The Last One

by Alexandra Oliva

  The rest of the trail is clear; the trio soon emerges from the trees twenty feet from where Tracker’s group did earlier. The skyline is deeply flushed. A brown-haired white man wearing a red fleece stands at the edge of the cliff with one hand pressed to his forehead.

  “That’s him,” says Zoo. “We made it.”

  “Timothy!” calls Rancher.

  The man turns toward them. Red runs down his face. His whole body wavers, and then he falls backward, tumbling over the side of the cliff.

  Waitress screams and Rancher runs forward. Zoo stares dumbly. She sees the rope that follows the man over the cliff, watches it go taut. She knows that what she’s watching is staged, that the man did not fall. She also knows that her team just lost. Her jaw quakes with frustration.

  For a long moment, the only sound is Waitress’s sniffling, the only movement her wiping her nose with her wrist. Then Rancher says, “Do we have to…verify that it’s him?” Zoo and Waitress stare at him, then Zoo says, “Yes.”

  Rancher leads the way down a short switchback. The actor who played Timothy Hamm is long gone. In his place, a gussied-up dummy lies at the base of the cliff, its limbs twisted, a parody of death. The dummy is dressed as the actor was and surrounded by a pool of liquid crimson. It’s facedown and wearing a wig, which is split at the side and leaking pink jelly. Latex skin is adorned with gross wounds and a plaster bone juts through the side of one knee.

  Waitress’s gentle tears explode into wild crying panic. Zoo looks up and thinks, even if the man had fallen for real, the drop isn’t far enough to cause this much damage. Rancher turns away from them both, and from the bloody dummy, crouching with hands on knees. Zoo watches him as he removes his hat and says, “Lord, hear our—”

  Zoo’s face is drawn, her lip shaking just slightly. Neither of her teammates is doing what needs to be done, so she approaches. She steels herself as best she can, telling herself it doesn’t look real, it isn’t real. “It’s just a prop,” she whispers, inching closer. Her whole body is shaking now as she reaches toward the artificial corpse. She searches the fleece pockets first—empty. Then she sees the square lump in the dummy’s back pocket. She’s trying to stay outside the red pool, but she can’t reach. She edges her foot closer, into the red. She sneaks her fingers into the pocket and grabs the wallet, then steps quickly away. Waitress is still crying. Zoo opens the wallet and sees a driver’s license: Timothy Hamm.

  “How could you?” says Waitress. It takes Zoo a moment to realize she’s talking to her.

  “Excuse me?” she asks, turning.

  “How could you get so close?” asks Waitress. Her voice is a mire of fear and awe, but there is something else in it—at least to Zoo’s ear. Disappointment. Accusation?

  “This happened because of you,” Zoo says. Her voice is tight, angry, and not very loud. “You and your stubbed toe, whining and delaying like you’re the only one who’s ever felt pain.”

  Waitress is shocked, as are Rancher and the cameraman. The producers will be shocked too, and the editor, who will work so hard to explain away this moment. But there is at least one viewer who won’t be shocked: Zoo’s husband. He knows this secret competitive side of her, her impatience for wallowing and delay. He also knows how fear can turn her mean.

  Waitress knows only that she is being attacked. “You’re crazy,” she says. “I only stopped for like a minute. This isn’t my fault.”

  “A minute?” says Zoo, furious and quiet. “By your reckoning we’ve been in these woods what, then, an hour? If that was a minute, I’ll quit right now. You ought to quit; you’ll never win, and you’d spare those of us who actually try from being dragged down with you, you fucking bimbo.”

  She stares down Waitress, waiting for a retort that isn’t coming, then turns and stalks off into the trees. Waitress and Rancher watch her go, wide-eyed. The cameraman is grinning. He’s so happy he forgets the discomfort that’s been nipping the lining of his belly all day. When Zoo returns a few minutes later, he hopes for more.

  “I’m sorry,” says Zoo. “I didn’t mean to…”

  Waitress won’t meet her eyes.

  But that night while the second episode of In the Dark airs and viewers gasp or laugh as Waitress tackles Exorcist over a pot of rice, Waitress sits with a cameraman and responds to Zoo via confessional: “There’s something messed up about being so nice all the time, all smiles and helpfulness, then exploding like that. I don’t really care about what she said, I’ve been called a lot worse than a bimbo, but I’m not going to be trusting her again. I mean, at least Randy’s up-front about being ass crazy. You know what you’re going to get with him. I’d rather deal with that than someone so fake.”

