by Steven Welch
Heart pounding, throat dry from thirst and dust, she burst through the open door of the neighborhood boulangerie, Le Bat.
Light from the rising sun spilled into the old bakery, captured by the dancing motes of dust thick in the air. Elise tried to catch her breath, then wrapped the torn cloth back around her mouth to block out the dust.
The old bakery had been a wonderful, warm, funny place. When the girls were allowed to visit Le Bat, which wasn’t often, fat Monsieur Belfre had always greeted them with laughter, hugs, and sweet snacks. Elise remembered little of her time in America, but she knew the bread there wasn’t anywhere near as good as what she had fresh from the oven of Monsieur Belfre.
The smell was still there, faint, a yeasty ghost that tickled her nose and belly.
Elise took a moment to take a bite from one of the snack bars that had been buried in her backpack. Once this was gone there was no telling where she might get food. She was thirsty too, and finding water might be an even bigger problem.
The glass case that had held countless baked delights was broken and empty. Chairs were overturned. The old cash register was gone as was the little television that had sat on a shelf in the corner.
Elise walked through the gloom, looking for anything that might be of help. Behind the bakery counter was sand piled an inch high, little dunes of it led to the back, and Elise cautiously moved toward the darkness.
“Oh.” Stop and think, why don’t you? Elise slipped her backpack off and dug into a side pocket.
Her flashlight. It was a twist light. You spin the back and it powered the little light bulb for a few minutes, no batteries needed. Dad had given it to her.
She gave it a series of twists.
The beam of the flashlight pierced the darkness.
Elise moved on, picking her way past cardboard boxes brittle from the arid air. The light revealed trash, old newspapers, bags of flour that had been ripped open and emptied.
Newspapers? Elise grabbed at a paper partially buried in sand. She pulled it up and played light over its yellowed surface.
The newspaper was Le Monde. Elise new that those words meant “the world.” In letters the size of her hand, the front page screamed “La Fin.” The end.
There was a single photograph, poorly focused and at an odd angle, as it had obviously been taken in a dire situation. A mother and her baby huddled behind soldiers who were aiming their weapons at the sky while people ran around them in panic.
What was in the sky? What were they firing at? You don’t shoot at an asteroid or a sandstorm or even a bomb from the sky. You only shoot at something alive, right? Something you could kill with a bullet.
All-right, the sun was up and it was time to find help and to figure things out.
Elise stepped back into the street. She stayed close to the old buildings as she made her way toward the Seine.
CHAPTER SEVEN
THE GRAVEYARD OF BOATS
PARIS HAD BEEN a city of life, light, and music.
Now, there was nothing except the shuffle of sand and a light whisper of wind. There weren’t even birds. Elise had always delighted in the pigeons that swarmed the area around Notre Dame, dive bombing tourists and eating out of your hand as if posing for photos.
These were all gone, or eaten, or hiding, or grown the size of elephants because of radiation or whatever.
The river Seine was close behind the cathedral. Elise ran across the street, heading straight for the water. If nothing else she could boil water from the river so that it might be safe to drink.
But there was no water.
The Seine, the mighty river and lifeblood of France, was a dry and barren bed of sand. Elise sat on the edge of the Quay and stared down at the dunes stretched as far as her eyes could see to either direction.
Here and there were lumps in the sand, and out of those lumps peeked torn sails, masts, decks. The boats of the Seine were buried here, from the tiny little skiffs to the mightiest of the cruisers, buried in a nautical graveyard.
Curious, Elise clambered down the steps, down to the Seine. The sand was soft, but not too bad. She walked out onto what had once been a river. Her boots sank an inch or two, and she was careful to step slowly. No need to drop into some kind of quicksand.
A river boat rested on its side under dunes of dust. She approached it cautiously, looking for any sign of movement.
Nothing moved except the shifting sand.
Elise stood looking up into the side of the ship, the broken glass of a long porthole just overhead.
A skull stared back down at her.
She felt cold, colder even than the chilly air around her.
Eye holes, black and empty, staring down, judging, asking, condemning.
A single gold tooth gleamed from the back of the paper white jawbone.
It couldn’t hurt her, and she knew that, but the hair on the back of her neck stood up anyway.
Someone had been riding in the boat, enjoying a cruise or doing some work or trying to get away down the river. Now they were dead.
But, this person had been in the boat, on the water, right? How did they die? She was puzzled.
There was a hole in the side of the boat a few yards to her right. She shuffled over and took a look inside.
Just metal and wood and fiberglass or whatever it was boats were made of, all jumbled up and broken. Not rusted though. Scoured by the sand until the metal was shiny and the wood was smooth.
More bones were scattered about the cabin, just beyond her reach. And something else. A snack machine? Yes, a vending machine.
So, how brave are you, Goofus?
Elise ducked low and moved into the ship. Her backpack snagged on something above her and her heart froze for a beat. She yanked it free and pulled it down from her back, carried it low along the sand.
