Once the virus mutated, the end came fast. I holed up in my apartment and worked my way through the Harry Potter books while I waited for the first symptoms to appear. Perhaps a silly choice for a woman my age, but I found them comforting.
The Internet was the first to go. The connection became spotty, then shut down altogether. Television followed soon after. I had stopped watching anyway. I couldn’t handle all the pundits screaming at each other, trying to figure out who to blame. And the running death count was too staggering to comprehend. Radio lasted a little longer, but one morning there was nothing but static. I shut it off and retreated to the wizarding world. When the electricity went out for good, I read by LED lantern.
I felt . . . fine. I finished The Deathly Hallows and moved on to my Jane Austen collection. Once in a while I looked out the window, but I didn’t see any people. I hadn’t heard any stirrings in neighboring apartments for days.
When I turned on the kitchen tap and nothing happened, I knew I was in trouble. I rationed my bottled water, but eventually I had the choice of dying of dehydration or venturing out into the great unknown.
If I had survived then there must be others out there. Would I need a weapon? I didn’t have one. I emptied most of the stuff from my purse and put a lady dumbbell in there to give it some heft, in case I needed to hit someone with it.
I assumed that any virus left on surfaces would be dead by now, but I put on dish gloves and a mask, just in case. Then I opened the door and poked my head out. The street was absolutely still. No movement, except for a soft breeze.
I stepped back and slammed the door shut and locked it, sinking to my knees. There were still two cans of diet soda in the kitchen. Maybe I could put this off for another day.
I used to watch those zombie apocalypse/alien invasion/post-pandemic TV shows. I had always assumed that if something like that happened in real life, I would be dead in the first wave. I had never had any desire to be a part of the band of scrappy survivors. Why was I still here?
I took a few yoga breaths and steeled myself. There was no reason to wait until I became weak and desperate. If something killed me out there, then so be it. I hadn’t expected to live this long, anyway.
I trotted to my car and locked myself in as fast as I could. There were plenty of other vehicles in the lot, but not a person in sight.
The drive to the grocery store was surreal. Mine was the only car on the road. The traffic lights were out, but I stopped at each intersection to make sure it was clear. Driving habits of over thirty years were hard to break.
I got a prime parking spot at the store. I shut off the engine, then restarted it. I backed out and parked in one of the handicap spots right next to the door. Then I backed out again and pulled right up to the front entrance.
The sliding doors were closed, but someone had broken the glass out of one of them. I stepped through and snagged a cart.
The back of my neck prickled as I moved through the market at a rapid clip. I kept checking over my shoulder. I’m not sure what I was expecting. Crazed looters? Zombies? Hoards of cannibals?
I grabbed the few remaining jugs of water, some bottled juice, and some paperback bestsellers. I finished the trip with random canned goods, crackers and a huge summer sausage. Then I sprinted out the door and dumped everything into my trunk.
At home, I stripped off my clothes, mask and gloves and tossed them out the front door. Then I used hand sanitizer to decontaminate myself and the supplies I had managed to carry inside in one trip.
I was exhausted, and collapsed on the couch. Four hours later, I woke and ate an unseemly amount of summer sausage washed down with warm apple juice. Under cover of darkness that night, I crept outside and retrieved the rest of my groceries from my trunk.
Without all the city lights, the night sky was gorgeous. For the first time in years, I saw the Milky Way. The stars were so bright it almost hurt to look at them.
I tried to go back to reading, but my mind kept wandering. Somehow the virus hadn’t killed me, but my future looked grim. There could be radiation leaking into the air from the power plant, or deadly chemicals from manufacturing plants seeping into the ground water. I had no idea what sort of emergency shutdown procedures those places had, and if anyone had bothered with them. Even if the environment didn’t kill me, I could get sick or suffer some catastrophic injury. There were no emergency rooms anymore. And all the food available had a finite shelf life. At some point I would have to try growing my own food, which would probably be disastrous since I couldn’t even keep a fern alive.
I grabbed a notebook and pen and started a list of all the things I was going to need to survive for however long I had left. Water purification tablets, gasoline siphoning kit, generator, medical supplies, etc. I could hit all the gourmet markets in the city, too. I would eat well while I waited for the end to come.
Each time I left my apartment, it got a little easier. I adjusted to the empty streets, blowing through stop signs. And I felt less guilty about breaking and entering, the more I did it. Property had ceased to mean anything, as had money.
When I ran out of new books to read, I drove to the main library downtown. At the pickup window, I broke out the glass with a crowbar. Then I scrambled onto the trunk of my car and climbed in through the window.
The library was absolutely silent. No buzz of voices at the circulation desk. No footsteps, or rustle of turning pages. Row after row of books gleamed in the soft light streaming through the windows. For me, it was like being in church. I sat in a comfy armchair and absorbed the hushed stillness. I felt completely at peace for the first time in days. I could live here.
