The Last One (37 page)

In the Dark
—Week one down. Reactions?

…

[+] submitted 29 days ago by LongLiveCaptainTightPants

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[-] CoriolisAffect
28 days ago

My cameraman friend is dead. Whatever’s happening it got him. The people on the show are fucked. We’re all fucked.

…

24.

When I envision the cabin, alternate visions seem equally true. The house is blue; the house is brown. There are balloons everywhere; there are a handful, scattered. Stacks of blue boxes; a trio of small packages. I want to cut the difference in half, just to stop wondering, but memory shouldn’t be a compromise.

The baby would have died anyway.

That’s what I tell myself, but it doesn’t help and I know it’s not true. Not necessarily. I could have saved him, maybe.

And then what, I’d be walking along this curving parkway with a baby strapped to my chest? An infant with no relation to me. That’s not survival, that’s selflessness, and the only person I’ve ever wanted to give the better half of anything was you.

Why was the welcome mat in the back? We’ve never washed it. Why would you wash it?

Why do I think it matters?

I don’t. I’m distracting myself. I don’t want to distract myself from you. But I have to; my tongue is dry and my stomach empty. You’d tell me to move on and I am.
I am.
I’m walking, I’m moving. But my feet are dragging; I can’t lift them, thinking about you. And I see Brennan trying, and I think—I think I can’t let him fail.

I came back, Miles. I’m here but you’re gone and I have to go on because I don’t want to but that’s all my body can do. I’m sorry. I’m sorry and I miss you and you’re gone.

I blink away asphalt and look up at the yellow-brown leaves, splashes of clinging green. I used to think autumn was beautiful.

I loved you. You’re gone. I’m sorry.

“Ad tenebras dedi.”

When I level my blurred gaze, Brennan is staring at me, his thumbs tucked under the straps of his zebra-patterned pack.

“Mae?”

I can feel my body wanting to cry, the tightness of my eyes. I think of his brother, his mother, all that he’s lost. He would have saved the baby. He saved me, when all I’d been to him was cruel.

“Where are we going?” I ask.

He’s staring at me. After a moment he replies, “I don’t know.”

A careful tone, because my voice still has tones and I have to choose one and he’s a
child.
Not accusing, only asking, “You don’t have a plan?”

“Just to get you out of there.” Brennan shifts his pack. “Where do you think we should go?”

Should. A judgment call I’m not qualified to make. But I do know a place, a place Brennan might like.

“It’s far,” I say, “and it’s not a farm, but there’s acreage and a well with a hand pump. A little greenhouse and a couple dozen sugar maples. There were chickens, might still be.” I’m beyond hope, but logic tells me there’s a chance, a legitimate chance, because if there
is
a genetic component to resistance, I had to get it from somewhere. One or the other. Though it could be recessive, an invisible, unexpressed connection that couldn’t save either of my parents and yet saved me.

“Where is it?” asks Brennan.

“Vermont.”

“Let’s go.”

That’s it:
Let’s go.
Because he trusts me. Despite everything I’ve done and not done, he trusts me. He keeps trying to save me. He’s trying, so hard.

I can’t let him fail.

—

Five days. I’m eating again, two meals a day, holding my spork in my clublike fist as a toddler would a crayon. My jaw still aches and everything tastes like rot. As we walk I feel my pulse in my swollen hand and wrist, and I wonder if I’ll ever heal.

We’re passing a strip mall, I think. Concrete and desolation, chain restaurants and office supply stores. Ubiquitous logos I know without seeing, that will mean nothing to the next generation, if there is a next generation.

What a waste, this landscape. Store after store after store; phones that will never be charged, games never played, drawers never opened, glasses never—

“Brennan, wait.”

“What?” he asks, pivoting toward me.

“Is that a LensCrafters?”

He looks where I’m pointing across the street, searches, and finds. “Yeah,” he says, and with the first hint of affirmation I’m crossing the street. No need to look both ways.

“You think they’ll have the glasses you need just sitting there?” asks Brennan scuttling after.

“No. But they’ll have contacts.”

