Alone

by Jennifer Reynolds

  “Sure. Something stupid and funny. I don’t think my nerves could handle anything remotely scary right now.”

  They were halfway through Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back when Eve brought up the subject of him coming to live with her, Andrea, and Caleb. They were sitting on his sofa with a half a foot of space between them. There was no response out of him for a long while. The question hung in the air through the rest of the movie.

  Just as Jay and Silent Bob were mounting the stage to do a little dance with Morris Day and the Time, Kyle looked over at her and said, “I guess, if there is room for me, I could come and stay with you guys. I could ride back with you tonight and come back here tomorrow to get my things.”

  “Of course, I have room. Have you seen how big my house is?”

  IX – The Proposal

  The last week of April was an extremely interesting one for Eve to say the very least. Most of it had been interesting in a very, very good way which was a bit of a relief for her considering all that she, and everyone else still alive, had been through. The death count for the week, among those survivors was low. Eve hoped that this meant that whatever was happening was finally coming to an end.

  The most interesting thing that happened to Eve that week was that she got married. Yep, you read the words right, she got married. Eve was just as shocked as everyone else probably was by the whole ordeal.

  That Friday Kyle woke about an hour earlier than Caleb normally would have and snuck up to Eve’s room. Eve was a light sleeper, so she woke the second his hand hit her doorknob. Her eyes jerked wide open, and she lifted her head to scan the room.

  “Who’s there?” she asked, slipping her hand up under her pillow and carefully wrapping her fingers around her dad’s gun.

  “It’s me…Kyle,” he whispered through the door.

  “Kyle, what the hell are you doing up here? Is it Caleb? Is there something wrong with him? What about Andrea, where is she? Is there someone in the house?”

  In the middle of an adrenaline-induced rant, Eve jerked the gun out from under the pillow and quickly, but quietly, got out of bed. But before she could get too riled up, he was in the room and beside her. He had been teaching her how to shoot, and she had grown quite comfortable handling the gun.

  “Calm down there, Katniss, everything is all right. Everyone is still asleep; at least I think they are. No one’s in the house except us.” He reached down and took the gun away from her very easily, terrified that she might grip the trigger and shoot him.

  “Son of a bitch, Kyle, you scared the shit out of me. And Katniss uses a bow and arrow to kill the bad guy, not a gun,” she whispered. Sighing heavily, she sat down hard onto her bed.

  “Sorry, it wasn’t my intention to frighten you. I guess I really didn’t think this whole thing completely through.” He ignored her correction on his Katniss comment, determined not to be side-tracked.

  After checking that the safety was back on, he put the gun inside the top drawer of her dresser. She watched him, making a mental note to retrieve it from the drawer and put it back where it belonged as soon as he was out of the room.

  “What thing? What are you talking about?” she asked confusion in her voice, while at the same time becoming very aware that she was nearly naked.

  She wore an extremely large and ridiculously long white t-shirt with a picture of a lighthouse on it, a pair of Haines panties, and nothing else. The oversized, ultra-soft white housecoat that she normally wore around the house in the mornings, before she decided to get dressed, was hanging on the back of the bathroom door, all the way across the room. She looked to it then to Kyle. He didn’t seem to notice her near nakedness, so she inconspicuously pulled the shirt down past her knees, trying to cover as much of her body as possible without bringing attention to herself.

  “I came up here to ask you something, not to frighten you.” He stared straight ahead, afraid to look at her.

  “All right. What did you want to ask me?”

  “Eve, will you marry me?” he asked, hurriedly pulling a ring out of his housecoat. He tried handing it to her, but his hand just hung in the air above hers.

  Eve never even looked down at it, let alone made a move to take it. She sat still, a bit confused, thinking that maybe she might still be dreaming. Finally, she got up, sidestepping the arm that held the ring, and walked to the bathroom.

  “If you see that cat, kill it,” was all she said.

