The Last One (34 page)

Engineer chooses first, stealing Tracker’s thermal blanket. “Sorry, man,” he says. Engineer gets cold easily; he feels chilly even now, despite the warm afternoon air.

“Anything other than the blanket can now be yours,” says the host to Zoo.

Zoo’s thinking about her pasta and how to cook it. Her plastic water bottles will melt if put in the fire. Even attempting hot-stone cooking will probably damage them. “I’ll take one of those metal cups,” she says to Waitress. She doesn’t feel bad, doesn’t apologize. Waitress has two, after all.

An intern bursts out of the woods, lugging a backpack and the post with the pink and yellow bandanas. He sets the post upright near the host and whispers into his ear.

“What happened?” asks Air Force, turning quickly toward the woods. “Where’s Doc?”

“The good doctor didn’t make it,” says the host. That’s all he knows, but he says it like he’s hiding something and Air Force wants to punch him in the face. The host pulls out Black Doctor’s mustard-yellow bandana and stabs it into the post.

“What happened?” Air Force demands again.

The host ignores him, stepping away to confer with the on-site producer. When he returns he speaks as though he never left. “Due to the circumstances of your next Challenge, we will be distributing his supplies now.” He takes two water bottles and the water purification drops out of the backpack. “I doubt anyone will be surprised by who these go to.” He hands the drops and one bottle to Air Force. “And this.” He hands the other bottle to Banker, who was kind when Black Doctor hurt his hand. “But we do have one surprise.” With a flourish he pulls out the wrinkled black trash bag that Black Doctor received from Cheerleader Boy. “This goes to…” He eyes the contestants, and then jerks his head to stare at Zoo. “You.”

“Huh,” says Zoo. She had a few casual conversations with Black Doctor, but nothing memorable. This gift, as small as it may be, is a mystery to her.

Waitress scowls, watching. If this episode were ever edited, if it were to air, it would cut now from her sour face to Black Doctor. “I hope Ethan wins,” he says. He’s sitting on a log, his arm in a sling. “Give him the drops and a water. Elliot can have the other.” He closes his eyes for a moment, clearly in pain. “The bag? Give it to that woman, the blonde with the green eyes who tries so hard. She’s here for the right reasons.” With that, an EMT helps him up and starts leading him down the trail. A moment later, the cameraman turns away, and the EMT drops Black Doctor’s arm.

The host hands each contestant a marked orienteering map. “These will get each of you to your home for the night. You will receive new instructions in the morning. Over the course of this Solo Challenge, new supplies will be made available for each of you, but they will not always be obvious. So, stay aware and remember your color—or starve.”

“How long will this Challenge last?” asks Rancher.

“You’ll know when it’s over.”

“What are we supposed to eat?” asks Waitress. She’s almost out of rice. Her eyes flick toward Air Force, accusing.

“As I said, stay aware—or starve.” The host likes that line. Tonight he will be sleeping in a hotel, and as he gets ready for bed he will repeat it to himself with various intonations and flourishes. “Good luck,” he says, and then he walks a few steps away, just out of frame.

Tracker orients his map and compass, then turns to the group. He makes eye contact with Zoo and mouths,
You can do this,
then starts off toward the first landmark indicated on his map: a small lake about a mile north. He is unfazed by the loss of his thermal blanket; he hasn’t used it once.

As Engineer and Zoo pack their new supplies, Rancher, Air Force, Biology, and Banker set off on their separate paths. Waitress looks at her map and bites her lip—unconsciously. She’s terrified. Exorcist sees this. He’s still a little rattled himself, and for the first time he approaches her with kindness. “You’ll be fine,” he says.

“I know,” she snaps.

Exorcist’s anger flares. “Or maybe you won’t be. Maybe you’ll starve, or fall down a hole. No loss either way.” He gives her one last sneer, then backtracks down the trail toward where the group spent the night.

Engineer pauses at Waitress’s side before following Exorcist. “Good luck,” he says. Waitress returns his honest smile.

Waitress takes a deep breath. “You can do this,” she says. Zoo watches her go, then follows her own map into the woods to the east.

