The World All Gone

The World All Gone

By Rob Harmon

He opens his eyes; faded green. A young man - no older than thirty.

He sits up slowly and peers at the morning through dusty window blinds. 

No sun, no moon. No light, nowhere.

Only a vague lesser dark than the night before. He rubs his tired eyes but it isn’t a tiredness that can be eased with a touch. It feels like a Thursday.

He lights a scented candle with a few waterproof survival matches he found on the outskirts of Santa Fe months ago. He explores the house he's woken up in - squinting in the gloom.

In the larger bathroom he tries the faucet over the sink. He doesn't expect anything and isn't disappointed.

He unscrews a jug of collected rainwater and drinks a little, runs some over his long, oily hair. 

As he brushes his teeth with baking soda, he sees his reflection - has to squint in the low, pale window light to see the bearded stranger with his wild, dark blond mane and wind-scoured face. 

Who is this person?

He searched the building thoroughly the night before, so the kitchen greets him with all the cabinets and drawers open. Like a quiet, waving audience. 

On the refrigerator hang fading photographs, covered in dust. Smiling faces - a woman, her toothless child, a pair of panting dogs. The pictures cling to the door as if to say “we’re still here,” and he cannot bring himself to meet their eyes. Small and still as they are. 

He sets the burning candle down beneath a kitchen window and goes through the cabinets once more.

...

He remembers sitting in the dark like this with his friends - playing card games in candlelight and joking as if the lights would never come back on. 

Must've been years ago by now but to him it feels like it could have been last weekend. Sipping on cheap beer and laughing at some story Darren was telling and making the best of the inconvenient blackout. 

Or was it Scott telling the story?

He remembers the distant booming echoes; a low haunting roar.

A siren sounded, rising in pitch and urgency. Over and over, like a tornado alarm.
But tornadoes are rare in California.

They all put their cards down and went to the door.
Outside, the city burned in the distance and the young men watched the flames reach the sky where helicopters circled.

That was when he realized the lights weren't coming on again. 

...

He spends the morning searching the other houses in the vicinity.

It isn't until he's on the street consulting the scraps of his tattered map that he notices the house he slept in is now consumed with billowing fire.
He stands and watches it for a while, a feeling of apology in him that he can't explain. But that bright orange anger is the most colorful thing he's seen in a long time and he cannot look away. 

He lost his glasses 2 years ago, and now everything is a faraway dream. As if none of this is real because his sight went away when the world did. 

When the flames start to jump to the nearby trees and houses, he shoulders his pack, turns, and walks down the far road. Thinking of Ithaca.

The empty neighborhood burns to the ground behind him.

...

Just outside Potterville, he can't believe his fading eyes when he finds a car on the side of the road with a body in the driver’s seat. He'd seen plenty in the early days - and later still, smelled them. But it's been near 8 months since he's come across a corpse and even longer since meeting anyone breathing. 

He smashes open the back driver’s side window - with a rusted fire axe he got in Dodge City - and is immediately assaulted by a robustly decayed scent that makes him cough.

The body has been undisturbed since the collapse, and in the contained car it has been effectively mummified. The leathery brown skin is dry, but with an oily sheen. And the lips have shriveled away revealing the biggest grin he ever saw. The corpse reminds him of films he used to watch about zombies and the living yet to become them. 

He ties a kerchief over his nose and mouth to dampen the ripe smell but it doesn't help much as he drags the cadaver to the ground and searches the vehicle interior. These days, food is the great treasure. He finds a small tin of mints - spearmint. A machete in the trunk - good condition. A children’s book - he looks at the cover a while. He finds an empty pill bottle on the ground - “Nitrostat” on the yellowed label. He looks down at the dead man, realizing he has no idea how this person died. No wounds or broken bones to be seen.

He searches the body - finding only a wallet and dead phone. He almost opens the wallet, but tosses it instead. There’s nothing it could offer.

He beds down for the night in a nearby house - leaving the body lying next to its car, grinning at the sky. 

…

He remembers a year ago, making his way through Prairie Village with Bryce - his last friend. All other companions had gone their own ways or were simply gone - lost along the way. He had lived with Bryce and a handful of other young men for a few years, each pursuing their art. Unprepared for the world to come. 

Raleigh had ended up being burned to the ground by the time they reached it, but they’d heard of a colony in Cascade - just a few miles north of Idaho City. A good place, supposedly - with good people. A place where the lights were on. 

So they journeyed. 

A roving gang set upon them in the city - driving trucks that belched angry black smoke. He and Bryce fled through alleys and streets but were soon hoarse with malnourished exhaustion. They must have gotten separated at some point because as he ran blindly and kept running, eventually he collapsed at a treeline outside the city and Bryce wasn’t with him.

He waited for nightfall and searched the city - avoiding the campfires that peppered the dark suburbs. But he never saw Bryce again. 

…

In the morning when he awakes, the corpse is gone. He looks off into the trees, mildly curious about what woodland god or beast would accept such a rotten offering.

...

Sometime the next day, he makes his way through a quiet, empty cityscape. Lansing, he thinks - if he's reading his map right. Not too far from Ithaca. Amongst the concrete wastes, he finds a park overgrown with vines and tall grass - surrounded by wrought iron gates. He gives a small smile as he enters the park, thinking he knows what it might be. He’s rewarded by empty cages and enclosures. The quietest zoo he's ever been to. 

As he walks through the park, he passes aquariums, reptile houses, bird and monkey cages, massive water tanks. The animals are all either gone or skeletons. 

He arrives at a massive enclosure evoking the African Serengeti - a great plain of grass and trees and sun. He squints out at large figures that loom between the trees. 

...

He remembers as a child growing up in some town he can't recall the name of. A place that smelled of pines. 

His gentle mother would take him to the zoo every day she could while father worked. He would run around the park, hooting at monkeys and growling at polar bears. But he'd always end up at the elephant enclosure - watching the giants with quiet awe. 

He and his mother could watch the elephants for hours. Once he could've sworn that after waving at them, one of them raised their trunk in response. He smiled all the way home that day. 

…

It’s only after digging through his pack and pulling out his broken binoculars that he can make out the large, distant shapes in the elephant enclosure - squinting through the remaining lens. 

