The Last One

by Alexandra Oliva

  [-] 501_Miles 1 day ago

  Thank you. This is the first lead I’ve had—thank you.

  [-] LongLiveCaptainTightPants 4 hours ago

  Got it. PM to follow.

  [-] Trina_ABC 1 hour ago

  501_Miles—I’m with an ABC affiliate outside of San Francisco. We heard about your search for your wife and would love to speak with you. If you’re willing to share your story, please PM me. Maybe I can help.

  …

  26.

  “This place is pretty nice, huh, Mae?” asks Brennan. He’s sitting on his cot across from mine, tying his shoelaces. We’re in a barn that’s been converted to a dorm and houses two dozen people. This corner is ours. It was kind of them, to give us a corner.

  “Could be worse,” I reply. I’m getting better at putting in my contacts left-handed, but it’s still difficult, especially without a mirror.

  “About Vermont…” says Brennan.

  “We’re better off here.”

  He looks up, hopeful. “You think we should stay?”

  I take my hand away from my eye and blink rapidly. It stings for a second, then the lens settles. “Yes, I think we should stay.” Because his future is more important than my past.

  We’ve been here four days. It’s difficult, being surrounded by people after so long alone, or nearly so. But there’s less drama than I expected. Everyone has a role, and seems to fill it with minimal complaint. “Most of us had it rough, getting here,” the doctor told me when I went to see her about my hand. “We know how bad it could get, if we let it. So we don’t.”

  Another bit of lore: There was an attempted rape, early on. They let the assailed choose the punishment and she chose instead to forgive. Something about there being enough grief in this world without adding to it. It’s unclear who exactly this woman was—no one ever gives her a name when telling the story—but if this is truly a new world, someone’s bound to dedicate a statue to her before too long. Or a church. Soon her memory and eventually her myth will be begged forgiveness for sins beyond count or measure.

  There’s no one left to forgive me.

  I asked the doctor about my period; she said nearly every woman here has missed one. It’s the physical stress, like I thought. She had me stand on one of those tall, creaky scales, the type that measures height too. One hundred four pounds; almost thirty below the weight I think of as mine. She said my body should be getting back to normal soon, now that I’m safe. She actually used those words: “normal,” “safe.” I think that’s what made me tell her about the coyote. She stared. Turns out I know more about rabies than she does. If I’m still standing a month from now, I’m in the clear.

  I haven’t told Brennan. I figure it’s best not to mention rabies until and unless I develop an irrational fear of water. He’s befriended a few kids around his age, but slingshots back to me every meal, every morning, every “town hall,” and every evening. I’m grateful.

  “Mae,” says Brennan as I move on to my right eye. “When we were at your house—”

  A different world, a different life, a different me. “I told you, Brennan, I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “But it’s different now.”

  “No,” I say, firmly. I blink my second lens into place.

  “But, Mae…”

  He looks guilty, maybe a little scared. I wonder if he stole something. Scavenged, in the parlance of our new reality.

  “If it’s something you need forgiveness for, you have it,” I say. He still looks supremely uncomfortable. I need to give him something. “Tell me what was in the motel room instead.” Because that’s something I still haven’t been able to reconcile, and I need to so I can forget it.

  “Oh.” His sneakers are tied. He rubs the toes of his right foot into the hay-lined dirt floor, drawing an oval. “It was stupid. The room was filled with electronics. TVs and laptops, Xboxes, stuff like that.”

  “No bodies?”

  “No.” A second oval, a slightly rotated twin of the first, making a very slim X. “But things were dusty like no one had been there in a while.”

  “So whoever put it there is probably dead,” I say.

  “Probably,” he agrees. A third oval. His foot is a slow Spirograph.

  I look around the barn. There are a handful of others milling about, preparing for the day. I’ve heard maybe a dozen different explanations for the plague since arriving, but the majority opinion seems to be it had something to do with fracking. Either the process released a prehistoric pathogen, or it was the dispersal method for a man-made toxin. One of the more outspoken proponents of the unearthed-pathogen theory is an old Indian woman who’s currently standing by the barn door. She waves at us, smiling, then takes the hand of the little white girl—four, five years old—who I’ve never seen more than ten feet from her side. The idea of fracking being behind this doesn’t make any sense, and I think the woman knows it. She just needs something to believe; they all do.

  “Maybe whoever put that stuff in the motel is here,” I say to Brennan.

  “Mae!”

  The look in his eyes hurts. “They could be, Brennan. Or men like those two at the grocery store could show up any day.” Maybe Cliff and Harry would be here, if not for me. Maybe they too would have roles to fill. “This is a good place,” I say, “but just because someone made it this far doesn’t mean they’re a good person. So don’t get complacent.” He squirms. “Brennan, promise me.” Because I can’t do it, I can’t lose him too.

  “I promise, Mae.”

  “Thank you,” I say. “I’ve got to go, I’m on breakfast duty.”

  “You’re lucky,” says Brennan. “I’m chopping wood all morning.”

