That’s the real reason I’m holding the crossbow in my hand. I’ve started to believe that by killing the coyotes will bring it all back. Through their deaths I’ll have made the sacrifice that whatever angry, vengeful god has taken everything from me needs to receive. Then that god will wave its hand and poof, I’ll once again wake up to the smell of coffee and the sound of Mom swearing as she stubs her toe. Oliver has given me the strength to live in this new world. That’s his gift to me. Without him, I’m lost again. And all I wanna’ do is go home.
What’s vengeance anyway but misdirected grief? There’s no sacrifice that’ll undo any of what’s been done. I sit on the small hill overlooking the marsh flats and cry. Goddam tears. In the end, there’s nothing else to do.
The Last Person
None of mythoughts are new. I’m just recycling everything over and over again. Caught inside a jar like I used to catch lightning bugs. MaybeI’m new. Maybe the same words spoken at a different time mean something completely different. Everything that I think, I’ve thought before. It’s an infinite circle, written in Kate Moynihan’s swirling script. All I’m doing is just keeping it going round and round.
This is my life. I can stockpile my food, grow my garden, chop down trees, swim in the ocean, read books, sleep. But what’s the point? To grow up? To grow old? To die? I’m the last person. It ends with me. There’s no Adam to my Eve. There’s no next generation. Whether I die tomorrow or in eighty years, the outcome is still the same. So what’s the point? What difference does any of it make? Hannah Barton will die. And there won’t be anyone to take her place.
What point did my life have before all of this? Would I have gone to college? Become a doctor or an artist or an astronomer or any of the dozens of other things I dreamed about? And then what? If I became a doctor, would I have saved lives? Would saving those lives have prevented them from dying eventually? If I became an astronomer, would I discover some Earth-like planet? If so, I’d never have lived long enough to visit it. All of these noble dreams I had, they had one fatal flaw. Human life is temporary. Had any of the noble dreams of any of the billions and billions of dead human beings made any real difference? There’d been so much energy poured into so many things, cures and discoveries and profound wisdom. People working and crying and loving and grieving. But who cares now? Nothing matters. The deer in the marsh flats, they’re immune to human discoveries. Whether life exists elsewhere in the universe or not, the deer don’t give a damn. That doesn’t make them better or worse than me. Comparisons are irrelevant. Do deer have dreams for their futures? Are they aware of their own mortality?
What’s the difference between my life before General Tsao and after? The fundamentals are identical. Birth and death are the anchor points. Maybe I’d have had children. Would that have changed the fundamentals? I would’ve had someone to remember me. Well, for awhile. And isn’t that the way people moved their anchor points? Gravestones and genealogy, memorial plaques and buildings named after you. All to make sure someone remembered. And if someone remembered, didn’t that mean part of you was still alive?
Maybe I alreadyamdead, that all of this horror movie freak show is really just an elaborate way of avoiding what comes next.I’mthe one who’s dead, everyone else is still alive, Mom and Dad and Grace and Gabe. They had to bury me, not the other way around. They had my funeral and they all figured out how to live their lives without me in it. I’m condemned to wander this empty purgatory of long, lonely days and endless black nights. Maybe nothingdoescome next, no heaven or hell, and all I’ll ever do is wander the emptiness. If thisis some manner of afterlife, that doesn’t change my fundamentals. I’m alone. And I always will be.
When It’s Darkest
As broadly as I paint my thoughts, my grand pronouncements on the human condition, everything eventually comes back to me. I’m the last one, after all. Being selfish is just being honest.
It doesn’t matter whether I kill the coyotes. Just like it doesn’t matter whether I do anything else. Leaving Detroit was meaningless. So was coming to Charleston. Or finding food. Or the beach house. Or the generators. Or Oliver. None of itfelt pointless, but what did any of it accomplish? Oliver is dead. The beach house is destroyed. And Charleston is no better off than Detroit was. So what’s the point? That everything I touch is doomed? Sure feels that way.
