Alone

by Jennifer Reynolds

  “What’s wrong? You seem a little uneasy.” He was too calm.

  “Nothing’s wrong. I…I’m just...shocked to see another person. That’s all.”

  In that instant, seeing him move a step closer, her mind snapped and began yelling at her. Damn it, Eve, it screamed. You should have lied. You should have told him you lived with a body builder who has only gone down the street for a second to do a little target practice and will be back any moment.

  His eyes lit up with the newfound knowledge. She was going to be easy prey.

  “So you’re alone. I’ve been alone since May of last year. How long have you been by yourself?”

  “August.”

  Stop. You are making things worse. Her mind scolded, but she couldn’t get her mouth to shut up.

  “Can I touch you?” A dark faraway look swept over his eyes as he stretched out a hand in her direction. Mentally she thanked God that he was too far away to actually touch her.

  This isn’t good. You need to run, she heard the voice in her head yell, but she just kept on talking. “I don’t think that’s a good idea.”

  “Why? Don’t you like me?”

  “Not really. No.”

  Lightning flashed in his eyes.

  “It’s nothing against you. I’m just gay. So the whole male thing is unappealing.” She lied again, trying to save herself, but he wasn’t buying it.

  “How did he come about then, if you’re gay?”

  “Turkey baster.” She tried to lighten the mood with this comment while her interior voice continued screaming at her. Why are you still talking to him? Are you feeble in some way? Get ahold of yourself and run, you dumb bitch.

  Her feet stayed planted to the concrete.

  He only scowled at her comment.

  “Why don’t you invite me in?”

  “I think we should get to know each other a little better first. Plenty of homes nearby are empty. I’ve cleaned most of them myself, so…”

  “Nah, I’ve been alone far too long for that.” He restarted his slow menacing walk toward her.

  Frantically, she looked around the porch for something to use as a weapon. The nearest thing was a shovel propped up against the wall near the back door. She prayed for God to give her the strength to use it, then she shouldered it like a baseball bat, blade side up. The metal shimmered in the noonday sun.

  “Now just put that down. You don’t need it.” He spoke to her as if he was talking to a child who was about to throw a temper tantrum, as he stepped up onto the bottom step of the concrete stairs that lead up to the porch.

  “Look, I’m happy that you found us.” Another lie. “But I really think it’s best that you leave. There’s nothing for you here.” She lightened her grip on the wood handle just a little to make it fit more comfortably in her hands.

  “Oh, yes there is. You have everything I need.” He voice was dreamy as he reached up with one hand to touch the side of her face. This time he was almost close enough to place a hand on her.

  “If you touch me, I’ll kill you. Now leave,” she commanded, her voice rising, though she was careful not to shout as she took a step back toward the door.

  “Don’t be that way, love. We’re the last two people on Earth. It’s our job to repopulate it.” At this, he took his final step up onto the porch, his hand still reaching out toward her.

  “Not now. Not like this.” Eve began to mentally prepare herself to swing.

  “Now is a perfect time.” He lunged at her in one quick movement. As he did, she swung the shovel just as fast as he moved.

  Thud and crack were the only two noises that her mind comprehended. The sounds happened simultaneously as his body dropped mid-lunge. Blood splattered across her face, neck, chest, and the wall behind her. Her breath caught in her throat as she felt the warm liquid slide down her face. When he hit the concrete porch, his head made another cracking noise. Seconds later, more blood began to pool around him, spreading out toward her feet.

  She remained rooted to the spot looking down at him for nearly five minutes before she felt secure enough to move. Never letting go of the shovel, she bent down to flip him over. The side of his head was simply gone. All that was left was a smashed in bloody mess. She reached down and placed a hand over his mouth. No breath flowed past his lips. Finding no pulse either when she felt for the arteries at his throat and wrist, she let go of the shovel. The metal rang as it hit the concrete causing her to jump and scream simultaneously as if the man had jerked up after her.