Tall, ominous structures. Towering rigs of wood and iron and chains. Pylons hung with massive hooks - swaying in the breeze. Immense bones lie scattered about. Half a skeleton hangs from one of the hooks - a sun-bleached white ribcage the size of a toolshed. From another hook dangles a titanic skull - one tusk carving divots in the dirt, the other long ago sawed off.

He turns away from the killing grounds and just stands there a long while, looking at the ground. His eyes are growing a little wet.

He continues through the zoo - walking a bit faster than before. He passes cages and enclosures - seeing the vague shapes and bone piles of other beasts long past. He wonders if any animals escaped into the wild - he hopes that some of them did.

He leaves the zoo behind and continues through the desolate city. As he makes his way through Lansing - at least, he thinks it’s Lansing - the snow starts to fall.

…

Journeying north in the days ahead, he is on a frosted highway peppered with abandoned cars when he sees something in the snow before him. A great, dark redness - vivid against the white. He stands there awhile, squinting at it. Willing his nearsightedness to go away for a moment. But of course, he can't. 

So he walks closer. 

It is a great pool of blood - vibrant in the winter noon sun. Bits of flesh and sinew and viscera are strewn about. A fresh layer of snow has fallen, but beneath that, the frost is kicked up in piles and trampled down. Blood is sprayed on the sides of nearby cars - one of which is yards away. 

He kneels and, reaching out a few fingers, scrapes up some bloody snow to examine it. He doesn't really know why he'd do this or what else it could be - just seems to be the thing to do. 

Dark crimson drops run down his fingers like raw, crushed cherries. Blood is not a new sight to him in this life, but something about this troubles him deeply. 

…

He remembers the first man he ever killed. Years ago, back in the earliest days after mankind fell; the beginning of the end.  

He and Bryce and their friends were making their way through Downtown Albuquerque. 

They’d fled the fires of Los Angeles, and supposedly there was a settlement in North Carolina; Raleigh. A safe haven with safe people. With no known living family, they all had decided to go there. Back in those times, there were still many people alive - and all of them were scared. 

A riot had broken out in the streets and his friends were making their way to a church where they’d heard there would be food and shelter. He and Scott carried shotguns. Bryce and Darren didn’t know how to wield a gun but Bryce carried a pistol all the same. Blake had a crossbow the others had seen him use occasionally. Aaron had been dead for months but they all agreed he would have gotten his hands on a revolver.

Blake pointed out that they were being followed and, sure enough, a band of men in dark jackets and gas masks were trailing a dozen yards behind - walking at a brisk pace. Carrying machetes and sawed-offs. 

He still had his glasses back then and didn’t have to squint to see their stalkers. He and his friends turned through several alleys. 

When the followers broke into a run, Scott opened fire with his 12 gauge. The pursuants took cover and started firing back and suddenly everyone’s running. He takes the lead, kicking through a door into an apartment building and running through the halls. Scott and Bryce cover their retreat, Darren yells to “keep going” so he keeps going - panting heavily as his backpack weighs him down. 

He turns - leaps down a staircase - tears down a hall. Chest bursting with air and blood and desperation as his friends follow him. At the end of the hallway there’s a door on the left - he rams through it.

The door whips open - unexpectedly weak - revealing what was once a laundry room. Inside there is a man holding a rifle - aimed right at him. He doesn’t think - he brings up the shotgun and the man’s face evaporates, darkening the wall behind him.

His shoulder goes numb with the shotgun’s recoil.

It’s only seconds later that he realizes that he pulled the trigger and as his hearing returns he hears the sounds of the children crying in the corner, telling Daddy to get up and Scott is there in his face yelling, “We have to leave. We have to leave right now.”

He lowers the shotgun and runs out of the room as one of the children - a little boy, he thinks - crawls over to shake the body. 

They get out onto the streets and only make an escape when Blake is shot in the back, shattering his spine. He lies in the alley and bleeds as his legs twitch and they try to carry him off but the pursuers descend on them and the rest of their group has to keep running. 

None of them look back, but that’s not true, because Bryce can’t help but look back. Fast as they run, none of them can escape the screaming as the men hold Blake down and slam their machetes into him like miners hungry for silver. Blake screams something about his dad. 

As they run, he barely notices Blake’s departing. He left his thoughts back in the laundry room. 

That image will stay with him long after his friends are gone; that little child trying to wake up the man with only half a head. 

“Silly child,” he’d numbly thought to himself at the time. “He’s not sleeping.”

He hates when he has thoughts like that.

...

There's a feeling you get when you pass through a spiderweb you didn't see coming. You feel it - a light, persistent tug on your arm or leg or maybe face - and then an immediate, unspeakable panic violently explodes through your brain like a plane crash. You wave your arms about, desperate to sever any trace of silk from your body. But this primitive panic stems not from feeling the web itself; something weak and ephemeral and altogether harmless. 

The panic comes from not knowing what's at the other end of the web crawling towards you. 

Something like this exact feeling seeped slowly into his nerves as he looked at the blood freezing on the asphalt. 

He surveys the woods around him, double checks his map, and then steps off the road. He continues north - through the forest. Avoiding the open highway. 

…

He is sitting by a quiet fire on a moonless night when he discovers he’s being watched.

The dying trees are crackling as they fall in the distance but here, where he is, the forest is still. And yet something in the air makes him shift uncomfortably. 

The hoary trees are a blurry, abstract sight to him. An impressionistic watercolor, like the kind his mother used to paint. Everything his faulty eyes see reminds him of watching her work on canvas when he was young.

But even in the white darkness, he sees movement in the distance. A slow, casual wandering through the trees - almost too slow and subtle to notice. Sometimes to the north, other times to the southwest. He decides whoever it is, they are alone like he is. And they are circling him.

He keeps his back to the fire as he eats the last of his cashews and soaks a rag in a dirty jar of kerosene. He’s past the point of hating cashews to not even tasting them anymore. A half hour has passed since he last saw the movement - to the East and circling him in a clockwise direction. Ought to be South by now, he imagines. He snuffs out his fire quickly, keeping one sturdy branch alight and wrapping it in the rag, creating a torch. He packs his bag and marches quickly Northward, keeping the torch low and in front of him - hoping to be lost in the darkness. It could just be a dog, but you never know.

He thinks about Ithaca. He shouldn’t be too far now.