  Zoo’s eyes are bloodshot behind her lenses, the sky above her full dark. “What can I say?” she asks the camera. “You guys got to me and I took it out on her. Yeah, I do think she’s the reason we lost, but I shouldn’t have…I just shouldn’t have.” She sighs and glances toward the stars. “It’s been what, a little over a week? If this is a sign of the direction this whole thing is moving in, I’m…well, I’m nervous.” She looks back to the camera. “But you know what? It’s not real. I know I’m not supposed to say that and you’ll just edit it out, but that guy jumping off the cliff, and that prop at the bottom? It’s all just part of the game. As long as I keep that in mind, I’ll be fine, no matter how twisted things get. And if everyone watching this learns that I can be a jerk sometimes, well, I can handle that too.”

  She stands. The final shot of the show’s third episode will be of her walking away, returning to a fire viewers will not have seen her build. This is Zoo’s final confessional.

  19.

  Brennan whispers, “Who is it?”

  “How should I know?” I say. My fear has thickened to anger. I should have known better than to relax—I did know better—and now they have another clip, another moment I will never be able to live down. What’s worse, I don’t know what to do next.

  What do they want me to do? Answer the knock. It was a knock, after all.

  “Should we leave?” asks Brennan.

  “I don’t think so,” I say. “It’s dark out. And I don’t think they’ve found the window, otherwise they wouldn’t be knocking on the shutter.” I curse myself even as I say this; what better sound bite could I have given them? They’ll play it, then immediately cut to someone standing under that window, looking up.

  “How do they know we’re here, Mae?”

  “I don’t know, we weren’t being quiet. And maybe some smoke got out.” No, they were told. They were in a van playing pinochle as the sun went down, waiting for their moment.

  “What do we do?” Brennan asks. All he has are questions.

  “Let’s pack up,” I tell him, because I’m supposed to play along, aren’t I? “Quietly. Let’s wait this out and be ready to move.”

  He nods and we both turn back to the fire and our packs. I’m shoving potatoes and onions into mine when the crashing knock sounds again. This time, I think I also hear a voice. I look toward the front of the store, again. I don’t see anything, again. Next thing I know, I’m walking toward the registers.

  An urgent whisper from behind, “Mae!”

  “Shh,” I tell him. “I want to hear what they’re saying.”

  Funny, I keep saying—and thinking—they. It seems indisputable that there’s more than one person outside. Maybe because the sound is so large, so intrusive.

  I creep to the front of the store and through a shadowy checkout aisle. As I reach the bagging area, there’s another bang. I sense the metal shutters shimmying with contact. A voice, masculine and muddled. The only word I’m certain I hear is “open.” Whoever they are, they want in.

  Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe it’s not they, but he. Someone I know. Cooper in another moment of enough. Julio, seeking company after an age alone. The Asian kid, hardened by experience.

  Bang.

  “Open up!” The words come through clearly this time, and I
recognize the voice. It’s a showman’s tenor, ringing with bravado. Randy. I’m amazed. Aggravating others is his oxygen; how did he make it through Solo?

  “I know you’re inside!” Bang. “Let us in!” Bang. Bang.

  “Sorry, Randy,” I whisper. I wish there were a peephole, so I could see what he looks like after the last few weeks. I envision him holding a torch, flames lighting his wild hair and glittering off his tacky necklace. He’s probably dressed entirely in squirrel tails by now.

  Wait.

  He said us. I was right; it is a they. Randy isn’t alone.

  A second voice outside, quieter and deeper: “That’s not going to work.”

  I know this voice too. Emery said we would know when the Solo Challenge was over and I do; it is. You can do this, Cooper’s last words to me, unspoken, but I heard, and I thought I could do it. But I can’t, and now I can tell him thank you and I’m married. Because I don’t know what he felt—if he felt—but I know what ran through me. I should have told him. The instant it happened I should have told him; instead I—but I didn’t mean to think it and I was confused, I thought I saw the person I could have been, but no, it’s different—we’re different—because I never chose alone, not until I came here, and this is the biggest mistake of my life. I don’t want to be Cooper, I want to be me, to be the us I left behind—the us I chose. And I can, I will—because Solo is over.

