by Sean Little
Ren scrubbed my wounds with scalding water and opened them afresh (which hurt like blue blazes), but they bled bright red blood. Healthy blood. And they only bled--no pus, nothing gross. The infection was gone. That was a good sign. She repacked the wounds with clean, fresh bandages and pronounced my recovery on track.
We sat together by the fire that night and listened to the crickets and the cicadas. There were fewer of them now. Fall was coming. It had to be sometime in mid-September. Maybe even late September. In Wisconsin, I could tell the seasons by the trees and the fact that the mornings would get colder. In the South, all the mornings were warm, as warm like late summer days in Wisconsin. All the leaves were still green. I couldn’t tell anything about the time of year anymore. Being in the South was going to throw off my ability to keep track of the passing of time. Maybe that’s a good thing.
The wedge that had been driven between us that day at the beach was still there. It didn’t feel quite as big, but it was still there. At least, it still felt like it was there to me. I laughed. I tried to joke. Ren talked some. There were some prolonged pauses in the conversation. There was still a strange distance between us. We were circling each other like magnets of the same polarity, spinning in circles near each other, but never touching—we were just keeping a safe, respectful distance between us, but I felt like the distance was shrinking. I think we both had confusing emotions that we needed to learn to control.
Ren sat in a chair by the fire and flexed her toes in the heat. She chewed on her lower lip for a while. “We’ll get to Houston tomorrow. There is going to be someone alive there, you know. At least one person, maybe more.” Ren shrugged. “I don’t know if we’ll find them. Houston is big. Not New York-big, but still pretty big.”
“In some ways, it’s bigger. Houston is more like Madison or Milwaukee than New York. New York is condensed. It builds upwards. Madison and Houston build outward. They sprawl. Houston is like that. It covers a lot of ground.”
Ren stopped chewing her lip. She looked over to me. “I hope they’ll be friendly. And not insane.”
“Me, too,” I said. “I wonder if other people are traveling around the country like we did. I wonder if they’re looking for us.”
“There are.” Ren’s tone wasn’t hopeful; it was definitive. She was dead certain on that fact. “They might never find us, but there are people out there. They are looking.”
You don’t really appreciate how big this country is until you’re trying to find needles in the haystack. America is massive. Sure, if you have a good car and a supply of No-Doz, you could drive across it in four or five days. I think someone once did a speed drive from Los Angeles to New York in something like thirty-two hours. When you think about America like that, it doesn’t seem all that big. It is big, though. It is grand and broad and majestic. There are hundreds of million miles of roads, hundreds of millions of homes. We were but specks of unimportant dust in the massive landscape, a pair of sand grains blowing across a vast, expansive prairie. I told Ren, “We’ll build a big fire after we find a place to live. We’ll burn it black so that clouds rise up. If people are within thirty miles, they’ll see the smoke. They can come to us.”
Ren’s voice dropped to a low, serious tone. A grim, nervous expression settled on her face. “Can we really do this? Can we really be like Ma and Pa Ingalls in the Kansas Territory and just be self-sufficient? Can we make a life out of this place?”
I didn’t know the answer to that. “We can try. I don’t think we have much of a choice, otherwise. We can try, though. If we try hard enough, we will find a way to make it work. We will not only make a life, we’ll make a good life. It won’t be an easy life, but it will be a good life, I promise you that.”
Ren stretched out a hand and rested it on mine. Her hand was warm and soft. At that moment, when she touched me, I felt sparks run up my arm and across my back. The sparks danced in my head. Ren leaned closer to me. “Thank you.”
I turned to look at her. “For what?”
“For bringing me with you.” She smiled. Her face was warm and sincere. At that moment, something unspoken passed between us. The wedge between us melted away, never to return.
I smiled back to her. For the first time in my life, the smile felt natural and unforced. I hope it looked like a real person’s smile. “Thank you.”
We lapsed into silence again. I felt like saying something more, but I didn’t want to break the mood. Maybe we’d said enough. I could not ignore the fact that Ren’s hand was resting on the back of mine, though. I turned my hand over so that she was no longer resting her hand on mine. We held hands. Our fingers interlaced. Ren squeezed my hand tightly. She made no attempt to pull it away. I didn’t look over at her, but I knew what that squeeze meant. It said more than words ever could.
Lake Houston spread out before us, a long, shimmering expanse of water in the middle of the Texas prairie. We stood on the shore and watched a badling of ducks circling overhead and descending for a watery landing, their wings splashing water before transitioning into an easy, graceful float. We saw a herd of deer in a field nearby. They looked strong and healthy. They were thriving in the post-human world. I thought about the hunting rifle I had stored in the RV. Fresh meat would require killing. I was not a fan of the thought of having to take an animal’s life, but I would cross that bridge when I came to it. In the drive through the Texas countryside, we had seen herds of cattle, mobs of horses, and loads of formerly domestic pigs gone feral in roving packs. The countryside was practically crawling with life. There was food on the hoof aplenty. And, since we were in Texas, I knew there wouldn’t be any shortage of ammunition any time soon.
