Bea was surprised at the tedium of survival. She hadn’t realized how much of her time would be taken up with ensuring they had food and fresh water each day. Then there was all the time waiting for Everley, watching the tree line for movement, hoping her sister would finally break through the branches and leaves. Bea imagined it multiple times a day, like a lovesick teenager. Everley was three years younger than her, enough to be babied and tucked behind Bea’s back for protection as kids facing the world. But then baby Everley grew and became fierce, a might of her own. Everley was the wild firestorm, Bea the calm and steady gentle rain that lets flowers bloom. Bea missed her but also feared what would happen when she once again landed on their doorstep, now that the end of the world had started.
She stood at the sink in her kitchen, watching sunlight play across the soap bubbles on her hands, wisps of green, blue, and purple swirling on the slippery surface. It had been two months since she and Hank took the children out of the city and up into the mountains. She knew it was for the best but she missed her sister furiously since they’d been forced to leave her behind.
Bea was wracked by guilt and in her darkest moments she wondered if it was really for the best. Everley would hate the quiet. No parties, with only each other for company, the children, and a nearly non-existent wine cellar. Last she’d heard was a text from Everley saying she was going to stay with her friend Josh for a few days, she remembered Josh, right? They played with him when they were kids. Then there was nothing and no chance of hearing anything else.
Bea drained the sink, dried her hands on a striped towel and turned back to the quiet cabin. It was small, basic and rudimentary. A realtor would call it charmingly rustic, but it was a safe haven and a lifeline for Bea and her family.
She breathed in the quiet of the cabin. She had a few hours to herself before Hank returned from the creek with the children so they could listen to the afternoon broadcast service together. Listening to it alone made Bea uncomfortable, the Prime Minister’s voice made scratchy over the flimsy, old lines. The local officials intoned reminders to keep safe, the location of open respite centers where they could find medications and food. Listeners were always reminded to lock their doors and travel in groups. Bea and Hank didn’t see anyone up in the mountains, but she wasn’t sure if that was better or not.
At the same time, she glanced out the large bay window across the room, something moved between the trees at the edge of the front yard. Frowning, she stepped closer to the window and realized it was a person using the trees as cover to wind their way toward the cabin. It couldn’t be Everley, she would’ve come directly to the front door. This was a person who didn’t want to be seen.
Bea kept the keyring with the gun cabinet ring on her person since they came up here, determined to never be in a position to risk her life wishing she had it. She unlocked the cabinet, withdrew the shotgun, pocketed extra shells and locked it behind her. She strode to the front door, threw it open with determination, and stood on the front porch, shoulders squared and denim-clad legs spread hip-width apart, the gun aimed into the yard. She stared down the barrel of the shotgun at the man caught in the open between two trees. Aiming at his head, she shouted, “Not another step!” her voice loud and clear.
The man, as far as she could tell, was alone. He held his hands up in the universal sign of surrender but Bea didn’t trust him for a moment. She stood still, her eyes scanning the tree line behind him for anyone else he might have waiting.
“C’mon, Bea,” the man called out, “Help me out here, I’m all by myself, sis.”
“I’m not your sister.”
He took a step closer, a condescending smile spreading across his face and hardening his features. Bea pumped the shotgun, loading the barrel with a shell as a response.
“Don’t be like that, Bea,” he stepped even closer, closing the gap between them.
“She’s not here,” Bea’s voice was cold. She didn’t move or show any emotion, to do so would betray herself and Everley.
“My children are,” he’d been taking slow steps across the yard and now stood almost three meters away from Bea.
“They don’t remember you and they’re better for it, Carl. Leave.” She wished Hank were here. She wished she was the one down at the creek, fishing and skipping rocks into the cool water. She wanted to be anywhere but here, staring down Carl.
“I don’t want to be a bother, but Bea, come on. If I don’t do it now, when is my chance to get to know them?” he asked.
She laughed bitterly at his words but kept the shotgun trained on her former brother-in-law.
“Christ, Bea. It’s the end of the fucking world, let me have my kids.”
“Are you sick?” She asked. He didn’t look sick, but that didn’t mean the sickness wasn’t hiding in him somewhere. She heard on the afternoon broadcast service that people wouldn’t show any signs before they were overcome with flu-like symptoms. Bleeding soon followed. Bea didn’t hear the rest because she’d left Hank to listen to it.