I could live here.
The thought filled me with excitement. Just me and thousands of books. It sounded like paradise.
Within a few days I had moved in all my supplies. The refrigerator in the employee break room was way too big for my needs, so I brought in a little dorm fridge to plug into the generator. I also had a microwave and a bread machine. That was the extent of my “kitchen,” and it was enough.
By day, the windows provided enough light for reading. I was tempted to cover the shelves with candles, for the ambiance, but the risk of fire scared me. I indulged myself with some electric candles, but mostly I used LED lanterns.
In my twenties, I had gone through a phase where I volunteered to bartend at all my friends’ parties. I enjoyed mixing drinks, and it had saved me from mingling. I hadn’t done much drinking in the past twenty years, but now seemed like the time to start again. After a trip to a couple of liquor stores, I turned the circulation desk into a kickass bar.
Since clean water was too precious to waste on laundry, my plan was to throw away grubby clothing. I had a stack of comfy clothes with the tags still attached piled on a table, and not a bra among them.
The final touch was to drag a mattress into the library and flop it down under a skylight. I placed a laundry basket filled to the brim with assorted chocolates within easy reach. It was perfect.
That first night, I had trouble falling asleep. Intellectually I knew I was safe, but my animal brain didn’t like the strange setting and wide open spaces. I mixed myself an old-fashioned, of sorts. I didn’t have fresh orange slices so I had to substitute triple sec. After a few of those, I slept like a baby.
Within a few days the strangeness wore off, and I was padding around the library in slippers and a nightgown, a book in one hand and a glass of wine in the other. I had more books than I would be able to read, and nothing but time on my hands. For the most part, I was happy.
In odd moments, a crippling sense of grief would creep up on me. It wasn’t the loss of my friends and family. I had set that aside by picturing all of them at a backyard barbecue. The kids would be in the pool, playing Marco Polo or diving for pennies. The adults would be standing around sipping margaritas, talking about good books or funny movies. They were waiting for me, and I would be arriving soon.
What got to me was the random people who popped into my head. A woman named Lisa whom I had worked with over fifteen years ago. She was fretting that her first grandchild would be born out of wedlock, but she was so excited she was practically vibrating. The receptionist with the beautiful smile, at my doctor’s office. She always looked genuinely happy to greet whomever walked through the door. For the life of me, I couldn’t remember her name. That kid who pulled over and changed my flat tire. He kept me laughing the whole time, and refused to accept any money.
In those moments of memory, I couldn’t breathe. I had to sit and put my head between my knees as the magnitude of loss threatened to crush me. So I would think of people who I didn’t mind were gone. My college boyfriend who cheated on me with my roommate. My college roommate. That supervisor who was a stickler for the rules, except when it came to her friends. That guy who honked at me when I made a perfectly reasonable turn.
When I was too restless to settle down and read, I would pace. I walked laps around the library for hours, until I collapsed from exhaustion.
One morning I woke to a young woman standing over me, watching me sleep. I scrambled away from her.
“Get back!”
She held up both hands.
“Sorry! I didn’t mean to scare you. Derrick and I were in town the other day on a supply run and we saw you. We followed you back here.”
My heart was hammering. I hadn’t seen them. I hadn’t had an inkling I was being followed. I had grown too complacent.
“We’ve been staying in a little house just outside town. There’s a big garden and fruit trees, and we have more produce than we can eat. I brought you some.”
She indicated a couple of bags at her feet. I could see peaches and tomatoes. I also saw that she was wearing skinny jeans and makeup. And a bra. I sighed.
“Thank you,” I said. She was looking at the bottles of liquor lined up along the circulation desk. She didn’t comment. “Have you seen anyone else out there?” I asked.
“No. Just you, so far. Anyway,” she said. “We have solar panels and a generator, so we can run freezers, but I thought I should also do some canning, just in case. Have you ever canned anything?”
I shook my head.
“Me neither. I was hoping there was a book here….”
I smoothed down my hair as I wondered what I smelled like. I hadn’t felt self-conscious in months, and I didn’t like it.
“This way,” I said, and led her to the cookbooks. While I located one on preserving, she chattered away about their cute little house with the greenhouse, well water and septic system. They had seen ducks by a pond, so hopefully they’d be able to trap some and raise them for eggs. And there were still deer, so they’d be able to get fresh meat soon. And maybe in a few years, they could have a baby.
That stopped me in my tracks. The thought of this girl bringing a new life into the world made me ill. And because I was the only other female around, she would expect me to help with the birth. Ugh.