  When she reached the bathroom door, she pulled the housecoat off the hook as she pulled the door closed behind her. She was breathing hard. A fire blazed across her face. If she didn’t get control of herself, she thought, she was going to hyperventilate.

  “What cat?” he asked, looking around the room with a very confused expression on his face. “You don’t own a cat.”

  “Well, there’s one in my room somewhere. I know, because it took a big shit in my mouth.”

  Laughter came floating in at her as she sat down to pee.

  “You are avoiding my question?” he asked when he had composed himself.

  “You asked a question?” she replied, feigning ignorance. Then she flushed and turned on the water in the sink to wet her toothbrush.

  “Yes, I did. Are you going to answer it?”

  “Can I ask you a question first?”

  There was a pause from the other room, which gave her an opportunity to begin brushing her teeth.

  “All right, ask away,” he finally said.

  After spitting out the paste, she rinsed her mouth, stuck her head out of the bathroom door, and asked, “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why do you want to marry me?”

  “Because I love you.”

  “Love me? How can you love me?” she asked still half hiding herself behind the bathroom door. “You don’t even know me. We’ve only known each other a few weeks. We’ve never even been on a date or kissed. How could you possibly love me?”

  “We might not have known each other for very long, but we have been together nearly every hour of every day since we met. I have learned more about you in the last few weeks than I’ve learned about any other girl I have ever dated. And you know more about me than anyone who has ever known me.”

  “You must not have had any kind of a real relationship,” she whispered, but he still heard her.

  This subject caused Doyle’s face to flash across her mind. She pushed it aside quickly, reminding herself that he was probably dead and was never coming back to her. The picture was replaced by Kyle’s face. Could she love him? Did she love him?

  “No, I really haven’t,” he replied.

  “What have you learned about me that makes you so certain that you love me?” Eve asked.

  “I know that you are the most loving, big hearted person to ever invade my life. You have taken on the responsibility of Caleb without showing any signs of resentment. You let Andrea move in here, and you had only known her a few hours. You have this strange obsession with young adult literature and old 1990s television shows. You listen to Pink Floyd and Adele, which is a strange combination. You bite your nails instead of clipping them. You majored in Journalism with a minor in Geography.”

  “Most of those are all things anyone could figure out about me after only five minutes of meeting me. I’m pretty open about who I am. And I talk too much.”

  “Okay. You cry yourself to sleep at night because you don’t want anyone to see you cry during the day, and think you are weak. You have read every Hans Christian Anderson fairy tale, ever written, to Caleb. Twice. You hate cooked vegetables. You aren’t afraid of anything. You refuse to give up on the world. You are constantly finding new ways to remind us that even though this is our reality we are still human, still alive, and we have to continue to live as long as we can, the best that we can.

  “If it hadn’t been for you, God only knows where Caleb, Andrea, and I would be. If you hadn’t been here to take care of us, we would all be dead. I know if you hadn’t been there
for me that night after Russ died, I probably would have lost my mind. Burying him was one of the hardest things I have ever had to do.

  “I fell in love with you the moment I opened my door to you that night. This world is dying, and I want to spend my last days loving you with every ounce of my soul.”

  Eve couldn’t say anything through the tears that were flowing down her cheeks, and pooling at the base of her neck. Unconsciously, she turned back to the bathroom and sat back down on the toilet too afraid to go back out into the room. She couldn’t say that the thought of them hadn’t flashed into her head a few times, but she hadn’t really lingered on the idea because she really didn’t have the time to stop and think of such things anymore.

  To break the silence that was slowly making the situation awkward he said, “Although, you do lose some points for not sleeping with me that night at my apartment.”

  She gasped with mock shock. The comment wasn’t a very appropriate one, but she welcomed the humor as a proverbial icebreaker and slung the door open in faux anger. Even though it had the desired effect, the noise the door made as it bounced off the wall, ricocheted throughout the house. Both of them froze, waiting to see if the bang was going to wake Caleb—or the dead. Then out of nowhere, they both began to laugh.