He breaks the glass door and we’re in. I beeline for the back, where I find a wall of sample packs. I scour the selection, taking any within a quarter of a point of my prescription. Daily, extended wear, anything. I stuff them into my pack. It’s enough to last at least a year, I think. While I’m filling my backpack, I feel a lump in the media pocket and pull out the dead mic pack from the show. Matchbox-sized and useless. I toss it onto the floor and slip more lenses into the pocket. Afterward I scrub my hands with soap and drinking water in the exam room sink; that’s how easy it’s been to find bottled water, I can wash my hands with it now. I keep the purification drops I took from the store, though, not knowing what’s ahead. I’m almost able to unfurl the fingers of my right hand. I can hold the bottle tight enough to pour, though I have to tip my whole arm.

I think of Tyler gifting me the trash bag. Why me, I’ll never know. And I’ll probably never know if he’s alive or dead, if any of them are. If anyone
should
have made it, it’s the doctor, but I bet Heather’s the only one who lived. Me and Heather, the most useless of the bunch. Cooper was probably the first to go.

I drop the empty bottle and peer into the mirror above the sink. An empty, wasted face stares back. A crusty scab on her chin, the yellow mottle of old bruising on her neck. Useless, but still here. I peel open a tiny package. I’ve never put in contacts left-handed before. Even getting the lens out and positioned on my index finger is problematic, and then I keep catching it on my eyelashes. Eventually it sneaks past, makes contact with my eye—and pops out onto my cheek. Another failed attempt, and another, then finally the lens slides in and settles into place, stinging. The second lens takes only marginally less time to get in, then it folds in my eye. I almost puncture my cornea fishing it out. It’s like I’m back in sixth grade, struggling with my first pair of contact lenses, running with tears streaming from abused eyes toward the bus—

The bus.

Those were real children.

Those were
real
children and I walked past, blind.

What did I step on?

Who.

I take a seat in the creaky exam chair, bury my head in my hands. It feels like the rest of my life can only be an apology, that with each step forward I have to beg forgiveness for the last.

I rest until I can try again, until I can refocus on something as mundane and concrete as putting in a contact lens. I return to the mirror. Plastic and cornea finally connect. I blink to help the lens settle and suddenly everything is so clear it’s startling.

I find Brennan in the front, trying on sunglasses. I see the holes in his red sweatshirt, the frayed cuff of his left sleeve, the fuzzed disarray of his growing hair, his unbroken posture. I see someone who doesn’t have to live the rest of his days in regret. He picks up a pair of glasses with huge lenses and bright yellow frames; I think they might be a women’s style, but who can tell and what does it matter. I see the pink beneath his fingernails and I think of Cooper’s hands covered in blood. A heat in my chest like anger and I know—I would feel it. If it were Brennan’s hands turned red, I would feel it. He slides the sunglasses onto his face.

“Those look good,” I tell him, trying.

He moves the sunglasses to the top of his head. “Thanks.”

We exit the store and follow the road north. The blankness, the bleakness, the rotting litter and stillness all around. It’s unmistakably vast. The extent of it overwhelms me. I don’t know whether to be thankful that my glasses broke or to resent it. Though, who knows, maybe I would have clung to the lie even if I could see. The brain is a terrifying and wondrous organ, and all it wants is to survive. I doubt I’ll ever be able to make perfect sense of those confused and confusing days. I’d rather just forget them.

Brennan and I walk despite the abandoned vehicles all around us. We walk because the world is too quiet for cars and without a word we’ve agreed to walk and for all I know I’m the last one on Earth who knows how to drive.

By dusk my eyes are itchy and tired, unused to being bound, unused to seeing. These lenses are daily disposables; I toss them into the fire and they disappear.

“Do they make a big difference?” asks Brennan. He’s reverted to a blur.

I nod, close my eyes, rub my temples. The fire crackles.

“Brennan,” I say. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know how bad it was. I don’t want to talk about…before. But I’m sorry.”

“It was because you couldn’t see?” he asks.

I nod again. It’s not a lie.

“Your eyesight’s that bad?” I hear rustling as he feeds the fire. I wait. I know what’s coming: a story. About his mom, maybe, but more likely about his brother. Aiden’s been walking with us these last few days.

