It’s been a couple days since May showed up on my doorstep. The first night she had stayed I had heard her yelling my name in fear. I remember rolling out of bed and running to the intercom. If anything happened to her it would be my fault.

She had had a nightmare. I sat at the screens and hummed her a lullaby until she could fall asleep again. Then I moved my bed into the lab so I could more quickly respond. She woke me up the next morning singing some little song she was probably making on the fly.

Now I get up and hit the intercom to say, “Good morning, May. You sleep okay?”

She starts coughing again but pulls herself up to the intercom and responds, “Ok. I’m cold.”

I rub my face and the back of my neck, trying to ignore what she said. Of course she’s cold, but at least she has food. Right? I see her pull some of that dried meat out and start to chew. She has some cans in there too, doesn’t she have a can opener?

“Well, I have to get to maintenance. I’ll be back real quick. Ok?”

She mumbles, “Ok.”

I sigh and set about my chores. Everything is fine, as usual. The whole time I’m working she’s all I can think about. Maybe if I just let her into the airlock? It’ll be warmer, at least. I can give her things if I’m careful.

But no, I can’t do that. Obviously if I open my door while she’s IN the airlock whatever she’s carrying will just worm it’s way inside and I could be dead within a week. But maybe that’s ok. Doesn’t she deserve this place more than me?

I’m manning the air pump when I lose it. I dash my toolbox across the floor and slump to the ground. I can’t just LEAVE her out there. Shit. Maybe I can seal off an area of the bunker. I could make her up one of the spare rooms, there are enough. As long as I close the room’s vent off it’ll only exchange air with the outside, through the filters, and not contaminate the rest of the bunker.

It’ll have to work. I’m starting to feel pretty good about the idea when I take a seat at the monitors. It occurs to me that she hasn’t asked me once if she could come in. Although it’s only been a couple days, maybe she’s too polite. Heh. Who’d have thought the last kid on Earth would be a sweet one?

I’m about to hit the intercom when I spot some movement on the other camera feed.

Two men are stomping through the mud. They look starved and ragged. I remember what May had said about her parents. Could these be the ones that did the deed? Were things so bad out there hunting children was a valid preoccupation? Maybe it was the bag she was dragging around. I can’t imagine what food is worth.

Ok…so no time for my original plan. I have to save May. Which means I either let her in now or head out there and kill them both. It’s a good thing I’ve been taking care of my pistol.

It’s been four days. Four days and the girl keeps coming back. Matted blonde hair tied back into pigtails. Wearing tattered clothes stitched together with fishing line and shoelaces. She can’t be older than eight or nine.

She just stands or sits in front of the front hatch camera. Sometimes she waves. Does she know I’m here? She’s dirty but not starved. She is skinny, very skinny, but not on the verge of death. How can she be out there?

After the plague? After everything that’s gone on out there? How could she be alive without any protective gear? How can she even EXIST?

She has to be a hallucination. I’ve already started hearing things. This has got to be the seclusion and depression setting in. There’s just no way she’s real. She can’t be real.

Can she?

She moves closer to the door and I bolt upright. I can’t see her anyway. She’s too small for the camera that close to the hatch door. I almost get up and run to the front door. I just want to see her for real.

The intercom buzzes with her little voice, “Hello?”

It’s distorted and cracked but it’s her. Or is it? I just can’t tell. Is this just more madness seeping forth? My hands are trembling as they reach for the button. I know I shouldn’t say anything. If she’s just a delusion I can’t give into it, no matter how tempting.

But what if she IS real? I can’t just let her rot out there.

I can barely manage a whisper, “H-hi there.”

She leaps back from my response and stares at the camera in surprise and fear. Then she smiles. A little girl smile. She claps her hands together excitedly and runs off.

“Wait! Don’t go! Don’t…” I shout into the intercom. But she’s already gone. I can’t spot her on any of the other cameras. I sit back and sigh, running my hand down my face. Should I go out after her? I have a chemical suit and as long as I cycle the airlock coming and going I should be fine.