  “I couldn’t have done something like that. I would have been taking advantage of you,” Eve said through gasps for oxygen.

  “Do you actually believe that a woman could ever take advantage of a man?”

  “Do men really give it up that easily?” she asked.

  “Have you met my gender?” he returned sarcastically.

  “Not a real man, no.”

  “You haven’t answered my question. Now stop distracting me,” he said, refusing to even touch that last comment.

  “You cannot possibly love me.”

  “I truly believe I love you as much as any one person can love another.”

  “What about the sickness? One or both of us could be dead by tomorrow. Hell, even by the end of this very day. Do you think this would be fair to us?”

  “I would gladly die tomorrow knowing that you said yes, or Monday knowing that you were my wife for at least one day.”

  “Monday. Are you saying that you want to get married this Sunday?” All the laughter was gone from her voice.

  “Yes.”

  “This Sunday. As in two days from now, Sunday?”

  “Yes.”

  A loud huff was the only noise that came out of her mouth as she plopped down on the bed beside him.

  “I’ve made some arrangements with Captain Ryherd. He has agreed to do the ceremony and sign all of the necessary paperwork to make it legal in the eyes of our nonexistent government. The rest is whatever you want. But all of that is beside the point. You either feel something for me or you don’t.”

  “I do.” Eve could barely believe that she was saying this aloud. “I’m so sorry. I never wanted you to think I didn’t. I think I have had feelings for you from the moment we met. It is just that life has been so strange. I never really stopped to consider anything like this.”

  He slid off the bed, bent down onto one knee, held the ring up to her, and asked, “Evelyn Elaine Hays, will you marry me?”

  She looked at him for a long moment then answered, “Yes.”

  Unfortunately, they didn’t get to have their first kiss until they said their “I dos” the following Sunday because Caleb chose that particular moment to cry for Eve.

  An hour later, they met Andrea downstairs in the kitchen for breakfast.

  “Did you ask her?” Eve heard Andrea whisper as Kyle passed the other woman on his way to the fridge. Out of the corner of her eye, she watched him nod “yes” and her mouth ‘so’.

  “I said yes,” Eve said loudly, breaking into their conversation.

  “I thought you might.” Andrea smiled up at her, and Eve stuck her tongue out at her. Then she jumped up from her spot at the counter and hugged Eve hard.

  “Who else did you tell?” Eve questioned Kyle.

  “A few people.”

  Andrea laughed at this, but said nothing.

  Later that morning, at the courthouse, just as they were entering the conference room, Kyle yelled out, “She said yes.” Everyone cheered and congratulated them. Well, almost everyone. A few didn’t think it was a good idea or were jealous of them. Others were too unemotional and stoic to react or care.

  Their happiness didn’t last long though. Caleb had fallen back asleep in the car on their way to the courthouse and had stayed that way while Eve had pulled him from the car and placed him in his stroller. He was still asleep as people congregated around Kyle and Eve to congratulate them. Eve wasn’t real sure what the woman was thinking trying to pull such a stunt like the one she did with that many people around. Although, Eve had her suspicions that the woman might have had some help in the planning department even though she acted alone.

  Caleb screamed the moment the woman picked him up. At the sound of his voice, Eve reached her right arm around to her back and grabbed the gun she had hidden in the back of her jeans. Eve had the gun pointed at the woman’s head before the woman could get two steps toward the exit to the conference room. The woman froze at the sound of the click Eve’s gun made as she flipped off the safety because the second Caleb had screamed out the entire room went silent. She stiffened as she heard the sound of five more clicks.

  The woman holding Caleb was Grace Kennedy. She was a middle-aged mother of three whose husband had died five years ago of cancer, and whose three children had died of the sickness. She had taught at the local elementary school before the sickness came, but Eve had never seen her before she had joined the cleanup crew.

