Lastly alone v2.0

Lastly Alone

“Brown and brown and brown and brown...”
She chipped at the earth with an iron rod she had dug from a collapsed building. The earth was too cold to touch now. Above her loomed the carcass of a once great tree. Its branches cracked upon the floor beneath.
“Brown and b...”
She muttered something she once remembered that had been poisoned by the landscape. As she thrust the iron into the ground her woollen mittens frayed and curled away from her blistered palms. There were no roots here to find. And she could no longer burrow. Exhausted and now waiting, she turned to the hummock and began to traipse her last steps.
The dog stood up now and drew it’s dry paws through the dust, keeping a few meters from her. She thought it might be blind as it never looked at her, instead seeming to follow her sounds and scent which had become repugnant.
She picked up a rock and threw it at the animal and hit it square on the head. She shouted some plosive sounds from her lips. The dog howled and slunk against it hind legs, then growled menacingly. Their truce remained. She had feared the animal. She had tried to run from the ragged thing but it had kept pace. It had followed her for days now and she had come to accept it as one does the winter rain. She hoped it would leave her. She pitied the dying beast none, and loathed it fiercely.
---

The girl cast her eyes back over her tracks, each footfall , like iron filings, pointing directly at her in a straight line leading back over the crest of the horizon. She had returned to where she bagan. She stood between her great perforation of the desert and the tall fencing, beyond which stood many small buildings. There had been someone else here once... no... she tried to reason. There couldn’t have been someone else. There must have been more... but she had no memory of them. Pulling back the gated entrance, she wandered into this obscure pen. Things weren’t as the rest of the world... things here made her feel differently. She walked between the buildings looking for the one she would recognise. Her pace hurried as each passed by not matching the image she had in her head and she became apprehensive, could she be chasing the uncatchable?
She approached a well and threw her hands upon it, she hadn’t much time. She had never looked so gaunt, the rags that kept her warm flapped upon her. Something else feint and distant, of water, thick and muddy that could be drunk when passed through a cloth stirred in the cold of her mind. She peered down into the dark. She tried the bucket but at the bottom was only an unpalatable gruel. As she fished through the contents she had brought up, she found the slim of a rotted finger which had been tugged off of something in the well. She pulled away at the sight.

She hoped that something might stir another memory in her. Looking around at the groups of buildings surrounding this small courtyard was one that appeared busier than the rest. Buckets, wheels and chairs were gathered there and upon a table that had been built of scrap was a rag. She approached. Her stomach, empty and cramping, was threatening some kind of reaction, and her legs trembled. There had been another noise, something she couldn’t see. There were too many hidden gaps and shadows here. There was no clear open ground as she was used to; the desert. But the rag seemed important, for it was surrounded by objects that she could sit on, and was positioned higher than anything other than the buildings. She crept over now suspicious, and on her guard. Of the people who had lived here, she only remembered one, and had never met another like herself afterwards. She had met nothing on the road. She trembled. The rag was old and coarse. She pulled back its layers and inside was a box of heavy wood. She opened it and within was another, finer cloth, faded and stiff. Inside this was a heavy leafed objected, her first book. There was also a tin box, warped, dented and heavy, which she put to one side. The spine was stiff and the leaves brittle. The last were empty and sepia, but some were written upon in thick grit. At the top of each page was an entry:

56-2= 54
…
54-3=51
…
51-5=46

On the final entry was just

12

Her heartbeat quickened and she daren’t make a noise. She hadn’t met these people but here was something they were saying, if only she could lend her ear to a voice instead of the words. She looked over what was beneath in hope:

The illness which has now killed the majority in our camp hasn’t been stopped. We tried to halt it incase it is contagious by evicting those showing signs of falling ill, but so many of us have died so quickly that it has been impossible to halt. We thought we could survive together, but many are fleeing in fear of whatever is killing us off. Nothing has grown in the fields for the fourth year now and there are no supplies to be found for miles, we cannot care for the ill. Those who are finding things are taking them for theirselves and we are no longer a community supporting each other but a refugee camp of individuals with no stake in each other’s survival. We leaders are no longer able to aid peoples lives by guiding individuals for the sake of the many, and under pressure from the camp hereby abrogate, our influence dissolved. The twelve remaining are leaving separately. Two are couples seeking together, sharing what they scavange. So much animosity has passed recently that we rest are aiming to survive on what little can be found for ourselves. Of course... other options have been discussed... but it was decided that it would not be for us to say of our intentions when leaving in solitude for sway of influence on others... Four of us are sick from the illness. One of those, Sineed, has chosen to remain.
I cannot say if the camp is safe for any future refugees who find themselves here... but we haven’t seen life within or beyond our borders for many many years. We tried keeping track of time, but found it impossible as our records were destroyed by that which it kept. My only offering to you, a most improbable reader, of how long it has been since this final entry is written, is kept here also. Make of it what you will.

But this made little sense to her. She studied it carefully before giving up. She knew there was nothing to be found here, no food, no water, no living souls. She curled her back over and clentched her jaw and fists, and stamped a foot. She didn’t know what the book said, someone she wanted so desperately to find, to hold her and warm her, clothe her, and understand her. She began to sob as she knotted up and leaned heavily on the makeshift table that leaned and cracked under her weight, and together they collapsed to the floor. She fell onto the tin box which sprung open and out fell a heavily decayed human hand. She yelped and trust the decapitation from her, moaning and kicking and crying now when there was a new noise from behind her. She spun as snot and tears wet her face, and dragged her dusty arm along her nose and mouth. There was nothing there, but it had been a demonic noise... something guttural and monstrous. There was a sudden bang and the sound of sore metal hinges rocking as something had disturbed their own rigour mortis. Nothing physical in the many years of searching had prepared her to face anything other than her own nightmares. She turned and fled.

---

The road is long and it takes its time, on that you can depend. No wind to catch, no melody to play. No river to lay down beside and nothing to wash this place away. And she walked and she walked... Away from the dead township which itself lay far beyond the cadaverous villages. She had decided on her destination now and, she supposed, that of her lurking companion. The chestnut plumes around her feet were dredged by her toes, ploughing scuff with each half-step, and thud, half-step, and thud, half-step, and thud.
Something else had been following her and she looked up at it again. A deep grey plume had been drawing in and covering the cinnamon dusted sky, round and billowing like a bale of giant turtles padding it’s way along a beach. Despite it’s gradual sneaking up on her, there was little wind. Despite the lack of wind, it was bitterly cold.
As she approached the bottom of the hill, she looked around at the flat plains behind her. It would be a good view. And she started the ascent, her breath surrounding her with each exhale.

---

Fear had overtaken her body and her own animal instincts, primed with years of emotional malnurishment, had sent her running through the buildings, left and right, twisting, trying to shake off the apparition that had appeared to her. She cried and threw her arms upon anything blocking her path unable to find her way back to the main gate when the shape she had been seeking mated to the silhouette in her mind and hooked her out of her charmed stumbling.
She found the one building of twisted branches, unlike the rest of mud or brick. Pensive now, she looked around and stood like marble, straining to hear that which she had been running from. The spaces between the huts here were narrow. Once, each had been painted, but the faded remains were flakes like dead skin ready to drop. Rusted rakes, chains and hoes lie useless here and there. She approached. There were no sounds other than the skitter of dust at her feet.

Inside, the subdued, cotton-sunlight was replaced by gloom and flecks hung in the air, visible against the shadows, illuminated by shafts of light. A corpse lay in front of her, long dry and shrivelled. It wore a familiar cloak of many bits of material stitched together with a few packets and packages cradled in her arms. The grim face was fingers of desiccated muscle and skin pulled tight over the crumbling bone beneath. Before her lay the person who had hurried her from the compound as a child, the last person she ever saw. She had cried and muttered things to her and pushed food into her clothes whilst people screamed around the buildings, running. The memory worked its way through years of cinders in her brain and she remembered, people were being killed. She had been made to flee... but it made little sense to her. She didn’t know why. She had ran through the dead foliage then, though it was a desert when she returned here. The struggle, the search, the fear, and now the presence of her mother she had sought folded her up, and again she cried at the futility facing her. She cried until her cheeks were again wet and her face pitiful. A growl from behind her stiffened her body and her skin crawled. She turned and saw the only other living thing she had come across since her mother abandoned her her so many years ago. Bloody blisters, swollen eyes, skin dripping from the face of the devil and a throaty growl that snivelled and barked blocked the doorway. She did something she didn’t know she could do. She screamed.