…

He remembers finding out she lived in his neighborhood. 

She was new that year. 

Her family had moved from Maine for her mother’s work. Her last name came right after his so she sat next to him in homeroom and her locker sat above his. 

She was quiet - he was 16 and didn’t know how to talk to girls. So he made fun of her. But in truth he’d never seen a girl with eyes like that.

It was during the summer after their first semester together. He had stayed up late and woke up around noon to someone banging on the front door. His family wasn’t home so he threw a shirt on and answered the door - not prepared at all to see her standing there, bent down to restrain his family dog by the collar.

“Your dog got out.”

“Oh. Uh-”

“He got into our patio and tried to attack our cat.”

“I’m so sorry. Wow. I didn’t- you live near here?”

She points at a house down the street. He is embarrassed for several reasons.

“It’s ok. Just… you know. Keep him under control.”

“Yeah of course. I don’t even know how he got out.”

He grabs his dog by the collar and drags him inside - a playfully energetic Border Collie.

“You really didn’t know I lived there?”

“Uh. No.”

“I mean, your little brother and mine are-”

“Friends. Yeah.”

She looks at him like he’s supposed to say something else but forgot his lines. Then she turns to go-

“Ok well. Keep ahold of your dog.”

“Yeah definitely. Definitely will. Thanks so much.”

“Have a good one.”

And she was gone. He shuts the door.
That was the most extensive conversation he’d ever had with Kara.

He wouldn’t see her again until several years later, at a friend’s wedding. Kara was there alone, but she did look lovely.

…

An hour hasn’t passed before he feels it again, walking through the forest. Something about the air - he doesn’t like it.

He turns around. He sees nothing. But he knows with every beat of his living heart that something is there. The spiderwebs are stuck to his face and something at the other end is tugging the strands. Something in the dark.

He gets to a clearing with enough room between the trees that nothing can get too close unseen and he stands there - slowly spinning around. Holding his torch out like a sword to do battle. 

The flame is lower than he’d like but he doesn’t trust the dark enough to add more fuel.

Somewhere in the wild, a dry branch snaps. He listens, his other senses sharpened as his vision fades.

Something is circling him. Close.

He slowly reaches with his free hand and removes the axe from his back - hefting it. Maybe the machete would be better, he thinks. It’s lighter, with better reach. But he likes the weight of an axe - the fairytale woodsman quality of it. Better for opening doors that wanted to stay shut.

There. Something between the trees. No longer circling - it just waits. He faces it - definitely not human.

He takes a step back - and it takes a step forward. A chill drags itself through him as he sees how big it is. Not a dog.

He leaps forward suddenly - waving the torch and baring his teeth and growling at it. A threat.

The beast hisses - it sounds like a great machine venting steam - and is gone. He spins around, eyes wide for all the good it does him.

It’s disappeared. 

He starts jogging through the snow, feeling something he hasn’t felt in almost a year. 

Good God, he’s afraid.

The hair on his neck rises when he hears it running at him - from the side. Great, echoing steps splashing in the snow. Heavy and fast.

He turns to meet it and a head the size of his torso emerges from the darkness, close enough to reach out and touch. 

He is struck by how vibrantly the beast’s face is painted in the flickering torchlight - angry reds and oranges. Other details come fast and blurry: the gaping mouth big enough to bite a car tire - the dancing, glassy glimmers where eyes would be - the ivory fangs dripping with steam and fetid flecks of carrion.

The animal stops - barely staved off by the fire - eyes glowing hungrily. It’s throat releases a low, tremulous rumble and a primitive part of his brain shuts off - paralyzed by fear.

But his torch stays up and when he waves it at the creature, it recoils and swings a paw at him - the size of his head. Though it’s too fast to see, he hears it coming and moves his arm before the talons can tear it off.

He swings the torch again, aiming for the beast’s face, and it vanishes like smoke.

He stands there a good twenty minutes - scanning the trees for the slightest sound, the smallest sight.

Dark, silent stillness.

He stays only long enough to stoke the torchfire and then starts a slow jog northward - spinning in slow circles the whole time.

He keeps moving until the sun starts to rise - waiting for that spiderweb dread to fade away, but it never does. 

…

He makes it to St. Johns sometime the next day - not seeing the creature again, as if it were a nightmare confined to darkness.

Nevertheless, he finds an apartment building and climbs to the 3rd floor to find a room. Something about the idea of spending the night on the ground floor doesn’t sit well in his chest.

He breaks down a few doors and does a little rummaging, but his heart isn’t in it; not paying close attention to the usual details. He settles on the room with what he feels is the most strategic position for viewing the surrounding area and making a potential escape.

Not that he can see the surrounding area.

He finds blankets. Some cat food. A book he’d been looking for years ago but none of the stores in Los Angeles had had it. Plenty of spoiled food but also a can or two of vegetables he decides to gamble on. A bed with no dust on it. A lighter with no fluid. A hammer he almost feels compelled to take but can't think of a reason to. 

Exhausted, he steps out into the apartment hallway, wondering in passing how much drinking water he has when something cracks him in the side of the head - something hard, bouncing off his skull - and he stumbles and oh, it hurts and he sees warm blood dripping off his face and oh, goddamn this hurts so much and he leans against the wall and drops his bag and holds his bleeding scalp and he sees through a haze a person standing there - right here - aiming a rifle at his face. 

“Who the hell are you?”

A woman's voice. His dazed, throbbing head wonders when the last time he met a woman was. Was it in Tennessee? Or maybe-

“I said,‘who are you?’ Are you following me?”

She steps closer and he remembers she's there and now he can make out the barrel and the woman and the anger on her face. It seems like a face that's seen a lot. He wonders what his own face must look li-

“Swear to God, if you don't answer me, I'm clubbing you until you stop breathing. Don't need to waste a bullet.”

“No.”

It comes out like a croak. He coughs and licks his lips. When was the last time he spoke?

“No what?” The rifle insists. 

“No I'm not following you. I came into this building for supplies.”

“Well there's nothing here.”

“... ok.”

Her eyes are hazel. For no reason at all he thought they'd be blue, maybe. 

“Keep your hands out.”

“I'm not moving-”

“Shut up. Are you alone?”

“Would you believe me if I said yes?”

She looks like she might hit him again. He shouldn't have said that. 

