Last Woman (6 page)

My Wilkes’ watch reminding me it was the seventh of May when I glanced down to check the time as I walked from the jail property. It was nearly two. That meant I lost two hours of travel. That was eight blocks out of my way to backtrack to the jail, and I had to go those eight blocks again to return to the main expressway.

Something good did come out of it, I was able to help someone who would have otherwise starved and died in that building. Actually his name was William Cash. But he informed me people
had called him Dodge since he was sixteen years old. I didn’t ask why.

I just knew it was time to move forward. I had to keep going if I wanted to make it further south and get some distance before the sun started to set.

The temperatures would drop without the sun, and with no power, no street lights, it would be too dark to travel, plus, I needed to find shelter while I could still see.

I had fully intended on going alone, but the truth was, ten steps into my walk away from Dodge, I stopped. Was I insane? I didn’t know what was ahead of me,
if more people were alive, if things would get dangerous or even if I’d ever see another living human being again. Having spent so much time alone and withdrawn after the accident made me numb to the world. It wasn’t fair to him to walk away nor was it smart of me.

I didn’t know much about Dodge, actually nothing at all. I figured I would find out
on our journey.

Dodge was a talker. He was also something else; I learned that right away … he was resourceful.

Not twenty feet into our walk, he stopped and said. “Wait up.”

“What’s wrong?”

“That wheel, it was all well and fine to let me know you were coming, but I think that might drive me nuts.”

“It will. But what can we do
? Transfer the stuff out?”

“Nah,” He shook his head and walked to an abandoned police car. He popped the hood.

“What are you doing?” I walked over.

“Fixing that wheel.” He emerged from under the hood with the dip stick and walked to the suit case. He crouched down before the problematic wheel and began to use the oil from the stick. “Nudge it back and forth for me.”

“Oh, my God, that is really smart,” I said.

“Not really. The squeaky wheel gets the oil. I had a friend, Jack Hanson, who used to say that.” With a grunt and cracking knees, he stood. “Try it, see if it needs more.”

I pushed the suitcases back and forth. “Wow, it’s great. Thank you.”

“Now, will you let me tote that for you?” He extended his hand for the case. “It’s the least I can do.”

I surrendered the suitcase, even with the ease of wheeling it, it was heavy.

“Good Lord, what do you have in this?”

“A lot of stuff. We’ll need it.”

“Yeah, I guess with the city shutting down first, picking are slim. That will change when we move further out. I hope.”

“Me, too.” I moved along with him at a steady, but comfortable pace.

“Tell me again, where are we going?”

“I wanna go home. My home is in Downing Park.”

He closed his mouth and nodded. “Not a bad place. About three miles from where I live.”

“Did you need to find your home?”

He hesitated before answering, then with an exhale, said, “No. No I’d rather not. Not yet.”

I was going to ask ‘why’, but refrained, the shake to his voice told me he’d tell me when he was ready. It wasn’t my place to ask. Of course, he wasn’t shy about asking things.

“Why are we headed north into town if we need to go south? Not that I’m griping, I’m just curious.”

“Because it’s easier to walk the expressway. Even with the road blocks, it’s a straight shot, but to get back to the expressway we have to go this way. Unfortunately. And my plan is to keep going south until we find a bridge that hasn’t been destroyed.”

“Yeah, I heard those.”

I quickly glanced at him.

“The day they did it.” He shrugged. “Was really the thing that nailed the reality of it to me. Just hearing it. The concrete falling, explosions. You could see it on the television, but to be right there, right near it. Hard to explain.” He inhaled. “So why don’t we just take the side streets
? The expressways may be a straight shot, but they aren’t a straight way through.”

“You mean walk the side streets? Kind of a longer way don’t you think?”

“No, I mean, drive. We may have to foot it over a bridge, but at least drive until we get there. Take the side streets in and out. I know the area well.”

“How are we supposed to drive?”

“A car, hopefully one that didn’t run out of gas while waiting.”

I laughed sarcastically at that. “I’m sure we’ll just find a set of keys in a car.”

“Um ... yeah.” He pointed to a car, the door was open, and a decomposing body was inside. “Keys.”

“Let me rephrase that. A car with keys and no body.”

“Just take the body out,” Dodge suggested.

“Go on.” I nodded. “Touch it., try to move it.”

He extended his hand in, then paused and glanced at me. “Why? What’s gonna happen?”

“Not like the movies. Go on.
Hollywood made me delusional as well.”

He braved it up, covered his mouth and nose as he reached in. I watched his hand grab the body and then the big, tough, man from jail, squealed in disgust, jumped back and rubbed his hands frantically on the sides of his prison jumpsuit.

