by Mark Lukens
She isn’t here! Nobody’s here!
Winston bolted down the steps, waiting on the landing below for Jeff, wagging his tail.
They got back down to the lobby and left the hospital building. He decided not to go up into the parking garage—he’d already been on top of the hospital and there was nothing to see. Besides, he was getting tired. He just wanted to move on away from this hospital ghost town and find a place to camp.
When they got to the truck, Jeff stopped in his tracks. The rear hatch was open.
Had he left the hatch open?
He didn’t think he had. He glanced around as he walked towards his SUV. Winston raced across the pavement to the back of the truck and jumped up onto it, his front paws on the floor of the back as he sniffed at the boxes inside, excited about something.
“What is it, boy?” Jeff called out as he approached the truck with the duffel bag in his hands.
Winston barked once as if calling Jeff forward, as if telling him to hurry. He was panting, and he actually looked happy.
“What is it?” Jeff asked again as he got to the back of the truck—and then he saw it. Someone had been here. Someone had gone through his stuff, maybe even taken some of it. He couldn’t be sure if some things had been taken; he hadn’t kept a strict inventory because he could always get more canned and boxed foods in any of the stores or the houses along the way. But it seemed like something might’ve been taken. His stuff had definitely been rummaged through.
By who? An animal? No, what kind of animal could’ve carried off cans and boxes of food and drinks? No, this was a person. Or maybe more than one person.
Were they friendly?
They could be. But then again, maybe they weren’t. If they were friendly, then why hadn’t they waited by his truck for him to return? Were they wondering if he was friendly, too? Were they waiting somewhere in the shadows that had grown long in the late afternoon? Were they watching him, waiting to see how he would react?
Then he thought about the gun underneath the driver’s seat.
“Shit!” Jeff said and ran for the driver’s door.
Winston was excited, barking and chasing him.
Jeff opened the door and reached underneath the seat. The gun was gone. The person had obviously searched his vehicle pretty thoroughly.
He turned around and looked at the tall buildings all around him.
“You can come out!” he called out. “I won’t hurt you!”
I can’t hurt you now that you have my gun. And please don’t hurt me, either.
“I’ve got plenty of food!” Jeff yelled. His voice echoed back to him in the valley between the hospital buildings and parking garage that was like a little city.
Shit, why had he left his gun in the truck? Why hadn’t he taken it with him? He needed to start being more careful.
Winston seemed ecstatic that he had smelled another living person. He jumped around in a little circle, barking.
“What should we do, Winston?”
Bark.
They could camp here near the hospital and wait for this person to come out of the darkness with his own gun aimed at him. The person was obviously waiting for the cover of night.
Or they could leave.
Jeff decided to stay.
Hours later, as the world grew dark, Jeff sat in front of the small campfire he’d built inside the ring of bricks he’d brought with him. He played one of the CDs on his boom box radio. He decided on Phil Collins, something upbeat, yet not threatening. The music drifted out into the night air. He hated to waste the batteries in the boom box, but he felt that this could be a special occasion.
He cooked dinner on his little grill. He couldn’t grill a steak—those days were long gone now—so he settled for a concocted meal of canned Vienna sausages and a mixture of canned corned beef hash, corn, and green beans. He had cracked open and drank a few warm beers. He had plenty more cans of beer for his visitor if that person ever decided to show up. He hoped the food, drinks, and music would be a peace offering to whoever had stolen his gun.
And that person could be watching him right now, planning to kill him, aiming the stolen gun right at him.
Would that be so bad? He had just been contemplating suicide with the pain pills only hours earlier, debating what he would do with Winston. Well, this person might make that decision for him now. He just hoped it would be a headshot and not a wound that he would suffer with for days before dying.
Then another even more chilling thought came to Jeff. What if this wasn’t a person at all? What if it was one of the alien things that had killed off almost every living thing on Earth?
No, that couldn’t be right, either. If it was one of those things, whatever they were, then they would’ve just zapped him out of his clothes right then and there like they’d done to everyone else. No, this was a person, another human being—it had to be.
It only took another hour for the person to walk out of the darkness.
Jeff selected another CD to play—The Rolling Stones this time—while he started on his seventh beer. He was feeling pretty light-headed. Why not go through the rest of his life drunk? Why bother caring now? He had eaten a few of the fried Vienna sausages and the mixture of corned beef hash, corn, and green beans. There was still plenty left for his visitor.
“Hello?” a female voice said from the darkness, startling him. She sounded closer than he would’ve expected.
Jeff froze. He hadn’t even been on guard.
“I’ve got your gun,” the woman said.
“I know,” Jeff answered.
“I’m going to come over to the fire.”
“Please,” Jeff said. “Please, I won’t hurt you.” He felt tears stinging his eyes just at the sound of her voice. The beer wasn’t helping him control his emotions very much. He didn’t want his first meeting with another human being to go like this. He didn’t want her first vision of him to be a gushing mess.
The woman walked towards him, materializing out of the black night all around them. She was maybe in her early thirties with a slim and athletic build. Her long dark hair was a contrast to her pale skin. She wore jeans, sneakers, and a thin hoodie-type sweatshirt. She had a small backpack on, and she held his gun in her hand, aimed down at the ground as she walked. She didn’t seem comfortable with the weapon, and he doubted that she had ever fired one before. Not that Jeff was any kind of an expert, either.