I had accepted that the end was in sight, but this girl was trying to forge a future. She had probably been a barista or something, trying to figure out what to do with her life. And now she had found her purpose. What if she was right, and this was only the beginning?
I gave her the book.
“Thanks! This is perfect. I’m Eve, by the way.”
“Seriously?”
“I know, right? What’s your name?”
I could be anyone I wanted to be. “Elizabeth Bennet.”
“Nice to meet you! You should come out to our place sometime for dinner.”
“That sounds great,” I lied. She was a perfectly nice girl, but I had no interest in getting drawn into her little family. As far as I was concerned, there were three people left in this city and it was two too many.
As soon as she left, I ate three ripe peaches. The juice ran down my chin and dripped onto my nightgown. I’d have to throw it in the trash.
Looking around, my little paradise suddenly felt silly. Why was I living like this? I could find myself a farmhouse with running water and a greenhouse, too.
Or better yet, an RV. Then I could get the heck out of here, before I was forced to become a midwife. I had always been afraid to drive one, but now it wouldn’t matter if I sideswiped a few cars or backed into a mailbox.
Why not go visit some of the places I had only read about? Audio books would keep me company while I drove, and there were lots of libraries and bookstores out there. In the past, the dread of crowds had stopped me from traveling. That was no longer a problem. I could watch Old Faithful erupt without having to stand shoulder to shoulder with sweaty tourists. I could drive down to Key West and check out Hemingway’s place. Or park on the White House lawn and walk to the Smithsonian every day.
I could go the Library of Congress. The thought gave me a little clutch in the chest. My library would seem paltry by comparison.
I grabbed a notebook and pen and started making a list.
Such an interesting take on a pandemic. The loner finds solace. I’ve felt like that during this Mad, Mad World time we live in. I work remotely on online building websites and writing web content. Kindle Unlimited keeps me supplied with loads of books. I quit TV and have gone to Netflix–great movie source…and then there’s writing…my passion. I’m onboard with “Elizabeth Bennet.” The mid-wife childbirth prospect would’ve sent me running too. Elizabeth wasn’t looking for a family dynamic. Nice story arc though when she decides to venture out into the world and do her bucket list on her own. Loved your short story–quite refreshing when conflict is “all there is” these days.
I love the idea of living at the library with a laundry basket of chocolate!
Nice story! Thank you.
I started a similar one at one time, but I never, in my wildest dreams, considered the lone survivor to be a loner.
So while I consider your story to be believable, I consider it sad. I think we all need each other, for emotional support if nothing else.
As an engineer I’ve always wondered how much I could keep going… to maintain some amount of our modern tech life such as it is, and I would have taken on the challenge of being the midwife if I had to. I liked the young couple with solar power and an orchard. Nice!
Keep writing! There will always be readers to enjoy your thoughts! (at least for as long as there are people)
As someone whose lifelong dream has been to be stranded alone on a desert island, I enjoyed seeing how the pioneering spirit of ‘Eliizabeth’ kicked in.
More detail would have filled in disquieting gaps. Did she throw a few $ on the supermarket counter out of a moral habit that we know exists, because she offered to pay the laughing kind who changed her flat tyre?
Good reader hook in exploring the random people who may populate one’s memory.
Where is all the wildlife? There must have been birds, at least.
Quirky take on the contrast between the self-indulgent cave-dwelling loner and the healthy, optimistic future-oriented tenters.
Yes, the writing of Elizabeth Bennet was an enjoyable and satisfying read. Thank you for sharing the story.
I enjoyed the ‘Elizabeth Bennet’ story very much and how she made herself very comfortable at the library. I was wondering if there were others who had made it through the pandemic, and then they showed up but were how she wanted to live out her life. Good twist. She was here own woman.
Thanks for sharing.
I loved reading the story; the story arch is believable. As a private man, I would also like to live in a library to learn and better myself even in a pandemic environment. If I was to meet someone and stay friends, it would have to be a person/s who have their feet in the soil so to speak; someone who knows how to be constructive and build stuff. The story could easily be extended in a series urging people to take life more seriously and learn economics … stay on top of things and not let governments lead us into debt to serve the rich. To be alone is not the end of the world, but the beginning of something unusual. Every step we make has values; it’s not up to us to work out the meaning of such things but evolve in it as part of all things for the good of a greater purpose. Thank you for sharing.
Love this piece, absolutely superb and might come true before long. I`ve written a series of books on a similar post appocolyptic theme and throughly enjoyed reading this.
Oh my! What an interesting story, especially reading it in these times! The covid19 era. Uncertaintiy and fear makes us shut ourselves and not see what the world has to offer, like when Elizabeth declained Eve’s invitation. This story has taught me that no matter what the circumstances are humans can rise above it with strong will and determination.