He hasn't met someone in a while. How does talking work again?

“I’m alone. Don’t hit me again.”

“Don’t give me a reason to. Are you armed?”

“Just an axe and a machete. Blood’s getting in my eyes. Can I wipe my face?”

“Not yet. Where are you from?”

“Most recently?”

“What?”

“I’m from all over. I wasn’t following you.”

“I heard you the first time. Where are you going then?”

He bites back about a dozen very sarcastic replies that would probably get him killed on the spot.

“Ithaca.”

“Ithaca?... not Edenville?”

“No… why would I be going- is that where you’re headed?”

She diverts:

“What’s in Ithaca?”

“I really don’t want to be hit again.”

“That’s gonna happen if you don’t answer.”

“I got a feeling it’ll happen if I do.”

Her eyes grow cold. He relents.

“Girl I used to know. She lives there.”

“Don’t bullshit- where are you really going?”

“No, really. She was-“

“Nobody lives there.”

“Her family’s house is right-“

“Nobody lives there.”

He purses his lips. 

“Ok then. Nobody lives there... Is it a problem that I’m going to an empty place?”

There is a sudden agony burying itself into his shoulder before he realizes she’s slammed the barrel into him. He feels a click in his collarbone and suddenly has a deep belief that the pain there is simply going to be part of his existence from now on.

She’s saying something else - her face looks full of venom - but he can’t register any words at the moment. 

She gestures with the rifle, down the hallway. Several times.

He gets up and walks. She follows, rifle-ready, like a death camp guard marching her prisoner to some unknowable judgement.

…

He remembers the last person he’d seen alive. 

He’d made it to Cascade alone. If there had been a colony there as he’d heard, there wasn’t any now. No lights to speak of.

But there was another man there. They saw each other in the town park - the man waved. 

After a moment, he waved back at the man.

His name was Matheson. He’d been separated from his wife and children in the riots of the early days and thought he might find them in the supposed Cascade colony. A place where the lights were still on.

They shared a meal and discussed their lives before and it was almost nice. 

That was when he thought of the neighborhood in which he’d spent his teenage years. That was when he thought of Kara.

After they ate and stopped talking for a while, and their last words were hanging in the empty air, he asked Matheson what he’d do next. 

The man without a family thought about it and said he didn’t  know. 

Matheson asked if he knew of any other supposed places where people were good and the lights were on and the world was trying to come back.

He thought about it and didn’t have an answer to give. For years, he’d crossed the country back and forth and for all the supposed havens he’d heard of, he had never seen a place resembling one. All he had to show for his travels were the memories of the friends he’d lost along the way - almost one for each place they’d gone. 

Matheson asked what he’d do now and he thought about it. He told Matheson he might go to the town he was a teenager in. That he might go see about a girl there.

Matheson nodded.

When the question was returned again, Matheson just looked at the ground and said he might just sit there a while. 

He packed up his things and wished Matheson bye’s and luck’s - both of the “good” variety. Then he walked away, leaving the older man sitting in the grass.

When he got to the edge of the park, he turned back.

He couldn’t squint enough to be sure, but from this distance it seemed that Matheson was still sitting, alone. Looking at something in his hand.

Something that gleamed like gunmetal.

He turned and walked on, one final destination now taking root in mind.

…

The woman took him to the roof and made him sit while she searched his bag and jacket. 

Satisfied only slightly that she was better armed than he, she discussed with him the idea of letting him go. He was amenable to this idea, however she bore much hesitation over whether or not he’d lie in wait to ambush her somewhere up the road. 

He countered that he had no idea where she was going or which road she’d take - but she didn’t want to take that chance. 

He offered to wait a day or two after she left before continuing on his way - giving her a head start. 

She thought for a long while. 

“Ithaca is on the way. To where I’m going,” she said.

“Edenville?” He asked and then wished he hadn’t as she gave him a blank stare, keeping both hands on the rifle nestled across her legs.

“We can go together. To Ithaca. I can keep an eye on you. When we get there, I just keep going.”

That sounded fine to him. 

She added, “and I can always kill you and take your things and leave you if I need to.”

He supposed that yes, she could. 

Coming to an uneasy treaty, she threw him a dirty rag to wipe off the scabbed blood from his hair and face.

He shared some water with her after drinking it himself to show nothing was wrong with it. 

She drank it and gave him a handful of lentils. He ate in silence.

They spent the night in separate buildings. His collarbone kept him up most of the night and in the morning he saw her coming out of her building looking very haggard. As if, like him, if she’d been up all night waiting for something. 

He guessed she was no older than her early forties, but this new world had demanded more years from her and it showed in the way she moved. 

They set out north after she helped him tie a brace around his shoulders and neck. The pressure hurt, but in a different, almost comfortingly dull way.

She walked a bit behind him as they journeyed. Rifle always ready. 

She told him her name was Helen. 

…

He remembers his senior prom. 

He was sitting at one of the tables alone after dinner had been served and enjoyed. 

Everyone was milling about or on the dance floor. He’d been dancing with his friends all night and decided to sit for a while to enjoy his endorphins and sweat. 

The MC announces the last slow song of the evening and the boys all either evaporate from the dance floor or pair up with girls. 

He’s thinking about college and writing and the whole world ahead when he sees Kara across the room. She’s also sitting alone at a table and her dress makes his mind go blank and he can’t look away. 

He thinks she might be lonely. 

Half the song goes by before he gets to his feet. 

He takes two steps towards her. 

Another two. 

Then he goes to ask another girl to dance instead.

…

When Helen gets it out of him that he’s walked all this way to visit the house of “essentially a high school crush” she laughs - hard. Even letting out a snort. 

The sound of laughter startles him - a distant, alien sound. 

When she asks why, he only shrugs. What else is there to do? 

What about his family, she asks. He thinks they’ve been gone a long time now.

Helen asks him more questions and he answers freely. She offers nothing about herself. But at some point - he doesn’t quite notice when - she stops keeping her gun trained on him.

At a leisurely pace, it takes them a day and a half.

And then they’re there. 

Ithaca. 

They go to his neighborhood - the one he lived in only a decade ago - and he turns to Helen. 

“Here we are.”

She tells him to keep going. She says she’s curious now and wants to see what’s at Kara’s house… if that’s alright with him. 

