Not If You Were the Last Vampire on Earth

by Cara Coe

  We reached the cabin and she pushed open the door for me. It was neat. Small. A square sitting room made up the middle of the space with more of the wood furniture and it looked as though it branched off into three bedrooms.

  “That’s mine,” Marla said, pointing to the room on the left. “I stay in this cabin full time. The other two rooms are for newcomers as they get adjusted.” She paused. “They’ve been empty for a while.”

  I tentatively moved towards one of the two rooms and glanced back at her with permission in my face. She nodded and gestured her okay and I went the rest of the way in. I dropped my pack on the bed, looked around from where I stood, and decided it would do. It was nothing more than a bed and a side table but it was more luxurious than I would have expected for a group of people in the middle of nowhere looking like they’d been thrown back in time before Franklin flew his kite and made the world a more convenient place.

  I did notice a k-cell generator and was informed when I asked that it was attached to the infirmary. “But we try not to use too much electricity and there are no vehicles,” Marla explained. “We want to be as under the radar as possible.”

  My first day in the colony was a full one. I was too antsy to rest, so I went from cabin to cabin, poking my head into homes with open doors. It seemed everyone came with a talent and whatever it was, that’s what you did. I met a farmer, a chemist, a doctor, a mechanic (who tinkered with small engines here), a seamstress, a couple of former business professionals, and a minor leagues baseball player.

  There was even someone here to repair shoes.

  If your previous profession had no merit in this new society (I sat and chatted with a computer programmer-turned-alternative healer for a while) then you took up a role that played to your hobbies or interests or filled a colony need.

  My favorite stop was Miss Molly who owned a bakery in The Before. I sat with her in her cabin, passing her ingredients and listening to her talk about her nephews who used to be her pride and joy before they died of the virus. Her voice was thick like honey. She had a drawl that made all her words sound like a lazy afternoon and I fell into a trance as we rolled out sugar cookie dough.

  “New people have all kinds of reactions to comin’ here,” she said as she threw her shoulder into a large lump. I worked on a smaller mass. I couldn’t get the right thickness she called for with a bigger piece like she could. “Some are relieved. Some are scared. Some are sad. I can’t figure which one you are yet. You’re off.”

  I shrugged and continued rolling. “Maybe because I don’t know what I am yet. Everything happened so fast.”

  She slid me a sideways glance. “It’s the ‘everything’ that’s makin’ you hard to read. Whatever happened, it was a doozie.”

  “That is was,” I agreed under my breath. I gestured to my flattened work and she nodded crisply.

  “Perfect,” she praised.

  Once we cut the dough into circles and dusted them with cinnamon, Miss Molly shooed me from the bakery. “Come back ‘round in fifteen to twenty minutes and they’ll be done and warm. Just cooled off enough to pick up without breakin’. All helpers get first bite.”

  My wanderings from that point landed me in Hugo’s cabin. He’d just returned from scouting wood in some of the forest a couple miles from here. He looked at me tiredly as I sat on his porch talking to his roommate, Marcus. He approached and wiped sweat off his brow.

  “Jack told me there was a newbie here, just arrived today.” He held out his hand. “I’m Hugo.”

  I shook it, hiding a smile. Hugo was such a big name for the scrap of a person standing in front of me. He looked to be maybe a couple inches shorter than me. But what he lacked in height, he made up in brawn. He had the look of someone who overcompensated in the gym to make sure he wasn’t the last one in the litter to the feeding trough.

  “I have no idea how to build a cabin,” I told him.

  Hugo waved me off. “No one does. Who spends their days building cabins? I’m pretty spent right now, but if you want, Marcus can show you some of the basics for getting the wood. It will take you several weeks to pile up enough to get started anyway. And it’s a great skill to have.”

  I looked at Marcus who stood and nodded. In the few minutes we’d been talking, I’d learned he was also a former computer geek. He used to work at a library in the IT department. Now he was the everything guy in the colony. Since he lived with Hugo, much of his everything was helping him with the building upkeep.