“I don’t think so, I sure hope not,” he chuckled as if it was funny.
She thought about what Hank would do if he were here. She knew he would never send anyone away without a meal and a chance to clean themselves up. Bea closed her eyes for a beat and breathed in to calm her nerves and exhale the anger coursing through her veins. Before, she’d wasted so much time and mental space imagining a scenario like this one, an opportunity to blast away her sister’s ex-husband with impunity. How she had fantasized about the chance to run him over on a dark road with no witnesses. Now he was served to her on a silver platter, and it felt cheap and without any kind of moral merit to shoot him where he stood.
“You can stay in the small barn until Hank is back, I need to talk to him about what we’ll do with you.” she smiled wryly when his face fell in disappointment. “It’s not that bad, there’s plumbing of a sort and you can get cleaned up.”
Finally, Bea lowered the shotgun and clasped it in her right hand, barrel pointed at the ground between them.
“It’s this way,” she nodded toward the other side of the driveway, unused since hardly anyone had a car that worked.
Bea walked a few meters behind and to the right of him, maintaining a safe distance from any germs or if he suddenly pulled a weapon. She hardly trusted him in the old world, and now you couldn’t trust anyone.
“Stop, please,” she stopped him before he got to the door of the barn so she could move ahead of him to open the door. She backed up, pulling open the door as she went and looked him over. His hair was shaggy and grown out towards his collar, he looked sunburnt and hungry but not sick. She motioned for him to go in ahead of her. “You can wash in the back and I’ll drop off some food later. Like I said, once Hank is back, we’ll talk about what to do with you.”
“Uh, what?” he peered into the dark outbuilding, a shaft of light glinting off the pedals of a bicycle, “I’m staying in there? What the fuck, Bea.”
“Yes,” she answered and stared at him evenly, hand on the door handle.
“Bea, I’m family! Let me wait in the house with you and we can catch up. Come on, it’ll be like old times.”
“We’re not family.” Bea’s face was stone. “No one waits in the house, doesn't matter who you are. You’re not tracking god knows what into my house and getting anyone sick. Ok, in you go.”
Old bicycles leaned against the far wall and on the other side, a set of bunk beds covered in clean quilts. There was one window on the back wall to let in light and a door to a small enclosed alcove with an attached shower and composting toilet. Carl stood in the middle of the room, next to the bunk beds and turned in a circle, taking in his surroundings.
“It’s sparse but clean. I think Hank put some of his old spy novels in the basket on the other side of the bed.” Bea moved to shut the door from the outside. “Ok, I’ll see you.”
“Wait! Wait! Wait!” He took a rushed step toward the door.
Bea stopped and stared at him, waiting for him to continue.
“Have you seen other people?” His voice was soft, pretense and manipulation gone from it.
She didn’t answer immediately, considering how much she should let him know. “I like to be prepared. If someone finds us, we have this barn to provide shelter for the night.”
“Just the night?” he asked.
“We don’t have the supplies to support anyone we’re not expecting.”
“Have you used it before?”
“You’re the first,” she whispered.
Carl nodded and backed away from the door, letting her close it. He knew there was only one person she expected or wanted to stay in the cabin. He didn’t know if he was surprised or not to hear the click of a padlock.
Bea spent the rest of the afternoon distracting herself with minor chores. She tended the sourdough starter she’d started years ago as a fun hobby in her and Hank’s cramped university apartment and that was now a cornerstone of their diet. She started a new loaf and thought of the multiple loaves she’d prepared since they moved up to the cabin, the way her niece Charlotte would end up covered in flour each time she came to help in the kitchen, like her mother as a child. Bea pressed a finger into the dough, covering a teardrop that had fallen from her eyes. She didn’t realize she’d started crying.
Bea had already decided Carl had to die and she was going to do it. He could never stay with them, it was a betrayal to Everley, and it didn’t matter if he was a survivor. That didn’t automatically mean he had to keep doing so, he was completely untrustworthy and Bea had no doubt that if she sent him away now, he would always come back. Like a rat, you couldn’t relocate them, you had to get rid of them permanently. She had only to convince Hank.
