Last Woman (4 page)

I was numb.

Perhaps that was why I moved with little concern for my physical well-being. Taking it all in as I pushed forward, I found myself oddly void of any emotions. Was it the shock of it all or had I really shut down so emotionally after the accident that I just didn’t care?

I supposed some rest, food, and educating myself with the magazine would clarify that.

Maybe.

I made it across the bridge into the city. Traffic was lined up on both sides, some vehicles were empty,
and most contained bodies, waiting to go somewhere as if life was better wherever they thought they’d go.

The bridge was blocked by abandoned military trucks. No soldiers, they left their posts, unlike Wilkes and Stevens.

While there may not have been people there was certainly flies. It was creepy to think that the sole surviving species of the planet earth was the common fly.

Feast and multiply, it scared me to imagine what would happen when they ran out of bodies.

I knew one thing for certain, I’d rest and then I had to get out of the city as soon as possible. Not only was it overflowing with bodies, but it was a death trap. The diseases alone that carried with dead bodies was enough to set my sights on finding an exit solution.

I looked down to Wilkes’ watch, it was near two PM. It took me hours to make it a mile or so. I had to hunker down. Maybe the next day’s light, would give me enough energy to find my way home.

Or at least closer.

There was a grand hotel, it used to be one of the city’s best and it sat near the river and was only two blocks from the edge of the bridge.

It was easy to spot and didn’t seem damaged from behind. As I walked closer, I saw it was barricaded off. The streets around it blocked with those horses and rapidly erected fences.

Keep out.

Military personnel only.

I didn’t see anyone though.

Only bodies. More bodies, lots of bodies. Some weren’t even covered. Just tossed on top of each other outside the fences as if it were a garbage drop off point.

As I crossed through the barricade of the hotel property, it was apparent that if for only briefly, it was some sort of military setup. Maybe a medical station.

Tents and trucks were outside, and the main doors were open.

Rows upon rows of cots were set
up in the huge lobby, but there were no bodies on those cots. No blankets. Only remnants of illness left on the mattresses and a sour smell that filled the air.

Taking refuge on a lobby couch was out of the question, they had been cleared out.

But the gift shop was not. That made me happy.

There were three shops in the lobby, untouched by looters, and one of them had clothing. Anything was better than what I wore. Setting down my duffle bag, I went into the shop.

I was able to find some things, including underwear. The only thing I couldn’t find were shoes. At least shoes I could walk in. They had sandals, and flats, but I couldn’t see me click clacking my way down the barren streets. The boots weren’t going to cut it. I was in a hotel, there had to be something in there. There were tons of bodies outside; I quickly dismissed the idea of looking for shoes on one of them. Remembering how my hand sunk into flesh, I could only imagine what was going to be in those shoes.

No, the hotel was my answer.

I thought getting into the rooms would be difficult considering the keycard system, then Christine came to mind again. I made a mental note that I was going to try to find out what happened to her and her family.

She had worked at a hotel for years and told me that all the keys systems were run on a triple ‘A’ battery system. There was also a master key for emergency workers. If I needed to, I’d look for that.

I didn’t feel much like going through each room like Charlton Heston in Omega man. I only needed shoes. So, I headed behind the front desk into the offices located there.

Something somewhere.

But that was a bust. I checked every drawer, thinking some secretary or accounting clerk had an extra pair of shoes.

My feet ached and I could feel my ankles hurting from the weight of the combat boots.

I stopped for a moment, sat on the chair behind the front desk and took a second to think. It was funny because I could have just stopped, found a place to hunker down, read my magazine and relax, but I couldn’t until I found what I needed.

After gathering my bearings, smoking a cigarette that caused me to cough with every puff, I ventured around the hotel.

It was a hotel for crying out loud, I had to find what I need.

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My original assessment of the hotel, being like the magazine, a gold mine, was correct. I didn’t have to go further than the first floor of the hotel.

A simple walkthrough of the dark kitchen led me to a back hall that joined every cooking or catering department and eventually an employee lounge.

Her name was ‘J. Cooke’, and I found a decent pair of sneakers in her locker. There were shoes in other lockers, some work shoes, but hers fit me. I thanked her.

