Most of the time, sleep isn’t a problem. My dreams have become less immediate. Dad always said dreams were just your brain taking out its garbage. I like that. Sometimes I dream of Oliver. They aren’t sad dreams as I expected, but most often just the two of us running along the beach. Once in awhile there’s a nightmare. I don’t remember those, mercifully, but wake up drenched in sweat and gasping for air. I think I might have been drowning.
I’m living. It isn’t a life I ever remotely wanted to live, but it’s a life nonetheless. And isn’t that the point? I’ve done enough thinking. Life, my life, is best assembled from a series of chores. Purpose and meaning are derived from activity. I’m plotting a course that gives me a future, and I’ve become comfortable in its journey.
It’s a run-of-the-mill supply run. Go to the orchard, where the trees are in bountiful bloom. Pull a few cases of bottled water from their storage in the orchard shop, and make a mental note of what I need to replenish. I purposely avoidd looking at the dog food. At some point I’ll get rid of it, make room for more practical supplies, but today ain’t that day. I can’t look at it, but its presence still hangs heavy around me. It connects me to Oliver in a tangible way. It’s also why I keep the basket of his toys beside the fireplace.
The truck is getting low on gas. I pull the dog-eared map off the seat beside me. I’ve scavenged most of the neighborhoods near the coastline and along both sides of the river. There are a bunch of small, eclectic houses on the west side of downtown. I’ve been through that neighborhood a few times, but haven’t gone full-on exploring. It’s worth a look if for no other reason than to mark it off my map.
The truck’s engine is making more noise than normal. None of the lights on the dashboard have come on yet, but I’m pretty sure I’ll have to do some reading up on vehicle maintenance. That, or just find a new truck. Like the toys and the food, though, this truck was part of my life with Oliver. Strands of his fur still cling to the seat cushions.
I drive through Charleston’s modest, familiar downtown, past the church steeple where I sometimes watch the sunset. My target neighborhood encompasses ten or eleven square blocks, past the church and ending at the river’s edge. Charleston is essentially a stub of land surrounded on three sides by water. Barrier islands extend along the Atlantic coastline east and west. My island, St. John’s Island, it’s more beachy. The western islands tend to be marshy and overgrown.
I park the truck on Asher Street, at the edge of the neighborhood. The silence is thick. The summer bugs aren’t at their peak yet. The world has become so quiet. Distantly, I hear a bird. Its chirps carry a long way.
I have scavenging down to an art form. When I first started ransacking houses, I made the rookie mistake of taking everything I saw. Clothes, board games, DVDs and CDs, impractical things that quickly became surplus items. Left most of that crap in the beach house when I left. Scavenging is all about finding what I need. It took me months to stop checking the wallets and purses for money. Before I finally gave that practice up, I collected over eighty-five thousand dollars. I use it as kindling to start my fires. That part is kind of fun.
I need gasoline. Everything else is secondary. I skip the houses themselves, instead focusing on the garages and sheds and outbuildings. Not checking the houses also means avoiding most of the bodies. The smell of them still hangs in the air like last night’s burnt dinner, but it’s faded significantly. At some point it’ll disappear altogether. At some point, so will the bodies. That’s what nature does. Cleans up the mess.
A dozen properties into my search and I’ve only found one can of gasoline, a quarter full. The yards are small, sometimes non-existent. I stand in the middle of the street and consider calling it a fail and moving my search north to the suburbs.
At first, I’m sure it’s an illusion. That happens to me sometimes, usually when I don’t get enough sleep. Hell, my own dead father sat down beside for a chat on the beach. Blink my eyes, look away and then look back again.
The woman standing at the far end of the street stares back with the same befuddled wonder. We stand like that for a long time, each deciding if we really have gone crazy. I start walking toward the woman. In a moment, the woman does the same. We’re two Old West gunfighters waiting for the other to draw first.