---

The memory of a song once sung about something she never saw was vanishing from her closing mind. She tried to imagine what the song might have been about but it was impossible to find inspiration. She had trekked through the city and passed many villages. She beat her arms around her chest against the stabbing cold. Her toes vanished from her and she rolled about on the balls of her feet whilst trying to climb the hill. The tune had been sung to her once, so it must have been from someone she had met. She thought back to the camp, and the buildings, the well and the book. Did any of it have any relation? Was it of the landscape? The tepid sky? The ochre dirt that coated and consumed everything now? She liked to whisper it and look, as a tailor measures a fit. She looked now, and she could see far. There wasn’t much she hadn’t seen on the many years of traipsing. She had come to mountains that led to great scars in the desert. Here she had found something that stirred her a little inside, rocks so round they were smooth against her nose and lips, with dark veins across a plaster face. They could have been in the melody but she wasn’t sure. With her last strength she continued to climb. It wasn’t far now. Maybe here she could discover the song.

---

There, somewhere lost, the dog had attacked. It’s gummed mouth unable to hold on to her as she shouted and thrust herself away from it. But still it bit down at her face and hands trying to take purchase of the softer, vulnerable parts of her body. She rolled away trying to keep those parts protected and hidden and it dug at her back with its claws. They wrestled desperately for a long time until they were wasted and wet with sweat. Every shunt, and push, grabbing one another and trying to stand took energy they were already in great deficit of to lows that each knew could itself be their death. Each cried in desperation. The dog screeched with each blow from the girl but was unable to change its course now, seeing her as its only remaining sustenance on Earth. She wailed long and childlike in terror, a waking nightmare.
When the dog could fight her no-more, they lay there staring into space sucking down the fumes of air that didn’t feed properly the lungs. She dug her heels into the earth and started to push herself trying to eek out more distance from the dog. As night came, the two faded into unconsciousness.

The following morning, her shivers woke her. She had collapsed in the doorway of her first and only home. She rolled over and opened her eyes. The dog was stood over her, watching her. She froze with fear, though the dogs reaction to her had changed. It flinched, ducked its head and took a few sidesteps away from her. Her heartbeat started racing again. The dog didn’t stop her from getting to her feet. She was shaking still, from the cold and from her adversary. Watching it all the while, she edged over to the corpse of her mother in their family home. It seemed like she had been waiting for her, resting on the old bed that they had slept together on. She touched her hair. It was coarse and dry. Then she stroked the garment and hummed a song that had come from this room. She remembered it being sung to her here... but she couldn’t quite wrap her tongue around it. It had become lost in the desert. Whilst humming, she fingered the things on her mother’s belly. Most of the packages were rotten and useless but one stood out. It was a little box of sugar cubes, each wrapped in a little package of paper. Her throat tightened a little. Her mother was here alone waiting in death, guarding the few things she would stave from herself and give to her child should she return. She took the sugar and the garment, wrapped it around her shoulders, and tore down a plastic sheet from the window and wrapped herself in that as well. She started for the gate. The dog followed her, submissive, head low.
Before leaving the refuge, she turned for one last look. The buildings, its safety and its worth had expired. Though it looked to offer sanctuary, it was a fallacy. She would start out along the desert once more uncertain where to turn, what to look for or how she might last another week. She already knew there was nothing and no-one to be found. She dropped a sugar cube onto her tongue and smile and shivered at the intensity of the sweetness. The dog followed.

