Never Look Back: A Dystopian Novel

by Mortimer, L. C.

  The field was long and wide. I had never played in it but Mr. Murphy used to keep cattle in it. I wondered what had happened to all the cattle. I glanced around but didn’t notice any herds or any bulls as I trudged slowly across the field. No one could see the field from the road. It was surrounded on all sides by a thick forest of pine trees and old oaks. Unless you knew it was here, you’d never spot it on your own. That was probably one of the biggest reasons he loved this place, after all.

  I was cold and hungry. I knew that the girls from the old house wouldn’t be able to see me and they certainly wouldn’t follow me this far, so I didn’t worry about my footprints as I trampled across the field. Most of the snow was melting, anyway, but it was still chilly outside and by the time I finally reached my house, I could barely feel my fingers.

  I stumbled into the house and peeled off my jacket, shoes, pants, and shirt. There was a fire in the fireplace. I sat in front of it wearing only my underwear and shivered. Brian had obviously started the fire. Where was he now? I didn’t call out for him into the empty house. Maybe he would hear me and come out from wherever he was. Maybe he was sleeping. I didn’t know.

  I grabbed a quilt off the couch and wrapped it around myself. I had missed him today and was craving his attention. I would go find him in a minute to let him know I was okay. In the meantime, though, the warmth from the fire was making my aching body feel much better. I leaned my head down on the floor in front of the open fireplace and closed my eyes, just for a second.

  Chapter 20

  “Where were you? Are you okay?” I felt Brian’s hands on my body, shaking me softly. Opening my eyes, I realized I had fallen asleep in front of the fireplace. I glanced at the now-cold ashes of the fire and wondered what time it was.

  “I’m okay,” I told him, kissing him gently. “How long was I asleep for?”

  “I just got back. I was looking for you,” he told me. There was a hint of anger in his voice. He sounded disappointed in me. Maybe he was just worried. I couldn’t tell. “When I got your note, I was worried. What the hell were you thinking, Paige? You could have gotten killed out there!”

  “I was hardly in life threatening danger,” I told him, brushing off his concerns. A look of pain shot across his face and I realized I was being stupid. Of course he had been worried. Had the tables been reversed, I would have been just as scared. Probably even more scared than he had been. “I’m sorry. You’re right. I shouldn’t have gone but I wanted to see what was going on. And Brian, you were right. There’s nothing left.”

  I told him what I had overheard the two girls talking about, how there was nothing left. They had come from New York, where apparently the virus had been just as bad as it was here. Of course, there were stories circulating about a safe haven, about a place of refuge. There always were. People on the East coast would dream up infection-free villages on the West coast and the West coast would promise there were plague-free places on the East coast. Somehow in the middle the two groups of people would meet and either infect each other or kill one another off. There was no way to win, not in this world.

  “I’m glad you’re okay, but I can’t believe that. I wonder what they’re here for, what they’re waiting for.”

  “More people to join them, maybe?”

  “Maybe, but you know what this means, right?”

  “What?”

  Brian looked serious now. “We need to fix up the house. We need to make it impossible to penetrate. If those girls tell Tim that someone was out driving around, chances are he’ll come looking, and if he looks here, we’ll need to be ready.”

  I glanced around the house. It felt too big to secure, really. “Maybe we should just work on the basement. You know, not letting anyone into the basement. That way, if someone gets into the house, they won’t be able to get to our food supply.”

  Brian rolled his eyes. “The goal is to not let anyone into the house in the first place,” he told me. “Not to defend your snacks once they’re already inside.”

  His words stung but he was right. I did care about more than just food. “Let’s start tomorrow,” I said. “For now, I just want to go to bed with you.”

  I grabbed his hand and Brian allowed me to lead him upstairs. We’d been sleeping in my old room since we moved in. The full size bed was a tight squeeze but somehow sleeping in my parents’ king size bed just didn’t feel right. That was their space, their safe haven. This was mine. We slipped under the covers of my bed and stared up at the glow-in-the-dark stars that still covered my ceiling after all these years.

  “I’m glad I found you,” I whispered to Brian.

  “I’m glad you found me, too.”

  **

  I felt fortunate that my dad liked projects. My mother had never been a huge fan of the “projects” my dad worked. A project, to my mother, meant endless nights out in the barn sawing and hammering away, money sunk into tools and equipment Dad would only use once, and half-finished pieces of furniture or fences. His projects would sit around the barn for months until he either burned the wood or tore the entire thing apart to rework. Occasionally, though, Dad would make something great. I thought of the tiny doll cradle he had made me once. I had used it for years and took great pride in the fact that no other girl in town had a cradle handmade by their daddy. Only me. I had felt special, more special than I’d ever felt before or since.

  To Brian and me, the collection of half-finished projects and the stack of tools in the barn meant we had a way to start fixing up the house. It was true that we should have been working on fortifications a long time ago, but it was easy to get complacent when nothing ever happened. Even though we knew the world was sick, the truth was that we hadn’t seen anyone actually infected in a very long time. When you sit around a house for weeks on end with only one other person to talk to, it’s easy to wonder if you overreacted to everything in the first place.