I’ve always had a hard time determining how old adults are. To me, they’re all simply Older, capitalized and without much difference between twenty-five and forty-five. This woman is Older, some indeterminate age that might make her older or younger than Mom. The woman has brown hair, long and shaggy, and she’s thinner than me. Taller, though, and with the echo of a rough toughness. The woman wears a dirty tank top. A collection of tattoos are visible on both her arms. Her eyes and her face lack the toughness of the rest of her body. I think the woman might be crying. I think I might be, too. We close the distance between each other slowly. I have enough time to consider turning around and running away. It’s a crazy thought, unexpected but persistent. I feel like a deer trapped in the headlights of an oncoming semi.
“You’re real.” It’s a statement more than a question, as if the woman is trying to convince herself of it. I nod my head.
“Oh, Jesus,” the woman says. Her voice isn’t much more than a breathless whisper. It carries along the silent street like a scream.
“I’m Hannah.”
“Hannah,” the woman repeats, almost like she’s digesting the word. I haven’t heard my name in over a year.
“I’m Julie,” the woman says. She attempts a smile, but she’s painfully out of practice. The expression comes across as an agonized grimace.
“Are you hurt?” I ask her.
“Hurt? No, I’m okay. I’m just… you’re real.”
“I’m real,” I tell her. She smiles in return. She has no idea how her expression appears.
“It’s been such a long time,” Julie says. “Are there…?”
“Other people? No. I’m it.”
Julie’s expression crumples a bit. I try not to take it personally. It’s an unfamiliar feeling. Being unwanted.
“I have a house,” I tell her. “Plenty to eat and drink. You look like you could use a meal or two.”
Julie touches her thin stomach self-consciously. It’s a weird thing to do. It’s an ancient thing to do, like wearing a toga or speaking Aramaic.
“When was the last time you ate?” I ask.
“I dunno, yesterday?” Julie replies.
“I have a house, there are beds, you can get some sleep,” I tell her. “C’mon, my car’s just around the corner.”
“Your car?” Julie asks. “How old are you?”
“Fourteen,” I reply defensively, and shrug. “Fifteen, I guess. I’m not really sure.”
“You haven’t been keeping track of time?”
I laugh. It’s a cruel laugh, but I can’t help it.
“I don’t have too many appointments to keep,” I reply.
Julie nods. She’s crying but she doesn’t seem to notice. I think it’s been much more than a day since this woman has eaten. Either that or she’s gone batshit crazy. I can respect that. I’ve lost my own marbles frequently enough to know it’s a hazard of the job of being the last person on earth. Which I am most decidedly not anymore.
I hold out my hand. Julie stares at it for a long time, as if it’s some strange mystical talisman. Slowly, timidly, Julie reaches out and takes hold of it. Julie’s hand is dry and cool. The skin of her palm is like rough sandpaper. I’m acutely aware that I haven’t touched another living person in a year. The last living human I touched was my father. He was the last one to die.
“Youare real,” Julie whispers. I nod. I don’t know what else to do. I lead Julie by the hand around the block.
Julie stinks, there are no two ways about it. Body odor, dirty skin, other rancid odors that only become more pronounced in the confined vehicle. I wonder suddenly if I stink, too. Sure hope not.
I hand Julie two bottles of water, which the woman dri
nks lustily. I stow the gas can and drove us through Charleston. Julie alternates between drinking water and staring out the window in awe. Charleston isn’t that impressive, but I guess it’s been a long time since Julie has driven in a car. That seems strange, especially for someone Older.
“Where did you come from?” I ask. It’s a good place to start.
“Denver,” Julie says. She glances at me through watery blue eyes.
“You’re a long way from home.”
“Where am I?”
“Charleston, South Carolina,” I tell her. Julie lets out a small sob.
“I’m from Michigan,” I offer. Julie doesn’t seem to hear me, or isn’t capable of listening. That’s okay. Small talk isn’t really the kind of conversation I want to have. We drive in silence the rest of the way home. Julie chokes back a few hitching sobs. Mostly, though, she just stares out the window. The roar of the truck and whatever’s wrong with it fills the silence.
“Oil,” Julie says suddenly as we make our way down the private beach road.
“Sorry?”
“You need an oil change,” Julie says. I laugh so hard I almost lose control of the truck.