“And whatever happens to the body,” I said. “It just eats through the car fabric. It’s gross.”

“I heard something about that once. I didn’t think it was real. They said the body when decomposing, can be like an acid when it breaks down.”

“From what I saw, that’s real.”

He peered down to his hands playing with a substance between his fingers. “Feels like gooey honey.”

I blinked a few times. ‘I’ll never eat honey again.”

“Got news for you, fresh honey may not be an option anymore unless you find some bees.”

“Here.” I reached into my pocket and handed him the tiny bottle of sanitizer. “Use that.”

“Thanks.” He squirted a lot on his hands and looked around as he rubbed them together. “Ok, so, key in the car, probably means body in the car. So we have to find a moveable, working car, preferably a couple years old.”

“What’s the age have to do with it?”

“A lot.” He looked around as we walked, peeking in every car, occasionally stopping to try a handle.

Dodge made comments about cars being perfect but no gas. Or complaining because there was a body or two in them. Then finally, just as we hit the traffic leading up to what I knew was a hospital, Dodge clapped his hands together released the suitcase and walked to the car.

“What are you doing?”

“Abandoned.” He indicated to the open door. “And I can pull this on the sidewalk, cut through that lot there and down the street.” He reached in and popped the trunk, walked around to the back of the car and started rummaging.

He smiled with an ‘aha!
' and lifted a small gray case. “Cheap but works, roadside kit.”

I shook my head back and forth confused as he climbed in and laid down. His feet extended from the car. “Dodge?”

He grunted. “Give me a second.”

“Dodge.”

“I don’t wanna walk, this car has gas.”

Just as I inhaled to call his name again, the car started. “You jumped it.”

“If that’s what you want to call it.” He slid out. “Once we stop we may not be able to restart it. But we can find another.” He walked to the suitcase and grabbed it. “Getting in?”

“How did you know to do that?”

“My job.”

“Ah,” I nodded. “You were a car thief.”

“What? A mechanic. A good one too. Been doing it since I was a kid. Hence my teenage nickname.” He tossed the suitcase in the car. “Dodge.”

“Ok.”

“Back in the day I could fix any Dodge. Trucks especially.”

Suddenly his nickname clicked and made sense, it wasn’t criminal relayed like ‘dodge the bullet’ or ‘get out of dodge’ he fixed cars.
He added another reason I was glad to have him with me.

Thanking him, I got into the car. To me it didn’t matter how many things he banged into getting off that street or curbs he ran over. He was driving, and I was exceptionally glad to not be walking.

We had to abandon ship. The comfort of the car, silence of no conversation, with the exception of Dodge telling me to hold on when we had to run around or over something. But six miles into our road trip, we hit an impassible section of road. Cars were jammed together like a parking lot. There was no getting around it. All of it beginning several dozen blocks before the area’s teaching hospital. We should have known better.

But we made it six miles.

“Hate to say it, we
’re probably gonna have to walk to a doable bridge. Then once we cross, find transportation,” Dodge said. “Sorry I let you down. I really thought we’d get farther
.
'

“Hey, we made it six miles. That was a lot of walking we saved. No, I expect
ed to have to walk.”

“We need to plan a course of action. Gotta see where we’re going. How about you start checking these cars for a map. I’ll trudge up to the overpass and take a look, maybe see if we can spot an upcoming bridge that looks good?”

“We can both go. I’m not that slow, am I?”

“No that’s not it. Just … I’ll run it and run back. You settle. Maybe not move so much. We also gotta find a place to stop for the night.”

“How about this? We both go …”

“How about not.”

“What’s the problem?” I asked.

He placed his hands on his hips, lowered his head and glanced at me through the tops of his eyes. “Honest?”

“Please.”

“You don’t … you don’t look that well. You’re pale.” He reached up and touched my forehead in some sort of fatherly fashion. “You’re cold and dry.”

“Oh, my God.”

“No, Faye. If you are it, if you are the last person I have to talk to on this earth, I sure as shit ain’t letting you drop from dehydration, exhaustion or whatever it is you are dealing with right now. Don’t be a martyr.”

It took until I got into that car, driving, to realize, I still wasn’t anywhere near a hundred percent. I pushed it because I had to when the truth was, my body had been deprived of food and water for longer than I knew. Rest was what I needed, but I counteracted that by my constant moving. I hadn’t realized how weak I was until I didn’t have to be quite so strong.

“You’re right. I’m not well.”

“I figured.”

“It’s not the flu.”

“I kinda figured that too.”