  Running into the girls in the woods had reminded me that I wasn’t as crazy as I often thought I was. There really was very real danger. In all honesty, the way my mom and dad died should have been enough to scare me into locking myself into the basement and never coming out, but it hadn’t. It hadn’t really hit me until now that someone might actually come back. Someone new might come. A lot of people might come. And we had no police to fall back on: no sheriff to call for help. We were all on our own and we had to be ready.

  The back door had long been boarded up. It was one of the first things we did after we took over the house. It had been a full-panel glass door, once upon a time. Since we had no way of replacing the glass after it had been broken, wooden planks seemed like the appropriate answer. Now, though, we made double sure that it was solid and, using all of our strength, we moved the upright piano that had long rested in the living room to block the back door. The wheeled on the bottom of the piano made it easy to move into place, but was heavy enough that someone trying to push from outside wouldn’t be able to move it alone. We placed pieces of wood behind each of the wheels to prevent it from moving again.

  The front door proved to be more of a challenge. Neither one of us wanted to block it completely. We needed to be able to move freely in and out of the house while things were good. There was too much to do outside to have to climb out of windows all of the time. Brian was the one who came up with the idea of a wooden slat to bar the door from the inside at night or in case of intruders. Dad had enough tools and old 2x4s to fashion the type of door lock you’d see on Little House on the Prairie. When he was finished, I stood back to admire his work. It was brilliant, really, and it looked like something a professional would do.

  The windows all had to go. Glass was too easy to break and too easy for someone to climb in the window. Although it was, to be fair, a ridiculous fire hazard. Each window was carefully boarded over. My hands were sore from nailing nail after nail for what felt like days, but when we were finished, we both felt a lot better. We left a small slat in each window to enable us to look outside if we neede
d to. It was too small of a hole for anything to get inside, but large enough for us to see out. Mom and Dad had done a good job of boarding up most of the windows, but the ones they had missed were quickly covered. We left one open on the second floor: my bedroom window. As a last resort, a last way to escape if it became necessary.

  When we were done, our hands were raw from handling the boards without gloves. I had gotten too many splinters and scratches than I cared to deal with. Brian sat me on the counter and using a pair of sharp tweezers, he gently pulled the splinters and then bandaged my hands. I kissed him, thanking him silently and feeling, once again, more grateful than I ever had before in my life. I was glad I didn’t have to be alone.

  “Last thing,” Brian told me.

  “What’s that?” I glanced around the house. It was spotless. Not only did it seem to me that it would be impossible to get into from the outside, but it was physically incredibly clean. When you didn’t have television or a computer to eat up all of your time, it was really quite amazing how much cleaning you suddenly had time to do. The kitchen counters, despite the fact that I made food in there every day, were pristine.

  “We need to make sure we have loaded weapons ready.”

  I nodded. He was right. We pulled out the gun collection and made sure to have something ready in each room of the house. Obviously we didn’t leave the guns just sitting around, but neither one of us wanted to be caught with an intruder and unable to defend ourselves. Top drawers were out of the question. So were nightstands. Instead we placed a gun under a magazine in the kitchen, inside a hollow book in the living room, taped to the side of the recliner, and in the piano bench. I even made sure to put one behind a couple of boxes of tampons in the bathroom, just in case.

  When we were done, we surveyed our handiwork. We had done it. We had managed, somehow, to make our house not only our own, but protected. I realized, suddenly, that I no longer thought of it as “Mom and Dad’s house.” Now I thought of it as my house, as “our” house. In binding together to fight against the world, Brian and I had somehow merged our own relationship into something only adults shared. I still didn’t really view myself as completely grown up, only now I did. Now I felt like I was ready to face the world head on, and Brian was right by my side.

  Nothing could phase me now.

  At least that’s what I thought.

  Chapter 21

  When you prepare for a war, you mentally run through different scenarios in your head. It’s natural, really. It’s how you get ready to fight. I used to do it before interviews for jobs. I’d stand in front of mirror and imagine something the interviewer would ask. Then, in my best grown-up voice, I’d respond out loud to the imagined question. I’d do that again and again until I felt ready to tackle the interview. And that’s what Brian and I did to prepare for the girls from the woods and their boy Tim’s arrival.

  We walked through the house repeatedly. We did it with our eyes closed, making sure we knew every step, every nook, every cranny. We did it quickly. We did it slowly. We pretend-fought with one another. Brian showed me how to get out of certain holds, how to punch a man, how to kick. We worked out together every day, working up a sweat and getting our endurance to where it should be. But then nothing happened. No one came.

  We sat around for a week waiting, but nothing. And I realized, with a start, that we were all alone. We were unimportant. We had panicked. We had run through this imagined scenario where two evil women and their henchman came to our house to take our food, and we defended ourselves. We fought. We were brave. We were courageous. I imagined Brian getting shot and dying slowly in my arms as I cried over him. I imagined the opposite. I imagined I was the one who was shot in the leg and Brian killed me to put me out of my misery. I ran through a million different scenarios, but then none of them came true. We were unimportant. We were tiny.