“I’m cursed, aren’t I?” I sit on the beach as the sun sets behind me. The waves drown out any reply to my question.
“Maybe itismy fault. MaybeI’m the plague. Why else am I the only one left? Everything I care about died. I got left behind. It’s hard not to think maybe I might bear some of the blame.”
It isn’t the stupidest thing I’ve ever thought. The circumstantial evidence certainly points in my direction. If this was an episode ofLaw & Order: SVU, I’d already have been handcuffed by Liv and Elliot. Probably standing in court with my attorney. The verdict seems a foregone conclusion. What evidence is left to hear? Even if by some chance the lights on the water and the words on the radio are real, what does that change? My life is over. Some far-off quarantine zone would be no better than my isolation now. They wouldn’t be my people. My people are already gone. All anyone else would be are strangers united only by the fact of our shared survival.
Would that be the worst thing in the world? Weren’t other people,any people, preferable to my haunted solitude? Maybe. But what would happen if the lights come back on? If the water started flowing out of the taps, if everyone went back to work and school and the whole thing started over again? I’m a million miles from the person I was a year ago. Could I ever go back to what’s expected of me? School, rules, curfews, the fragile glue that has already failed. I already trusted that everything will be okay. What would school and rules and curfews teach me now, anyway? If there’s a quarantine zone, if life as I once knew it ever begins again, why would I ever listen to anyone else? Unless something has appreciably changed, all I’d be is a fourteen-year-old orphan that somebody feels obligated to take care of.
It hasn’t occurred to me before that that’s what I am. An orphan. My mind immediately jumps toOliver Twist. Maybe that’s why I’d named him Oliver, a subconscious nod to what I had yet to say out loud. An orphan is just another label that can be affixed to my forehead while the adults in charge made decisions on my behalf.
Is that how it would be? Isn’t it possible that the fact I’ve survived on my own earn me a hair’s width of street cred? And maybe, just maybe, this make-believe quarantine zone would be a better place. As long as I’m making up quarantine zones, perhaps the Loch Ness monster could be my roommate. We could start a frozen yogurt shop together. Get matching BFF necklaces.
If I actually believed such a place exists, I would’ve gone to find it a long time ago. If I thought the lights or the voice on the radio were real, I’d already have gone looking. Truth is, I don’t care. I don’t want to suffer the pain of caring again. That’s my curse. Everything I love is dead.
“So what am I still doing here?”
Good question. The waves provide no hint as to the answer. Maybe thereisn’t an answer. But isn’t that answer enough?
I’ve been here before. This dark hole seems like it’s a regular stop on this thought train. But what am I actually contemplating? Killing myself? This, also, is not the stupidest thought I’ve ever had. Scroll through my knee-jerk reasons to not consider this. My list has dwindled. I’m not even a stranger to suicide. Captain Reynolds in Cincinnati and the Ceiling Fan Man from Atlantic Acres, they’d stared down this same dark hole. They were adults. Why am I any braver? What more do I have to live for than they did?
The sun has gone down. I go back inside and light a fire. My hands are cold and I warm them by the flames. I keep hoping these activities will occupy my mind until I find something else to fill it. I sit in front of the fire and try to come up with one reason why I still want to be alive. I’ve done a bang-up job of filling up the cons side of my list. The pros elude me. As they h
ave for awhile now.
The logs on the fire pop. Hot red ashes explode and float up the chimney. As they rise, their heat fades and the tiny pieces of burnt wood become gray ash. The heat of the fire carries them up, up through the chimney and out into the night sky. Soon they’re nothing more than dust in the air. Maybe they’ll fall to the ground. Maybe they’ll decompose and give another tree another moment’s worth of nutrition. That tree will grow. Squirrels and birds and worms and bugs will raise generations of offspring that all live because of that tree. In time, the tree will fall. Maybe a storm, maybe rot, but it will crumble and disintegrate and from its death a dozen more trees will live. Neither the floating ash nor the tree nor the animals that call it home are concerned or even aware of their purposes. They only do. There are no internal debates about their own meanings. It’s how the world works. Every life matters and is meaningless at the same time. Life exists despite its perceived value. It just is.