Shit. If she’s a carrier I can’t just BRING her in here. Could she be immune? I certainly don’t know how to test for it or treat it. I can clean a bullet wound well enough, sure. But blood work and medicine and all that crap? Shit.

She can’t be here alone. There’s just no way. If she brings her family back they’ll ALL want in. I can’t just throw them some food like they were ducks and tell them to go.

Although it’s not like they can force their way in. I’m not sure if I could stand by and watch people starve to death on my front porch. I never liked killing people. It’s why I preferred to work with machines. Make the guns work so someone else can fire them.

It’s a couple hours before she’s back. She’s dragging a bag with her. It’s a big duffel bag. It looks like it takes all her strength just to move it. No wonder it took her so long to return. She plops it down by the front hatch where its dry.

The way the front hatch is built there’s a long overhang and a lip at the end on the top and bottom. It works great for backing trucks in. Throw up an air-tight seal and you’re good to go for transporting goods or passengers. She starts pulling stuff out of the bag.

Blankets and some food. I use the term “food” loosely. Canned stuff and maybe some dried meat. I don’t want to know what kind of meat it is. It looks like she has a tent too, but she doesn’t bother trying to set it up.

She hops over to the intercom and says, “Hi again. My name is May. Can I stay here?”

I nearly fall out of my chair grabbing at the microphone, “Yeah, yeah! That’s cool. Go ahead.”

She responds through the electric crackle, “What’s your name?”

“Uh, Jack. My name’s Jack,” I say, trying to remember how to talk to another living being. “What are you doing all alone, May? Where’s your mom or dad?”

She’s quick to respond and I find it a little disturbing, “They’re dead.”

I don’t know why I asked that. The answer was pretty obvious. Lousy conversation starter. She steps away from the intercom and sits in her pile of dirty blankets. After a moment of thought she pulls a piece of jerky out and starts to chew on it.

I really hope that’s animal jerky.

She pulls what looks like a water damaged story book out of her pack and flips through the pages. Then she sighs and puts it down. Even from the camera feed I can tell it’s beyond readable. May hops up and goes to the intercom.

“Mr. Jack? I’m getting sleepy, can you read me a story?” she asks, as innocent as a sunrise. “My Papa used to when I couldn’t sleep.”

I’m not sure if she was starting to cry, but I know I was having a hard time not losing it. Fuck. I want to let her in so badly. She doesn’t deserve this. If anyone should be safe in here it’s May. But if I open that door and let her in it could kill me.

I hit the button and speak into the intercom, “Yeah, May. I can tell you a story.”

God help me.

I came to consciousness in a clinic room, naked from the waist up, but bandaged better than I had been. A doctor was cleaning up, I gather having just finished on me. To others were in the room, watching too intently at me. From the looks of them, they should have been on leashes, or at least neutered. Then I’d have felt safe. I reached for my clothes, but the doctor turned. He wore glasses with a cracked lens in a gold frame that had been bent and straightened often enough they would never be called straight again.

They looked like typical navy boys, lean and muscled, maybe a little more muscled than before, Navy crew cuts and harshly angular faces. They stood six feet tall like a matched pair, and wore uniforms that were perfectly creased but bore the stains of years of use. One had a large radial scar along the side of his head, patches where the hair wasn’t growing. I could tell he didn’t mind seeing me like this, a little smirk on his face. The other wasn’t much better, had the deepest blue eyes I’ve ever seen, and somehow they made him menacing, like a blind fighter.

“Here, let me get that,” the doc smiled. It was almost gentlemanly, if that exists anymore. Clean cut gray hair, not a crew like the others, soft features and a light build.

“Is there a curtain or something?” I asked.

“Oh, they’re here to guard you.” He must have picked up my look of confusion. “Oh, not from me. From anything. Anything that may happen. New woman on base, you never know what may happen.”

“Then shouldn’t they be looking out to the hall?”

“They’re also witnesses. Base commander will have no further mishaps regarding you or the tidewater delegation.”

I pulled on my top with a bared teeth scowl, making it clear that whatever the base commander wouldn’t allow, there are things I wouldn’t allow either.

“When can I go? And where are the others?”