  I throw myself at the motion-activated doors. I push and tug, then pound on the glass.

  Brennan is at my side. “Mae, what are you doing?”

  “We’ve got to let them in.” But the doors won’t open. I can’t figure out how to get them open. “Help me,” I say.

  “Mae, no, it’s—”

  Then from outside, “Hello? Who’s in there?”

  Brennan’s head whips toward the doors, and I call, “Cooper, it’s me! I can’t get the doors to open.”

  A beat of silence, then, “There’s an emergency exit at the other end.”

  “Okay!” I rush along the window displays, searching. I fumble for my lens, but my hand is shaking and I’m running and can’t quite grasp it.

  Brennan catches me by the arm. “Mae! Stop!”

  “It’s my friends,” I tell him, pulling away.

  “What are you talking about?”

  His disbelief makes me pause. “Well, Cooper’s my friend. Randy…he…but if he’s made it this long and Cooper’s working with him, he’s got to—”

  “Wait,” whispers Brennan. He leads me to the emergency exit door, which I suppose he’s been able to see the whole time. I’m so amped I’m fluttering, my breath, my eyelids, I feel like I could take flight. “Hello?” he calls.

  “We’re here!” says Randy.

  “Who are you?” asks Brennan.

  “Friends,” Randy replies.

  I reach for the door.

  “What are your names?” calls Brennan.

  The voice I’ve been identifying as Randy’s says, “I’m Cooper.”

  I fall from an unimaginable height.

  I’m sinking, shriveling. Fear floods through me, filling me from my toes to my scalp and pulling me under. It’s not the presence of these two strangers that scares me, it’s that I thought I knew them. That my perception could be so far from reality.

  Brennan turns to me, his victory clear on his face. For the first time he feels superior to me—and he’s right to.

  My fear leaves me, floods out, and I’m empty, washed out and cold.

  I can’t do this anymore.

  Care. Explain. Pretend.

  I walk back to the fire and take a seat.

  “Mae!” Brennan’s eyes are bugged with worry. Outside, the men are yelling, or maybe just the one is.

  “What?” I say. I stir the lentils. “If they’re coming in, they’ll come in. If not, they won’t. It’s out of our hands.”

  Brennan fidgets. “I’ll pack.”

  A few minutes later, the men grow quiet. The stew’s bubbling is the loudest sound around, and then the zipping of Brennan’s backpack as he finishes.

  We eat. The home fries, the stew, it’s all tasteless. Brennan looks squirrely. He asks again about leaving. I don’t answer. Like the men outside, he soon stops trying. There’s more stew than we can eat. “Breakfast,” I say, putting a lid on the pot and removing it from the dwindling fire. I think of Cooper’s first laugh, like a gift. How special I felt as he walked away, bucket in hand.

  “You really think it’s safe to sleep here?” asks Brennan.

  I shrug. I lie on my towel-lined chair. The cloths beneath me bunch uncomfortably. I get up and sweep them all to the floor. I lie down again. Our fire is little more than embers.

  “Mae?”

  I squeeze my eyelids shut. I’m so tired.

  “In the morning, let’s find a car. Let’s drive the rest of the way.”

  “No,” I say.

  “Why not?”

  “You know why.”

  “Oh,” says Brennan.

  “Go to sleep,” I tell him.

  I open my eyes. The fire’s embers are a faint orange blur.

  Ad tenebras dedi. I could say it. I should. I shift in my chair, so that I’m facing the ceiling, the camera somewhere up there, watching me. If I were to say the words, would the electricity flicker on? Would the front doors slide open? Would Emery stride in and pat me on the back, tell me I made a noble effort, but now it’s time to hand over the ratty blue bandana I have tied around my Nalgene and go home? Would a car be waiting outside?

  Or would nothing happen at all?

  The thought pinches. I cannot give up. I cannot fail. As exhausted and frustrated as I am, I must keep going. I’ve given myself no other choice.

  I turn back to the dying fire. I stare at it until my eyelids droop. Mice scuttle down one of the aisles. Their gentle patter helps me fall to sleep.

  A hand on my shoulder wakes me, I don’t know when. Later. It’s still dark. I can’t see any sign of the fire.

  “Mae.” A whisper in my ear. “I think they’re inside.”

  “Who?” I ask.

  “I heard something in the back. Listen.”