So why aren’t I? Is it a self-delusional thing to even question my own meaning? If the rest of nature teaches me anything, it’s that I’m both valuable and disposable. Taking my own life would neither matter nor be inconsequential. None of it’s about God having a purpose for me, that everything happened for a reason and it’s all preordained. Nature has a purpose for me. The simple fact that I’m drawing oxygen and expelling carbon dioxide gives me a place inside it.
What has any of it mattered, then? If the entire course of human history comes down to me, where’s the purpose in that? Every war, every kingdom, every piece of art and technological innovation, it’s all been meaningless. Countless millennia of struggle and toil and bloodshed, so that one fourteen-year-old girl can stare into a fire and decide when to end humanity.
What did I do to deserve this? If I’m the last human being, does anything I do matter at all? Should I start going to all the museums and libraries and art galleries and figure out how to preserve everything? And for what reason? Does being the last person make it my responsibility to lock the doors and turn off the lights? And who exactly will I be preserving thingsfor? In a million years when cockroaches take over, will they open the sealed tombs of human knowledge that I’ve somehow sealed and say, wow, look at all this silly primitive stuff?
Whether I live another hour or another eighty years, it makes no difference to the world. But it does make a difference to me. There are still good things. The sound of the surf in the darkness outside. The smell of smoke drifting lazily up the chimney. The taste of fresh fruit. The feel of the sun on my forehead. These are tiny and inconsequential things. None will be remembered after the last human has drawn her final gasp of air.
If it doesn’t matter whether I live or die, what’s my hurry? There are still good things. If I stop focusing on the damnedmeaning of everything, I can start pay attention to those good things.
“I need to get out of my own way.” And despite the almost comical imbalance between my pros and cons, all I need is a single pro. Everything else will wait. Heaven or oblivion or whatever comes next, it isn’t going anywhere. Being alive is a fluke of nature. Living requires a conscious decision. For now, I’ve decided.
MARCH
The Beach
Whether time is measured or left to its own devices, it still moves forward. Time’s passage is measured in changes. Seasons mutate. Trees shed their leaves and welcome new buds. Flowers burst from the ground and spread their rainbow beauty. I’m fifteen now. I only know because of the change of seasons.
I rarely look in the mirror anymore. When I do, I’m hard to recognize. My hair is long and unkempt. Saltwater bathing has dried it out. I’m thin and lean. A sudden growth spurt has forced me back into town to find new clothes, which I wear only for warmth. As the earth began its rotation back to spring and the sun warms the air, I once again wear less and less. My body is new. Long legs, wider hips, bigger boobs. All of that’s inconsequential to me. I’ve gotten stronger, though. I’m able to lift and carry and chop with greater ease. My arms that were so scrawny are now toned and muscular. Even my face has changed. My cheekbones are sharper and my jaw more defined. The face that stares back from the mirror looks more and more like Mom.
I don’t dwell much on memory. At first it was a conscious choice. Now it’s just habit. On rare occasions, I dream of my family. Sometimes I dream of Oliver. But when I’m awake, the dreams rarely linger.
Staying alive is my choice. I made the decision. All that’s required of me is to carry it out. And so I do. It isn’t a mindless life. I read and draw and sometimes even sing. But it’s also a purposeful life. I now know the truth of my existence. Meaning comes from living, and living on purpose is a straight and narrow path. Stepping off the path will bring me back into the woods. I already know what it’s like to get lost.
I keep my heart quiet. Emotion has little purpose in a purposeful life. Missing my family, grieving for Oliver, none of it’s worthwhile.
Hannah Bartondid die that cool February night right along with Oliver. Her physical body still functions. She still has conscious thought, but the essential piece she’d fought for and carried with her has been laid to rest. If the new person I am was to grieve for anything, it would be that. But grief is a wooded distraction. The path I follow must remain clear.