“They are waiting for us to finish. Base Commander is busy today, but is making some time for them.”

“Take me to them.” I sat bolt upright, painfully fast, and began to grab the last of my things. The guards still stared at me. I’d put on a top, pulled on my vest, but to them I’d never have any clothes on again. Couldn’t do much about it until I got rid of them, presumably when I got back with Oleg and the others. Assholes.

“Don’t you want to see your x-ray?”

I stopped dead in my thought there. X-Ray? How do you do x-rays in these days, and that’s when it hit me. There were lights on overhead. And a fan going in the corner. It wasn’t air conditioning, but it was better than suffering through it.

“Where are you getting your power?”

He smiled at me, but picked up my x-rays anyways.

“It’s one rib, bullet must have hit you directly on it, and hard, too.”

“It was a rifle, 30 odd 6 maybe.”

“Maybe. It did enough damage. Be thankful you had that vest on. Who did it?”

“They don’t know. Come on, tell me where you get your power.”

“If the Base Commander wants you to know he’ll tell you.”

I figured that was the end of that subject. He held the x-rays up to the lights. Yep. Broken. No doubt.

“That was a kill shot. Dead on your heart. Even with the vest, broken rib could have punctured something, internal bleeding might have done you in. You’re lucky I don’t see any evidence of it.”

“Ok. Great, let’s go back to Oleg.”

“You really should take it easy.”

I snatched the x-rays out of his hands and pointed to two lumps on my right side.

“Training accident, took a good kick to the sides, was back in the ring in two days. And here,” I pointed to another on my left side. “Bastard got a lucky shot in with the butt of a combat knife while on break and traveling through a bad neighborhood. I broke both his arms and left him. Can we go now?”

I walked out on him, leaving him to catch up.

He directed me to where Oleg and the others were waiting. And this is where we wait.

--
Lori Kim is written by Bryan Lee Peterson.

We left the Phoenix area several weeks ago and traveling has been tough, especially with my elderly mother, but we made it to Montezuma’s Castle. I hadn’t been there since I was a kid.

People took refuge in the ruins, damaging them I’m certain, but how does one tell in such an ancient place? My small group set up camp in the nearby trees. Shelter was shelter in this new era and there’s a river close by offering clean water and fresh fish to those who were willing to work for it and help out in this small community.

It pained me to see the ruins being damaged, but reminded me of a time long before the modern world. It’s so strange to watch the world revert back to that time . . . with exception to the few cell phones and laptops around here. They weren’t really being used much to conserve battery life, but a few of us had them in case of an emergency, and this was how I’d get news out. I was honestly surprised the internet still worked, but I supposed as long as there’s power on somewhere to run a server or two, and satellites still hung in the sky, cyberspace still existed.

The people around here were living off whatever they’d brought with them, which consisted of a lot of junk food, and not one in the group was any good at hunting aside from catching a rabbit or squirrel. That didn’t feed too many people and this group wasn’t small. A large man named Zeke was the leader. He’s kind of scary-looking, but he’s a big teddy bear. Once Zeke learned that Daniel and I knew how to hunt, that became our job. If it kept me from scrubbing laundry and dishes, I was game. We hunted in the early mornings after our run toward the sunrise—me with my rifle and Daniel with his bow.

We’d hunt at night as well. Coyote was best to hunt at night. We headed out together then because there were other things lurking in the darkness. During last night’s hunt, we’d tracked a coyote down into a wash. They were extremely quiet and cautious animals, so tracking one wasn’t easy, but Daniel and I figured tracking a coyote would lead to a whole pack, and coyotes were scavengers. Not that I wanted to eat whatever they’d found or killed. They made different sounds for each, though. When they killed, the yips and howls sounded like an angry pack of hyenas, not like the coyotes near the Phoenix area. Those were more like desert wolves and howled more than anything. We were able to kill a few of them. Their pelts would help keep us warm come winter, since we’ll be heading north.

This morning while Daniel and I were out on a hunt, we stumbled upon a small doe. Daniel damn near scared it away with his excitement. We hadn’t seen game like that in some time, long before the world dipped into chaos and cataclysm.