A back storage closet gave me not only a better flashlight, but a pillow and blanket.

I didn’t need to go up to the rooms after all.

I noted that the pool area had a hot tub, still filled with water not clouded over and I’d probably use that for clean up the next day. Who knew the next time I’d get to do that.

I returned one more time to the kitchen for water and cereal, then I settled for the remainder of the day and night in the corner of the first floor lounge.

A private set up, probably for parties, it had three couches and a set of ‘pull close’ doors for privacy. I gathered every little table lantern I could find. The tiny ones with a single wick, oil based that were used more for decoration. I got them from the lounge and two restaurants. Alone they were a mere flicker, but thirty of them together, lit the room.

At least, that night, wouldn’t be spent in the dark. If I didn’t catch on fire.

There were no windows in that corner, so I couldn’t see what was going on outside. That helped
with me not being scared.

Following my criminal behavior of breaking into the locked liquor cabinet under the bar, I settled for the night with my bottle of whiskey, MRE spaghetti, fruit ring cereal and
Newsweek Magazine
.

I’d rest easy that night knowing that neither the magazine nor paper made mention of the rising dead, cannibalistic creatures or rage monsters. They wouldn’t jump at me from a corner. Neither would crazed survivors.

While I fell to what was probably more than likely an alcohol induced coma, the world had ended.

The nice thing about journalism was the recap of news just in case someone missed it. Yeah, someone did.

Me.

The
Newsweek
had plenty of articles; the entire magazine was dedicated to it.

ERDS.

European Respiratory Distress Syndrome.

It started in Europe in February. I didn’t know, nor paid attention, because my own world was ending. No one knew where it came from or what started it.

One article suggested that Mother Nature just said, ‘Enough’. I wasn’t knowledgeable enough about viruses to know what sounded right or wrong, I didn’t follow the story, obviously, so I had to rely on the magazine as if it were some sort of history book. My only source of education.

In February,
in the middle of cold and flu season, it began as a different strain. ‘H’ Something, ‘N’ Something. Those who fell victim died from complications. It showed no prejudice. The ill didn’t need to be old, young or have any serious health problems. To quote one of the doctors, interviewed, ‘If you get it, you die.’

A one hundred percent kill rate.

But the people weren’t getting it as easily as the ordinary flu. I think I read that in the beginning it was one in a thousand that caught the flu, caught that particular strain. Then it moved to one in a thousand people caught ERDS, whether they had a case of the flu or not, or even a shot. Then...

One in five hundred.

One in a hundred.

By the middle of April, one in two.

By the time the article was printed, Europe was done and the new flu, called ERDS, was spreading like wildfire.

The early phase of communicability rate made it easy to cross continents.

What started as a sniffle, cascaded to full blown pneumonia symptoms, and people choked and drowned on their own overproduction of phlegm. That was if the fever didn’t kill them.

In was inhumane, people suffered at first for nearly a week. Then as healthcare facilities were unable to handle the ill, as medicine, antiviral, and fever reducer stockpiles plummeted, the ill weren’t getting their symptoms treated and the symptoms killed them faster.

That was at the end. What I gathered from that last newspaper article.

My city was done. Officials told families to place their dead out like garbage. However, I guess soon enough, those caring for the ill, just got sick themselves.

My heard spun from all the information I tried to process that night along with the alcohol. It was a long time since alcohol affected me. Maybe I shouldn't have drank, especially after alcohol nearly killed me, but I didn’t care.

Why should I?

ERDS was hailed as the extinction event. Not just humans, but everything. Every species carried it and contracted it. Birds dropped from the sky, dogs died in the street.

Everything but flies.

Scientists never found one occurrence of immunity. Not one case? What was I? A fluke or did I really get it and was that one in eight billion that beat it.

Extinction event. Everyone … everything died.

Except for me.

Was that possible? It couldn’t be. There was no way, no how
. I was the only one remaining.

I stood and started blowing out the lanterns. I’d leave one on, that wasn’t a fire hazard.

A few articles remained unread; I saved them for another time. I managed to find a package of something called ‘pain away’ in the employee first aid cabinet. I washed those down and finished off my bottle of water to thwart any post drinking headache. My previous headache had finally subsided, I didn’t need another.