Fantastic read. I enjoyed it first word to last. A very interesting take on the Last Man/Woman alive. I hope the nex chapter in Elizabeth’s life is her travels.
I’ve always enjoyed your writing, Angela, and this was no exception.
I can sympathize with Elizabeth. She finally gets some alone time with enough books to read and at least a week’s worth of chocolate, and here comes someone else to shrink her world back down. Though I can’t fathom why she’d name herself for that particular character. 😛
I’m also enjoying imagining her life on the open road. I hope she finds an audiobook copy of Kerouac, and maybe some Bill Bryson.
Angela you are such a wonderful writer. I always enjoy all your stories but this one was the best. Thank you I can’t wait to read more!!
Hi Angela.
I went to The Twilight Zone straight away, and felt Burgess Meredith stopping time for the peace and quiet of solitude was the closest to Elizabeth Bennet’s mindset that I could link to.
I liked the way your protagonist had viewed many films and TV shows concerning the varied flavours of annihilation that are available to us but your story was not going to go down that road – rather you chose to look at this through the lens of Austen, perhaps? A thoughtful, observation rich apocalypse.
Goodness knows your character’s real name but Elizabeth is certainly a nice literary reference that young Eve did not get… therefore never being able to provide any intellectual stimulation for Elizabeth.
Your plot was engrossing and expertly delivered – and I agree with an earlier comment, Elizabeth did not have to overcome one challenging situation after another because your story was all about the challenges within Elizabeth. That there were not wild, hungry dogs and rotting bodies all over the place hardly matters at all, because your story was about ‘woman alone’ and her internal dialogue – fascinating.
The ending suggests more growth – or maybe withdrawal into self [arguably the ultimate growth option].
I enjoyed what you did.
Keep doing it.
I like your stories, but this one depressed me.
While I am usually alone, I guess I don’t appreciate it the way your character does.
I think she could have maintained relations with the couple and still had her privacy.
Being a private person and being a hermit are different things and I suppose I don’t appreciate pathological personalities.
Besides there WOULD be ” wild, hungry dogs and rotting bodies all over the place”, as another responder mentioned.
The world’s bigger than we are and I’m discouraged to see bad habits of mind empowered rather than altered by disaster’s challenges and opportunities.
“The world’s bigger than we are and I’m discouraged to see bad habits of mind empowered rather than altered by disaster’s challenges and opportunities.”
I don’t think it’d make any difference either way. Humans create problems that threaten our very existence, we overcome it, and then we do the same or worse again. Never better. I mean, do you really think that humanity is capable of change? Did people change after the bubonic plague pandemics? In fact, some historians assert that life in Europe became a lot worse–wars, crimes, persecution… . It took a long time and a lot of pain, blood and suffering before some kind of post bubonic plague-order was established. But was it better? Maybe for the few, but for those oppressed, no, just like now, with billionaires and politicians profiting from Covid and the regular Joe suffering.
Of course, the bubonic plague is just a small moment in human history. All that talk about Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité didn’t do much for the French either.. And it wasn’t just France, Russia, China, U.S… And it didn’t start there; we have the Romans, the Babylonians…
We’re still here, battling the old enemies: ourselves.
Yes, the woman of this story was offered an important role in the new genesis, and the opportunity of having company, but she turns it down just so she can engage in selfish pursuits. Given our record at starting over after causing great pandemics and wars and harm to people, animals and the environment, I’d say this “Elizabeth Bennet” piece of work, full of prejudice, is probably the solution to all our problems.
I liked your storyline. The story itself held my interest from beginning to end and kept me wondering where the story was going. I think many of us can relate to being able to survive alone without missing the vast majority of those we interact with, excluding those who hold some special meaning to us. I couldn’t help but imagine that if your character decided to grab an RV and take to traveling that she would put a travel trailer on behind it filled with her favorite books to hold her over between libraries.
I have some suggestions for you to consider
to give it some heft, in case I needed to hit someone with it.
I assumed that any virus left on surfaces would be dead by now, but I put on dish gloves and a mask, just in case
Try to avoid close repetition when possible. Consider: to give it some heft, on the off chance I needed to hit someone with it. Or gloves and a mask, just as a precaution.
to live this long, anyway. I’m not an expert but I think this comma is unnecessary.
At home, I stripped off my clothes, mask and gloves – I Think there would also be a comma after mask.
an old-fashioned – I think the name of the drink should be capitalized.
The receptionist with the beautiful smile, at my doctor’s office. Again, I don’t think this comma is necessary.
Overall, I thought this was pretty well written. By the way, I chuckled when your character noted there was a pile of clothes with ‘not a single bra’ in it and then again at the disappointment of the young girl wearing one. It’s no wonder she decided to hit the road.