I stood on his left and leaned in to whisper. “Make sure you actually hit it.” I was only teasing him, of course. Daniel’s an amazing hunter.

“Shh.” He was a perfect statue, keeping his aim steady, watching the doe for a good long time before letting the arrow fly. It pierced her eye and she dropped.

“Holy hell, that was a good shot!” I almost dropped my rifle.

Daniel turned to me. “Yeah, even though someone doesn’t know how to stay quiet during a hunt. No wonder you need the damn gun. You couldn’t stand the torture of silence for long.”

“Oh, shut up and go get her.”

He smiled and wandered toward his prey that lay about thirty yards from us. “You’re lucky she didn’t hear you or I’d be putting that arrow in your ass.”

I heard gunshot in the distance, to the east. “You hear that?” I shouted to him.

He waved a hand in acknowledgement. He’d heard it, but wasn’t concerned at this time. Maybe it was just another group out hunting. If that was the case, Daniel and I would need to be more careful on future hunts, or find another spot.

I walked over to him and the doe as he pulled the arrow from her and cleaned it.

He turned to me. “She’s gonna be heavy. See if you can find a log or something we can tie her to and carry her back to camp.”

I nodded and turned away. Scanning the area, I decided it was best to head down near the river. Trees grow along a water source, so that would be the best place to find what I needed.

Not sure how long I’d wandered around, I finally found a piece long and sturdy enough to carry the doe. As I picked it up and started to drag it back, I heard voices on the other side of the river beyond the trees and ducked down.

Three men appeared out of the brush and headed for the river as I watched from my canopy of tree branches and bushes. Daniel and I were pretty far from our camp, which was why we needed the log to carry the doe back. At least it wasn’t an elk. Those things were huge.

I couldn’t understand their words as they cleaned up in the river, but I could see what they washed from their hands—blood. I could only hope it was from an animal. Before leaving the Phoenix area, Daniel and I had to fight off a small group trying to steal our supplies, so I didn’t trust anyone easily . . . especially if they were armed and covered in blood.

We’d run into some real nice people too, such as those in this community, but I’d heard stories of the unsavory kind of folk you only saw in movies. The kind like those we fought off several weeks ago. Not looking forward to that again. I guess an end of the world type of situation would test what kind of person you truly were, wouldn’t it?

So far, I was pretty damn proud of who I was and who my family was.

I looked back along the path to see if I could escape without being noticed. The possibility existed, so I secured my rifle on my back and picked up one end of the log that was about three inches in diameter. Very quietly, I made my way up the path, looking back now and then to see if they noticed me. They hadn’t.

When I made it back to Daniel, I huffed and caught my breath before speaking. I’d moved quickly through the woods.

“We need to get out of here,” I said, and told him about the men.

Daniel worked fast securing the doe to the log. Once she was ready, he pointed me to one end.

“Grab it and let’s go.”

I lifted the log at the same time he did, and we marched back toward our camp.

“Jesus, could this thing be any heavier?”

“Wuss,” he replied from the front and continued walking. “Keep up.”

“I’m trying.” I had my end resting on my right shoulder. “Boy, they’ll be happy when they see this. It’ll feed the whole camp.”

“I know, right?” He looked up through the trees. “C’mon, there’s a storm coming in.”

My eyes peered through the tree canopy above us. “How do you do that? All I see is blue.”

“It’s a gift,” he said. “Besides, I can smell the moisture in the air.”

In my nervousness about the men I’d seen at the river’s edge, I kept looking behind us to make sure no one followed. The feeling just wouldn’t go away.

Once my mother could travel again, we were heading up to Montezuma’s Well. That’s the source of the river from an underground spring several miles up the mountain and I’d be able to find specific medicinal plants around there that mom needed. While she didn’t have the WNV strain that afflicted most of the Valley of the Sun, she definitely wasn’t doing well and I needed to figure out how to treat her.

Eventually, we’d make it home, to our Navajo Nation. Then maybe on to Canada, which was where everyone else was heading. I just didn’t want to sit in this place too much longer.