If anything, that whiskey would help me sleep. My body was tired and achy, my mind and heart heavy.

Not wanting to think of anything else, I closed my eyes and prayed for a dreamless sleep.

It was the same one. It always was. At first it was every night, then just every time I dreamt.

The phone call. The knock. The scream. My scream.

That day was forever embedded in my mind.

“Nearly done,” I said to my husband on the phone. I had been working all Saturday morning on marketing reports. That was my job. I collected the research from the study groups and compiled it.

“We won’t be much longer. Unless you want us to stay out,” he said.

“No. Come home.”

“Daddy, can we stop and get pizza?” I heard my six year old daughter ask from the back seat.

It made me laugh.

“Well, Faye, you heard Sammy. She wants to stop.”

“Rich …”

“We won’t be long, enjoy your break.”

“How’s Mark doing?”

“Oh, he’s a champ. If his driver’s test was today he’d pass with flying colors. He’s excellent.”

“Hey Mom!” Mark called from the background.

“Drive.” Rich told him. “And remember. Two seconds after the light changes.”

“Yep. Got it.”

I laughed. “Well, get back to being driving instructor. I’ll see you soon.”

“Sounds good. Love you.”

“Love you, too.” I pulled the phone from my ear but not before I heard an eerie, ‘oh my God’ come from Rich.

The line went dead.

It didn’t sit well with me. Immediately, I tried to call him back. It went directly to voice mail.

How long and how many times did I call, text, both Rich’s phone and Mark’s. It wasn’t more than an hour and a half, because the knock came at the door.

One police officer. “Mrs. Wills?”

My family had been killed. My entire family. In one single instance, even after my son hesitated to go when the light turned green, a truck going fifty miles an hour, running a red light rammed right into my family’s car.

The impact sent the car sailing down a busy street. I wasn’t the only one who lost that afternoon. Like a billiard ball, after it rolled and ricocheted into other cars.

For the first few days, after the shock, I struggled with the fact of what my family endured. I was crushed over thinking that my poor daughter in the back seat was screaming out for help. The only comfort came from the coroner who said they all died on impact.

He said they didn’t suffer. But his report wasn’t enough. I actually sought him out.

“Swear to me.”

“Mrs. Wills, this is highly unusual.”

“Swear to me please. Swear to me on anything that’s important. Please,
swear to me they didn’t suffer.”

He gripped my hand, looked me in the eyes. “On my own child, I swear to you.”

It took everything I had not to kill myself in the days following the funeral. Aside from being cowardly, I wanted to see it through. I wanted to see justice delivered to the man who not only took my family, but destroyed the lives of four other families in the process.

I sat through every day, every hour of that trial. Eight counts of vehicular homicide while under the influence. He had no defense and begged to be put away. I listened as he said he had no will, he was drunk and that the day it happened he had buried his own three year old son who
had passed away from leukemia.

When the families stood up and asked the judge to deliver a life sentence, I saw a man who was remorseful. Putting him away wasn’t bringing back my family. He wasn’t a man who was tossing his actions aside, he would definitely live and carry what he did for the rest of his life. That was punishment enough. I told the judge that.

It didn’t matter. When the judge handed the sentence of twenty-five years, I left the courtroom went home, threw away my car keys and started drinking. I didn’t stop. Not until that day I dropped unconscious in that bar only to wake up to a nightmare world.

Thing was, even before the flu, I was living in a nightmare world.

The dreams would never stop; it would ease, but never go away.

I was pretty sure I screamed when I sprang awake, I always did. Wake in a sweat, heart beating, and then cry.

Not this morning. I didn’t cry. For the first time since it happened, I realized why it happened. They were spared the madness that I now had to experience. I already grieved them; I still was and would be for a long time.

They were all I had in the world, and their loss was bigger to me, than what I faced now.

My losses were tallied long before the world keeled over.

All that was left for me to do was to get out of the city and try to make my way to my house. What I would do after that remained to be seen.

The Wilkes’ watch read a little after eight am. It was time to gather my things and get moving.

My first focus was accomplished, I found out what happened to the world. Focus two was the hotel and the answer to what happened to people. Now I just wanted to get to my final focus and that was simply to get home.