The Last Journey

It was the violence of the act that fed her at this moment, and to her surprise, she found herself eagerly grasping her violater’s shoulders, pulling him closer to her, taking from him even as he took from her. His foul smell only added to her sudden urge to copulate. Their grunts mutated into hisses and snarls as they both came with a sudden fury. Soon after, the thrusting stopped and he was out of her and off of her in seconds. He zipped his pants and strolled away, whistling.

She didn’t know how long she lay there. It might have been minutes, but it seemed more like hours. Eventually she got up and straightened her clothes, the only vestige of decency left her. She stood and waited for the shame, but it never came. Neither did she think of Gerald as she began her journey again. She didn’t look back at the Bloomingdale building, leaving her memories behind her.

The many miles she walked brought her to the house around late evening. Nature, seemingly in response to the destruction of humanity, had reworked itself so that night came earlier and lasted longer. The air was colder, and her breath frosted into a vapor barely visible in the moonlight. Broken streetlights stood as stalking shadows beneath the haze of the moon, which gave illumination stark enough to highlight the street’s devastation, creating ominous silhouettes of the half destroyed homes along either side. The street was littered with broken bricks and the corrugated remains of the cars that had been brutally torn apart, the pieces contemptuously discarded. Nothing but steel skeletons remained where once bright, new cars had stood as signatures of the prosperity of the neighborhood.

She almost tripped over a downed limb lying in front of her. She noticed then that no tree stood now. They had all been torn down.

At last, she came upon her house. It was still there, amid the shambles of the neighboring homes, but barely. Gaping holes left it exposed to the cold and the yawning vacuum where the door once stood opened onto utter darkness. Broken eaves hung dangerously over her head. A few shards of glass remained in the windows.

She stepped over the bricks that had fallen from the frame and had accumulated on the broken stoop. She stood silent just outside the door as she took it all in. This was her home, the last vestige of her past self. Yet she felt no nostalgia. Only hunger and a desperate need for sleep. Her trek had tired her joints decrepit with metamorphosis.

Inside, her eyes gradually adjusted to the darkness. Her sight and hearing had sharpened since the TD, and every foreign smell and sound now made her turn her head to experience it and determine its origin. She saw the shadows of the destroyed furniture, lying helter skelter on the floor. Moving among the detritus of her life, she stopped. A familiar picture lay amid the debris of what had once been her cherrywood table.

She picked it up, looking at the people in it. The frame was cracked and the cover glass shattered, but the faces inside were still smiling. Yes, she had been beautiful once. She and Gerald looked happy and in love, even after seven years of marriage. And a five-year-old Chris was beaming at the camera. She held it for a few seconds more before letting it drop from her hand. It landed with a thud.

She heard another sound. Sniffing the air, she smelled something familiar. She moved steathily towards the kitchen where the sound was coming from, preparing herself to confront the intruder.

By the time she saw him, she had determined who he was by his smell. He smelled of sweat and fear. She stepped into the kitchen and waited.

He had come back. Just as she had.

He emerged from the shadows, his young face covered with a good growth of beard which for a second confused her, making her think that she was seeing Gerald, risen from the grave.

He moved towards her. "Mom?"