He thinks about it. 

It’s alright with him. 

…

They quietly pass his old house - overgrown with grass but small and comfortable-looking. He glances at it but doesn’t say anything. It elicits a faint ache in his chest.

They round a bend and suddenly there is Kara’s house - it’s the first time for both of them. He points and tells Helen, “that’s it.”

Helen looks at him. “Well?”

But he now finds himself panicked. Terrified as the night he saw Kara at prom. 

Just a few steps away to ask her to dance. 

But Helen won’t let him hide. 

He walks up to the door and knocks. 

No answer. 

He waits and knocks again. 

“What did you think would happen?” Helen asks - but there’s nothing cruel or sarcastic in her voice. 

She tries the front door. Locked. 

He says “alright then,” and starts to walk away when he hears the shattering of glass and turns to see that Helen has broken a window and is carefully reaching in to unlock the door. 

The house is empty. 

In the streets outside, a gentle rain starts to fall.

…

He remembers his first year in Los Angeles. 

He was lying in bed. His first apartment with his friends - fresh out of college.

They’d thrown a party - he’d been drinking. The night was fading away as his bedroom spun like a Tilt-A-Whirl . He was thinking of the carnival rides he used to take his college girlfriend on before she broke his heart when his pocket vibrates.

He takes his phone out - a text from an unknown phone number asking him if he is who he is.

He replies yes to the Michigan area code, closing one eye to better focus on the bright screen.

After a moment… 

This is Kara

Then:

Got your number from your brother

And:

Your dog got out again lol

He smiles. Types back - tell my brother

She responds - You can’t come?

He actually laughs. He hasn’t talked to her in years.

“Silly” he mumbles to his phone. He types- 

I’m in California.

Another moment before:

For real??

He types Ys

Tries again - Yes

Absent-mindedly, he pulls up her social media while he waits for a response - tipsily scrolling through her carefully curated life.

She messages - Why’d you go all the way out there?

He drops his phone on his face - curses. Picks it up and looks at her message.

He thinks about his dreams - ambitions. Telling the stories that have vibrated in his bones since before he knew.

He responds…

Because you

He deletes that. Shouldn’t text drunk. He tries again.

There’s nothing for me back there.

He watches the bubble pop up on his screen as she types.

And types. And types.

Finally:

Gotcha

He thinks of something to say - anything to keep the conversation going.

How’ve you been?

She responds pretty quickly this time-

It’s pretty late here. I should go to bed.

He realizes what time it is in her timezone - bewildered:

What’s got you up at this hour??

She says-

Your dog :p

Night!

“Good night” he says - but it’s out loud to his phone. 

He puts the phone down and wonders why she didn’t just text his brother to get the dog in the first place. He thinks of her until he falls asleep…

And then for many years after.

…

Helen starts exploring immediately - going towards the kitchen.

He lingers in the doorway awhile before entering - just taking in the living room. He walks over to look at all the dusty pictures on the wall. Leaning in close to bring them into his world.

Kara’s life is here. Lovingly chronicled by her parents. 

Her smiling on the first day of 4th grade - crooked teeth beaming. 

Her and her brother posing with their dog that they’ve subjected to wearing a hat, dress and sunglasses.

Her high school graduation picture… there’s Kara as he remembers her.

But there are others too:

Kara graduating college.

Kara in a family Christmas photo holding hands with a man he doesn’t recognize.

Kara’s wedding picture.

He looks at that one a long time. She looks radiant.

Finally - a picture of Kara holding a baby as she’s held by her husband.
How had his favorite writer once put it? “Each the other’s world entire.”

Helen calls for him, pulling him out of a past that’s aged but very new to him. She walks over and sees the pictures. Then she studies him; studies his face to see what he might make of these.

“That’s her?” she asks, pointing notably at Kara’s wedding picture. 

“Yeah,” he says.

She takes that in.

“She’s a cutie.”

“Thanks,” he responds - and immediately doesn’t know why he’d say that.

Helen holds up a dark bottle that sloshes full of liquid. 

“There’s some cans of food in the cupboard, but the important discovery here is that Kara’s parents had good taste in wine.”

He chuckles. “You gonna move on to Edenville then?”

She looks out the window. The rain is growing heavier. “Not tonight,” she says.

They search the house - rifling through the remnants of a loving home. He finds a battery-operated record player, picks up an album at random and plays it in the living room. Helen comes quickly to investigate the alien sound. When she sees the spinning vinyl, she has to sit on the couch for a moment. Her breath hitches a bit, she wipes her eyes.

“Been awhile, right?” he asks. She can’t speak - eyes full of emotion, she just nods. “Mhm.”

He sits down too. 

Sound fills the house. The rain outside, crashing like applause, loud as can be through a window Helen opened to let in a little evening breeze.

The music crackles - the melody rich. A bittersweet love song crooned by someone who’d had too many cigarettes - written by someone who'd broken too many hearts.

This moment gives him a deep, warm feeling. He has the thought that he may never have this feeling again.

At some point, Helen laughs at the state of herself. Then she gets up and retrieves a corkscrew from the kitchen. 

They get most of the way through the bottle before it really hits them. They laugh easily, now used to each other. As used to each other as one can be after the end of things.

When he stands up and offers her a hand, she takes it. She doesn’t resist when he pulls her close and she doesn’t hesitate when he starts dancing with her - slowly swaying to tunes from a world long gone. 

He can’t be sure if it’s the wine, but Helen is so incredibly warm against him. “What are we doing?” she laughs in his ear. He just keeps swaying. Soon, she lays her head against his neck. He can’t stop thinking about how she smells - how long it’s been since he’s experienced the great mystery of another human being.

Soon, spinning around - even slowly - proves too much for them. They end up lying on the living room floor, faces inches apart. Just talking. 

He loves being this close because he never gets to see anything so clearly. Emerging from the hazy, watercolored world, Helen’s face is stark and beautiful. From here, he can see her every scar, every worry, every grey hair and he can’t look away from any of it.

“What’s in Edenville?” he asks her, looking at those hazel eyes of hers.

She stares at him for a long while. He wonders what she’s thinking. For the first time in years he feels studied and very self-conscious. 

“There’s people there,” she finally says.

“People?”

“People. Rebuilding. Electricity. Some crops.”

