I curse, not loud but on that hiss of breath you get with shock and pain. The second time, I manage to get my heel on the pedal. The bike jerks forward with each hard pump.
I squirt between parked cars. As my heart slows, I let myself think I’ve imagined the whole thing. Until the supermarket doors crash open, and a male voice shrill with desperation yells, “Miss! Come back! Miss! Don’t run away from me! Please! I’m not going to hurt you!”
And maybe he’s not. But I’m not inclined to trust. Trusting never did get me anywhere I wanted to be.
I push down and pedal harder. I don’t coast.
He only shouts after me. He doesn’t shoot. And I don’t look back.
Now that he knows I exist, he’s not going to stop looking.
I know this the way I know my childhood street address.
And why would he stop? People need people, or so we’re always told. Being alone—really alone, completely alone—is a form of torture.
To be utterly truthful, there’s a part of me that wants to go looking for him. Part of me that doesn’t want to be alone anymore either.
The question I have to ask myself is whether that lonely part of me is stronger than the feral, sensible part that cautions me to run away. To run, and keep running.
Because it’s the apocalypse. And I’m not very big, or a trained fighter. And because of another thing that doesn’t exist anymore:
• Social controls.
Dissociation, though—that I’ve got plenty of.
He is going to come looking for me. Because of course he will. I hear him calling after me for a long time as I ride away. And I know he tries to follow me because I follow him.
We’re the last two people on Earth and how do you get more Meet Cute than that? We’ve all stayed up late watching B movies in the nosebleed section of the cable channels and we’ve all read TV Tropes and we all know how this story goes.
But my name isn’t Eve. It’s Isabella. And I have an allergy to clichés.
• Dating websites.
• Restraining orders.
• Twitter block lists.
• Domestic violence shelters.
I stalk him. I’ll call it what it is.
It’s easy to find him again: he’s so confident and fearless that he’s still wandering around in the same neighborhood trying to get my attention.
I mean, first I go back to my current lair and get ready to run.
I load up the bike trailer with my food and gear, and flats and flats and flats of water. My sun layers and my hat go inside and I zip the whole thing up.
Then I hide it, and I check again to be sure my gun is loaded.
And then I go and stalk him.
He’s definitely a lot bigger than me. But he doesn’t look a damned thing like my ex, which is a point in his favor.
And he isn’t trying in the least to be sneaky. He’s just walking down the sidewalk, swerving to miss the cars that rolled off the road when their drivers disappeared, pulling a kid’s little red wagon loaded with supplies. He’s armed with a pistol on his belt, but so am I. And at least he’s not strung all over with bandoliers and automatic weapons. Plus, there are enough of those hungry, terrified feral dog packs around that a weapon isn’t a bad idea.
I wonder how long it will be before the cougars move back down from the mountains and start eating them all.
The circle of life.
Poor dogs.
They were counting on us, and look where that got them.
The only other living human being (presumed) is wearing a dirty T-shirt (athletic gray), faded jeans, and a pair of high-top skull-pattern Chucks that I appreciate the irony of, even while knowing his feet must be roasting in them. I make him out to be about twenty-five. His hair is still pretty clean cut under his mesh-sided brimmed hat, but he’s wearing about two weeks of untrimmed beard. Two weeks is about how long it’s been since the world ended.
He calls out as he walks along. How can anyone be so unafraid to attract attention? So confident of taking up all that space in the world? Like he thinks he has a right to exist and nobody is going to come take it away from him.
He’s so relaxed. It scares me just watching him.
I do notice that he doesn’t seem threatening. There’s nothing sinister, calculated, or menacing about this guy. He keeps pushing his hat up to mop the sweat from under it with an old cotton bandanna. He doesn’t have a lot of situational awareness, either. Even with me orbiting him a couple of blocks off on the mountain bike, he doesn’t seem to notice me watching. I’m staying under cover, sure. But the bike isn’t silent. It has a chain and wheels and joints. It creaks and rattles and whizzes a little, like any bicycle.
Blood has dried, itchy and tight-feeling, on the back of my calf. The edge of my sock is stiff. I drink some of the water in my bottle, though not as much as I want to.
It’s getting on toward evening and he’s walking more directly now, in less of a searching wander, when I make up my mind. He seems to be taking a break from searching for me, at least for the time being. He’s stopped making forays into side streets, and he’s stopped calling out.
I cycle hard on a parallel street to get in front of him, and from a block away I show myself.
He stops in his tracks. His hands move away from his sides and he drops the little red wagon handle. My right hand stays on the butt of my holstered gun with the six bullets in it.
“Hi,” he says, after an awkward pause. He pitches his voice to carry. “I’m Ben.”
“Hi,” I call back. “I’m Isabella.”
“You came back.”
I nod. Never in my memory—probably in living memory—has it been quiet enough in this city that you could hear somebody clearly if they called to you from this far away. But it’s that quiet now. Honey bees buzz on the crape myrtles. I wonder if they’re Africanized.
“Nice bike, Isabella.”
“Thanks.” I let the smirk happen. “It’s new.”
He laughs. Then he bends down and picks up the handle of his little red wagon. When he straightens, he lets his hands hang naturally. “Have you seen anybody else?”
I shake my head.
“Me neither.” He makes a face. “Mind if I come over?”
My heart speeds. But it’s respectful that he’s asking, right?
I don’t get off the bike or walk it toward him. I cant it against one cocked leg and wait.
“Sure.” I try to sound confident. I square my shoulders.
You know what else doesn’t exist anymore?
• Backup.
We head off side by side. I’ve finally gotten off the bike and am walking it, though I casually keep it and the wagon in between us and stay out of grabbing range. The step-through frame will help me hop on and bug out fast if I need to.
Ben offers me a granola bar. I guess he learned early on, as I did, that once the power went off, there wasn’t any point in harvesting chocolate. Well, I mean, it’s still calorie-dense. But if it’s daytime, it’s probably squeezable. And if it’s not melted, it has re-solidified into the wrapper and you’ll wind up eating a fair amount of plastic.
“Terrorists,” he hazards, with the air of one making conversation.
I shake my head. “Aliens.”