---

From the top of the hill she collapsed on top of a large rock, cowering from the wind up here and looked over the landscape she had come from. A labyrinth of tall buildings were gathered in the darkening distance. Sandy clouds were drawn across the sky and at it’s fringe with the distant lands, it was almost inseparable. The dog had found a log with which to rest upon where it would continue to listen carefully to her. As she watched back across her path, a great tower leaned awkwardly. In silence a billow of dust erupted from its foundations and it progressed its final descent into the buildings below. The first slight rumble reached them. The dog became aware of the building now. The impact arose a cloud of ash and dirt that sprung from the earth. The crash bounced across the plains and landed upon them. The first sounds and movement, other than each other, that the two had come across in longer than either could remember.

She didn’t know how long she had walked alone for, never seeing another like her, or a bird in the sky, or an insect on the wind, though her her hair had grown from her neck to the middle of her back. The top of the food chain toppled the last, fell the furthest, and crashed the hardest.
Her feet could no longer carry her across the steel lands so here she would rest, looking across the full panorama now that spread out far and wide all around.
“Brown and brown and brown and brown...”

---

Either she or the dog would outlast the other. She thought it was her heart beat the dog was tracking, not kinship or warmth. It kept a constant distance between them, stopping now and then to scratch its dry skin, or to dig into the ground for some noxious grub.
Together they passed from one village to the next. At each they were greeted by the reflection of their own noises that came back and forth from the alleys and buildings. The rusted husks of vehicles, prams canisters, drums, dotted the streets. The contents of the shops had been pillaged many decades before her time. Later, the bodies of the dead had been ransacked for what could be used and reclaimed. After enough time had passed, gangs had leached out every item from the villages, towns and cities, constructing their own territories. After everything had been repaired and used until it too was dead, the gangs disbanded. The smallest communities survived in their own built up sections that harboured what little was left. This is what she was born into long after the world was emptied. It could have been centuries after the annihilation event which was no longer an ‘event’ recorded or explained. Only its consequences hinted of something terrible. Newspapers had become fragments in the earth. Books had decayed and and so few in the final tribes could read. The very smartest, that still clung to to the teachings of the past had led their clans but were themselves long gone.

Once more on her travels she came to a town. Its tall lopsided buildings struck at the sky like forked lightning. Each building empty. Sometimes she would find the bodies of people so old that only their bones remained. She would look upon them only briefly, the personage having no impact upon her.
The weather was setting in now and night was falling. The bitter cold tore away her clothing and she felt powerless against it. She also knew that the buildings offered little protections. Doors and windows had all been stripped out in decades of recycling. She had many times taken shelter in closets and small rooms but it was becoming colder than ever now.
She returned to a stairwell that descended from the streets into the ground. She rarely came across this obscurity in the communities she had explored. The darkness itself would be enough to stop her from entering normally but there was nothing elsewhere for her and she chose to try there for shelter.
She had discovered by chance a trick for igniting fire many years ago. She dragged up the dry remains of weeds that once grew from the windowsills, the gutters and out of the very tarmac. There was no shortage of dead leaves. She bundled them up tight. The vehicles had long been stripped of everything valuable including the fuel, seats, stereos... at some point, everything could be used in the emergencies. Even the engine oil had been stripped out of nearly all vehicles. But she kept a few spanners which had survived many generations of use for this very purpose. Not that she understood what she was really exploring, she found the sump for the gearbox oil. Of the first few cars she tried, she could not get the bolt free but she eventually found one she could prise open with a great crack that surprised the watchful dog. She left the plants to soak in in the dripping oil and turned her attention to the battery. Using a screwdriver from her little pack of essentials, she gouged a hole in the hermetic outer casing. She tore of a piece of her fabric and dipped it into the acid, withdrawing it and wrapping it in a piece of her plastic sheet. Collecting her things she hurried back to the stairwell hoping there would be something more substantial to burn. The dog had sat 10 meters from her whilst she worked on the car watching her curiously and as she vanished into the darkness hesitated. She left the shaft of light and could no longer be seen. It looked around at the overcast sky, and the emptiness of the city, ducked its head once more and followed after her.