  Gathering herself, she stepped off the porch to turn on the outside faucet. She pulled her shirt off to use it as a washcloth to clean herself. Once all the blood was gone, she checked on Caleb. He didn’t appear to have seen or heard anything. He was steadily pushing his toy cars up and down the hall. Tapping on the window to get his attention, she wiped away a few tears that were running down her cheek. He turned to look at her and waved.

  She wiggled her fingers at him and said, “We’ll have a snack in a little while if you play quietly in the hall while Aunt Eve finishes up out here.”

  He smiled an understanding smile and went back to his cars.

  Sighing heavily, she pulled the body from the back porch. She couldn’t help but cringe every time his head bounced off the steps. Dragging him across the yard, through the gate, past the graveyard, and into the vacant lot, she buried him just past the outskirts of the stone wall she had built around the graveyard. Looking back at the house, she nearly vomited at the sight of the mess she left in her wake. In the small plot of land, she dug a shallow grave and made a cross marker out of wood planks. She put his name and the day’s date on it.

  After she did all of that, she went back to the house and began to hose off the porch and the back walk. In the midst of washing away the mess, she began the process of tricking her brain into forgetting he was ever there.

  ------------------

  From the day that Brent Cast entered her life, she carried her dad’s pistol, holstered to her side, and her grandfather’s shotgun, slung over her shoulder, with her everywhere she went. Now, instinctively, her mind took over, pushing her fear as far down as she could get it. As she began to turn her head toward the gate, her right hand reached for the shotgun while her left reached for the pistol.

  Through the iron bars of the grate, she saw a young female inching her way across the grass-circled medium toward her house.

  “Caleb, baby, go to the front porch,” she ordered in a low voice, getting to her feet.

  Without a fuss, he did as she ordered. Eve watched him slowly walk down the path, effortlessly crawl up the steps, and go into the house, pulling the screen door closed behind him. For the millionth time, she wondered at how intuitive and intelligent he was.

  Eve stood, turned, and faced the girl with both guns pointed in her direction. The girl stopped stone still in the center of the medium. She was roughly five foot, six inches tall with dark black hair that was barely long enough to cover her face. Because of her hair, Eve couldn’t tell what her eyes looked like. Even though this was only the second person she had seen in nearly three years, Eve knew that the girl’s eyes would tell her if she was sane or not.

  “Don’t come any closer or you’ll never walk again,” Eve warned, stepping through the gate and onto the road.

  The girl dropped the large military issue duffle and the small hiker’s backpack that she had slung over her shoulders and quickly threw her hands into the air.

  “I’m unarmed,” she cried out.

  “Don’t care. I’m not. Is there anyone else with you?”

  Eve’s eyes searched the area around them, looking for anyone else that might possibly be with the girl, anyone who might be hiding, waiting to sneak up on her. Between a two-story, battleship gray home and a one-story, stone house a half a block up the road, Eve thought she saw something moving, but it was just a tree branch swinging in the wind.

  “No. I have been alone since July of 2025.” The girl’s voice tremb
led as she tried to hold back tears.

  The closer Eve got, the more of the young girl she could see. She was badly sunburned. Eve could see where her mocha skin had turned red, tired looking, and her eyes showed the slightest twinkle of tears and hallucination.

  “Are you really real? Did I really see a child just a second ago?” the new girl asked, going on in an incoherent nervous babble. At one point, she even cocked her head to look around Eve to see the house and to get a look at Caleb.

  “Don’t look at him. Look at me.” Eve cocked one of the guns. The click vibrated throughout the street and echoed for what felt like an entire minute.

  “That really was a little boy,” the girl whispered to herself in awe.

  Eve nodded. The girl began to weep. Quietly at first, then in a roaring gush of screams that caused the sunburned girl to hit the concrete shaking. Eve’s defenses fell quickly at the sight of her. Flipping on the safety and slipping the pistol back into its holster, she went to her side. The girl jumped at the touch of Eve’s hand, but didn’t flinch away.