“Sounds nice,” he says. “If it’s true.”

“It’s true,” she immediately replies. He thinks on that. Choosing his words - “I’ve heard of a lot of places like that. Places with the lights on.”

Her gaze is very intense on him - he wants to look away but he knows the room will start spinning if he does. He thinks back to that night texting Kara-

Helen is saying something to him. “What?” he asks.

“I’m meeting someone there.”

He becomes vaguely aware that their hands are touching - her fingers are soft. 

“In Edenville?” he asks.

She nods. “Waiting for me.”

He looks at their hands. “How… how do you know he’s there? That anyone’s there.”

“Who said it’s a ‘he’?”

“Um…” He panics but she smiles - enjoying knocking him off balance. 

“What will you do?” she asks.

He thinks about it and realizes he’s never thought about it before.

“I’m not sure. Maybe stay here awhile.”

She says his name. He looks at her to hear:

“There’s nothing for you here.”

“Maybe I’m… a kind of ‘nothing’ too, though.”

She rolls her eyes. “Don’t give me that. Come with me, dumbass.”

“Come with you? To Edenville?”

“Sure.”

“With all the people.” 

She nods - “With all the people.”

“Sounds nice. If it’s true.”

“It is,” she whispers, insistent.

“When did the music stop?” he asks. At some point the battery had died. But she doesn’t answer - she’s fading away. Soon, she’ll be gone from this world.

He tries to focus on the feeling of her hand - the warmth of it. But now he’s fading from the world too.

…

He dreams, remembering graduation night. Only a decade ago.

High schoolers no more, he and his friends piled in the back of Aaron’s truck, drove to a lake and jumped in the water screaming. Nothing on Earth could touch them.

After a while, he sat on the shore while Michael and Aaron dunked Kimberly and splashed Dakota. He looked up at the stars and thought about how they all looked when he heard a girl say his name.

Kara walks up to him. She says something to him but he can’t, for the life of him, remember what it was. He says something funny in return and she laughs, glowing with excitement. 

There’s a whole wide world coming at them - faster than life. 

And they’re just a couple of kids.

She tells him it’s gonna be a great summer. Then he watches her run into the water, kicking up the foam. 

He promised himself right there that he’d ask Kara out before he left for college.

That night was the last time he ever saw her.

…

He wakes up to see daylight in that hazel gaze, striking even in this cloudy grey morning. Helen’s eyes are wide - staring right at him. The rain has stopped and the air is dead silent.

Her mouth is open a bit and he can’t help but think about kissing as his brain stirs from the depths of sleep and he starts to ask why she’s staring when he sees the tiger and it’s chewing on her neck and popping noises are coming from her spine like when you crack your knuckles and he blinks his eyes and a little blood comes out of Helen’s mouth and she tries to say something but the tiger wrenches her neck and more blood and torn bits of Helen start to spill out of her throat and oh my God what am I seeing- wake up, wake up from this he blinks his eyes again and the tiger is looking right at him, familiar carrion breath steaming into his face, its eyes angry coals in this cloudy grey morning.

He makes a sound. The tiger crushes Helen’s neck in its yellowed fangs. She sighs, drooling blood. The tiger shakes her like a puppy with a ragdoll.

He clambers to his knees - falling backwards - noises are coming out of his mouth and there’s a warm wetness on his face but there isn’t room for a single thought in his mind. The tiger and its angry eyes have taken everything.

He lunges towards the couch where Helen left her shotgun within reach and grabs it and turns and now the tiger is only an orange blur a few feet away but its massive and looking at him as she dangles from its mouth and he aims the gun and feels his shoulder go numb and suddenly he’s remembering that man in Albuquerque whose face he’d removed and the tiger is screaming and he’s here now but his ears are ringing so he shoots it again and the tiger swats his head with limb full of knives and evaporates out the window like a magician.

He stands up and points the gun out the window and takes halting breaths but blood is filling his mouth and one of his eyes isn’t working and he can’t see anything anyway so he falls on the ground, dropping the gun.

Later he’d recognize this as a state of shock because he can’t feel his hands or the ribbons of skin hanging off his face - he just goes to Helen. He tries to hold her head but it’s lighter than it should be - it’s only connected to her body with half a neck. She stares up at him, breathing very shallowly. She looks scared and indignant but mostly confused. What just happened? What was that? Why didn’t I have a chance? This isn’t fair.

It isn’t fair, he’d agree. Tigers don’t even live in this continent. 

He tries to think of something to say but soon she stops moving and stops breathing and her pupils dilate and she’s gone. Her fingers and feet twitch as her nervous system tries to process what just happened.

He numbly wipes as much blood as he’s able to get off his head and wraps it in a yellowed bandage. Both of his eyes still work - he was only blinded by blood. He works quickly, knowing that as soon as the adrenaline is gone he will be nothing but pain. And pain has no use to him right now. 

He methodically takes what he needs from Helen’s bag and packs up his own - propelled and moving as if he’d long fled his own body and it was being used by an hive-mind insect. 

He reloads her shotgun. There’s less than a handful of shells left - but one way or another, he won’t need many. He pulls on his pack, picks up her gun and his axe. 

He might’ve had the thought to say something to Helen before he left. If he had any room for thoughts.

Instead he set Kara’s house on fire, leaving it to burn down with Helen inside as he follows the wounded tiger’s blood trail north.

…

Tiger eyes orange anger tiger blood blood blood helen anger why tiger teeth hurt hurt 

…

He walks without ceasing to eat or rest - following splashes of blood that trickle off to faint traces. Walking until the woods around him are carpeted in snow, making the trail easier to track.

Time is lost on him. It doesn’t matter how long he walks - no sun, no moon. No light, nowhere. There is only the blood and his feet.

Pain does come. The only thing that marks the passing of the hours.

It’s starting to get dark, but the snow is bright enough to see the dark splashes and massive pawprints - even for a nearly blind man like him. 

He stops once to vomit. His head starts spinning and the world goes sideways. The word concussion flashes briefly through his mind. The memory of reading somewhere that a tiger can crush a buffalo’s skull with one swipe. Random information stored and fired off in his battered brain. Did you know that elephants can’t jump? He can very acutely smell something burning - acrid. But there’s nothing around him on fire anymore.