  I shrugged. “Okay.”

  Marcus disappeared inside to grab a few tools and then led me a little ways into the trees to practice. He showed me a good spot for chopping wood and demonstrated how to swing the axe. He told me he had a chainsaw, but he hadn’t powered it up since the first cabins were built.

  “It’s loud as shit and there’s no more fuel,” he said. “We needed them when we had to build a bunch of cabins all at once, but now that it’s slowed to a crawl, we don’t bother with it.”

  I swung. I was surprised at how good it felt to hack away at a tree. The steady rhythm numbed my thoughts and pushed a pleasant tiredness through my muscles.

  “You’re pretty good with that thing,” Marcus praised as I took a break halfway through the trunk. I leaned casually on the wood wondering if my weight pressing onto it might take some of the work in knocking it down but it was frustratingly still sturdy. Marcus cleared his throat before darting his eyes to meet mine. “Did you have someone out there? A man?”

  Alex.

  What would they think if they knew I was in love with a vamp? Sure, these people would probably erect a statue for Ike in his memory if he ever died the way they idolized him but I knew it was still a far cry from my situation.

  I shook my head and gulped some water.

  “I don’t anymore,” I answered quietly.

  “You’re pretty cute. He was a lucky guy.”

  I didn’t like the way Marcus was looking at me. He wasn’t much older than me. Maybe thirty at the most. And he looked fine- symmetrical face, good teeth, no back hair as far as I could see. But his eyes were all wrong. They weren’t deep brown with the telltale Korean traits shaping them. And his smile didn’t dimple near the corner of his lips. He wasn’t Alex.

  “I’m late for some sugar cookies. I think I’m gonna take a break from lumberjacking,” I said, handing back my axe and walking towards the colony. I felt Marcus’s eyes watch me go.

  They were all nice people.

  All of them.

  They fed me beef stew at dinner. A girl named Harmony (I sensed another colony-given nickname on that one) played a guitar after dinner around a fire. A couple children chased each other in the dying light. It was everything I searched for in Tucson. Ike gift-wrapped my dream and handed it to me.

  But as I lay in bed that night, tears fell from my eyes and wet my pillow. Four now. I’ve cried four times since The Sweep.

  I sang Jenny softly. Marla popped her head into my room before she turned in for the night to tell me she used to love that song.

  I fell asleep with the numbers on my lips.

  * * *

  I woke up before everyone else. It was still dark outside. Waking up felt good. My body was charged. It must have been the way I felt asleep with Jenny on my brain. Living with people again – the thing that I had wanted for so long- crumbled in my mind and left a confusing mess. But those seven numbers swept up while I slept. Because as soon as my eyes popped open, I knew what I was going to do.

  I was going to go back.

  I tiptoed as quietly as I could so not to disturb Marla and shut the latch on the front door. I slung my pack over my shoulder and gazed around. I liked this. Knowing that there was a patch of land somewhere where humans could start again and come out of all this. If Alex never figured out his experiments, perhaps my kind would still make it and not go the way of the dinos.

  I didn’t need to wait around to issue good-byes. I was but a brief moment in their world. Also, I wasn’t
sure if they would be receptive to my leaving since I now knew of their existence. In all my introductions and conversations and question-and-answer sessions, no one mentioned leaving as whether or not it was allowed.

  As I hiked out of the colony, I noticed the lamp on in Miss Molly’s cabin. She spied me through the window and waved me over.

  Curious, I walked to her cabin trying to formulate in my head what I would say about my early morning stroll with everything I owned on my back.

  “I made bread,” she said as soon as I stepped into her cabin. She sliced off three thick sections and wrapped them in a cloth. “And there’s blackberry jam in that jar. Those things grow all over around here. We have blackberry everything.”

  “Thanks,” I responded reluctantly, accepting her offers.

  “You’re leaving,” she said simply.

  Okay. Formulated excuses not needed.

  “I am.”