“What’s funny?” Julie asks.
“Everything,” I say. It’s the first good laugh I’ve had in a long time, and it feels kind of awesome.
I pull into the long, tree-shaded driveway and stop the truck. I get out and walk up to the front door, open it and go inside. I leave the door open. I don’t look back to see if Julie comes inside. Honestly, I don’t care. It takes me a moment to figure out why.
I’m not the last one. That takes me by surprise. Of all the things to carry as a point of personal pride, being the last person on earth seems pretty low on the list. Hadn’t Iwantedto find other people at one point? Hadn’t that been the whole exercise of watching for the lights on the water and listening to the radio?Hadbeing the operative term. Ihadbeen a lot of things. Ihad been the last person on earth. Now that’s gone. Taken away from me.
I open the French doors and sit down on the deck. The tireless conversation of the ocean absorbs me. I don’t notice Julie appear until she walks past me to the edge of the deck.
“This is amazing,” Julie says. Her tank top and loose jeans flutter in the wind.
“Go have a swim if you want,” I offer. Julie looks back at me as if I’ve just handed her the winning lottery ticket.
“Seriously, it’s okay,” I tell her. It’s better than okay. It might wash off a layer or two of the woman’s funk.
“Do you have a bathing suit I could borrow?” Julie asks.
I laugh again, this time purposely trying to make it sound kinder.
“I’m not that formal here. I don’t mind if you don’t.”
Julie walks slowly down the beach. She strips off her clothes self-consciously, glancing back at me as she does so. I look away. I don’t want to watch this woman get undressed, but the fact that it’s another living human being makes me curious. Julie’s body is rail thin. Her hips jut out like small dorsal wings. Her spine is a series of pronounced lumps. A long, ragged scar extends across her back and around her left side. Her skin is a dull gray. The tattoos on her arms extend across her shoulders and partway down her back.
Julie wades into the surf and I step back into the house. Privacy isn’t something I’m used to providing. I feel like a prisoner in my own place. I close the front door and set about preparing some food. I feel a nagging itch at the back of my mind, far enough down that I can’t quite scratch it loose.
Julie
Swimming and food seem to pull Julie out of her lethargy, and we sit in front of the fire as night settles. I give Julie some clothes from one of the upstairs wardrobes. Julie wears a sweatshirt and a pair of sweatpants, and she smells significantly better.
“It got weird in Denver real quick,” Julie says. “Almost like one day things were normal and the next it had all gone to hell. I guess that was the first wave, right? General Tsao?”
“Yeah, it must have been,” I reply.
“There was National Guard in the streets, and then there was no one in the streets,” Julie says. “Like a giant switch had been turned off. My boyfriend Danny, he got sick and I tried to take him to the hospital but there just… there just wasn’t a hospital anymore, y’know?”
“I know.”
“He, uh, he died in our apartment. I didn’t know what to do. I took off. Hitched a ride with a truck driver who was heading to Idaho. Thought maybe I’d go home, see my mom. But the truck driver, Maurice, he got sick at a truck stop in Utah. It was kind of like a makeshift morgue by then, anyway. A bunch of long-haul truckers pulled in when they got too sick to drive and just kinda’ died there in their cabs. It was kinda’ gruesome.”
Julie stares into the popping flames as if replaying the scene in her head.
“Did you get home?” I ask.
“Yeah,” Julie says, and lowers her head.
“Yeah,” I say. It’s an odd camaraderie we share. We’re total strangers who would never have known each other in normal life. Our only common link is that of our immunity. I suppose that’s enough. Has to be, doesn’t it?
“I just sorta’ wandered around after that,” Julie says. “Wherever I went, I was the only person. After awhile, I just stopped looking. I could tell by the smell, y’know?”
“Where did you go?” I ask.
“All over,” Julie replies. “Oregon, California, Arizona, Texas. I thought maybe the bigger places would have some sort of camps, FEMA or something, y’know? LA, Phoenix, Houston, Dallas, they were all empty. Not empty… dead. Eventually I just avoided the big cities altogether. The smell was … unbearable. I guess I just wandered into Charleston. There aren’t many places between Charleston and anywhere else. A few farms, gas stations. I had trouble finding food. I’ve been existing on M&Ms and stale Sprite for about a week.”