There were dozens of nice homes around the edge of the lake. Any one of them might be our new house. We had an outdoor brick oven kit lying on the mattress in the back bunk. We would build an outdoor fire pit and wood-fired oven. If we found a house with a hearth and fireplace, even better. Some of the homes had barns. We would need one of those, eventually. I wanted to capture a few horses and cows. We would require them in the coming years. I knew nothing about horse training, but that was why there were libraries. I would find books and teach myself. I would learn by doing, by trial-and-error. There were large, open parcels of land in the area, and many of the homes had expansive lawns. Lawns were a needless luxury now. Ren and I would turn them into large, sprawling gardens and vast orchards. We would capture chickens and raise them for eggs. If we could catch rabbits and pigs, we could farm them, too. We would reclaim the overgrown land. We would wrestle weeds from the ground, till the soil, and plant gardens. We would return our little patch of the world to an agrarian paradise. We would build our life.
“It’s beautiful here,” said Ren. She turned her face to the sun and inhaled the warm prairie air. “I mean, it’s not Brooklyn, but I think I can be happy here.”
“Happy is a state of mind,” I told her. “You can be happy anywhere as long as you set your mind to it and decide to be happy.”
Ren smiled at me. Her smile thrilled me. She said, “We can be happy here.” She leaned up on her tiptoes and kissed my cheek. I turned my face, and we found each other’s lips. I put my hand on the back of her head and the kiss extended from a peck to something much longer and sweeter. Her hands ran gently over my shoulders. I cradled the small of her back. Time stopped for several seconds, a blissful and welcome break from reality.
When we parted, Renata turned and climbed into the RV. “C’mon, Twist.” She shut the passenger-side door and leaned out the window. “We traveled enough for this lifetime.” She nodded her head toward the houses on the west side of the lake. “It’s time for you to take me home.”
I smiled at her and turned back to the lake. It was beautiful there. The flat prairie stretched for miles. There were plenty of homes we could scavenge for supplies and wood until we could turn the land into a working, sustainable farm. There were animals we could capture and domesticate. It wouldn’t be easy, but it would be worth it.
We wouldn’t be stuck in a weird, half-life existence, struggling to live out of a library or a cramped RV on odds and ends we found lying in the wreckage of the world. We would have a home. A real home. I looked to the woman I loved. The smile on her face lit my entire world.
I think this is what Doug had been trying to tell me. He wanted me to live. To feel like life was not an inconvenience, but rather a gift. He wanted me to not worry so much about living day-to-day, and to start worrying about doing something more than merely existing in a state of desperation. He wanted me to have joy. To have love. To have a bit of something beyond being in the moment. I stood on the shore a moment more. I hoped my parents were proud of me, wherever they were. I hoped Doug could see where I was, and what I would accomplish. I hoped he was proud of me, too.
I limped back to the RV and climbed into the driver’s seat. I started the engine. I looked at Ren, and she looked at me. She placed her hand on my shoulder. I shifted into drive and let the Greyhawk roll slowly back to the road. The future stood before us like the lake, bright, wide, and shining.
It’s Thursday, I think. I’m not sure .
Honestly, it doesn’t even matter. The apocalypse wasn’t a cruel dream. The Flu was real. Almost everyone I have ever known or loved is still dead.
However, the world looks less vacant and barren than it did. I am no longer alone. I found a woman in New York and she came to the South with me. We sought many long, empty roads for possible survivors of a catastrophic viral apocalypse who might have wanted to help us rebuild civilization, but found no one, so far.
We know there are people out there, though. We hope they will find us. If not, she and I are prepared to carve out a good life together.
We will succeed.
This is the continued journal of my daily life.
My name is Twist. I’m nineteen, and heading toward twenty. I still miss Big Macs, television, indoor plumbing, and going to the movies.
And I am still alive.
And I am actually living.
Acknowledgements
When I first wrote After Everyone Died, it was really just a response to my growing contempt with the post-apocalypse fiction genre. Everything I was reading was about panic, or warring factions of armed militia-types, or putting children in gladiatorial arenas to fight to the death (which is seriously messed up, when you think about it), or—of course—zombies. When I really thought about the apocalypse, I figured Cormac McCarthy probably had it right in The Road, but his vision was so bleak and brutal. I wanted to know what would happen if you just plucked an average, beta-male type kid out of his suburban life, and forced him to keep living with no further advantages. I did not really want him fighting others for survival. I did not want to see a large group of people trying to rebuild a town. When I really thought about it, in a good viral apocalypse, boredom and isolation would be the biggest enemies. Humans are social animals. Take that away from us, and we can be driven to madness. That interested me more than any sort of violence or action. I wanted to write a small, quiet, intimate look at a life after the fall of humanity. It was not an exciting vision, but I felt it was truthful. One of my favorite writing teachers, Dr. Emilio Degrazia, used to say, “It doesn’t matter what you write, as long as you tell the truth about it.” And I felt this was as truthful as I could tell it.
