The Last One(97)

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26.


“This place is pretty nice, huh, Mae?” asks Brennan. He’s sitting on his cot across from mine, tying his shoelaces. We’re in a barn that’s been converted to a dorm and houses two dozen people. This corner is ours. It was kind of them, to give us a corner.

“Could be worse,” I reply. I’m getting better at putting in my contacts left-handed, but it’s still difficult, especially without a mirror.

“About Vermont…” says Brennan.

“We’re better off here.”

He looks up, hopeful. “You think we should stay?”

I take my hand away from my eye and blink rapidly. It stings for a second, then the lens settles. “Yes, I think we should stay.” Because his future is more important than my past.

We’ve been here four days. It’s difficult, being surrounded by people after so long alone, or nearly so. But there’s less drama than I expected. Everyone has a role, and seems to fill it with minimal complaint. “Most of us had it rough, getting here,” the doctor told me when I went to see her about my hand. “We know how bad it could get, if we let it. So we don’t.”

Another bit of lore: There was an attempted rape, early on. They let the assailed choose the punishment and she chose instead to forgive. Something about there being enough grief in this world without adding to it. It’s unclear who exactly this woman was—no one ever gives her a name when telling the story—but if this is truly a new world, someone’s bound to dedicate a statue to her before too long. Or a church. Soon her memory and eventually her myth will be begged forgiveness for sins beyond count or measure.

There’s no one left to forgive me.

I asked the doctor about my period; she said nearly every woman here has missed one. It’s the physical stress, like I thought. She had me stand on one of those tall, creaky scales, the type that measures height too. One hundred four pounds; almost thirty below the weight I think of as mine. She said my body should be getting back to normal soon, now that I’m safe. She actually used those words: “normal,” “safe.” I think that’s what made me tell her about the coyote. She stared. Turns out I know more about rabies than she does. If I’m still standing a month from now, I’m in the clear.

I haven’t told Brennan. I figure it’s best not to mention rabies until and unless I develop an irrational fear of water. He’s befriended a few kids around his age, but slingshots back to me every meal, every morning, every “town hall,” and every evening. I’m grateful.

“Mae,” says Brennan as I move on to my right eye. “When we were at your house—”

A different world, a different life, a different me. “I told you, Brennan, I don’t want to talk about it.”

“But it’s different now.”

“No,” I say, firmly. I blink my second lens into place.

“But, Mae…”

He looks guilty, maybe a little scared. I wonder if he stole something. Scavenged, in the parlance of our new reality.

“If it’s something you need forgiveness for, you have it,” I say. He still looks supremely uncomfortable. I need to give him something. “Tell me what was in the motel room instead.” Because that’s something I still haven’t been able to reconcile, and I need to so I can forget it.

“Oh.” His sneakers are tied. He rubs the toes of his right foot into the hay-lined dirt floor, drawing an oval. “It was stupid. The room was filled with electronics. TVs and laptops, Xboxes, stuff like that.”

“No bodies?”

“No.” A second oval, a slightly rotated twin of the first, making a very slim X. “But things were dusty like no one had been there in a while.”

“So whoever put it there is probably dead,” I say.

“Probably,” he agrees. A third oval. His foot is a slow Spirograph.

I look around the barn. There are a handful of others milling about, preparing for the day. I’ve heard maybe a dozen different explanations for the plague since arriving, but the majority opinion seems to be it had something to do with fracking. Either the process released a prehistoric pathogen, or it was the dispersal method for a man-made toxin. One of the more outspoken proponents of the unearthed-pathogen theory is an old Indian woman who’s currently standing by the barn door. She waves at us, smiling, then takes the hand of the little white girl—four, five years old—who I’ve never seen more than ten feet from her side. The idea of fracking being behind this doesn’t make any sense, and I think the woman knows it. She just needs something to believe; they all do.

“Maybe whoever put that stuff in the motel is here,” I say to Brennan.

“Mae!”

The look in his eyes hurts. “They could be, Brennan. Or men like those two at the grocery store could show up any day.” Maybe Cliff and Harry would be here, if not for me. Maybe they too would have roles to fill. “This is a good place,” I say, “but just because someone made it this far doesn’t mean they’re a good person. So don’t get complacent.” He squirms. “Brennan, promise me.” Because I can’t do it, I can’t lose him too.

“I promise, Mae.”

“Thank you,” I say. “I’ve got to go, I’m on breakfast duty.”