We stood there staring at each other in the midst of
the mass car congestion, perhaps a mental way to come up with a plan and then we found a compromise.

The expressway was about a quarter mile from where we stood. We could walk around, find a place to rest, then after day break, trudge to the expressway. Or just go there now and make camp.

I didn’t have a problem with making camp for the night on the road; Dodge did, but agreed as long as I took it easy when we got up there.

We headed in the direction of the expressway, to me that was the better place. We wouldn’t have to waste energy getting there in the morning; we would be at our starting point.

Plus it was a good view of the other side of the river, if there was any inkling of life, there would be an inkling of light and we’d see it in the dark world.

The sky was clear and I suspected it wouldn’t rain and a star filled sky made for a brighter night.

Dodge kept checking every car he could for a map. I didn’t believe he’d find one because everyone used GPS. He said
he
didn’t which meant someone else didn’t rely on technology either.

Why did he need a map anyhow?

Sure enough though, he found an atlas in the front door pocket of an older SUV.

He also made it a point to stop at an abandoned and apparently raided ambulance.
All the medicine was gone, but there was a blanket.

The ramp to the road was packed with cars. Once we got pas
t that and around the standard military blockade, we faced an empty stretch of road. Empty until the next exit ramp onto the road, where more trucks could be seen along with cars. Lots of them. I wondered if they broke the barricade.

“It stopped there.” Dodge pointed. “End of
the city limits, at least far enough away from the hospitals and city. Bet Folsom Street Bridge is clear and we can walk across.”

“I hope you’re right.”

“Once we get situated, I’ll trudge up with the binoculars and take that look. Got enough strength to make it nearer to those cars?”

I did and I told him so, but like it had
two days before, my strength left me quickly. I was indeed ready to drop. I know it was a total of a mile walking but to me in my state, it could have been ten. I did too much the previous days.

We stopped near enough to the cars in case some freak storm rolled in we could jump in the back of the military truck.

No sooner did Dodge say, ‘Let’s stop here, this is as good a place as any.’ I did. I stopped and dropped down to a sitting position on the concrete. It had absorbed the sun and felt warm.

“Don’t sit on the ground, here.” Dodge tossed the blanket my way.

I lifted my rear end and tucked it under.

“I’ll be back. Drink
plenty of water.” Dodge instructed and then he darted off.

I hated it. I hated the fact that he looked at me like he had to take care of me. More than that, I hated the fact that I accepted the help.

He didn’t stop, despite the fact that I did. Before the sun went down, he had ripped out a bench seat from a minivan, and another seat from some other car.

I took the bench seat.

He build a small fire and instructed me to keep it going. Then he darted off again.

Each return trip he’d drop off items, then leave again, before he left the final time, he
perched two MRE’s close to the fire to warm them.

On h
is final return he was wearing baggy jeans, almost too big for his body and a flannel shirt. Dodge wasn’t a small man. The man who unknowingly donated the clothes must have been huge. For some reason, the flannel shirt worked for him, as if it matched a personality I didn’t know much about.

“Got you a new,
non-squeaky case. Might wanna transfer.” He sat down across the fire from me with an empty duffle bag. “I want to start packing some of the things I found.”

He stared rummaging through his pile. I didn’t know what
he found, but he did toss a bottle of Ibuprofen my way. “Here, hold on to those.”

“What
did you gather?” I asked.

“I just grabbed. I’ll sort through
it all. What else do I have to do? I got you a jacket though.”

“Why are you being so nice, were you always such a nice guy?”

“I like to think I was.” He shrugged. “Plus, you know, you saved my life. You really did. I owe ya.”

“No, you don’t.”

“Yeah I do. So, no arguments. The Chinese say something like, when you save a life you are responsible for that life. That means you gotta make sure I make right decisions. My right decision right now is making sure you’re okay. You look better.”

“I feel better. I haven’t moved in hours.”

“Maybe that’s what you needed. Now, can you start transferring what you have in that suitcase, because I’m pretty curious to see what you’ve been tugging along?”

I smiled slightly and pulled the suitcase near me. After unzipping it, the first thing I pulled out were two bottles.

“Drink much?” he asked.

“Yep. If I can’t handle the apocalypse, I might as well be drunk enough to ignore it.”

He laughed when I handed him a bottle. “Can’t beat this, dinner in a foil pouch and bourbon.” Carefully, he grabbed the end of the MRE and slid it my way. “Watch, it’s hot.”

I took it and would eat it in a bit. “How’d you end up in jail, Dodge? Do you mind me asking?”

“Nope, don’t mind you asking at all. I shouldn’t have been there. I should have been with my kids.”