The contestants dribble into their campsites—sparse patches of forest or field marked only by a bow-drill kit in each contestant’s color—and settle in with varying degrees of comfort. Zoo tosses the bow drill aside, uses her fire starter, and dines on plain pasta. “It’s nice to be alone,” she says. Engineer succeeds in bowing another coal and also eats hot food, though he cooks his in a leaf-lined hole in the ground. “Whatever works,” he says. He drapes the thermal blanket over his shoulders as he eats. He’s soon shivering anyway.

Waitress builds a shallow shelter and distracts herself from her fear by focusing on the swell of nausea in her otherwise empty belly. “I’m starving,” she says, though she knows that’s not right. Exorcist digs up some grubs from a rotting log and swallows them with great showmanship. Biology thinks about her partner back home and chews some mint she found near her campsite. Rancher takes off his boots and flicks a spur as he stretches his toes. Banker runs a hand through his sweaty hair, then builds a small fire. “Only nine matches left,” he says.

Two of the Solo camps are different. Air Force finds a dark blue tent at his destination, and Tracker finds a red one. Neither man realizes that this is their reward for reaching their lost hiker in time yesterday. They assume the others are also given shelter. Tracker ducks inside without comment, sprawls across the floor and closes his eyes. Air Force stands outside the tent flap for a moment, fuming silently. He wants to go back for Black Doctor. But this isn’t a war zone, or even a training exercise, and leaving men behind is essential to any race. “What do you think about—” his cameraman starts, but Air Force stalls him with a gruff, “No.”

Several hundred yards away, an intern disassembles a mustard-colored tent.

21.

He’s alive. He must be. I’m alive, Brennan too. The brothers whose cries drift in our wake, they survived. Others must have too. My husband could be among them. He
could.

“Mae?” whispers Brennan. We’re hobbling down the street, moving too fast and not fast enough. “I had to. Right?”

I see the familiar rivulets running down his cheeks. I think of the machete, jutting.

“You had to,” I whisper back.

But I didn’t. I didn’t have to apply; I didn’t have to leave. None of it was necessary.

“How old are you?” I ask Brennan. My jaw throbs; it hurts to speak, to think, to breathe, to be.

“Thirteen,” he says.

The world rocks, and then he’s in my arms and all I can say is “I’m sorry,” and I’m saying it to him and to my husband and to the child I left to die in a cabin marked with blue. There was blue, I know there was. It wasn’t all blue, but there was some. There was.

Pink cheeks. Mottled arms.

“Everything you said about the sickness was true?” I ask.

Brennan nods in my arms and sniffles. His hair rubs against the open wound throbbing on my chin.

I close my eyes and think of my husband, alone through it all. Worrying, wondering, and then maybe a tickle in his throat or a burble in his stomach. Lethargy like lead weighing him down. I’m sorry, I say again, silently, but with all my heart. I’m sorry I implied that life with you wasn’t enough. I’m sorry I wasn’t ready. I’m sorry I left. Even if—even if this was all to come, at least we would have been together.

If the stories Brennan told are true, then the chances of any single individual surviving whatever this was are infinitesimal. For both my husband and me to have been immune is so statistically improbable as to be impossible. I know what’s waiting for me at home, yet here I am begging:
please
and
maybe.
The smallest maybe ever, and I know that if I don’t go I will wonder for as long as I continue to exist on this horrid, wiped-clean Earth.

An invasive thought: a cleaning-product commercial showing a microscope view of before and after—kills ninety-nine-point-nine-nine percent of bacteria. Those few stragglers in the “after” shown only for legal purposes—that’s us, Brennan and me. Residue. From what he said it was only a matter of days before everyone inside the church was dead except for him. At least a hundred people, he said. Extrapolate from there and it’s millions. When did it start, just as we left for Solo? Sometime between then and when I found the cabin four or five days later. Such a short window.

I remember the cameraman who left after the lost-hiker Challenge, too sick to work, and suddenly understand why Wallaby never showed that Solo morning. And I was relieved. I was
thankful.

I called the one who left Bumbles. I
named
him that.

Self-revulsion slams through me.

Did any of them survive? Did Cooper? Heather or Julio? Randy or Ethan or Sofia or Elliot? The sweet young engineer whose name I can’t remember? I need to remember his name, but I can’t.

Brennan shudders in my arms and sorrowful wonder brushes through me: I thought he was a cameraman. I thought—

“I’m sorry about your mother,” I say.

