A Single Light

by Tosca Lee

  Someone clears their throat. “Uh, you folks know you’re on comm, right?”

  Irwin.

  Heat rushes to my cheeks and I rip off the headset as Chase curses and does the same.

  I walk the next mile in angry, humiliated silence, my headset in a sweaty fist. Gaze trained toward my left shoulder, away from him, vision threatening to blur.

  “Hey, look,” he says a few minutes later. I glance over to find him pointing at a farmhouse. There’s a black X spray-painted on the door. But the markings are different, letters I can’t decipher on the left quadrant. A zero in the bottom one.

  The words beneath it are plain enough to understand.

  3 DEAD

  “It’s like the markings on the doors in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina,” he says. “Except I can’t tell who left it.”

  I don’t know about that hurricane. But I feel the itch of panic at the back of my brain.

  The door of the next house we pass isn’t even closed. Three turkey vultures are gathered over a meal on the front porch and I realize this is where I saw them circling earlier. A sign in the front yard next to an old-fashioned well spigot reads: FREE WATER. The handle is up. Nothing’s coming out.

  Chase loops his headset back over his ear.

  “Irwin? Yeah, sorry. Hey, doesn’t look like the neighbors came through this that great.”

  The morning silence is eerie after the hum of generators and air systems we’ve lived with the last six months. The humidity feels sticky, the sun too harsh in the cloudy sky. Chase pulls a pair of sunglasses from his pocket, offers them to me. I ignore him and pull a worn baseball cap from my pack. It’s the same one I wore with a fake beard when I disguised myself as a man after delivering the samples, the frayed bill shielding my eyes as I sped down I-80 hell-bent on the only thing that mattered:

  Getting Truly out of the Enclave.

  I tug the cap on, pick up my pace.

  County Road 46 turns into First Street on the edge of a town that’s far too quiet. We pass a trailer home, the empty door and window frames of which are shrouded in black soot. A white house that might be a hundred years old with a black X on its front door, a zero in the bottom quadrant. A Lutheran church, doors hanging open, a single word spray-painted across the white siding in front:

  INFECTED

  The town—which is really a village that once housed fewer people than the enclave of five hundred I grew up in—is utterly still.

  Devoid of life.

  My mind is churning. I’m looking for a medical clinic or, barring that, a vehicle. But for all the abandoned vehicles along the highway and back roads six months ago, for all of the campers I saw parked in driveways of the small towns we passed through last winter, I don’t see a single vehicle now.

  “Where is everyone?” I say, and realize I’m whispering. I can feel my pulse ratcheting against my eardrums.

  And all I can think is: What if it’s true? What if we’re all that’s left?

  Magnus preached about the end of mankind. The few who would inherit the Earth and populate it anew.

  Stop.

  Even if Magnus was right, the earth would never pass to a known apostate like me.

  There must be people alive out here somewhere.

  “Maybe this is a good sign,” Chase says, and I realize that he’s unnerved, as well. “That there’s shelters or supplies—maybe even vaccines—in the cities. We need to get to Sidney.”

  A flash of gray skirts across a yard and clamors up a tree trunk.

  Tumbles out of it a second later, feline claws flailing.

  Clearly not right.

  We walk past a bank of grain silos, straight for town—what there is of it, anyway. It’s mostly just a street with a few storefronts. A bar and grill. A repair shop with a tall false front.

  The crunch of our soles, the bump and scrape of the suitcase, is too loud in the silence. So much so that I put the headset on just to know Irwin’s there.

  The door to the post office has been broken in. The two newspaper dispensers out front stand empty.

  The breeze stirs, carrying the smell of damp earth and decay. Something flutters along the concrete ramp to the door:

  A piece of dirty paper with big block letters.

  “Anything?” Irwin says.

  “Place is a ghost town,” Chase says as I go over and pick it up.

  As I do, I note several more like it matted to the sidewalk.

  I smooth out the weathered page.

  STAY SAFE

  STAY HOME

  • Keep your doors closed.

  • Do not leave your house.

  • Quarantine sick family members to a separate part of the house, sterilize any surfaces they might have touched, and wear protective masks and gloves at home.

  • If you must leave, wear protective masks and gloves.

  Last updated 03/18 12:36

  I read the flyer and then glance around. But none of the houses we’ve passed have shown evidence of occupants in weeks, if not months.

  Where is everybody?

  There’s a similar notice stapled to the telephone pole on the corner, though as I get closer I can see it’s slightly different:

  STAY SAFE

  STAY HOME

  DO NOT leave your home seeking supplies or vaccinations!!

  Do not believe rumors that vaccines are available!

  Do not buy injections from those purporting to sell vaccines!

  These injections are FAKE and may harm your health.

  Do not trade food, water, fuel, or other vital supplies to anyone offering to sell a vaccine, cure, or other treatment for the disease commonly referred to as rapid early-onset dementia.

  When a vaccine becomes available you will receive instructions from the Department of Homeland Security. Until then, stay safe—STAY HOME.

  Stay alive.

  Last updated 05/01 1:27

  It’s been stapled on top of the torn remnants of others like the one in my hand.