Winston barked, his tail thumping on the ground, and then he whined.
“He’s okay,” Jeff told the woman as he wiped away at his tears and sniffled. Then he laughed without even realizing he was going to do it. “He won’t bite. He’s . . . he’s real friendly. His name’s Winston.”
The woman stood a few feet away from the fire and stared at him and Winston.
“Do you want to meet him?” Jeff asked, crying harder. He nudged Winston. “Go on, boy. It’s okay.”
Winston bolted away and slinked up towards the woman, his head held low.
She crouched down and held out her empty hand to him. Winston licked her hand, and she petted him. He whined and wagged his tail, snuggling up to her.
“I’m sorry,” Jeff said, wiping at his eyes. “I don’t mean to cry . . . it’s just . . .”
The woman started crying too. She nodded and smiled like she understood exactly what he was feeling.
“Please,” Jeff said. “Do you want something to eat? I made some Vienna sausages, and corned beef hash and veggies. It’s an end-of-the-world recipe I created. I might write a cookbook, but all of the recipes will revolve around canned goods.”
The woman snorted out a laugh. “Sounds good.”
Jeff made the woman a plate of food and handed it to her, still being cautious, trying not to spook her.
The woman took the plate and sat down in the lawn chair at the other side of the campfire that Jeff had set up for her. She set the gun down next to her on the pavement.
“You can keep that gun if you want to,” he told her. “I don�
��t know why I brought it. I guess in case I came across whatever had done . . . whatever things did all of this.”
The woman nodded. She ate a bite of the hash and vegetable mixture. “I don’t blame you. I have a gun that I found. I guess it’s a good idea.”
“My name’s Jeff.” He paused for a second, taking a breath. “God, it’s so good to see someone else.”
“At least you’ve had some company,” the woman said and ruffled Winston’s fur. He had remained by her side the whole time, watching her eat.
“Quit begging, Winston,” Jeff said. “I just found him earlier today. I was alone before that. What’s your name?” He realized he was rambling again.
“Stephanie.”
“Hi, Stephanie.”
They talked well into the night, growing more and more comfortable with each other. She’d been married like Jeff had, but unlike Jeff, she had lost children to whatever had happened. She lived in Brandon, a suburb of Tampa, and she’d been working her way north as Jeff had been working his way south. She hadn’t seen any other signs of life.
“What do you think did this?” Stephanie asked Jeff.
“I don’t know,” Jeff answered. He went over the theories he’d come up with, and they pretty much matched her theories. They both thought some kind of aliens or some strange kind of a natural occurrence were the most likely scenarios.
“But we’ve been left alive,” Jeff said. “And Winston. And the cat I saw. That means there has to be more of us somewhere.”
“Why do you think we were . . .” Stephanie hesitated like she was searching for the right word. “Why do you think we were spared?”
“I don’t know. I don’t think there’s anything special about us.”
“Maybe the aliens had to wipe out all lifeforms before they came to this planet,” Stephanie said. “But maybe it doesn’t kill a hundred percent. Maybe there are always stragglers. Maybe they’re not even here yet. Maybe they’re still on their way, and they sent like some kind of gamma ray burst or something so this world could be ready for them, everything wiped out so they could have our planet for themselves.”
Yeah, that’s not a comforting thought.
DAY SEVENTEEN:
The next morning Jeff drove Stephanie to her car, and they found room for her stuff in his SUV.
They discussed what to do now as Jeff drove.
Jeff shrugged. “Just survive, I guess.”
“We should try to find some others,” she suggested.
It would be winter soon, Jeff told her. He suggested they find a place to stay through the winter and then start their search.
She seemed fine with that.
They would need to find a house with a fireplace, maybe several of them, for heat. Even though Florida could have some cold nights in the winter, at least they wouldn’t be in any real danger of freezing to death. And who knew? Maybe the weather wouldn’t even turn cold. From what Jeff had seen so far, it didn’t seem like the weather changed much. Now that he thought about it, he hadn’t remembered it raining since this thing had happened, whatever it was. And Stephanie hadn’t seen any rain, either. Maybe the aliens, or whatever they were, had done something to the Earth, something to the weather system. Maybe they were terraforming Earth before they got here as Stephanie had suggested last night.
They headed back up north the way Jeff had come from because the traffic wasn’t as jammed up as it was down in Tampa. They got back onto State Road 54 for a few miles, and then they drove farther north into Pasco County on another road.
They stopped and made camp near a plaza of shops in case they needed to look for anything else. Jeff started a campfire, and they made an early dinner as the sun dipped lower towards the horizon. The sky was still hazy and the wind was calm.
After they ate, Jeff stood up, stretching. “I’m going to go look around,” he told her. “See if I can find anything useful. You want to come?”
Stephanie shook her head no, and then she stretched out on the sleeping bag. “I haven’t slept much in the last few weeks.”
Jeff knew what that was like. “Come on, Winston,” he said.
Winston followed happily.