Later that afternoon, after Hank returned with the kids and they were down for their naps, Bea and Hank talked in the kitchen about their problem in the barn.
“If Everley comes back and finds out he survived because we helped him and now lives here, where she’s supposed to be-”
“If?” asked Hank.
Bea realized what she said and doubled over in grief, like a train slammed into her chest at full force. Only in her darkest moments did she think like that, she certainly never voiced it.
“When,” she whispered as she sank down to her knees, “when Everley comes home to us, he can’t be here. When Everley is here. When she is here,” she repeated in a whisper. “When she is here.”
After a pause, Bea’s quiet voice came from her bent over form, hair shielding her face, “What if she doesn’t find us?”
Hank pulled Bea into his arms. She rarely cried in this way – sobs wracked her body.
Her breathing calmed, but her voice remained a whisper, “I feel like I’m supposed to know, to feel that she is still alive but I don’t know if I do.”
Bea and Hank put on masks and gloves and carried a garbage bag with them out to the barn. A habit they’d held since they were first married and there was a pandemic, they never stopped stocking medical masks and nitrile gloves for the flu season.
“He said he’s not sick, but I don’t believe him,” said Bea, her eyes on the barn. She’d walked by it earlier and heard the outdoor shower running, so at least Carl would smell better.
They stopped in front of the barn and Bea knocked loudly three times with her fist. “Carl!” she shouted, “I’m going to open the door. Hank’s home and he’s with me.”
Bea unlocked the padlock and slowly pulled open the door.
“You locked him in here?” whispered Hank, but she didn’t answer him.
Carl was lying in the bottom bunk, his legs tangled in the bedsheets, and his head tilted back so that his snores were both high-pitched and rumbling.
“Carl!” she shouted again.
“Bea, let him sleep,” Hank placed a hand on her arm. “We can come back.”
Bea stared at Hank, “Since when does he deserve our niceties. Carl! Get up!” She banged on the open door with her fist.
Carl sat up, blinking in confusion, light shining across his face from the open door. He looked sweaty and pale after spending most of the afternoon in bed.
“Hank! Man, it is so good to see you!” He stood up and rushed towards the door to greet Hank, his arms outspread. “Did this one tell you she was going to shoot until she realized it was me?”
Hank held up a hand to stop Carl from coming any closer. “Yeah, I heard you were creeping up on the house, so I think you should consider yourself lucky. How are you feeling?”
Carl ran a hand over his face and into his hair, “Yeah man, I’m fine.”
A phlegmy cough suddenly overtook him, his shoulders shuddering. He leaned out the back door and spat on the ground. “That’s nothing, smokers cough.”
“Like hell it is, you’re fucking sick,” Bea cut him off. “And you still came here.”
“I didn’t,” Carl’s face went slack. “I didn’t know what else to do or where to go. I thought maybe I had a chance to find Everley and see the kids.”
“You might have killed them by coming here actually, so good job.” Bea glared at Carl. She had never hated him as much as she did right then for bringing the sickness with him.
“I knew I should’ve shot you this afternoon,” she muttered.
“Bea,” Hank said quietly, and shook his head.
To Carl, he asked, “How long have you been sick? Do you know when you probably caught it?”
Carl shuffled his feet and sat back down on the bed, his hands clasped between his knees.
“My girlfriend Kelly died, uh, three days ago. We’d caught a ride with a group travelling this way, they had horses and carts and shit. Real wild west stuff, it was cool,” he smiled at the memory. “The family we were riding with got sick first.”
Hank glanced at Bea out of the corner of his eye, but she was staring at Carl and her expression was difficult to read.
“It didn’t seem so bad at first, like a normal cold or something, but then the youngest started bleeding from his eyes and nose, and Kelly said from, uh, other places too. I didn’t see but she helped,” his voice cracked, “she helped take care of the sick ones, she was really good with the kids. They found an abandoned house and left everyone who was sick. Kelly wanted to stay and help.”
“She probably already had it, if she was that close to people,” Hank said quietly.
“After she, uh,” Carl nodded, staring at and beyond the blank space on the wall in front of him, “I realized we were about a day’s walk from you, so I started walking this way. I didn’t mean to bring,” bitter coughing shook his shoulders, cutting off his words.