  And then I notice the date at the bottom.

  “This was six weeks ago,” I say, glancing at Chase, who frowns.

  Do not believe rumors that vaccines are available . . .

  But they should be by now—shouldn’t they? It’s been six months since the National Guard sent a helicopter to retrieve Ashley and the samples from Fort Collins. Since I watched the best hope for our nation—and the world—roar overhead as I sped down I-80 toward Iowa in disguise to retrieve Truly.

  Hiss of static. “What was six weeks ago?” Irwin.

  I read the flyer aloud.

  “Looks like people got impatient,” Chase says. “We haven’t seen a vehicle since we got here.”

  “Maybe there was another flyer. Info on where to go for the vaccine,” Irwin says.

  Chase lets go of the suitcase and circles the pole, glancing up and down. But I’ve already looked and there’s nothing newer. I walk out to the intersection, glance down the unpaved cross street past a mobile home with a sidewalk that goes straight to its stoop. The front door hangs open, crooked on its hinges, a red X spray-painted on the siding to the right of it. A MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN sign in the window.

  “FEMA, or the National Guard, or whoever it is can’t be everywhere at once. Especially a town as tiny as Gurley. I’m guessing folks would have to go to Sidney, at least. Better yet, North Platte or Kearney. Maybe even Denver . . .”

  I turn in the middle of the intersection, shielding my eyes from the sun. Walk a little ways down the street past an old concrete building. It’s been boarded up as though against a storm. I take in the junk heap beside it. The open lot at the end of the block.

  The grass interspersed with rows of dirt mounds. Five mounds in each, the last row unfinished with only three.

  As though waiting for two more.

  And then I see it—a patch of earth darker than the others. Messier, where it’s been disturbed.

  A low growl sounds from the direction of the junk pile, th
e sound amplified by the old hood of a car.

  “Back away,” Chase murmurs, raising his pistol.

  Too late.

  A black dog darts from beneath the hood and I skirt back. But before it’s gone four feet it wavers and falls sideways. Flails. Gets to its feet and starts for us, something not right in the way the front legs are churning as though independent of its back.

  It falls again, worming against the grass.

  A sound rises up in my throat, because even though the dog’s the wrong color, it reminds me of Buddy. The size I imagine him to be now. How I pictured Truly playing with him in Wyoming, splashing through river shallows this summer. Curling up with him in front of the fireplace this fall.

  But that idyllic dream is gone. Julie might not live till summer. How twisted everything has become.

  “Cover your ears,” Chase says.

  I turn away as the shot rings out.

  We have to move on. But without a car, nothing will be fast enough.

  I glance at the sun. It’s nearly midmorning, the hours passing too quickly. I fight down a surge of panic, wondering if we’re too late. If Julie’s slipped away already. I need to know what’s happening at the silo. Lauren and Truly have to be awake by now.

  “Irwin,” I say, not needing to touch the button to speak. There’s no one to overhear me. “Have you seen Truly or Lauren? Can you check on Julie?”

  “Hold on.”

  I hear him a few seconds later in conversation with someone else.

  Chase points to a double garage near the mobile home. I nod and draw my pistol. He grabs the suitcase handle, pistol in his other hand. And then we’re crossing the yard and circling around to a small patio attached to the back, looking for a way in.

  “Ivy’s checking,” Irwin says, too loud in my ear.

  We come to a back door. Chase checks the knob and, when it doesn’t turn, peers in through the window beside it—then drops back against the siding.

  “What is it?” I ask.

  He shakes his head.

  “What?” I move to look and he takes my arm.

  But not before I see the figure dangling inside.

  I shove away, hands going to my knees as my stomach rebels. The image branded into memory by my sheer will to unsee it.

  What is this world we have reemerged into?

  Magnus’s voice, once the voice of God Himself, comes unbidden to my inner ear.

  Have I not told you what is to come?

  Did I not say: not in an age, but in this age? I tell you today: it is here. The end is happening even now.

  Shut up.

  But from what I can tell, everything Magnus said has indeed come true.

  I glance at Chase, who’s looking through the window at an angle—not at the body, but at something along the wall.

  He tries the door and, when the knob doesn’t turn, steps back and takes in the patio. The black wire table and chairs that look about as comfortable as a cheese grater. The terra-cotta planters stuck with giant plastic candy canes and a Santa on a stick.

  “What are you doing?” I say, wiping my mouth on my sleeve.

  Static. Irwin in my ear: “The girls are fine . . .”

  I straighten at his hesitation.

  “But what?” I say.

  Already bracing for the next months and years of wondering what more I could have done to save her. Just as I did with my own mother.

  Chase pauses, hands on the edge of a planter, his eyes on me.

  When Irwin doesn’t answer, I say, “Irwin! What about Julie?”

  “Sorry,” Irwin says. “Ivy said she’s awake, but not doing well. Hey, Micah’s joining us.”

  “Uh, hi,” Micah says, having apparently donned a headset.

  “Micah,” Chase says, tipping up a planter and looking beneath it. “Tell us something good.”

  “I was able to replay the security footage,” Micah says.

  “What’d you find?” Chase.