At some point, he happens to look up, realizing he hasn’t been paying attention to his surroundings. He stops walking.

Down by a lake, only a few miles from him, is a town. 

The lights are on.

Edenville. 

He realizes he’s on his knees now and all at once he’s very, very tired. He falls over and fades from the world again. The snow feels warm on his face.

…

He wakes up under fluorescent lights. Have I traveled back through time? He wonders. Can I talk to Kara before the world ends?

A man comes and sits at his bed. He says his name is Tom. They found him passed out in the snow outside town. Dehydrated, exhausted from travel and blood loss. 

More people come - more faces than he’s used to seeing in years. They bring him water to drink and ask him questions. Where’d he come from? Where was he going? What happened to his face?

He tells them about Helen; about the tiger. He says he must leave or it will escape. They ask why it’s so important to find the tiger. He’s safe now. The only answer he can think to give is that he simply has to find it. The people insist he stays and recover before he continues on his way. He starts to argue but soon fades away again. 

…

A month goes by. 

His face still itches where the stitches used to be. They sewed up his face rather remarkably - several of the townsfolk used to be surgeons - but the scars are still prominent enough to draw stares. It takes time for him to become used to people again. Conversation comes easily enough, but when 4 or more people are in the room with him, he feels anxious; trapped. 

He talks about the tiger often. His intention to hunt it. The townsfolk listen to him, accept him. Support his wish. And then urge him to continue to recover - save his strength.

In the meantime, they give him a room. And a job.

He teaches the town’s children how to read - how to write. They really are rebuilding, he often marvels to himself. 

He’s initially resistant to the work - being trusted with children makes his breath shallow. But they find him a pair of glasses that makes everything almost perfectly clear and suddenly he can see beyond his world; his tiger obsessions.

Suddenly he can see the children’s science teacher clearly. A young woman named Anne-Marie. Dark hair - bright blue eyes. She smiles when she talks to him and doesn’t stare at his scars too much.

Seasons change. The town grows. He keeps teaching the children and the tiger doesn’t dominate his mind as much.

Sometimes a darkness does wash over him - sometimes the nights come cold and dark and unending. Sometimes he thinks of Helen and the friends he’d lost and even the girl that broke his heart.

Bad feelings could do that on occasion - show up unbidden on your doorstep with an unwelcome memory in tow. Tom would later tell him - in a support group - that anger and sadness were both afraid of being forgotten. They reminded you you’d been wronged. That you deserved better.

He helps Tom welcome new people to their community - coming in like abused dogs to a warm home. Helping others healed him a bit. Tom became a good friend. 

Anne-Marie also helped him. Showed him how to not be angry. For the first time in a very long time, he felt deserving. For the first time in a very long time, he was in love. 

He married her next winter. The town’s children were ecstatic to see their teachers getting hitched.

He still had horrid dreams on occasion - dreams that brought him awake at night. But Anne-Marie was always there. Always ready to hold him and tell him nothing on Earth could hurt him while he was in her arms. The dreams come less and less as the years go on.

Eventually, Edenville makes contact with another community, not too far away. Society is starting to regrow like a forest after a fire. Anne-Marie becomes pregnant and, for nine and a half months, she is the children’s favorite teacher - an object of fascination.

Their daughter is born in November and he feels things he never knew how he’d lived without before. He holds her in his arms and feels how small she is and everything in his life seems meaningless before this. They name her Lorna - a name he’s always loved.

She grows quickly - eventually he has a hard time keeping up with her as she runs around. Her eyes are big and curious - somewhere between green and blue. She wants to see everything there is to see. He sees how big the world is to his little Lorna - how big it once was to him.

Sometimes - in the still quiet moments when his family sleeps - a faint shadow stalks around the corners of his mind. A predator in the trees, watching from afar. But when he sees his wife snoring in a chair with their daughter drooling in her arms, both dreaming, a love fills his heart that leaves no room for anything else. 

All the hurts he’s ever taken fall away - boneless and weak. He never knew how much anger had driven him until it was gone, leaving him tired.

Things weren’t always perfect. He and Anne-Marie fight on occasion - much had changed in the new world but not the complications of loving someone. She is haunted by things that she won’t ever talk about.

But he wouldn’t trade the fights with his wife for anything else. This is a good life.

He was almost forty years old - nearly Helen’s age as he remembers her - when Tom’s little son went missing. Andrew was Lorna’s age and they played together nearly every day. Tom was frantic. The town’s people organized search parties and implemented a curfew for the children after dark. The people were hopeful to find Andrew safe - unharmed. That’s what Anne-Marie reassured their class with.

But a deep dread filled his stomach when he put Lorna to bed one night and she confessed that she thinks a monster took Andrew. He told her he didn’t think a monster took him. But he won’t promise her that monsters don’t exist in this world. 

The dread seeped up to the back of his mind - whispering a thought that he refuses to think. Until another child goes missing and a large patch of blood is found outside the schoolhouse one afternoon, in broad daylight.

The child’s parents keep the town up that night with their moaning - their rage. Tom locks himself away in his house. The people talk about wolves - about bears - about mountain lions.

But Anne-Marie knows what he thinks. They have a fight when he tells her it’s all his fault - when he grabs a gun and a knife and tells her he should’ve finished it years ago. Anne-Marie cries, “what about our daughter? What about me?” 

He reminds her that it won’t stop at 2 children. Or 3. Or 4. He tells her that even if it took Lorna last, it wouldn’t take long to go through every child in town. Anne-Marie hits him. Lorna wakes up, crying over a nightmare. Anne-Marie puts their girl to bed and he apologizes to her. They hold each other and she cries and he apologizes again.

But he has no words for her that will quiet the thought that has effortlessly aptured his mind.

It’s come back.

After he puts his wife to bed, he slips out into the night.

He walks up the hills outside of town - the treeline approaching. The ground is covered in snow and suddenly he’s smelling a burning smell. Something acrid that feels familiar to him but he sees nothing on fire.

Wait- that can’t be snow on the ground, in the trees. It’s Fall - those are fallen branches and leaves - dead things. But then it’s snow again-

He wakes up. He sees a patch of blood in the snow from his face. He slowly sits up. Daylight - the town still in the distance. No lights. No signs of life.

He touches his pounding head, his bloody face. He’s not even thirty years old and he needs a new bandage.