  “I knew that yesterday while you helped me bake. That’s what was off about you. You had the faraway look of someone giving something up.”

  “I’m going to un-give it up,” I said, stowing the food away in my pack.

  “You’ll have light to walk by if you wait an hour,” she advised, then clucked. “But you’re not concerned with that. Don’t let him eat you,” she added.

  I merely crooked a corner of my mouth up in reply and moved my hand in a short wave. “Thank you for the bread, Miss Molly.”

  Chapter 44

  Her

  If I thought the walk to the settlement was hard, then I would have to concede that the walk out of here was downright treacherous.

  “They’re not keeping vamps out, they’re keeping people in,” I muttered, scraping my knee on a jagged stone. My fingers were curled around a jutted outcropping of rock. I once again had to decide between a marathon swim through the lake or a climb up this rock face. And once again the rock face won, but just barely. I hadn’t known what I was facing climbing down it. I just ended up on the side of the beast. But looking up at the obstacle? If I had a pair a floaties, it would’ve been a no brainer. But I still didn’t think I could make that swim so I chose to risk death by fall over death by drowning. I feared I may have chosen incorrectly.

  My muscles quivered but I was already halfway up, making the fall down a good four seconds of screaming before the ground shut me up. So I turned my head towards the sky and pretended blackberry vines were under my feet instead of empty air.

  By the time I crested the rock, I was spent. I rolled onto my back on top of my sack and squinted into the sun. It was hovering over the horizon. So that climb took a couple of hours. If I ran (ha! I’m so funny) ok, if I briskly walked I could make it to the cabin by sundown. Alex would be gone by then, but I’d at least have a chance to sleep, shower, and scout for a bit of food before heading to the nearest town on foot.

  As I hiked, I replayed our conversations in my head in an attempt to glean clues from where he would have headed next. I already decided if by the time I found a vehicle, if I still couldn’t figure out which way to go, I’d go back to Houston and take up residence in his childhood home. It’s the only place on earth that I’d ever have a chance of running into him again.

  And I needed to run into him again.

  My sundown estimate turned into a middle of the night estimate as the darkness melted all over everything and slowed my already slow steps. I also had to keep second guessing the path that was narrower in some parts. The branches must have been scraping the truck doors as we drove with how close they were to the road. I hadn’t even noticed.

  I kept thinking that it would be it after the next bend but it never was. Even my bones felt tired. But I forced myself to keep taking steps.

  And then suddenly it was my last step.

  I made the next turn and the cabin loomed in front of me. A patch of trees hid it until you went around them and then it abruptly appeared. The tiredness fled from my body. My heart beat so forcefully, it felt like it was scraping my rib cage.

  The truck was there.

  I almost wept with joy seeing it parked outside the cabin. I ran to the door and pushed it open.

  Alex was resting on the couch when I crept in. His body was splayed over the length of it and his arm was draped over his forehead. His eyes were heavily closed and he didn’t stir with all my excited ruckus. He was out. I dropped my sack and climbed onto him, startling him awake.

  His eyes went from hazy and unfocused to sharp and confused.

  “Tasha, what-”

  I cut his words off with my mouth. It moved against his stunned lips before his mind caught up to the fact that I was here. Not there. Here. With him.

  His hands rose up to make a mess of my hair as our lips smashed together with a heightened need. I could have cried, he tasted so good.

  His hands caught hold of the front of my shirt and ripped it down to expose my dark breasts. I worked at his jeans as his mouth closed over my nipple. The intoxicating effect his tongue had on me caused my fingers to fumble with the zipper several times before I got it down and had the length of him out in my hand. I scooted forward and slid down onto him. I was slick and ready and he glided into me until I was so full it blurred the line between pleasure and pain.

  His deep moan vibrated through my flesh.

  We didn’t speak. I grinded and he clutched. We sucked, and nibbled, and scratched, and moaned. His fangs were hard points against my lips. When I arched my back to drive him in deeper still, he pressed his fingers in my thighs and verbalized his struggle to hold off.