Twenty minutes later Jeff had walked down to the end of the plaza, checking out each shop. Some of the stores were kind of useless: an appliance store and a furniture shop. But he picked up a few things here and there. He didn’t really need much, but he knew Stephanie was tired, and he wanted to give her some time to rest. He didn’t want to hover over her or scare her in any way.
Winston seemed happy enough to sniff at everything, but it still looked like he was bothered by the lack of scents he was picking up.
“I know, Winston,” Jeff said. “It’s a brand new world. What can we do but try to survive?”
It was getting close to dusk now, and it was time to get back to camp.
He left the last store and stopped at the window, staring at a piece of paper taped to the glass. He stared at what was on the paper for a long time—it was the answer to what had happened to everything. Winston sat down beside him, panting happily, waiting patiently.
Jeff carefully peeled the tape back at the corners and took the paper off of the window. He folded it up neatly with his trembling hands and stuffed the square of paper down into his pocket.
Should he show it to Stephanie?
Not yet. He swore to himself that he would show it to her soon, but not yet.
DAY TWENTY-FIVE
Jeff and Stephanie found a mansion to stay in. It had seven bedrooms and eight bathrooms, much of that space useless now. They made their home in the living room, stacking up supplies in the family room.
Jeff made many supply runs, bringing back four gas-powered generators and fifteen electrical cords. He set one of the generators up on the back porch and covered the front of it with a piece of wood to block the noise. It was still noisy, but they got used to the sound. Jeff kind of liked the noise, a sound from the old world. He ran a thick, one hundred foot electric cord into the house and hooked it to a surge protector. From there he ran cords to lights in the living room and the appliances in the kitchen. They had a refrigerator again where they could keep their drinks cold. They had a toaster, but the bread was quickly going bad. They had a coffee maker and a stove to boil water.
He set up another generator outside the house and hooked the pool pump up to it. After shocking the pool with chlorine, it was swimmable again. It was getting a little chillier, but Jeff and Winston still got into the pool.
Jeff worked hard for a few days on the lawn, clearing away weeds and trimming back bushes from the house. Even though there didn’t seem to be much animal life left, the plant life was still growing.
In a large free-standing garage, Jeff backed out two of the vehicles and used that space to store as many cans of gasoline as he could find.
It wasn’t paradise, but Jeff and Stephanie had made a home there.
DAY THIRTY-NINE
Jeff and Stephanie grew closer, snuggling up together in bed. They had talked a lot in the last few weeks, learning so much about each other. Of course Stephanie missed her husband, her kids, and Jeff missed Cheryl, but all of that was over for them now.
That night, after making love, Jeff and Stephanie lay in bed, both of them staring up at the ceiling. They only had a few candles burning and the room felt warm and cozy.
“We should still look for others,” Stephanie said after Jeff was silent for a while. “We’ll wait until after winter is over, and then we’ll head north and look for more people.”
“Yeah,” Jeff said, turning towards her. “We’ll find some more people. I’m sure of it.”
DAY FORTY-TWO
Jeff began setting off fireworks at night. Just a few. Maybe someone would see them and come and find them. Winston was afraid of the fireworks at first, running around and barking, then hiding.
“It’s okay,” Stephanie told Winston, hugging him and comforting him.
“Someone will come,” J
eff told her. “It might take a few days, or even a few weeks, but someone will see these fireworks and come find us.”
She nodded. But maybe she was thinking the same thing he was. Would that person be friendly? They had also discussed the idea that whatever erased most living things might see these fireworks, too. But they had decided to take that chance.
DAY FIFTY-SEVEN
Jeff had gone out on a supply run. He’d taken Winston with him. Winston loved to go places. They hadn’t found much, but it didn’t hurt to stock up on more boxes and cans of food, a few more plastic cans of gasoline, and more wood for the fireplace.
When he got back, Stephanie stood in the middle of the living room. She stared at him, and she looked angry.
“What’s wrong?” Jeff asked, stopping in his tracks.
Stephanie had a folded-up piece of paper in her hand.
And Jeff knew what the paper was. She had found it. Maybe he should’ve thrown it away, but he couldn’t. He wanted to show it to her one day, but he kept putting it off, waiting until he was ready.
“Why didn’t you tell me about this?” she asked him.
Jeff didn’t know what to say. He knew this day would come. He thought he would be prepared for it. He thought he would know what to stay. But he stammered for a moment and then said nothing.
“You knew all this time?” she asked, beginning to cry. They were tears of anger and of hopelessness. “You knew and you never told me?”
“I . . . I wanted to . . .”
“What?” she snapped. “Protect me? Is that what you were about to say?”
He could only nod. It was true. Maybe he’d kept it from her because he wanted to protect her from the truth.
“You wanted to keep this from me because . . . what?” she spat out. “What? You wanted to play house? Is that it?”
“I was going to tell you,” he said, taking a step towards her.
She hadn’t stormed off yet, she hadn’t attacked him—maybe that was a good sign. But she was crying harder.
“I swear I was going to tell you,” he said in a softer voice. “You have to believe me. I could’ve thrown that paper away at any time in the last few weeks. I could’ve thrown it away, and you never would’ve known about it.”