  Eve bent down to soothe her. The force of the black haired girl’s body landed Eve on her ass, though, as she threw herself into Eve’s arms. Eve couldn’t help but get a little misty eyed herself. The sensation of being able to feel another human was overpowering. Sure, she had Caleb, but to have someone hold her back for a change was overwhelming to say the least. Even the sounds of the girl’s incoherent mutterings were a relief. At that moment, Eve felt all the fear and loneliness she had felt for so long slip away. Every one of her senses was on sensory overload. They were bursting with eagerness and acceptance of finally finding those lost and much needed sensations.

  She never knew a body could need the feel of another person so intensely, could miss the simplest interactions. There in the middle of the grassy medium, as they sat holding each other, time seemed to cease, to be frozen in relief.

  “E,” he yelled from where he was standing just inside the gate. He had waited behind the screen door until his curiosity got the better of him, or his attention span begged for something else to do. Eve had treated him like a little man so often that sometimes she forgot that he was just a baby. But in that moment, with him looking at her through those large metal bars with eyes filled with potential tears, eyes begging for her to be all right, pleading with her to come back through the fence where it was safe, she was reminded of just how tiny he really was.

  It took the new girl a minute to realize that someone had spoken. She looked over at him, then up at Eve.

  “E,” he said again this time sticking one tiny little hand between the bars, reaching for her.

  The girl let go of Eve and sat up wiping away tears. Re-shouldering the shotgun, Eve got up to go to Caleb. When she picked him up, he held onto her so tight that she thought he might dissolve right into her.

  “I’m so proud of you. You were so brave doing what I told you to do,” she whispered to him as she carried him over to where the dark haired girl still sat trying to compose herself. She said nothing to him about leaving the porch and coming to the gate.

  “I’m sorry for crying like that, for scaring you all so,” the girl said.

  “You have nothing to be sorry for. As a matter of fact, I should apologize to you for threatening to shoot you.”

  Eve held out her hand to help her up. She took it, staring at Caleb as if she had never seen a baby before.

  “Sorry, it is just that I haven’t seen a child since February of the year everything happened. Momma was convinced that is was the rapture, when all the kids in our family kept dying. I even began to think it after momma died, but then when people who I knew were self-proclaimed atheists, agnostics, and non-Christians were dying also, I knew it wasn’t Jesus coming to take us home. Sorry, I tend to ramble when…well…when I’m in any situation really.”

  “It’s all right.” Eve laughed, not at the girl but at how wonderful it was to hear a voice other than her own. “You can talk as much as you like about anything you want. My name is Eve McPeters, and this is Caleb Forbes. Again, I’m very sorry for scaring you the way I did. We had a bit of a scare last year, and, well, I have been a little on edge ever since.”

  “I think I was more shocked than scared. Also, I think there was a moment when my mind sort of checked out on me. I have been praying to find another person for so long. Then when I saw the smoke,” she nodded to the dumpster that was fully flaming, grey smoke billowing up into the air, “about two days ago as I was coming over Lookout Mountain over in Kingston, I thought maybe it would be someone signaling. By the way, my name is Vera Gasque. Is he your son?”

  “No.”

  Vera reached down to get her bags.

  “Let me help you with those. And he is or was or whatever my sister’s.”

  “Thanks, but I can carry them; been doing it for so long now that they ain’t so heavy anymore.”

  The trio crossed the road. Eve held the gate open letting Vera get a clearer view of the gardens and house that lay before her.

  “Oh my,” Vera exclaimed.

  “You like my gardens?”

  “You did all of this?”

  “Yes, mostly. Caleb helped. There is still a great deal of edible food, but I wanted to go ahead and start these so that they would be ready for the day when there was nothing left of the old food to eat.”

  “The thought that I may live long enough to see all the available food go bad never actually crossed my mind. I have just been eating anything that hasn’t expired. I always hated vegetables. Now that seems to be all that is edible on the shelves. How did you know to do this? Is your sister still alive? Is this your home?”