“Oh, you have children.”

“Had. They caught the flu.”

“Have.” I corrected. “They will always be there with you. Trust me. So please, go on. Tell me. How many do you have?”

“Three. The youngest two were sick. They were so sick. I ain’t never seen anything like it.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Me, too.” He uncapped the bottle and took a drink. “They lived with my ex and she got sick. I was there and she begged me to go to a distribution center for help. For medicine. I knew. I watched the news. Medicine wasn’t helping. To me, leaving was taking a chance of being gone when I needed to be there. I kissed them though. They were sleeping, sort of in this state of unconsciousness. I told them I loved them. I knew … I knew when I left, something inside me said I wasn’t coming back. That it was the last I’d see them.”

“What happened?”

Dodge stared into the fire as he spoke. “I went to the setup place. You know, distribution. This was before the city shut down. Fighting broke out. I was there. I was detained. Tossed in the jail. No judge. No lawyer, no way to get out. Just sitting there freaking out ‘cause I knew my kids were dying.”

I felt his words; I felt them emotionally and physically. “I am so sorry. I am.”

“Thank you.”

“You said three children. What about the third
?”

“My son, my oldest, is at college about eight hundred miles away. I don’t know. He
was probably sick too.”

“You don’t know. You don’t. I think maybe you should go look for him?” I asked. “Nice to have a goal.”

“I don’t know. Maybe. No, I will. How can I not?” He inhaled loudly. “Looking for anyone alive right now is also a goal. Getting across a bridge. That’s a goal. What about you? Kids? Husband.”

I nodded. “Yeah. Two. A boy and a girl. A husband. The perfect suburban life.”

“Cut short by the flu.”

“No, actually. Cut short by a man drinking in his grief over
the death of his own son. My family was killed instantly in a car crash months before this all went down.”

“Instantly?”

I nodded. “They died on impact.”

“Don’t take this the wrong way, but lucky them and lucky you.”

It did enrage me slightly and my eyes met his over the fire. “Why would you say that?”

“Because they didn’t suffer. You … you didn’t have to watch what this flu did to them. To hear them cry in pain, suffering and know there was nothing you could do but wanna die right there with them.” He took another drink.

There was a quiet moment. A part of me felt he was right.

Then Dodge broke the silence. “You said you are from Downing. How’d you end up on this end? Getting supplies.”

“No, being dead.”

“I’m sorry?” He asked.

“Before this happened. I guess it was happening but I was so stuck in my grief, I didn’t know too much about the flu nor did I care. I was out, it was after a long day of drinking, and I kept drinking. Drinking. Drinking.” Subconsciously I reached across for the bottle and took a drink. “A part of me just couldn’t get drunk enough to numb the pain. But my body disagreed and I shut down. I fell unconscious, felt like I was having a stroke. Next thing I know I’m in the hospital hearing about alcohol poisoning , then I wake up, hear I have the flu, then I wake up … in the football stadium, wrapped in a cloth body bag right smack in the middle of all those bodies.”

“Holy shit. They tossed you
in with the dead?”

“Yep. I guess they thought I was dead or didn’t care. But I lost three weeks. I don’t know how long I was left for dead and unconscious.”

“No wonder you look so pale and weak. Babe, you gotta replenish. Take it easy. Who the hell knows how long you lay there.”

“I know.”

“So let me get this right.” He held up his hand. “You passed out and the world was okay, you woke up and it was dead. Talk about a shocker. You thought you were dreaming?”

“Yes. I did.”

“I don’t know what’s worse. Knowing what happened or missing it. I sat and watched the world end from inside a jail and via the news.”

“That had to be hard,” I said.

“It was.” Dodge took another drink. Held his hands to the fire and spoke. “Every day. And every day, the men around me got sick. They eventually stopped taking them out. Then they stopped bringing food. They stopped locking us in our cells. But the news was on. It went from different newscasters every couple hours, reporting the same thing, the same death and riots. Then there was only a handful of news people, and then as the numbers dwindled in the jail and the outside world one reporter remained. Tamika. To me she was hope that life was continuing. Then the last day she came on she looked sick. Really sick. Then she didn’t come back. No one did. Hope died. The news stayed on until the power went down, but for a couple days, all we saw was the news station and an empty chair. That just about says it all, don’t it? An empty chair.”

“At least you knew.” I said. “I have been trying to piece it together. Magazine, newspaper, the Soldier reports. A man named Wilkes wrote them.” As I reached for the clipboard in the suitcase to show him, Dodge’s hand crossed over mine and instead lifted a stack of rubber band bound licenses.