“It didn’t seem so bad,” says Brennan. “I thought it was like—Aiden had glasses, but he only needed them for driving. That’s the only time he ever wore them.” He pauses. Did Aiden forget his glasses once and rear-end a traffic cop? Maybe he drove the wrong way down a one-way street. “Mae”—Brennan’s voice lifts—“at your house—”

“No.” An instinct. I can’t, I won’t. He’s caught me unprepared and my hackles rise.

“But—”

“No! I don’t want to talk about it.” Even this is saying too much. My eyelids are tight, but they can’t block memory. A shock of dark hair, a blanket falling. I feel the threat to leave him boiling in my throat. I’ll speak it if I have to, lie or not.

I can feel him staring at me.

“Brennan.
Please.
”

A long moment passes, and then he says, “Okay.”

In the Dark
—Trying to find my wife

Hello? If anyone is reading this, my wife was a contestant on In the Dark and I’ve been trying to find her since August. I’ve tried all the emergency contacts I have for the production but I haven’t been able to reach anyone. I know someone on here knew a cameraman, and if you can help me, if anyone can help me, please.

Please.

[-] submitted
Just now
by 501_Miles

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25.

The next afternoon as we walk along the road I see a parachute caught in the trees to our left. Brennan darts ahead to get the first look, and it’s the third time today he’s referred to himself as “the scout.” I see him pause at the crisp tree line.

“What is it?” I call.

“A box!” he yells back. “A big one!”

When I get there, he’s walking around a huge plastic crate, peering in. It’s as tall as he.

“What do you think it is?” he asks.

“A big box,” I tell him. He laughs, but I’m not there. I might never be.

“But from where?” He’s still circling, like a pup investigating a scent.

The box isn’t connected to the parachute, which is huge, bigger than I would have guessed from the road, and hangs above us like a great green sky. The cords have snapped, or been cut.
Don’t look, scan,
but these tracks are the most obvious I’ve ever seen. “It was air-dropped,” I say, remembering a trail in the sky, a sound in the night.

“It’s empty,” announces Brennan. He’s jittery—excited, I think. “That means someone emptied it, right? There are other people around here?”

I step forward to touch the plastic box. Cool, smooth, inorganic. I imagine a massive jet stocked with these instead of passengers, arriving home empty. “Also someone else out there organized enough to pull off a Marshall Plan,” I say.

“What’s a Marshall Plan?” asks Brennan, ducking into the crate and examining its ceiling.

It’s hard, so hard. Conversation. Is this how Cooper felt at first, talking to me? “You didn’t make it to World War Two in school?” I ask.

“Nazis,” he counters. His voice echoes slightly. “World War Two was Nazis.”

“Touché.” It slips out and I want it back. More than
I love you,
we said
touché.
Banter followed by a kiss. “It doesn’t matter,” I say. “I don’t think the reference even works.” Because the Marshall Plan was different from the Berlin Airlift, wasn’t it? And it was an air
lift
not an air
drop,
and though I’ve always assumed the supplies drifted in on parachutes, maybe the planes landed.

Are there enough people left for the proper nouns of history to matter?

This crate would suggest so. I’m not sure how that makes me feel, for there to be enough, but for those I loved not to be among them. It’s another readjustment, and I don’t know how much change I have left in me.

Brennan pops his head out of the crate. “Should we try to find them?” he asks.

Movement catches my eye and I see it, see them: a trio of strangers standing among the trees, watching. An old black man with bright white hair, a youngish white woman, and another man, also youngish, who looks like he might be Latino, but maybe he just has dark hair and a tan.

“Mae?” asks Brennan.

“I don’t think we need to,” I say.

“Why not?” He hops out of the crate. “Do you—” He notices my gaze, follows my nod. “Oh,” he says.

—

“Name?” asks the old man. A different old man. This one is white and bearded, and this farm has been in his family for generations. Or so goes the lore. A little over a month since the plague—that’s what they call it, the plague—and this sanctuary tucked away in western Massachusetts already has lore.