I shake my head.
“Me neither.” He makes a face. “Mind if I come over?”
My heart speeds. But it’s respectful that he’s asking, right?
I don’t get off the bike or walk it toward him. I cant it against one cocked leg and wait.
“Sure.” I try to sound confident. I square my shoulders.
You know what else doesn’t exist anymore?
Backup.
* * *
We head off side by side. I’ve finally gotten off the bike and am walking it, though I casually keep it and the wagon in between us and stay out of grabbing range. The step-through frame will help me hop on and bug out fast if I need to.
Ben offers me a granola bar. I guess he learned early on, as I did, that once the power went off, there wasn’t any point in harvesting chocolate. Well, I mean, it’s still calorie-dense. But if it’s daytime, it’s probably squeezable. And if it’s not melted, it has resolidified into the wrapper and you’ll wind up eating a fair amount of plastic.
“Terrorists,” he hazards, with the air of one making conversation.
I shake my head. “Aliens.”
He thinks about it.
“We probably had it coming,” I posit.
“I don’t think it’s a great idea to stay in Vegas,” Ben says, with no acknowledgment of the non sequitur.
“I’ve been thinking that too.”
He glances sidelong at me. His face brightens. “I was thinking of heading to San Diego. Nice and temperate. Lots of seafood. Easy to grow fruit. Not as hot as here.”
I think about earthquakes and drought and wildfires. My plan was the Pacific Northwest, where the climate is mild and wet and un-irrigated agriculture could flourish. I figure I’ve got maybe five years to figure out a sustainable lifestyle.
And I don’t want to spend the rest of my life living off ceviche. Or dodging wildfires and worrying about potable water.
I don’t say anything, though. If I decide to split on this guy, it’s just as well if he doesn’t know what my plans were. Especially if we’re the last two people on Earth.
Why him? Why me?
Who knows.
“Lot of avocados down there.” I can sound like I’m agreeing to nearly anything.
He nods companionably. “The bike is a good idea.”
“I’d be a little scared to try cycling across the mountains and through Baker. That’s some nasty desert.”
Mild pushback, to see what happens in response.
“I figure you could make it in a week or ten days.”
That would be some Tour de France shit, Ben. Especially towing water. But I don’t say that.
Tour de France.
“Or,” he says, “I thought of maybe a Humvee. Soon, while the gas is still good.”
He loses a few points on that. I wouldn’t feel bad at all about bullet-pointing Hummers, and I don’t feel nearly as bad about bullet-pointing the sort of people who used to drive them as I probably ought to.
“Look,” Ben says, when I’ve been quiet for a while, “why don’t we find someplace to hole up? It’s getting dark, and the dog packs will be out soon.”
I look at him and can’t think what to say.
He sighs tolerantly, not getting it. I guess not getting it isn’t over yet either.
“I give you my word of honor that I will be a total gentleman.”
* * *
You have to trust somebody sometime.
I go home with Ben. Not in the euphemistic sense. In the sense that we pick a random house and break into it together. It has barred security doors and breaking in would be harder, except the yard wasn’t xeriscaped and all the
Landscaping
is down to brown sticks and sadness. Which makes it super easy to spot the fake rock that had once been concealed in a now-desiccated foundation planting, turn it over, and extract the key hidden inside.
We let ourselves in. There used to be a security system, but it’s out of juice. The house is hot and dark inside, and smells like decay. Plant decay, mostly: sweetish and overripe, due to the fruit rotting in bowls on the counter. Neither Ben nor I is dumb enough to open the refrigerator. We do check the bedrooms for bodies. There aren’t any—there never are—but we find the remains of a hamster that starved and had mummified in its cedar chips.
That makes me sad, like the dog packs. If this is the Rapture, I hope God gets a nasty call from the Afterlife Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.
We find can openers and plates and set about rustling up some supper. All the biking has made us ravenous, and when I finish eating, I am surprised to discover that I have let my guard down. And that nothing terrible has happened.
Ben looks at me across the drift of Spam cans and Green Giant vacuum-packed corn (my favorite). “This would be perfect if the air-conditioning worked.”
“Sometimes you can find a place with solar panels,” I say noncommittally.
“Funny that all that tree hugging turned out useful after all, isn’t it?” And maybe he sees the look on my face, because he raises a hand, placating. “Some of my best friends are tree huggers!” He looks down, mouth twisting. “Were tree huggers.”
So I forgive him. “My plan had been to find someplace that was convenient and had solar, and if I was lucky its own well. And wait for winter before I set out.”
“That’s a good idea.” He picks at a canned peach.
“Also, the older houses up in Northtown and on the west side of the valley. Those handle the heat better.”
“Little dark up there in North Vegas,” Ben says, casually. “I mean, not that there’s anybody left, but it was.”
I open my mouth. I close it. I almost hear the record scratch.
I’d have thought it was safe to bullet
Racism.
But I guess not.