When I started submitting After Everyone Died to agents and publishers, the ones that actually read it said the exact same thing, every single one of them: we want more action and characters in your book about loneliness, boredom, and isolation. They all had a well-defined formula for post-apocalypse novels, and they were not going to deviate from it. It made me realize that my personal, intimate vision of the apocalypse probably wasn’t going to sell many copies for larger publishing houses. I do not blame large publishers. Their job is to sell stories they feel the majority of the public would like to read. I freely admit this book series is probably not for everyone. I thought for a while about changing the story to suite their given demands, but I realized that to change it would be telling a very different story, a story that had been told many times before, and I did not want to tell that story. Others had already done it better than I could. I was not willing to compromise on what I viewed as the reality of the post-apocalypse world, so I knew I would have to step out on my own to do it.
I had no idea what would happen. I had no idea if people would like the book at all. I had no idea if anything I did would work. One universal truth about writing is that a writer should only write books that he or she wants to read. I did that, and then I just had to hope that others wanted to read that book, too. I believed in the story and hoped for the best.
Turns out, I made a good decision.
After Everyone Died was my seventh novel. It has outsold all my other books combined ten times over and then some. This book has easily been my greatest success. At last count, I was over 15,000 copies sold (mostly the Kindle eBook version on Amazon, but a fair amount of hard copies sold, as well) and heading toward 20,000. Not to mention, over 5,000 free downloads during a promotional venture on Amazon. I ended up with over 100 reviews on Amazon (so far), and that means AED was included into some of Amazon’s promotional materials, which helps more than you would realize. By some book-selling metrics, that Little Book That Could became a best-seller. I could officially put “author of the best-selling novel…” after my name.
And that’s not nothin’.
I could not have done any of this without you, the readers, though. Without people believing in the book, enjoying the book, posting reviews on Amazon (especially posting reviews—you have no idea how much they help authors. If you like a book—any book—please, post a review), and telling friends about it, it would not have gone anywhere.
I could not have written the sequel without seeing the positive response in the reviews and the kind emails requesting more. Those emails meant the world to me. I appreciate so much that someone would take time out of his or her day to send a quick note to me on Facebook or Twitter. Without people pestering me for more, I honestly don not know if this book would have been completed. During the first draft process, I had become stuck around 15,000 words in the manuscript with that “What’s the point?” malaise writers so often get when staring down the barrel of three hundred or so empty pages. I had put this book to the back burner and started working on other projects, but the occasional nudge from random strangers made want to finish this book. It made me need to finish. It was very gratifying to know that someone out there connected with the simple little melancholy isolation story I wrote and wanted more. We all need some help occasionally, and I will be eternally grateful for those who wrote those notes and helped me finish this book.
When it comes to the people I know personally, I have to start by thanking my cover designer, Paige Krogwold. She is a fiery little elfin sprite with attitude, but if you had to be stuck in the apocalypse with someone, she would not be a bad choice.
I must thank my editor, Ann Hayes. Ann is a true friend, and although she is sometimes too blond for her own good, she is still one of the smartest and kindest people I know. If you needed someone to ride shotgun in your RV while you’re out scavenging the crumbling ruins of a dead society—Ann is the person you want having your back.
The wonderful Mary Holm needs a special thank you, as well. She’s probably one of the nicest people I have ever met, and she offered to give a read-through of my manuscript, pointing out all my bonehead typos along the way. Truly, if this book is any good, I owe a debt of thanks to her.
There are always people lurking in the background who might not have anything to do with the book itself, but who are always willing to help in any way they can, even if it is just by distracting you from myriad torments of decay and rot. People like Ryan Spindler, Jack Quincey, Ethan Bartlett, David Johnson, Veronika Garrett, Dusty Miller, Josh Upton, Chris Koterba, Fran Cohen Brown, Nancy Gray, Carol Kaufman, Jennifer L. Miller, and Steve Kittleson are those sorts. As is Eric L
arson, and all the good people at TeslaCon. In addition, my sister, Erin, sits among those who willingly brave the newly fallen lawless world in search of corned beef and cans of tuna. If anyone is going to be wearing a suit of armor and shouting orders to an invisible raccoon after society crumbles, it will be her. Just do not ask her to garden or make any sudden movements around her.
Many thanks to Maddy Hunter, Alex Bledsoe, Kathleen Ernst, Jerry Peterson, Craig Johnson, Doug Moe, and all the other writers in and around Madison who have let me attend their book events and have shown me how selling books should be done. Even with their stellar examples, I still will not likely be successful at hosting a coherent promotional event, but I enjoy how you all handle it with grace and style. Also, I have to thank everyone at Mystery to Me on Monroe Street in Madison. That is my “home” bookstore. They have always been very kind and supportive to me (please return their support by buying books through them!) and for that I am very thankful. I do not think I could what I do without their help. I sincerely hope the viral apocalypse spares you all, but if it doesn’t, I will gladly dig your graves and mark them with fieldstone.
And of course, I have to thank my parents, who made me read when I was growing up, and made me want to write. I have to thank my wife, who does not complain when I read at the dinner table. And my daughter, Annika, who continues to be a large part of the reason I still try to chase my dreams—even when they are painfully out of reach.
Lastly, and most importantly, if you bought a copy of After Everyone Died, I thank you most of all. You are the reason this sequel even exists. Should you ever need to hide from Bigfoot, you are all welcome to lie on the floor of my RV in terror anytime you want.