  “Let’s just go,” I said finally, mushing my fork around in a cold plate of beans.

  “No.” Brian was used to my whining by now, but I still didn’t think he liked it.

  “There’s no reason to stay. Our families are gone,” I whispered, seeing him flinch slightly. Brian never talked about his grandparents. Ever. I knew he missed them, but it killed me that he never even said a word. I had to almost physically restrain myself from constantly sharing memories about my parents. Talking about them wouldn’t bring them back, but I found comfort in focusing on pleasant experiences we’d had together. For Brian, though, talking about his grandparents was just another reminder of everything he’d lost.

  “We already know what’s out there.”

  “But I just want to see it for myself.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m bored, Brian. I’m tired of sitting around, pretending that everything is okay. Is this really all there’s going to be to the rest of our lives?” I motioned around the kitchen with my fork, a bean still on the end. “Cleaning and cooking and exercising? Is this really it?”

  “Paige, you know this isn’t all there’s going to be.”

  “Then what? What else is there going to be? I was going to college, Brian. I was going to be somebody. I was going to get a job, maybe start a family,make some money, maybe travel. Do you know how much time I spent dreaming up how my life would go? Big wedding, fancy honeymoon, dresses and parties, babies, maybe writing a novel, trips. I wanted to go on a cruise. I wanted to go on a cruise and write a mystery about something terrifying and exquisite that happens on a cruise, but I can’t do that now. I can’t do any of it.” I threw my fork on the ground like a child, like a toddler who had been given too much sugar and now needed a spanking.

  And then I looked into Brian’s eyes and saw the disappointment. I immediately regretted my outburst.

  Brian picked up the fork and he placed it on the counter. He walked over and picked up each of my hands. Holding them gently, he looked up into my eyes. Then, taking a deep breath, he spoke finally.

  “My love, I know you had big plans. I know you had big dreams and you were going to do amazing things, but you are still an amazing person and you’re still going to do amazing things. They’re just going to be a little different now. Nobody said you can’t get married. Nobody said you can’t have babies. I can give you all of those things, Paige. I can’t give you a cruise, but I can get you a pen and a notebook and I can help you write that book you’ve always dreamed of writing. I can help you, Paige, but I can’t bear the thought of losing you.”

  A tear slid down his cheek but he never broke eye contact, not for a second. “You are all I have left in the world. You are the only reason I am still alive. You are the only reason I’m still here, still fighting for tomorrow. I’ve seen my friends die, Paige. I’ve seen my family die. I’ve seen your family die. We have lost everything. I don’t want us to lose each other.”

  I wrapped my arms around him and held him as tightly as I possibly could, and I realized how selfish I was being. I hadn’t even thought of Brian’s opinion or his feelings, not on this one. And to be fair, he was right, and I felt the same way. I’d never been loved by a man before. I’d never felt this raw passion. I’d never needed someone so deeply that it hurt, that it ached in the pit of my belly to even think about losing them. But I had that with Brian.

  “Okay, okay we’ll stay,” I told him. His entire body immediately relaxed. I could feel it.

  “Thank you,” was all he said, and I just nodded. Then, breaking apart, I reached for my fork and starting chewing on my beans again.

  “I’m sorry. I wasn’t thinking about you.”

  “I’m bored, too. We just need to find some new things to do.”

  “I can think of a few good things.”

  Brian smiled, “that sounds promising.”

  **

  With little effort, we began to come up with new activities we could do. We tried to spend time together each day, but we also made an effort to come up with some things we could do alone. The problem with spending all of your time with a sing
le person is that eventually you’ve heard all of their stories and the stories you have heard begin to stop being funny and start being obnoxious. So in an effort to not go absolutely crazy spending every moment together, Brian and I began to forge new paths and new adventures within our own worlds, as well as within our shared world.

  I found a set of knitting needles and a basket of yarn in the basement. My mother’s “storage room,” as she had affectionately referred to the disaster in the room where the hot water heater was stored, turned out to be a haven of things to play with. The basket with the yarn had a book of patterns and while I couldn’t figure out how to follow one at first, by the end of the week I had managed to create a mismatched, sloppy scarf that I wore with pride.

  Brian, on the other hand, had taken it upon himself to finish some of my dad’s projects. The half-done bird house was quickly finished and painted with little effort. Then Brian decided to tackle something a little bigger: making a chair. I wasn’t sure how he’d be able to do it, but after a few hours of working alone in the barn and quite a few swear words I’d never heard before, Brian produced what I told him was the finest chair I’d ever had. We gave it a place of honor next to the fireplace in the living room.

  It was amazing what doing things with your hands could do for your self-esteem, and both of us quickly forgot just how much we’d been whining about our lives the week before. It was true that actually doing something physically and working hard on a task gave you a sense of accomplishment and pride when you were finished with it. Our crafts were no exception. While my scarf wasn’t perfect and the chair wasn’t either, we both felt like it gave our lives at least a little bit of purpose, a little bit of sense.

  After breakfast one morning, I suggested that we go for a walk.