---

Sulpher snow began to fall from the sky, not pristine and crystalline, but a sort of orange, oaky, and burning. She pulled the plastic tarp closer around herself and watched. When she turned back to check on the distance between them, the dog was shaking in the freezing air violently. It looked at her desperately hoping to outlast her, and let out a gentle howl from the agony of attrition. How it had striped them both bare.
The girl was in no better state and accepted that she wasn’t going to be able to eat the dog. Firstly, there was no meat on it. It was probably suffering from disease as she was and would need to be cooked. Secondly, there was nothing left to burn. Not for days of drudgery had she seen anything that could take flame. And in this freezing landscape, she wouldn’t be able to conjure fire.
When at last she reached the top of the hill, she felt more tired than she thought she could cope with and she rested down on the ground, wrapping the tarp around and beneath her. She looked over the City. She could see small villages in the distance. Mountains were on one horizon and a dry river bed coming from it. The desert beyond the city where lay the refuge she had been born. Somewhere out there was the one thing she hoped to see before she could no longer open her eyes. She sung softly, panted and looked.

“Brown and brown and brown and brown...”

But nothing gave her inspiration. In frustration, a tear crept from her eyes. Her stomach knotted in anguish and she pulled the tarp up around herself. She looked out from the plastic cave, a flat line of desert surrounded by black, and a half-hole of cascading snow. Her breath filled the small window into the ended world and hid from her it’s atrocious sight that mocked her. But each breath began to take longer than the last. Each vision of the tormented, crushing lands was held undistorted upon her for longer, until she couldn’t bare to look any more. She closed her eyes and panted in short wisps. The last of her strength had gone.