  I walk back out to the street, look around the tiny intersection at the only stoplight in town.

  Movement catches my eye from the building across the street. My head snaps up toward a second-story window crisscrossed with iron bars.

  Where a gaunt figure is pressed against the glass.

  Staring down at me.

  10:30 A.M.

  * * *

  The hair rises on the nape of my neck—and then on my arms. I pull back but am standing in the middle of the street.

  Nowhere to hide.

  I raise my pistol.

  The figure jerks out of view.

  “Micah, hold on,” Chase says. “Wynter?”

  The mobile home behind me is set back from the street. I could be shot before even reaching the lawn.

  So I bolt for the corner of the brick building. Flatten myself against its side.

  “There’s someone in the building across the street,” I say, breathless.

  “Where are you?” Chase. “Which building?”

  “Brick. Second floor. I’m on the east side.”

  “Uh, what’s going on?” Micah.

  “Micah, I’m gonna need you to shut up.” Chase.

  I see him a second later, crouched against the end of the mobile home.

  “See him?”

  “Nope. Wait.” A beat, and then: “What the—”

  “What’s he doing?”

  “Holding a sign up against the glass.”

  “A sign?” I peer around the corner, but can’t see anything from this angle. I glance across the street, see Chase squinting against the sun.

  “ ‘I don’t have weapon. Am not sick,’ ” Chase reads, and then snorts. “Like he isn’t the first person to say that in the last six months. Wynter, get to the next house over and drop north a block. He won’t see you. I’ve got eyes on him. Go now.”

  I start to move and then hesitate.

  The man upstairs is the first human we’ve encountered since leaving the silo. Which means he’s the only one who can tell us what’s happened.

  And how to get to the closest medical facility.

  “Wynter, go!”

  “What if he’s telling the truth?”

  “We can’t take that chance.” He says it like I’m out of my mind. Like he can’t believe he’s having to even say this.

  He glances back up to the window, squints again.

  “What’s he doing?”

  “Writing on the window.”

  My heart drops. Just our luck that the first person we find is as deranged as the rest. But what did I expect from someone imprisoned behind barred windows?

  “Writing backward so I can read it,” Chase amends. “ ‘Please help. Almost out of food. My name is Otto.’ ”

  I glance around front, and then slowly step out.

  “Wynter, what are you doing? Get back!”

  I move out onto the sidewalk, and then into the street until I can see him. A young man, maybe only a few years older than myself. His hair long enough to tuck behind his ears. His T-shirt hangs from his shoulders.

  He pauses, a red marker in hand, behind the letters awkwardly scrawled on the dirty glass.

  No sign of tremors. Lucidity in his eyes.

  He lifts his other hand and gives a small wave. Smiles slightly. And then mouths a single unmistakable word:

  Help.

  I spread my hands as though to ask why he’s there. Or how to help. Let him take it as he will as Chase jogs to my side, pistol ready.

  Otto shrinks back until I just see his face peering around the frame. I reach over and put a hand on Chase’s gun, lowering it.

  Otto steps back into the window, points toward the first floor. Then crosses his hands to form an x.

  My eyes go to the ground floor of what was obviously once a store. The broad windows have since been boarded up, the door painted only with OWNER ARMED. DON’T TRY.

  Wild gesturing from above. I glance up, where Otto is waving his hands and shaking his head. He points around back.


  “He says not to use the front door,” I say.

  Chase shakes his head. “I don’t like this.”

  Above, Otto’s got the marker out. Writes:

  Front is trap. Back okay.

  And then: please.

  Chase looks down the street, shakes his head as though what he’s thinking of doing goes against every fiber of his being.

  I walk onto the sidewalk and around the building. He catches up to me a second later.

  “You sure you want to do this?” he says.

  “Yes,” I say, reaching the back door. It’s wooden and unremarkable except for the message painted on it:

  COME IN AND YOU WILL NOT COME OUT

  “Well that’s encouraging,” Chase mutters, stepping back far enough to take in the two small, first-story windows. They’re too high to look into. Too small for someone to escape through, even if there weren’t any bars across them.

  Leaping, he grabs the sill of the nearest one. Pulls himself up to peer inside, toes digging into the brick wall. Getting up on his forearm, he grabs the flashlight from his back pocket, flicks it on, shines it inside.

  He drops down a second later, flicks the flashlight off.

  “Well, Otto didn’t lie. There’s a big hole in the floor right behind the front door.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Other than the body on the sofa?” He considers the weathered wood of the door, turns on his heel, and then starts off across the street.

  “Where are you going?” I ask. For a moment, the sight of his back sends a shard of panic into my stomach. Maybe because I’ve never considered the idea that he’d actually abandon me out here or because it brings back that night six months ago when, having failed to get real answers from me about the samples, he drove off, leaving me behind in a snowstorm—or so I thought.

  The Chase I came to know would never abandon me, even when I told him to.

  But that was a different man. Chase today isn’t obligated to help me do anything.

  I give a bitter laugh. “Figures. Great. Good-bye! It was nice knowing you,” I say, throwing him a sarcastic salute.

  “I’m getting something to open the door,” he says through the headset in my ear.