Last Woman Read online

  “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 past 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 his 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. “W
hy 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.

  “What are these?” He asked.

  “At the military setup, they kept those. I suppose they were gonna keep track and then it got ahead of them.”

  He rummaged through some more and found the other stacks. “You kept them all? Don’t you think that’s kinda sick?”

  “No. Not at all.” I grabbed the stacks from him. They were mine and I felt a sense of being insulted, that he was touching something personal and doing so without respect. “They are a reminder to me. I always want to remember… those bodies out there, the ones we see everywhere, were more than corpses, they were people with names and lives and families. And these pictures, these faces, do just that. The least I can do in this screwed up empty world…” I held up a stack. “Is acknowledge these people as more than just bodies.”

  Dodge closed his mouth tightly, gave a single nod and held out his hand.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Give me a stack.”

  “Why?”

  “’Cause I think you got a good heart and the right idea, and I want to honor them as well. Soldiers in a battle.”

  I handed him a stack. “That we lost.”

  “Nah, we ain’t lost yet. You and me are still around.” He undid the rubber band and slowly lifted and stared, really stared with conviction at the first license. “We ain’t lost yet.”

  18. Chocolate Candy

  It was the first time in days I didn’t have a headache. I didn’t wake up to daggers in my eyes or a mouth so dry, my throat hurt. I did wake up to two sensations. One was the overwhelming urge to urinate the other was the smell of coffee.

  I welcomed the aching bladder, because that meant I was hydrating. Prior to that, I was going nearly all day without attending to the needs of my urinary tract.

  I wanted to address why I was smelling coffee so strong, but I had to shuffle off and when I returned, Dodge had poured me a cup. He handed me some expensive coffee shop mug with the piping hot brew.

  “Oh my God, how did you make coffee?” I asked. I took in the warm aroma, allowing the steam to touch my nostrils then I sipped it.

  “Found a coffee shop, some things people didn’t take,” Dodge said. “Like a French press. Makes it easy. I love my coffee.”

  “Me, too.”

  “The way you nursed that bottle last night, I’m gonna say you love your booze.”

  “That, too.”

  “I’m sorry.” He said. “That was wrong.”

  “No, it wasn’t. This is good.” I made reference to the coffee.

  “Eat up. We have a long day.” He handed me a paper plate with a pancake on it. “Sorry there’s no syrup. Best I can do, but that ought to buckle you down. You look much better.”

  “I feel better.” I examined the pancake in wonder. “How are you doing this?”

  “1999 Jeep Cherokee over there had camping stuff. Guess they were headed to the hills. Check it out.” He pulled out a back pack. “In case we have no shelter. Small tent and a sleeping roll. I’ll carry it. However, I have other plans.”

  “I bet you do.”

  “Anyhow, everything is easy when you have a fire. Pancakes are easy when you have water and a bottle of that mix.” He lifted his pancake, folded it and took a bite.

  “Did you go camping a lot?”

  “Yeah, I did.”

  “How long have you been up?” I asked.

  “Long enough to discover good news.”

  I was just about to take that first bite of the pancake and I paused. “What’s the good news?”

  He produced half a smile. “We have to back track a mile, head down to the other expressway, but … Steel Miner Bridge is accessible.”

  “No, it’s not, we looked down there yesterday.”

  “Yeah, well, it isn’t collapsed; it’s just a barricade, and a couple car fires. From what I could see we can get through. Have to do some small climbing, but I think once we’re across the bridge we’re gonna see less traffic and less remnants of pandemonium.”

  “Why do you say that?” I questioned.

  “Because the city was shut down. Not the other parts, just the city. I don’t know why, because everywhere had the flu. But you lock people in they get nuts, feel trapped, and that’s what happened.”

  “So we’ll make it across the river today?” I asked.

  “Yeah, I believe so. But we’ll take it slow, take it easy and if you feel it’s too much, we’ll stop.”

  “Okay,” I nodded. “But honestly, I can do this. If you weren’t here, I’d have no choice, right?” I knew he agreed and I also knew his mind was churning. I finally took a second to dive into that pancake he made. It was sweet and delicious. So much better than the MRE’s I had been eating.

  While I rested the evening before Dodge had scavenged cars, and while I slept he was making plans. When I started my journey, I had one focus goal left and that was to make it home. That was still my goal, but something told me, Dodge had been making other plans.

  I couldn’t see life beyond that pa
ncake and crossing that bridge. Dodge did.

  For as content as I was to spend my time alone before the flu, at that moment, in a desolate world, I was glad that I had found Dodge.

  <><><><>

  Belly full, but not enough to bog me down, rejuvenated with some caffeine, and finally rested, I was ready to go.

  At the rate we were going, we’d have to find transportation with all the things we’d gathered. Dodge with his hiker backpack, toting the new and improved suitcase on wheels. I had my ration bag full for us when needed and it draped over my shoulder.

  The conversation was technical between us to the bridge. Although, Dodge did start to go on about the ‘next move’ after I stopped at my house. He tossed ideas, asking after every few, what I thought.

  I didn’t engage much in the conversation, because I truthfully didn’t know what I wanted or was going to do after I made it to my house. I didn’t think beyond that, I didn’t think long term. Did we honestly need to?

  I liked when he talked about his son. Tyler was his name, he was something like eight hundred miles south at a school for art. I was cautious not to say anything that may build up Dodge’s hopes, because as a mother, the last thing I’d want is to start looking positively at a situation only to be crushed. And no matter how prepared one is, you are crushed by the loss of a child.

  Dodge took an avoidance road with Tyler. Even though the last he spoke to his son, the nineteen year old wasn’t even sick. I wanted to say, ‘Oh, Dodge, you have to find him. You have to look.’ But I didn’t. It had to be his decision to go, and I hoped he did.

  Cars were squeezed in like sardines at the base of the bridge. A barricade was set up about twenty feet before the ramp. That of course, was destroyed, we saw that. However, what I didn’t see, and Dodge did, upon further investigation was that cars had plummeted to the road below. Piling on top of each other and the weight of the major traffic jam on the road side gave in, causing more traffic to topple. This cluster of a mess became a viable path to walk.

  Walk over the tops of the cars. All well and fine, but not to get up to the bridge.