* * *
I don’t say, So it’s full of evaporated-Black-people cooties? I get up, instead, and start clearing empty tin cans off the table and setting them in the useless sink. Ben watches me, amused that I’m tidying this place we’re only going to abandon.
Setting things to rights, the only way I can.
He’s relaxed and expansive now. A little proprietary.
I am not quite as scared as I ever have been in my life. But that’s only because I’ve been really, really scared.
“It’s just us now. You don’t have anybody to impress,” Ben says. “You’re free. You don’t have to play those games to get ahead.”
I blink at him. “Games?”
He stands up. I turn toward the sink. Knives in the knife block beside it. If it comes down to it, they might be worth a try. I try to keep my eyes forward, to not give him a reason to think I’m being impertinent. But I keep glancing back.
I look scared. And that’s bad. You never want to look scared.
It attracts predators.
“Nobody can hurt you for saying the truth now. And obviously,” he says with something he probably means to be taken as a coaxing smile, “it’s up to us to repopulate the planet.”
“With white people.” It just comes out. I’ve never been the best at self-censorship. Even when I know speaking might get me hurt.
At least I keep my tone neutral. I think.
Neutral enough, I guess, because he leers again. “Maybe God’s given us a second chance to get it right, is all I’m saying. Don’t you think it’s a sign? I mean, here I meet the last woman on Earth, and she’s a blue-eyed blonde.”
The little tins fit inside the big tins. The spoons stack up.
Ice cream.
Though I could probably make some, if I found that cow. And snow. And bottle blondes are still going to be around until my hair grows out. I don’t have any reason to try to change my appearance now.
Ben moves, the floor creaking under him. “If you’re not going to try to save humanity, what’s the point in even being alive? Are you going to just give up?”
I turn toward him. I put
my back toward the sink. I half-expect him to be looming over me but he’s standing well back, respectfully. “Maybe humanity has a lifespan, like everything else. You’re going to die eventually.”
“Sure,” he says. “That’s why people have kids. To leave a legacy. Leave something of themselves behind.”
“Two human beings are not a viable gene pool.”
“You don’t want to rush into anything,” he says. “That’s all right. I can respect that.”
And then he does something that stuns me utterly. He goes and lies down on the sofa. He only glances back at me once. The expression on his face is trying to be neutral, but I can see the smugness beneath it.
The fucking confidence.
Of course he doesn’t need to push his luck, or my timeline. Of course he’s confident I’ll come around. He’s got all the time in the world.
And what choice have I got in the long run, really?
* * *
There will always be assholes.
* * *
I leave that house in the morning at first light. I lock the door behind me to be tidy.
Only four bullets left. I should have anticipated that I might need more ammo. But this is Nevada. I can probably find some.
Maybe I can find a friendly dog, also. I love dogs. And it’s not good for people to be too alone.
There might still be some horses out in the northwest valley that haven’t gone totally wild. It’d be nice to have company.
I can get books from the libraries. I’ve got a few months to prepare. I wonder how you take care of a horse on a long pack trip? I wonder if I can manage it on my own?
Well, I’ll find out this winter. And if I get to Reno before the snow melts in the Sierras . . . I’m a patient girl. And I’ll have the benefit of not having slept through history class. What I mean to say is, I can wait to tackle Donner Pass until springtime.
* * *
The lights that are still on stay on longer than I might have expected. But eventually, one by one, they fail. When I can’t see any anywhere anymore, I make my way down to the Strip with Bruce, my brindle mastiff, trotting beside.
Before I head north, I want to say goodbye.
That night the stars shine over Las Vegas, as they have not shone in living memory. The Milky Way is a misty waterfall. I can make out a Subaru logo for the ages: six and a half Pleiades.
I stand in the middle of the empty, dark, and silent Strip, and watch the lack of answering lights bloom in the vast black bowl of the valley all around.
I cannot see so far as Tokyo, New York, Hong Kong, London, Cairo, Jerusalem, Abu Dhabi, Seoul, Sydney, Rio de Janeiro, Paris, Madrid, Kyoto, Chicago, Amsterdam, Mumbai, Mecca, Milan. All the places where artificial light and smog had, for an infinitesimal cosmic moment, wiped them from the sky. But I imagine that those distant, alien suns now shine the same way, there.
As if they had never been dimmed. As if the Milky Way had never faded, ghostlike, before the glare.
I reach down and stroke Bruce’s ears. They’re soft as cashmere. He leans on me, happy.
That night sky would be a remarkable sight. If I had a soul in the world to remark to.
GWENDOLYN KISTE
The Eight People Who Murdered Me (Excerpt from Lucy Westenra’s Diary)
from Nightmare
1. You
The teeth in the neck gambit obviously starts all of this. Don’t think I’ll forget that. Don’t expect for one moment you’re going to get off too easily. You might not be the only one to blame, but you’re still mostly to blame.
For how you come to me when I’m by myself, a lonely girl in a goblin market where some treasures are best left undiscovered. Tonight, my mother’s hosting another soirée, all in my honor, a way to find me the perfect husband. She doesn’t care what I have to say about it. Nobody cares what I say, so without a word, I slip out the back door and take an evening stroll through the city, past the downtown train station with its melancholy whistles and along cobblestone streets with vendors that keep strange hours.