“Why didn’t you stay anywhere?” I ask.
“You mean like you did?” Julie replies. “For a long time I thought, no, IbelievedI’d find something. Therehad to be something, someone, somewhere. When there wasn’t, I just sorta’ gave up.”
“How old are you?”
“Twenty-seven,” Julie says. “Twenty-eight, I guess. Has it really been that long?”
“The last date I knew for sure was New Year’s Day,” I tell her. “That was a long time ago. Months.”
“Can I ask you a question?” Julie asks.
“Yeah.”
“Why didn’t you go looking?” Julie asks. “I mean, weren’t you curious? Didn’t you wanna’ know?”
“I was curious for awhile,” I say. “I saw lights on the ocean. Might’ve been a boat. By the time I got my binoculars, it was gone. And once I heard a voice on the radio. Just a couple of words.”
“That means that—”
“That means that maybe there’s someone else,” I reply, “or maybe it was just my brain playing tricks on me. Either way, it didn’t matter. Itdoesn’t matter.”
“Of course it matters.”
“What am I going to find out there that’s any better than what I have right here?” I ask.
“And when the supplies run out?” Julie counters. “That map in your truck. It’s places where you’ve searched? It looks pretty marked up. It looks like you’re running out of places to look.”
“Well, when we ran into each other, you were the one who was starving, not me,” I feel my cheeks flush. Anger boils inside me.
“I don’t wanna’ piss you off, kid,” Julie says. “I just… I just want all this to be over.”
I take a deep breath. The itch at the back of my brain springs forward.Kid. That’s the reason I haven’t gone looking for anyone else. I haven’t just survived but I’ve kind of thrived. I alone have done all the things I’ve done. Leaving Detroit, walking to Charleston, finding the house, stockpiling supplies, surviving the hurricane, losing Oliver, canning the fruit, growing my garden. In this world, in my world, there isn’t age or senio
rity or anything to label me. But in one fell swoop, this woman, this stranger, she’s brought it all back. Julie is an Older, and that means I’m Younger. Despite my achievements, I’ll always be Younger and will, by default, be lesser. And unless I happen to run into a colony of twelve-year-old Peter Pan wannabes, that’s the consequence of looking for other survivors. I’m not afraid of not finding someone. Rediscovering civilization, that’s what terrifies me the most.
“I guess I’ve been alone too long to want to go back.” I reply.
“You like this?”
“This is what I know now,” I tell her. “And I’ve gotten pretty good at it. You see a kid all alone and you automatically think I’m helpless. Take a look around. I’m not helpless.”
“I don’t think that.”
“What, then?”
“Are you kidding me?” Julie asks. “MaybeI’m helpless. You did all this stuff, you’ve got your shit together and I guess it just makes me mad.”
“Mad?”
“At myself,” Julie says. “For wasting all that time crisscrossing the country looking for what isn’t there, what’ll neverbethere. I didn’t want to be alone. That’s why I kept searching. Icouldn’tbe alone. But guess what? I was anyway. Moving around and hoping that the next town, the next truckstop,somewhere there’d be people. You figured out what I couldn’t. And so I’m mad at myself and I’m jealous of you. I could’ve stopped looking and just accepted what had already happened.”
“Being the last person is lonely,” I whisper.
“That’s what we were, isn’t it?” Julie asks. “Before we met. We were each the last person. We didn’t know there was anyone else.”
“Does it matter?” I reply.
Julie shakes her head. “No,” she says.
“The good thing about being the last person is that there’s no one to remind you that you screwed up,” I tell her. “You can start every day with a clean slate. Surviving, it’s pretty black and white. You survive or you don’t. It’s a lot of emptiness with brief bursts of life or death. The rest of it, those long lonely hours, you find things to fill them. Because if you don’t, those empty places will flood. And you’ll drown. You kept searching. I stayed put. We both survived. What else is there?”
The First Year Page 25