  His voice is so forlorn I can’t help a little smile, impressed by his resilience, for chopping wood to feel like a burden. “That’s better than scrambling eggs for three hundred strangers,” I tell him. “I’ll be right out there with you as soon as my hand’s better.”

  “Mae, how long do you think we’ll be here?”

  “I don’t know,” I say. “Could be another day, could be forever.”

  In the Dark—Trying to find my wife

  …

  [+] submitted 5 days ago by 501_Miles

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  [-]LongLiveCaptainTightPants 3 days ago

  Was Elliot any help?

  [-] 501_Miles 34 minutes ago

  He said she didn’t get out when he did. That some of them were left behind. She was left behind. That’s all he knows.

  [-] Velcro_Is_the_Worst 29 minutes ago

  You know how many bodies there are rotting east of the Mississippi right now? Millions. Your wife is one of them. Dead as a doornail. Accept it and move on.

  [-] LongLiveCaptainTightPants 28 minutes ago

  Don’t listen to him, Miles. People survived. There’s been radio contact with pockets of survivors and there’s talk of sending in recovery teams as soon as it’s safe. As soon as they can.

  [-] 501_Miles Just now

  I know. Thank you. If anyone could have made it, it’s my Sam.

  …

  27.

  Faces swarm the camera. Calmer than expected, cleaner than expected, thinner than they used to be. Most are smiling and many are crying as their breath blurs the air. One by one they accept pamphlets and bottles of water from men and women wearing orange vests. Backs of heads nod and bob as frost crunches beneath boots and shoes and the occasional pair of slippers. As strong a community as was being built here, nearly all want to be saved.

  Three thousand miles away a man watches the scene on an old flatscreen. He’s lucky, he shares the room with only two others—fellow East Coasters, though he didn’t know them before. The man has a four-month-long beard that used to be more black than gray. His chin is tucked into his palm and he gnaws on a thumbnail as he searches the faraway faces. An alert to which he will not reply blinks on his iPhone, which lies on the c
ot beside him. Service was restored locally two months ago, but there weren’t any messages, not from her. Her mother left one from the landline back in August; she didn’t sound well and no one’s answered his attempts to call back. This is the third camp he’s watched the rescue teams enter. None have been easy, but this is the hardest yet. It’s the largest known cluster, over three hundred people. His best chance.

  A news anchor appears in the frame, microphone in hand. She’s sleek and polished, her symmetrical face augmented with HD-friendly makeup. She’s not the one who’s been helping the man search; she knows nothing about him. Looking at her pert grin, one would never know that a mysterious miasmic infection whose origins authorities are only now beginning to trace recently reduced her nation’s population by a third and the world’s by nearly half. A caption at the bottom of the screen reads: EASTERN U.S. REFUGEES RESCUED.

  The caption is a lie. The man searching the screen for his wife’s face—he’s the refugee. He became one the second he boarded a bus to quarantine instead of taking the last train home. His roommates are refugees, as are the thousands of others like them: the displaced waiting to go home. The people in the camp are not refugees. They are survivors. Each has a story about reaching this thriving community in the hills of Massachusetts. The short Arab man who just accepted a bottle of water was a taxi driver in Washington, D.C. He got sick; so did his wife and children. He was the only one to recover, waking in his apartment dehydrated and surrounded by his deceased family. His will to live was stronger than his sorrow, barely. The elderly Indian woman in the right corner of the screen lost her daughter and grandson days before saving the life of the little white girl who now rides her shoulders; she scooped the girl from her car seat as water rushed in through the window of the Mini Cooper her delirious father had just crashed into a river. The black child in the red sweatshirt held his mother’s head as she faded to nothing on a church pew. Alone, started walking south, only to turn east on meeting a stubborn stranger his loneliness wouldn’t allow him to leave. The stubborn stranger’s story is the strangest of all, riddled with deceit external and internal. Even the man who legally owns the property these many people have begun to think of as home has a story, though he did not have to travel to arrive. His is a story of opening doors, of deciding to give after losing so much.

  In time, many of these stories will be celebrated, but for now the losses are still being counted. For now the mere survival of these people is news enough. All the anchor wants to know is “How do you feel?”

  “Overwhelmed!”

  “Exhausted!”

  “Blessed!”

  Nothing of substance, nothing unexpected. Just tears and platitudes. The man watching hears nothing. A chocolate Lab trots through the shot and his heart pinches. He doesn’t know what happened to the greyhound he adopted a week before the world he knew imploded. The dog was supposed to be a surprise for his wife. Speckled and sweet, just like she wanted, and she would have loved the name: Freshly Ground Pepper. He let the dog sleep in their bed, even the night she got into the trash and vomited a foamy pile on the first step of their evening walk.

  The anchor spots the black boy in the red sweatshirt. His stranger, a white woman in a stained green fleece and a blue hat, is walking with him, her hand resting lightly on his back. The boy looks delighted and overwhelmed, but the woman’s face is stone. The anchor loves the contrast, the connection. She thanks a weepy widow for her time and strikes toward the pair.