Existing is a matter of repetition. Wood needs to be chopped. Food needs to be eaten, water drunk. I walk the long beaches and swim the crashing waves. At night, I sleep. During the day, I’m awake. That’s existence. It requires little but muscle memory. There’s nothing here to grieve about.
When some piece of my dead selfdoes reach out from its grave to reconnect with me, I bury it down again. And if the pieces of me that still function long to reconnect with their essential soul, my new body is stubborn. I have to remind myself that my purpose is to exist. There are no more gray areas.
“You don’t really believe any of that, do you?” Dad asks. He sits next to me on the beach. He’s started doing that recently. It makes existing more difficult.
“You’re not here, Dad.”
“Nice way to talk to your father,” Dad chides. “Of course I’m not here. You’re too smart to believe that.”
“So I’m talking to myself, then?”
“Maybe so,” Dad says. “Or maybe you’re visiting me. Who knows? But I do know you’ve gotta’ knock this crap off.”
“What crap, Dad?”
“This crap,” Dad replies. “Closing yourself off and pretending that this wandering around you’re doing is living.”
“Well, you’re dead, so I’m not sure you’re the best judge of what living is all about.”
“You’ve always been too smart for your own good,” Dad says. “You decided that if you don’t let yourself get hurt, you can go through the rest of your time here without any more bruises. Unfortunately that’s not how it works. Life is a full-contact sport, kiddo. Your purpose on earth isn’t to chop firewood and poop in the sand.”
“So what is it? Because I’m kind of fresh out of ideas.”
“If youarethe last person, what’s the difference?” Dad asks. “Even when there were seven billion other people walking around, you were still you. Unique, one-of-a-kind, with a reason for being here. So there’s no line at the grocery store anymore. So what? What difference does it make to you? How does that changeyou? Being the last or the first or one of the billions, you’re still here. You’re not some cosmic accident. You’re not cursed. You’re here. That simple fact gives you a responsibility.”
“To do what?”
“To do whatever your heart tells you to do,” Dad says. “None of this is what you are. You lost all of us. You’re right, all of that is too painful to endure. You’ve had more than your share of horrible days. But them’s the breaks, Hannah. Those are the things that make you into who you need to be. Loss, grief, pain, those are your building blocks.”
“Why does it have to hurt so much?”
“If it didn’t hurt, how else would you remember?” Dad says. “I used
to think the hardest thing to endure was my own pain. But that pain was nothing compared to watching my own children suffer. In small ways, in big ways, it didn’t matter, suffering is suffering. It took me a long time to understand that each of us have to go through it.”
“If I’m the last person, what am I doing all of this for? Who’s gonna’ ever know?”
“You’ll know,” Dad says. “And in the end, that’s all that matters. If you don’t actually live, then life has no meaning. And meaning, that creates purpose. When you recognize that you’re in charge of your own life and not a victim of it, you find the secret everybody was looking for.”
“Which is?”
“Thereisno meaning of life,” Dad says. “There’s only the meaning ofyour life. Other people will come and go, live and die, love you or hate you or be indifferent. We spend our lives colliding into each other and trying to create our own definitions from those collisions. If someone loves you, love them back. But your own meaning, that belongs to you. It doesn’t come from anybody else, and nobody else can take it away. Not even when they die. Everyone dies eventually. But Hannah, you’re still here. Don’t shy away from that. Don’t throw this most remarkable gift away. Jump in with both feet. It’ll be over soon enough. If the meaning you find in your life is that you truly lived it, then that’s meaning enough.”
I put my hand on the empty sand where my father was sitting. A part of me believes I can feel his warmth.
“I miss you so much, Daddy.” Somewhere far away, I feel him smile.
Meaning
It becomes a game. I wake up each morning with a new vitality. One day I go rollerblading. Another day I fly a kite on the beach. I find the biggest art canvas I can find and spend three days painting it. I clear the creepy antiques out of the house. I wash the windows and paint the walls. I climb to the top of the church steeple downtown and watch the sunset. And Dad was right. Living is a better choice than existing.
The First Year Page 23