  I lifted myself from his lap and turned around. He was immediately behind me. His large hands gripped my waist and he slid back into me with long, steady strokes. He leaned forward as his did so, his breath hot on my ear.

  “I love you, Tasha.”

  I gripped the arm of the couch as his thrusts went deeper and faster. When I came, the orgasm ripped through me and causing me to rise up on my knees and he followed with an arm curled around my waist, squeezing as he released inside me.

  I curled my legs up to my chest on the small couch and Alex curled behind me. We barely fit. His calves hung off the end.

  “Tomorrow morning, I’ll drive you back,” he whispered.

  “Tomorrow morning we leave this place. Together.”

  “I can’t, Tasha.”

  I craned my neck back to look at him. “Why not?”

  “Because I spent the whole drive to Washington working up the strength to let you go.”

  “Oh. Well it manifested in an assholic manner.”

  A sad smile tugged at his lips. “Don’t speak Tasha-nese right now. This is already hard enough. You have to go back.”

  “I don’t have to do anything.”

  “I don’t want you to hate me in a month.”

  “I won’t.”

  “Or six months. Or a year. There are people on the other side of that lake. Not vamps. There’s a new start. You might want to choose me now, but I can’t bear the regret.”

  “Neither can I,” I said, turning back around and resting my cheek on my hand. My eyes felt heavy. “That’s why I’m here.”

  Alex sighed defeat into the chilly air. “We’ll talk about it in the morning.”

  Chapter 45

  Her

  We didn’t talk about it in the morning. I ate the bread and jam from my backpack that Miss Molly had given me and Alex downed a vial of juice. He took one look at my face and loaded my pack into the truck before whistling for the dogs. Whatever he saw in my expression had the truck rumbling in winding fashion down the mountain passes and away from the colony.

  We drove quietly for a while. The turns evened out as the tires touched flatter ground and the empty shells of houses sat high above the road on their little hills.

  “I missed my dogs,” I spoke suddenly.

  Alex threw a thoughtful look at me before pulling the car off to the side of the road and putting the gearshift in park. He turned to face me, his face light with am
usement.

  “Did you now?”

  “Yes. Desperately. I love them. More than anything in this world. I can’t live without them. I tried.”

  “You tried for a day.”

  “Five minutes was enough. It’s useless.”

  He glanced out of the back window where the three beasts were rousing, taking our stop as a signal to jump out and explore.

  “They missed you, too,” he said, swinging his gaze back to me. “Just as desperately.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “For a day?” I parroted.

  “They thought you were never coming back. They spent the day drinking rum and crying.”

  “Rum?”

  Alex smiled sheepishly. “It was what was in the cabin. Shut up, it’s the drink of pirates.”

  “Crying?”

  The smile dropped and his eyes turned serious. “Yes. The ugly kind. The worst kind. The heartbreaking kind.”

  “My dogs do look frightfully ugly when they cry,” I commented, bringing some of the humor back to his expression. “I love everything about them. And I never want to be apart from them again. I want to marry them.”

  Alex’s breathing caught. He let it out shakily. “Society does not approve of human-dog matrimonial unions.”

  “Society isn’t here,” I said, smirking.

  “Society doesn’t approve of human-vamp matrimonial unions, either.”

  Now it was my turn for the teasing to leave my voice. “Society isn’t here.”

  Alex unbuckled his seatbelt, reached over me to unbuckle mine and pulled me into his lap. His forehead rested on my neck and his arms wrapped around me.

  “I was a mess,” he confessed quietly. “Losing you hit me so much harder than I ever thought it could. But I was determined to be strong in front of you. You’ve been without anybody for so long…I wasn’t going to take that away from you.”

  “I don’t want it. Not without you. I don’t want anything without you.”

  “It won’t be an easy life. We’ll have to lay low. It may mean leaving everything and starting over several times. I’ll need to reconstruct a lab each time.”