kyle and Eve carried Andrea’s body out to its final resting place. Andrea hadn’t wanted a big ceremony, so Kyle and Eve said their ‘I love yous’ and their ‘Goodbyes’ quickly and left her.
Eve took three whole days to break down. She had been folding laundry in the family room and watching back-to-back episodes of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Time had moved slowly for her during the past few days. She said things she couldn’t remember, did things without thinking about what she was doing. She was just going through the motions of what was now her everyday life. She had been flipping from one episode to the next, from one disk to the next, from one season to the next, without truly bothering to pay attention.
Lying another towel down onto the growing pile of towels, she glanced up for a second to click the ‘okay’ button on the remote to select the next episode without reading the title. Putting the remote back down on to the table, she reached over to pull a second basket of clothes close to her.
“Hey. Flower-gettin’ lady. Want me to pick Dawn up from school?” Eve lifted her head up to look at the screen at the sound of Buffy’s voice. “Mom? Mom? Mommy?”
Eve’s eyes were glued to the television. She knew this episode, she knew what was about to happen, but she couldn’t look away. The opening credits ran, and the next act began. Turning the show off at this point would be a good idea, she told herself. Right now, they were just showing flashbacks of a Christmas dinner that was never in any of the episodes before this one, and Eve knew when they come back to the present moment she was going to snap, but she couldn’t will herself to hit the ‘STOP’ button.
When the flashback ended, Eve watched intently as Buffy rushed to her mother, who lay motionless on the couch, her own mind flashing back to the morning she found Andrea, to the night her mother had passed, to the morning her sister had given birth and bled out. Buffy began to shake her mother’s shoulders, trying desperately to wake her. Tears were beginning to stream down Eve’s cheeks.
“Mom! Mom! Mom! Mom! Mom!” Buffy repeated the word over and over again, finally shouting it into Joyce’s face.
With Buffy’s last scream, Eve screamed. She dropped the article she had in her hand and covered her mouth with both hands, letting loose huge tears. Her breath caught in her chest. A second later, she was on the floor, clutching her stomach and rocking back and forth. Kyle burst into the room. She
didn’t move. She was too busy heaving, trying to catch her breath as her cries threatened to suffocate her. He picked her up and carried her into the bathroom.
Running cold water into the basin, he dipped her face into the water to cool her off. Tears were still running out of her eyes, but she is breathing better. Ducking her head twice more he took a hand towel off the rack above the toilet and submerged it in the water. He carried her back into the living room, placing himself in front of the television. Without getting her settled first, he yanked up the remote and turned the entire system off.
Eve tried to curl up into a ball on the couch, but Kyle didn’t let her. He stretched himself out alongside her, constantly wiping the cool towel across her face, neck, and chest. Eve’s crying grew a little less hysterical, but she was unable to stop the tears even as the surge of emotion that flooded her weakened her.
“Go to sleep,” he whispered.
II – Kyle
Two other deaths came after Andrea’s death. Ty ran his motorcycle off a cliff (by accident, presumably). Then Kyle got sick. At first, he had wanted Caleb and Eve to stay away from him, but Eve told him that they were going to die eventually anyway, so they might as well all die together. She was at the point where she was almost begging death to come and take them. She was welcoming it with open arms. She was still thinking this on the morning she woke up alone.
The idea that in the middle of the world ending, she had managed to get pregnant didn’t occur to Eve until one morning mid-month while she was searching in one of the bathroom cupboards for some Nyquil for Kyle. The unopened box of pads sitting on one of the shelves reminded her that she hadn’t had a period that month or the month before. Kyle had asked her a few days before he’d gotten sick if she had started yet. Normally he hadn’t cared about such things unless he wanted some, but his question hadn’t seemed all that odd to her. She told him that she had not. She blew it off, blaming it on stress. Then she forgot all about it.
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