It was dark in the corners, but soft red sunlight spilled through holes here and there, lighting more of the path toward the vending machine.
The machine lay on its side, the back facing her. The dead were off to her left, strapped into benches. Skeletal corpses, still dressed in tattered clothing, still draped with day packs and earphones. A few weathered guidebooks were scattered about in the dust.
So this had been one of the tourist boats.
These people had been on a tour of the Seine when something awful happened, and it happened so quickly they didn’t even take out their ear buds to stop listening to the English or German or Spanish translations.
The world had ended in a flash.
Elise moved around the fallen vending machine and tripped, falling face first into the sand, into something hard and pointy.
Ribs. She had fallen into someone’s ribs.
Elise was brave and old for her years and her courage came from anger, a strong and deep place.
But she was still only twelve years old.
She screamed, and once she started screaming she couldn’t stop. Screaming, scrambling away from the bones, she cried so hard she thought her cheeks would break. She knew her screams would attract something terrifying, she knew it, but she couldn’t stop. She couldn’t stop looking around, frantic now, at the bones jutting out from the sand all around her, the skulls, the fingers, the leg bone she had tripped over, it was all too much, too horrible.
Elise curled her knees to her chest and buried her face in her hands to try to stop the screaming, her sobs convulsing, the tears dropping into the sand, probably the only water the river had known in years, her tears, the river Seine.
She looked down at the tiny rivulet of tear water she had made. The Seine, now just the tears of a little girl. This struck her as funny and her screams stopped. Crying still, she began to laugh.
How about a boat for my tears so I could sail away from this place, she thought.
Elise took a few minutes to compose herself. Her fall had kicked up dust from the sand and she waited for it to settle a bit before moving around. When the motes had gone back to rest, she stood and shook away the
sand and the fear.
The glass door on the front of the vending machine was cracked, half buried in a little dune. But inside, oh inside, the treasure!
Bottles of water. Chips. Candy bars. Chewing gum.
Elise picked up the leg bone that had tripped her and swung it like a cricket bat. The glass cracked more, but held. She swung again, and then again. On the tenth swing, her arms and shoulders aching, the slice on her hand stinging, sweat burning her eyes despite the cold, the glass shattered.
Let’s find out how much my backpack will hold.
CHAPTER EIGHT
WATCHING THE GIRL
THE NOISE. SUCH shrill noise.
It had no sense of smell but could see a bit and most of all, it could feel.
Tendrils, whiskers, antennae, reaching, sensing, discovering, following the tracks in the sand, following the tracks in the sand until the noise began, the high and awful sound.
The child thing was making the noise.
Was it wounded? We must see.
It sounded as if it were horribly wounded, as if a limb had been removed or it had been stepped on but not killed, just left to suffer.
“Oh, and my eyes are on stalks so I can see around corners.”
The human child thing is making the wounded sound and sitting in the thing of wood and metal and bone.
It is not injured. Why does it make the wounded sound?
“Oh. I smell water. I smell salt water.”
The thing is leaking salt water from its little eyes and oh, the salt water smells lovely.
I must tell Ozwold. He will be back soon from his strange scampering and I will tell Ozwold and we will go to the girl to find out if she knows where to find more of that lovely salt water.
CHAPTER NINE
CANDY STORE
A BUS WOULD have been nice.
Or the metro. Of course, people who could help her would have been nice, too. Or just people. Rude people, bored people, annoying people. Any kind of people would have been wonderful.
The backpack was so full and heavy with her scavenged goods that her backed ached. Elise walked to the west along the Left Bank having crossed the bridge that led to Shakespeare & Company, the old bookstore. This was not the original location but it was still a wonderful place full of books of all kinds. A charming fountain stood in front of the store, but now it was dry and overflowing with sand.
Elise peeked into the broken windows and saw a scatter of paper in the darkness. This made her sad once again, and then she became angry at her sadness and punched herself in the thigh.
She stepped away from the store and walked back to the road along the quay.
Now the sun was high and bright, an orange ball ringed by halos of red. The wind was gone, and the city was quiet. She could see well now, the dust no longer clouding the sky.
Overturned cars littered the road, some almost completely buried in drifts of sand. There was one of the red tourist buses, still standing where it had stopped as it had collided with a tree.
Elise slipped off her backpack and clambered up to the second level of the double decker. She ran to the front for a better view of the city and what lay ahead down the street.
Devastation as far as the eye could see. Tangled cars, buildings scarred black with fire damage, trees broken by wind or something else. No life, no movement anywhere.
Paris was dead as those skeletons in the ship.
Well, I’m not going to end up like that.
*
What would you do if you were the last person on earth?
Elise had sometimes considered what it would be like after a zombie apocalypse or a meteor strike or just some weird dimensional shift that wiped the slate clean and left the world wide open for her.
Eating candy would be good. Unlimited candy, if you could find it. Maybe there would be electricity and you could watch every movie ever made. You could read every book, listen to every song, play with every toy as long as it wasn’t something built for two. You could stay out until all hours and nobody would be there to tell you to clean up, study, go to sleep, brush your teeth, you could poop where you please, you could throw rocks through window panes and joy ride in fast cars with the wind blowing in your hair, so free.