  The man’s eyes and shoulders perk. He thinks his hope and his imagination are working against him. After all this time, all this not knowing, he’s not sure. She’s bone-skinny and her hair is light and short where it peeps out of the hat, but—

  “How do you feel?” asks the anchor. Surrounded by so much ruckus, the boy is at a loss for words. The anchor smiles at him sweetly, thinking him shy, then turns to the stone-faced woman and repeats her question.

  Certainty rips through the man, and he stands with a shout, believing—knowing. He looks around for someone to tell but is alone. For months he’s been seeking, fearing; now he’s laughing and pounding the air with his fists.

  The camera jolts sidewise; the stone-faced woman is attempting to walk past.

  “Miss?” prods the anchor, leaning in.

  The woman glances at her, then at the lens. She cannot see the eyes watching her so joyfully. She can no longer imagine these eyes exist, that what she wouldn’t let the boy tell her—what the boy didn’t know she couldn’t see—was this: The body in the bed wasn’t human. The woman scans the crowd, the crush, the saviors, the bottled water, and the orange vests. She does not feel blessed. It’s over. It’s just beginning. She will endure. The cameraman edges closer and the anchor tilts her microphone toward the woman’s face. But the woman has no confession and these obstructions, these devices sucking in her breath, her image, these are all things that are no longer real. Her hard green gaze slides past the lens to the man behind it. “Get the camera out of my face,” she says. “Now.”

  Acknowledgments

  I have many thanks to disperse, and my first bundle goes to the smartest man I know, who is just enough of a chump to have legally bound himself to me for life. Andrew, thank you for giving me a second chance at our first date, your loving and logical support during the writing of this novel, and everything in between and yet to come—especially the laughter.

  Next up, rapid-fire family thanks: Thank you to my dad for understanding the creative drive and supporting my decision to follow such an uncertain path. Thank you to my mom for my off-kilter upbringing, which I know plays such a huge part in who I am today. Thank you to Jon for answering my Air Force questions and general big brother awesomeness. Thank you to Yvette for her kindness and gentle understanding throughout the years. Thank you to Helen for weathering my teenage ambivalence and for her friendship.

  A shout-out to my ninth-floor suities: Purva, Katie, Xining, Shelly, Lynn, Emily, and Aditi. Your support and camaraderie over these many and occasionally very long years has meant the world to me, and your outpouring of selfless joy when things finally started to click is the definition of friendship. Extra thanks to Dr. He for answering my writing-related medical questions with such speed and thoughtfulness; to Lynn for the photo shoot; and to the Galipeaus for providing dinners, drinks, and much good company while the world shifted beneath my feet.

  Alex and Libby: Thank you for your feedback and your friendship, and for not letting years or miles get in the way of our little writing group. You not only push me to be better, you inspire me to be. I hope I’ve been half as helpful to you in your own work.

  To the incredible BOSS staff: Thank you for a once-in-a-lifetime adventure. Seriously, once was enough. Special thanks to Cat, Jess, and Heath; I can’t imagine having had better guides through those trying and extraordinary two weeks. Thank you also to the staff (and residents) of the Prospect Park Zoo, for providing sanctuary and inspiration amidst the bustle prior to my escape to the Pacific Northwest.

  Thank you to Shelley Jackson for that extra little push toward the weird. Thank you to Lee Martin for the givens, though I later stripped most of them away. Thank you to Julia Glass for her kindness at an airport during an overwhelming time.

  Thank you to the Catto Shaw Foundation for a quiet space for the finishing touches. Thank you to the good people of Aspen Words for a community, and for Lucy.

  Lucy Carson. To call her a dream agent is an understatement, because I never dreamed I’d have the privilege of working with someone as passionate as she. Lucy, you gave me hope and give me confidence. Knowing you have my back makes all the difference. Thank you. Thank you also to Nichole LeFebvre, for handling the details so deftly and with such kindness.

  Thank you to Jessica Leeke for quite possibly the most exciting and surreal morning of my life, and for her continued enthusiasm since. Wider thanks to my entire team at Michael Joseph.

  Thank you to Gina Centrello and everyone at Ballantine who’s had a
hand in bringing this book into the world, including: Libby McGuire, Kara Welsh, Kim Hovey, Jennifer Hershey, Susan Corcoran, Melanie DeNardo, Quinne Rogers, Kelly Chian, Betsy Wilson, Kara Cesare, and—of course and especially—Mark Tavani. Mark, this book could not have become what it is without your insightful questions, on-point suggestions, and good-humored support. I literally cannot thank you enough.

  Finally, thank you to Andrew, who asked to be mentioned first and last. He may have been joking, but he deserves it.

  About the Author

  ALEXANDRA OLIVA was born and raised in upstate New York. She has a BA in history from Yale University and an MFA in creative writing from The New School. She lives in the Pacific Northwest with her husband. The Last One is her first novel.

  alexandraoliva.com

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