  “If you move a hair in any direction, I will blow your skull off of the back of your head,” Eve announced in a flat, toneless voice. Looking out of the corner of her eye, she saw that Kyle, Andrea, Ty, Candace, and Annah, two women who are part of the cleanup crew and who belonged to a group Kyle’s best friend had run, also had their guns raised and pointed at the woman. “Andrea, get the baby,” Eve ordered, refusing to let go of her weapon for a single second while the woman had her hands on him.

  Andrea holstered her gun. Captain Ryherd walked up at that moment and pulled out his, no questions asked. Andrea stepped up to the woman and took Caleb from her.

  “I…” the woman stammered.

  “I didn’t give you permission to speak,” Eve interrupted. “You open your mouth again, and I will execute you right here in front of God and everybody and live the rest of my life without regret. I don’t want to know why you did it, what you were thinking, or what you were going to do with him.”

  Grace opened her mouth, again, to say something, but Kyle shook his head at her and raised his gun a little higher to insure that the woman could see it.

  “I’m giving you simple orders now. I want you to turn around and walk out that door. You aren’t to look back at any of us. You will never step another foot inside of this building as long as I live. If you do, I will put so many bullets into your body that they will be able to hose your remains down into a gutter when they clean up the mess. Now go…Go.” Eve screamed the last word and made nearly everyone in the room flinch.

  Grace, herself, jumped, screamed, and scurried out the door.

  Two days later a group found Grace’s body on her bedroom floor. She had blown her own head off. Eve would be lying if she said she didn’t feel sorry for her, but her sympathy for the woman passed as quickly as it came.

  Eve turned to face the others, gun still in her hand, but it was facing the ground. Captain Ryherd, Kyle, Annah, Ty, and Candace re-holstered their guns. No one commented. They were waiting for her to move or say something. Minutes passed in silence with her just standing in front of the group taking in long, deep breaths, but everyone was still too afraid to move, afraid they might startle her somehow.

  When Caleb began crying again, Eve re-holstered her own gun and took him from Andrea.
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br />   “Kyle, would you please take us home? I don’t feel much like being here today.” Eve didn’t put Caleb back into the stroller. She held onto him as tightly as she could without hurting him and walked out of the room.

  “Kyle, why don’t you and your group take off for the rest of the day? As a matter of fact, take tomorrow off as well. The others and I can handle it. Besides it will give you two time to plan that wedding. I’m assuming she said yes.” Kyle nodded his head. “Good. Good. Decide what all you want to do, and how you want to do it. I will come by around three this afternoon to find out the time and place,” Captain Ryherd ordered, following them out of the conference room.

  “My house around one o’clock Sunday,” Eve muttered from the hallway. She had turned her back to him as she said this, hiding the tears that were rolling down her face.

  “Well, I guess we’ll see you guys then,” Captain Ryherd said, patting Kyle on the shoulder and lightly pushing him in the direction Eve was walking.

  Ty and Ella said, as they were getting into their car, that they would come by the next day to help. Eve didn’t acknowledge them, but Kyle smiled and thanked them.

  They were quiet on the way home. Eve sat in the front seat with Caleb in her lap, watching the houses pass by in colored blurs. When they got to her home, Eve handed Caleb to Andrea, who took the baby into the family room and put him in his playpen. Instead of playing though, he promptly laid down and fell asleep.

  Eve stood outside on her front walk looking up at her family’s home for a long time, then she walked around to the backyard. Kyle watched her from a distance. She walked through the backyard, through the makeshift graveyard to a small shed that her grandfather had built illegally when her mother was a little girl and before the fence was erected to mark their lot. The shed served as nothing now. Half of the roof was missing and the walls were falling in.

  Silent tears began to fall down her face as she pulled her gun again. Tears blurred her eyes as she raised the gun to eye level. She didn’t have any real target in mind; she just needed to fire. To feel the jolt as the bullet left its home. To hear the thunderous popping noise it made when it did. She wanted to drown in the intensity of the act.