I feel the tacky skin of my chin prickle and tear as the boy pulls away from me. “Why did you act like it wasn’t real?” he asks.

Thirteen. I want to tell him the truth. I want to tell him everything, about the show and the cabin and the love I abandoned for adventure, but it hurts too much. I also don’t want to lie anymore, so I say, “Can you blame me?”

He sniffles a laugh and I think, What a remarkable child.

Soon we’re walking again, slowed by our respective aches and injuries. My right hand is swollen, useless. I can’t move my wrist or fingers. I’m concerned Brennan might have a concussion, but he seems steady and I don’t see anything wrong with his pupils, so I think he’s okay. Unless there are signs I’m not seeing, signs I don’t know to look for.

Eventually he asks, “Have you ever killed someone, Mae?”

I don’t know how to answer because I think the answer is yes but I didn’t mean to and I don’t want to lie anymore but I can’t tell him everything. I can’t speak everything. But he needs an answer because he’s thirteen and he stabbed a man. A man who was going to kill me and likely him too, but even so. I think of the rabid coyote. I still remember seeing gears, but I also remember seeing flesh, like two versions of that day both exist, equally true. And for a second I think, Well, why not—maybe I’m wrong and that was still part of the show. Maybe it didn’t become real until later—but the thought is sour and forced, and I know I’m reaching.

Brennan is waiting for an answer. His puppy eyes watching me.

“Not like that,” I tell him. “But there was someone I think I could have helped, and I didn’t.” My throat is closing; the last word barely escapes.

“Why not?” he asks.

In my memory the mother prop has green eyes I know from mirrors and I don’t know if that’s real, if her eyes were open or closed.

She wasn’t a prop.

“I didn’t know,” I croak, but that’s not right. “It was a baby,” I say, “and I thought…” But I
didn’t
think, I panicked and ran, and how can I explain something I’m not sure I remember? “I was confused,” I try. “I made a mistake.” Not that that excuses it, excuses anything.

“I don’t regret it,” says Brennan. “I feel like I should, but I don’t. He was going to kill you.”

The soreness at the base of my throat, where Cliff’s arm pressed. Bruising I can feel but not see. Why did he attack me? If this is the world, why would one’s instinct upon meeting another be aggression? Why would—

His hand on my shoulder. I remember his hand. His breath. But that’s all: a stench.

The first blow, was it
mine
?

“Mae?”

Was he defending himself from
me
?

He was. He touched me, but he didn’t strike me. I can’t remember his words. I try to clench my fist; a pulse of pain, but my fingers don’t move. Brennan’s guilt, that’s my fault too. But he didn’t know and he can’t know—that I brought it on myself. That he didn’t have to.

“You have nothing to regret,” I tell him.

But I regret everything. All of it.

Their blood, meaningless. Their cries behind us, meaningless. All this death, meaningless. A meaningless observation. There
is
no why, no
because.
All there is is
is.
Systems colliding, wiping out existence, leaving me, an unlucky outlier. Worlds end, and I’m bearing witness.

“Thank you for saving my life,” I tell Brennan. I’m not thankful for it, but he did; he shouldn’t have, but he did. He’s been left behind too, and at least he doesn’t have to be alone, at least I can carry this burden for him—this burden that I caused.

I’m sorry.

We soon cross the bridge, ducking through an E-ZPass lane, and break into an historic tollhouse to spend the night. I know what dreams will come, so I don’t sleep, and I shake Brennan toward wakefulness periodically because I think that’s what I’m supposed to do. He seems more annoyed than grateful, and I take that as a positive sign.

After my fourth time waking Brennan I sneak outside and sit, leaning against the tollhouse beside the door. My clothing is heavy with dried blood; the weight of it pins me to the earth.

“I miss you,” I whisper.

Our children would have been born with blue eyes. But would that blue have turned to green or brown, or surprised us both by staying blue? Hair black or brown or blond, maybe even that beautiful auburn shade your mother wears in pictures from when you were young? No way to know. Roll the dice, have a kid. Cross your fingers that the genes are good. What if. Who knows. Questions become statements in this cowardly new world. Our children will never be. But that loss is nothing, nothing compared to the loss of you.