Page 11 of Last Light

I narrow my eyes and try to look intimidating. I’m pretty sure it’s not effective. It’s my damn dimple. “Yes. Poems. I told you before.”

“Why do you carry that book around with you?” He’s staring at me as if I’ve lost my mind.

Maybe he has reason for thinking that about me, given what’s happened to the civilization we used to know.

I lost my family. I lost my town. I lost everything, and there’s only a slim chance I’ll be able to stay alive long enough to get to Fort Knox and even a smaller chance we’ll get there before the drove overtakes it. But I’m still clinging to this book.

Everything is about survival now. Poems don’t matter anymore.

There are words I could use to explain it to him. About hope. About remnants of lost beauty. About echoes of meaning in a bleak reality.

But I don’t even try to explain.

Maybe I am crazy.

Reading poems at the end of the world.

I don’t say anything at all.

Two

WE ONLY DRIVE AN HOURbefore it’s too dark to keep going.

Before everything happened, I would have called this time of day early evening, but the setting sun is already blocked by a wall of dirty clouds and haze, and soon Travis will have to turn on the headlights, so we look for somewhere to spend the night.

Night is too dangerous to be out in anymore. Travis may be strong and well armed, but it’s just him and me against whomever we encounter in the dark. Daylight’s the only safe option.

We find an old farm with a house set far back behind a hill, barely visible from the road. Most of the windows are broken, which means it isn’t going to have supplies we can use, but there isn’t a town for miles, and the isolation of the farm feels safer than a community anyway.

We hide the Jeep, take our stuff inside, and enter the dilapidated farmhouse.

“Not much chance of finding canned goods or water here.” I look around the front room, which is covered with dirt, spiderwebs, and years-old birds’ nests. Most of the furniture is broken or decaying from the weather that’s gotten inside.

“Nope. Let’s try upstairs. All we need is one intact room.”

The upper floor is in better condition, and one of the bedrooms appears untouched. The door is shut, and there aren’t any broken windows. It was a kid’s room with two twin beds.

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