  Eve burst out laughing again. The questions weren’t necessarily funny, but it was the only reaction her body seemed to be able to have. She had grieved for so long that the only thing she felt now was a touch of hysteria. Vera watched her, unsure of how to react to her reaction. It made her a little uneasy and a tiny bit scared. For the first time the thought hit Eve that she may have gone insane as so many had because of the sickness.

  “Sorry, I’m not real sure what I found funny in all of your questions. Do you know you tend to jump around subjects?”

  “Yes, and I ramble a bit also, like I said.”

  “I noticed that. It is refreshing. Yes, this is my family’s home. It was my grandfather’s and his father’s before him. And no my sister isn’t here anymore. She passed away on January 1, 2024 while giving birth to little man here,” she informed the woman while bouncing Caleb up and down in her arms.

  Through the entire ordeal, he had stayed relatively still clutching on tightly to Eve’s arm.

  “Caleb, can you say ‘hi’ to Miss Vera?” she softly spoke into his ear. Caleb refused to say anything. His lips trembled a little, but he never cried.

  “Don’t be offended. The last person he has seen, other than me, was a man who showed up for a second last summer. Before that, was my husband Kyle who died when Caleb was only eight months old.”

  Eve slipped deep into thought. Memories came rushing back.

  “Are you all right?” Vera asked, placing a hand on the arm that didn’t hold Caleb. She was looking at Eve’s glazed over eyes with a worried sort of expression.

  “Yeah. Memories. I hate the way they sneak in and fill the brain. Anyway, welcome to my home. Please come in. Are you hungry?”

  “Starved.” Vera followed her into the house, looking around in amazement at how big, yet homey the house looked.

  Eve treated Vera to the first true meal she had had in nearly two years, a meal that consisted of a grilled canned ham, green beans, potatoes, and squash. After they ate, Eve put Caleb down for a nap so that they could get to know each other a little better without him demanding attention. He didn’t go down as easily as he normally did due to the fact that there was a stranger in the house, but his constant rubbing of the eyes told them that he was tired and would put up only a small fight before falling asleep. Once he was down, tho
ugh, the two convened to the formal living room to swap horror stories. Eve started first by telling the story of how Jayna had died.

  “I didn’t lose anyone really close to me until March,” Vera told her. “My grandmother was the first to go. She got cancer quick and died faster. The doctors barely had her diagnosed before it had spread through seventy percent of her body. We were shocked. I mean, this thing was everywhere but none of us was affected until then.

  “After that, schools started shutting down. Dad got mad and said that he was going to make them reimburse us for my tuition. Two weeks later, his company shut down, and I lost my job at the bookstore. Mom began to get worried about bills and groceries.

  “The week after dad’s company closed, the president made the public announcement that basically declared martial law across the nation. He announced that they were freezing all bank accounts, and that they were going to start handing out food vouchers. He also said that we could consult our local courthouse to find volunteer jobs to help in the crisis. They would pay some money, but not much.

  “The next week my father and I started working in food delivery. Mom was too sick to help. She had real bad allergies. I went door to door delivering food and gas vouchers, medicine, and anything else that people were too sick to go out and get.”

  “They had that here,” Eve said. “But by the time I found out about it, only me, mom, and Caleb were alive in my family. I did it for a few days, but my mom got sick. I was the only one left to watch over her and Caleb. They wouldn’t let me bring him along, so I had to quit. In mid-April, I started working on the cleanup crew, though.”

  “I did that also. Nearly a month after I started delivering, almost all of my family had passed away along with most of the world’s population. We stopped delivering, and they moved me to clean up. My second day on the job we emptied my aunt’s house. It was so surreal having to do that to my family. I had buried my mom and dad in the backyard of my house, but that wasn’t as disturbing as having to bag up my aunt and her two sons and send them to the body dumps. I never found out where my uncle was.”