  At first I hear nothing, just Brennan’s breath by my ear. And then I hear the sound of a door creaking open. Right on time.

  Resigned, I say, “Get our bags.”

  We head to the front of the store, then skirt the checkout lanes until we reach the mouth of the produce section. We creep from one stand to another, making our way to the back. Brennan exhales too loudly behind me.

  From around the corner I hear, “Where are they?” Not-Randy’s voice. And then the other, louder, “Hello?” From the nearness of the voices, I guess that the men are standing just outside the swinging doors. We’re only about twenty feet to their left, our backs to shelves of salad dressing. This is the home stretch, I tell myself. The home stretch of a game that’s lasted far too long.

  I hear their footsteps and a rustling sound. The footsteps come our way. I put my arm out to keep Brennan from moving. With my forearm against his chest, I feel his nervous breath.

  The two men walk by, moving slowly toward the outer wall of the store. For a few seconds nothing but air separates us, then a rack of bagged walnuts and pecans comes between. Soon, the men are over where I found the potatoes. From their soft footsteps, I can hear that they’re moving toward the front of the store, probably planning an aisle-by-aisle search. I gesture for Brennan to follow me and inch around the corner toward the swinging doors.

  Crunch. Right under my foot. Whatever I stepped on, it’s loud. Brennan and I both freeze. The footsteps across the store halt, and then suddenly they’re pounding toward us.

  Fear and flight, instincts stronger than reason. I shout, “Go!” and shove Brennan through the doors. We run to the office where we entered and I slam the door behind us. Shaking, fumbling, I can’t find the lock. Brennan shoves the desk toward the window.

  A sudden force against the door pushes me away. Adrenaline
courses through me and I push back, slamming the door into its frame. Then Brennan is there, helping.

  “The lock!” I say.

  He finds it and snaps it closed. “Will it hold?” he asks. We’re both braced against the pounding door.

  “I don’t know.” I look at the window. I don’t think it’s possible for us to climb out before they’d break in.

  The banging against the door stops. Neither Brennan nor I move.

  “We just want to talk,” says Not-Randy.

  “Yeah, right!” Brennan shouts back.

  “Stop,” I tell him.

  Looking out the window, I can see that the sky is lightening. Dawn is close. I don’t know why they’re here, except that they’re meant to be overcome. I don’t think they’ll hurt us, but they could steal our supplies, or tie us up, or lock us in the walk-in cooler. They could delay us in hundreds of different ways, and I won’t stand for any of them.

  “Look,” I call out. “We don’t have anything you want. This place is full of food. Just leave us alone.”

  “There’s food everywhere,” says Not-Randy.

  “Then what do you want?” asks Brennan.

  “Like I said, to talk. Me and my brother, we’ve been alone since the shit hit the fan. We live down the road.”

  “What do we do?” Brennan whispers to me.

  All I can think to do is to keep the man on the other side of the door talking and get out of here. I look around the gray, blurred room.

  The desk chair. In movies, they always jam chairs under doorknobs and that holds up the bad guy long enough for the hero to get away. I hold up a finger to Brennan, asking for silence, and for him to wait.

  “Where are you from?” asks Not-Randy. “Are you local?”

  As quietly as I can, I step away from the door. The desk chair is on its side, a few feet away. Holding my breath, I pick it up. It scrapes the floor, but Not-Randy is still talking and his voice masks the sound. “How many of you are there?” he asks. “Are you family, like us?” I bring the chair back to the door and ease its back under the knob. I have no idea if it’ll hold. “Were you sick? My brother was, but he got better. Me, I never got it, whatever it was. They tried to evacuate us with the others, but we wouldn’t have it. This is our place, you know? You must know, you’re still here too. Ain’t many of us that are.” I nod toward the window, and Brennan moves away from the door. I motion for him to go first, and he climbs onto the metal desk. Not-Randy’s still talking. “Used to be there was this band down the road, these three nutjobs. I knew one of them, and he kept trying to get us to join them. But we didn’t. They were real crazy—always talking about trespassers. This group, and my brother and me, I think we were the only ones left in the whole county.” Brennan’s standing now, with his hands on the window frame. He pulls himself up and pushes through, feetfirst. I watch him disappear. “They’re gone now, dead or moved on, I don’t know,” says Not-Randy. “Since then, we—”