---

Down in the entrance to the underground, in the fading light from the stairwell she started her fire. She wrapped the the sugar in the acid-soaked cloth and crushed them together beneath the tarp. It began to give off a great amount of heat and the sugar grew into a black rock. She placed this into the oily weeds and as the heat built within the oil, it began to catch. She coaxed the flame with her breath which caught onto the weeds and she hurried down into the rooms below. The burning gearbox oil gave of a putrid black smog that she choked upon as she explored the first corridors. The dark red brickwork was built up in arches that seemed to guide her down deeper into the caverns. Metal signs once directed flows of people left and right but she had no idea where she was heading to. The bundle was catching fast now and was becoming too hot to hold. She placed it down next to two large double doors and with both hands pushed them open. An incredible stench rushed from within and almost sent her sprawling backwards on her fireball. Light flickered, hopped, sprung around and fell upon a great organic pile. She covered her mouth and left the fire behind, approaching. Faces were in the shadows. Arms and legs, bones and grot. Hundreds of bodies lay, slung on top of one another, their fingers pointing in all directions and the hollow eyes staring aghast. She stepped in a little closer. Their emotions were dry as the desert she had left behind. Each was still wearing their own clothing, brown and disgusting. She looked back at the fireball, the dog was curled up around it. She began to tug out the clothes and the bodies tore apart as she did so. Heads and torsos fell from the pile and she again bundled up fuel.
The fireball was now too hot and burning too fast for her to hold. She smothered the fire down with the rags so only a small part was burning and with a little more ingenuity, she took two of the longest bones she could find, and scooted it along the floor as if she was curling. Only a little further down the corridor did she find her next surprise. At the end of a long buttressed passageway she found a great pile of wooden furniture. Pews, old sofas, windows frames... Someone at somepoint had stocked this here. The dog which had been following her suddenly ran ahead and scurried in underneath the wood. From behind she heard a digging and scratching. She tried to peer through the mass. The pile it seemed wasn’t that deep and through the dancing shadows, she could see a door. The end of a corridor was a strange storage place indeed. It was very far from the surface and not easy to carry out when needed. It was well protected from the weather even if had been much closer to the entrance. This was a barricade it seemed. She started to pull the wood back from the pile and though she was tired and weak, worked her way to the dog digging at the gap between the steel door and tiled floor. She shouted and rattled the wood at the dog and it cowered away in fear and slunk back to the fire where it was warm. The door was padlocked, and oxidation had eaten away at the entire thing. It seemed rustier than much of what she found in the houses, yet it was protected from the elements down here. She took the screwdriver attacking the lock with stabbing actions but she only managed to chip away the crusts. Then she jammed the screwdriver under the steel arm and forced it apart. With some effort, the lock cracked and sprung open. She could just open the door enough behind the pile of remaining wood to sneak in and again it was pitch black. She shuffled the burning ball under the wood and through the door and before she could stop it, the fire tumbled down another flight of stairs, undoing itself and exploding with light and sparks and embers as it hit the room below. She was left in darkness and couldn’t see her way back along the corridor. She had to descend now further into the depths of the underground. Her scarred legs had frozen and impeded progression. There was something strange about this lower cellar, the light danced and noises other than the fire came from below. The fire echoed from the lower chamber and in a sparkling brilliance, spirits pranced on the walls at the bottom of the stairs. She crept, trembling down, the tiled floor frozen against her feet which now poked through little holes in her makeshift shoes. The dog was again following, keeping behind her. As she reached the bottom, she peeked around the corner. The room was lit up by the fire and she marvelled at a small lake of crystal water that rippled slightly as droplets fell from stalagmites. She gasped and ran to the edge where the dog joined her and they both drank deeply. She had to grit her teeth and jam her jaw open and closed against the cold of the water but with every drink she felt more refreshed. She pulled handsful over her face and through her hair and rubbed the dirt from her eyes with great ‘aahs’. She swilled it around her teeth and squirted it back out of her lips and laughed at the noises it made. Even the dog dipped its head in and shook water over its body and rubbed its paws over its head.
She decided to stay a little while. She gathered wood from the stair and piled it over the bundle which was starting to deteriorate. It eventually caught and soon the room was hot and bright. The smoke left up the stair and she continued to sip and wash, then she rested listening to the constant dripping of water whilst the dog licked its fur. She noticed a green algae had formed at the edges and, as the only natural thing she had seen in many years, tested it on her tongue. The slime slid around in her mouth and was hard to swallow but she took a few mouthfuls hoping it would offer something to her sinews.
Tomorrow she would leave the town. Experience had told her there was no food beyond the mire that grew down here. The places of large population were the most scavenged of all. This hidden treasure hadn’t always been this way, the woodstore possibly used to hide and protect a most precious and lacking commodity. Maybe it was being rationed along with the wood and only the keyholder was allowed access. Decades of abandonment though had left her with a lake to enjoy all to herself as the ground above filtered and delivered droplets to the tiled floor, the darkness keeping the pool from becoming stagnant.
With no food to survive the coming cold upon, she had to decide what to do next. There was one last thing she wanted to know. It was the only real memory that she had of other people. A song that was once sung, the song she hummed to her mother. There might be a slim chance that she could uncover its meaning before she could go no further. She would seek out into the countryside once more not with the need to survive, but to know one last thing about herself.

That night she had another idea. As the fire burned and the dog slept, she drew her screwdriver and crept up to it but before she could bring it down upon the animal it leapt away and crept around the burning wood, growling fiercely and barking at her. She approached it carefully but having lost the advantage of surprise daren’t get any closer to the menace that snarled and hissed. She was scared once more. That night, neither of them slept.

---

She opened her eyes. The tunnel was no longer filled with the apocalypse, but brown fur. No strength to react. She could feel the dog breathing against her chest, buried down in her soft and skinny belly. It felt a little warmer now. In the blackness, it had come to her and pushed into the tarp, not attacking, itself not scared. She was no longer scared either. She reached a hand out and instinctively drew her fingers through its fur, at which, the dog jumped and lifted its head slightly, stiff with apprehension. She drew her fingers again through its fur and rested herself a little closer upon it. It was warm beneath the tarp now and the dog relaxed again. Their little pants together, beneath the black sheet, their exhaustion together, their end of days together. A little more had come back to her and she sung once more.
“I can see a rainbow... see a rainbow... see a rainbow too...”