Of course, the reality of it was a bit more of a kick in the knees.
No electricity, not much candy, sand and dust wherever you looked, and you weren’t alone, not really. There were scary things, and a man who dangled from the ceiling of Notre Dame like a farting puppet.
So, Elise entered what had once been a tiny candy shop on the Left Bank and shut the door tight behind her.
This would do for tonight.
The lock was good, the windows small and unbroken, half covered in dust. Light could get in, but not by much. The store was small and uncluttered, with a wooden bar that ran the length of the place. Even the glass here was unbroken.
There was no candy in the case. Not a problem. She had snacks galore for now. What she needed was a safe place to hide, and this would work.
A twist of her flashlight and she moved up the small steps to the first floor. Not too dusty, not too scary. There was an apartment with a single bed, simple furniture, and a bathroom. This had been someone’s home. Probably the candy maker. Elise thought it must have been a woman, an older woman, because the decorations in the room were colorful and frilly and of another time. She had never known a grandmother, but this is what she imagined a grandmother’s apartment would look like.
There was a framed picture by the side of the bed. A child’s school photograph, a boy Elise’s age, maybe younger, smiling, dressed in a PSG jersey.
I wonder where he is? I wonder where they all are?
Elise dropped her backpack to the floor.
She heard the voice of her Dad, that rich, deep voice. She couldn’t hear what he was saying, but it warmed her. It gave her courage and hope.
The adrenalin she had spent, the horror the fear the chaos she had felt, the confusion and wonder, all of these things pulled away at the courage and endurance inside of her like strings pulling the marionette man back to the top of the cathedral.
Elise pulled blankets around and tucked away behind the bed. Hidden, she fell sound asleep for the first time in the new world.
CHAPTER TEN
THE MAN OF MANY EYES
THE WINDS CAME at night.
That’s how it worked now.
Sleep was fitful in the candy store. It’s hard to rest easy, no matter how tired you are, when you’re afraid of the world around you, so Elise was half-awake when, after sundown, the sandstorm came back.
There was no slow build, no warning. The still of the evening was blasted with a roar of hard wind as if a giant had flipped a switch and Elise jumped up to the window.
Visibility dropped to nothing, only the tiny sparks in the air, hell’s fireflies. Then, that roaring, crashing lightning filled the sky.
Dust devils formed along the street below and whipped along like violent ghosts. The shock flies seemed to fly into the dust devils and Elise watched, fascinated, as they became little tornadoes of electricity. They were beautiful, but she thought it might be smart never to get too close to one if the opportunity presented itself. Such was static electricity in a sandstorm at the end of the world.
Something else moved in the gloom and frenzy. Elise shrunk down so that only her eyes peeked over the window sill. There was a massive creature lurching and shambling down the street, as big as an elephant, with tentacles that reached out and probed, as if seeking food.
Elise moved quietly as she could away from the window. She covered herself back up in the blankets and old clothes, concealed and safe as could be, and tried to go back to sleep.
*
Morning light drifted in through the window and Elise woke up. She heard no sound, no howling wind. Just like that, the sandstorm had died.
She stretched and went to the window.
The last time she had gone to sleep, it hadn�
��t worked out. Perhaps this night’s sleep would wipe away this new, horrible, unkind world.
Outside the window, the sand outside was still, a red snowstorm covered Paris.
Oh well. At least there was no sign of the giant creature she had seen the night before. The street was perfectly calm.
She made a breakfast of a blueberry health bar and a can of soda she had pulled from the machine.
“Brush your teeth,” she said to herself after, “We’re not animals here.”
A twist of the water faucet in the tiny kitchen produced a rattle of pipes and a belch of dust and nothing more. She brushed and rinsed with the rest of her soda.
There was water in the toilet, and she relieved herself with a proper flush.
“Oh. Shouldn’t have done that.” She suspected water would be precious and there went most of it from the water bin at the back of the toilet.
Elise stared out the window at the landscape below. She felt safe in the candy store, but she knew she needed to find help. If the weird guy in Notre Dame was still alive, there must be others, less weird, somewhere.
“I can’t stay here.”
*
She was careful to walk close to the buildings along the Left Bank, along the Quai d Orsay, as she made her way west. She didn’t want to leave footprints out in the open. Also, she could scavenge as she went, popping into promising shops. She had more than she could carry now having found bottles of water and plenty of snacks. Elise had used some of the water to clean the cut on her hand. It helped and once clean the cut wasn’t as bad as all that.
There had been skeletons, of course. Bodies dried by the wind and sand. Some of the cars held them, and she came across a dead man dressed in rags hanging by a rope from a sand stripped tree. The leathery skin was like jerky and the rope made a little creaking noise as it swung in the soft breeze.
The sky was strange, with no clouds, just the red haze of the sun. The dust in the air obscured visibility.