“What do you seek, pretty girl?” they ask, their lips curled up in grotesque smiles, each of them proffering me trinkets meant to solve problems I don’t have.
My nervous hands clasped in front of me, I turn away, and that’s when I see you. There at the corner, emerging beneath a gaslight, your voice a sweet melody that could pied-piper all the children of London to their unmarked graves.
“Good evening, Miss Lucy,” you whisper, and my skin hums in refrain. I never ask how you know me. It should be my first question, but you don’t look like a question to me. You look like an answer—an escape from the everyday, the humdrum of parlors and suitors and a future where I’ll surrender my name and freedom in exchange for a title.
Missus. Mother. Nothing more.
But you pretend to offer another way. In an instant, we’re together, perched side by side on an iron park bench, and you share everything about yourself—where you came from, how you traveled aboard a ship named after Persephone’s mother, a woman who knew loss so intimately. Your gaze speaks to me of loss, too. It feels as though you already know me, that we’ve met like this a thousand times before, so I lean in and whisper my secrets in your ear. How I’m desperate for something more, something you promise me without ever speaking a word. You might be a stranger, but it seems safer to share these things with you than with my own best friend.
As the moon slips across the sky, you guide me to my feet, and we sway together, dancing to music no one else can hear.
“Don’t let me go,” I say, and you smile, because you’ll oblige, just not quite the way I expect.
Your breath sweet as marzipan, you embrace me, one hand on my shoulder and the other on the small of my back. We’re so close I can barely breathe. Then all at once, I can’t breathe or move or even scream.
When you finish with me and I return home, my head heavy and vision blurred, the party is long over, and the house has gone quiet. In my own bedroom, nothing looks familiar, not the faded floral wallpaper or the vanity arrayed with candlesticks or the canopy beds, one that’s mine and the other with Mina curled up in the dark.
“Are you awake?” I ask, my voice splitting in two, blood on my hands, blood that’s all my own. But she’s already fast asleep, and it isn’t worth waking her now, even if I could form the words to tell her what you’ve done to me.
2. My Mother
She could have warned me.
She could have stitched crosses into all my corsets and brewed me vervain tea until my blood was brimming with it and you wouldn’t have wanted me.
Better yet, she could have taken my hand, and I would have taken Mina’s, and we could have run together, farther than the edge of town, further than the Carpathian Mountains, to somewhere no man would be brave enough to follow.
But that isn’t what she did. It isn’t what any of our mothers have done. This is the world they inherited, and it’s the one we’ll get too. Perhaps we shouldn’t expect anything more.
(My father with his bulging bank account and dirty fingernails is below mention. Sometimes, men can be far crueler than monsters.)
3. My Best Friend
Mina, sweet Mina, a light of all lights. Even if my mother wouldn’t have come with us, we still could have fled this city of death. That was what we always wanted.
“Shall we run away together today?” I’d ask, back when we were just girls who didn’t know enough to know we should be afraid.
“Tomorrow,” she would whisper, and we’d laugh and dance together in the garden maze, our fingers entwined, fresh blooms of wisteria woven through our hair.
For years, I believed tomorrow would come. But today has come instead, the morning when Mina can see the gray glint in my eye, this unwitting change stirring within me, all thanks to what you’ve done.
Now she only shakes her head. “We’re not children anymore, Lucy,” she says, and I suppose this means we can no longer dream.
That night, I
latch the bedroom window, but that won’t be enough to stop you. Though I never invite you in, you’re everywhere now, your shadow as weightless and oppressive as the August heat.
“Hello, my love,” you whisper in the dark, your voice soft and sweet yet still strong enough to drown out the gentle thrum of my own heartbeat. You don’t ask me what I want. You can’t be bothered to care about that.
In your cold arms, my head lolls back, and through the open window, I listen to the mournful train whistle downtown, as passengers in fine red silks and gray-flourished top hats come and go, departing and returning from places I’ll never know.
“I could take you wherever you’d like to go,” you say, wetting your lips, and though I want to believe you, I already know the truth, even if it’s too late now to matter.
In the next bed, Mina sleeps her dreamless sleep, and as you press your mouth against my throat, I reach out for her across the gloom, but she might as well be a thousand miles away.
Mina isn’t like me. She wouldn’t go walking at midnight, and she would never have listened to your lies. That’s why she’ll survive. Proper young ladies like her always do. They learn from my example how not to die.
(Even as I write these words, I know this isn’t really her fault. She’s only done what’s expected—shed her hopes, shed her name, chose a husband. There are worse sins. There are your sins.)
4. My Fiancé
I have to choose someone too. That’s the rule.
My mother holds more parties in my honor, and the men descend, vultures that they are, squeezing into every corner of the parlor, each of them on bended knee as though they’re at my mercy and not the other way around.
The Best American Science Fiction and Fantasy 2020 Page 19