He sits in the snow and cries for a while.

Then he climbs slowly to his feet. He can still see the tiger’s trail. He starts walking - legs burning with soreness from yesterday’s march. But at least he’s a bit rested.

He thinks about the name “Lorna”. Can’t remember where he’d ever heard it before.

…

He finds the tiger under a large tree licking its wounds. It stops when it sees him crunching through the snow. Then keeps licking, pretending not to care. As he gets within 30 yards, it stands up. It starts padding towards him.

             

He raises the shotgun and fires and the tiger leaps at him and - did I hit it? - the tiger crushes his shoulder in its jaws and he screams and all he sees is fire and he blindly pulls the trigger again. The tiger disappears. A moment of deafening silence. He’s lying on the ground. He sits up and holds his shoulder - blood escaping through his fingers. 

He sees the tiger, feet away. It keeps falling over and getting right back up. Ignoring the fresh blood it’s also leaking. 

He grabs the axe and climbs to his feet. A lot more blood spills out of him onto the snow - he grows dizzy. He raises the axe high overhead and sinks it into the tiger as it lies in the snow - the blade biting through its starved ribcage. The tiger yowls, thrashing around like a beached fish. It gasps, struggling for air, the axe planted in it like a flag. It throws pink snow over him and the trees around them.

He sinks to the ground, sitting against a tree. He can’t feel his legs. He spits, mouth full of blood for some reason. He tries to get to his feet again and can’t - his head goes fuzzy - the world spinning. He almost passes out but the lightheadedness passes after a moment. He notices a lot more blood is seeping into the snow around him...  but not from his shoulder. His stomach is torn open. He can see the muscle, the fat, the veins he didn’t know were there. He groans. “No. No.” With one hand, he holds his guts in. When did that happen?

The tiger stops thrashing, a few feet away, and just tries to breathe - deep, rattling sounds. It’s blurry but he can see its eyes; it’s looking right at him. And he realizes in this moment that this monster isn’t angry or evil or vengeful. It’s just scared.

He comes to understand it as he looks at it - this tiger is very tired, and it has been for a very long time. He knows that it is in such pain and it cannot comprehend what was happening to it. He wishes that he could stroke its fur and whisper gently to it that “everything will be alright.” That’s all anyone needs to hear on occasion, isn’t it? Even when it’s not true.

The tiger snorts and dies and a little blood seeps out its nose. It lies in the snow staring at him.

…

Oh, I’m still here he thinks, perking up as the sky darkens and snow starts to fall and he’s still sitting here, against the tree. Well, of course I'm still here. Where else would I be?

He very clearly has the thought that he is dying. 

And that thought tastes strange and new. So he has it again. 

He thinks about Helen. And the town of Edenville she never got to. The place where he’d gone and lived and raised a family only in his addled mind. He wonders if the person Helen was supposed to meet ever got there. He wonders if anyone is there at all. Probably not. Feeling returns to his legs and they feel very cold and now he’s remembering the first girl he dated in Los Angeles and how they’d fight whenever he was off his meds and one night they were screaming at each other in his car and tears were in both their eyes but then a sad song came on the radio and they both got very quiet. Now he’s being put in timeout for the 6th time because he keeps chasing and biting that Indonesian girl on the playground that he has a crush on. He thinks he might never find love again but now he’s thinking of Anne-Marie and how she never really existed but she simply must because the neurons and chemicals in his brain that conjured her are real and every thought and dream that anyone has ever had and ever will have is real and that’s probably what most of reality is, right? Now he’s remembering his parents saying a prayer over him as he leaves for California, and then for his first day at college, and then his first day at high school. He’s remembering the first time he got fired from a writing job while there was a rainbow out the window and how he carries that with him in whatever place he keeps his worth. He remembers the way his dog had licked his face when another kid had beat him after school and he was crying. He remembers dancing with Helen - her with those hazel eyes. He remembers the way Lorna feels in his arms when she’s stayed up too late and he has to carry her to bed. He remembers not being able to say many words at his father’s funeral. He remembers eating a feast set before him by the king for slaying the beast that ravaged the country side - bards were already composing songs about him. He remembers when he and his brothers broke ground on their order’s first temple, high up in the mountains where they withdrew from the world. He remembers his sick son taking his last breaths on the creaking ship as he took his family to the new world. He remembers helping Anne-Marie down the stairs to see all their children and grandchildren for Christmas in a house brimming with life and what are these? Where are these memories coming from? I didn’t- he remembers the time he left the earth to orbit and watch the sun rise over it. He remembers the time he got drunk and crashed his car and died with all his friends. He remembers every single thing he’d never done as the blood drains from his face and he starts to feel warm all over and the day comes to an end he remembers a thousand years in the future when the world has taken the sadness it was given and made something more out of it. A sadness that the world didn’t ask for or want and tried to get rid of. But the sadness came back and brought with it a great, dark strangeness that no human being knew how to comprehend and so they all live an existence that feels flawed - like walking around with skin too tight until the gates of reality open up and we’re all told the great truth and we can suddenly breathe and realize we’d, none of us, ever breathed before- oh God. God. Where am I going? He remembers how that great sadness found root in the Earth and seeped into creation until all the world’s sorrow became lodged in a tiger and that tiger became as a scourge to mankind, creating more grief wherever it went because sometimes sadness doesn’t stay sad. Sometimes, if it stays too long, it grows angry and bitter and mean. And he remembers the peace in its eyes as it died and how it seemed sorry for what it did to him and his planet - just as he was sorry to kill it. But he’s also remembering that great society that the world grows in the future because of this - right here, right now - this dead tiger and all the world’s heartache dying with it and how painfully, frightfully beautiful all the tomorrows will be for it. 

His vision comes back for a moment. Snowflakes twirl softly to the ground all around him. In the distance, he can see Edenville. Night has fallen in earnest, and the town’s lights are on - blurry and magical to his fading eyes. Helen’s right, he thinks. There are people there - with the lights on. And no tiger’s ever gonna hurt them.

He’s going to rest awhile but he’s filled with a feeling like hope. I can’t wait to see them all. Just as soon as I’m rested. The world will get better and I’ll see you all there. 

Soon, very soon, I promise.

God, I can’t wait to see you all there. 

The End.