Bea said nothing and walked away from the barn, leaving the two men to continue their discussion. The children would wake soon from their nap and they needed someone to care for them.
Later that night, as they lay in bed, a lone candle lighting the room with its warm glow, the children asleep in their room, and the house quiet, Hank broke the cloud of silence they’d been in the during the day: “I’ll dig a grave tomorrow, we’re going to need it pretty soon. Carl didn’t say much except it didn’t take long for the others at that house.”
Bea nodded, her hands folded on top of the blanket she lay under. Hank lay beside her in bed.
“I told him we’ll bring some supplies in the morning so he can sit in front of the barn during the day, if he feels up to it.”
Bea sighed and closed her eyes rather than let Hank see her roll her eyes.
“I think he should meet the kids, Bea,” Hank said quietly.
“Are you fucking kidding me?” She enunciated each word into its own furious sentence.
“He’ll be dead in a few days. How do we explain to them that he was here and they didn’t meet him? Jonas knows we’re not his parents but he knows his mom, he’s going to start to wonder about his dad.”
“It’s too dangerous,” her voice firm.
“We’ll do it in the yard, wear masks and keep them far apart. It’ll take minutes,” Hank reached out and took Bea’s hand. “Jonas and Charlotte will want to go play before you know it,” he continued.
“Christ, Hank. Do you know what he put Everley through?” Bea asked and pulled her hand out his warm grasp.
“I was there,” Hank looked down. “What do you think Everley would say? Now, how things are, not six months ago, what would she say?”
Throwing her hands up in the air, Bea swore a few choice words and turned over in bed, her back to Hank. “Dig his grave tomorrow, I’ll introduce the children.”
She said nothing further and Hank blew out the candle, extinguishing the only light in their small room.
The next day, Bea dressed Charlotte and Jonas in clothes they could wear outside to tumble and play in the grass and she could easily wash by hand in the basin. She carefully looped a mask over Jonas’ ears and fixed it over his nose and mouth. Charlotte, at three years old, was too young to keep from fidgeting and pulling hers off.
“Now remember what I said, we’re not going to shake hands or get close to the man we’re going to meet.” Bea knelt in front of Jonas and buttoned his sweater. “His name is Carl and he was a friend of Mommy’s and he … never mind. Just be nice and polite, like she would want you to be.”
“Yes, Auntie Bea,” he replied.
Bea stood and put on her own mask and took the children to meet their father.
“Uncle Hank said I could give him a fist bump,” Jonas said suddenly.
Her hand on the doorknob, Bea paused and turned to her nephew, “Did he now? That’s fine, sweetheart, but then you have to step back, ok?”
“Yes, Auntie Bea,” the little boy replied seriously.
Hank left early that morning after he made his own breakfast. He knew the perfect spot for the grave, he’d told Bea. While she sipped her coffee and tried to ignore the details, Hank explained his reasoning for its placement, away from the water and in an easy to dig area. He didn’t tell Bea, but it also had a decent view of the valley below and he thought Carl would like it.
Later that afternoon, after the children had spent the morning running in the yard, tumbling and showing off for their new friend Carl, and after Bea had fed them lunch and settled them down for a nap, she headed back out to the small barn to see Carl.
“The kids liked you,” Bea said as a greeting. She stood a few meters away from him, a six pack of beer in her hand at her side, a lawn chair tucked under her other arm.
“I figure you might want a beer before dinner,” she held up the six pack. “Hank should be back soon.”
Carl sat deep in the lawn chair Hank had brought him that morning. He was pale with deep, dark circles gouged under his eyes and he looked gaunt. “Sure, Bea. That would be nice.”
She set up her chair then took a bottle out of the box, left the rest of the case where she’d been standing and handed him the bottle. He noticed she was wearing medical gloves. Bea stepped back and settled in her own chair.
“Cheers,” she held up her bottle towards him.
They sat in silence, drinking their beers while the late afternoon sun traced its mark across the grass and butterflies danced for pollen.
“I want you to shoot me before it gets real bad, Bea,” Carl said, his voice scratchy and ragged.
“Christ,” she muttered under her breath. “Is that why you came here, to have someone else take care of your death?” Bea shook her head, “A coward to the end, aren’t you.”
“It’s not like that. The kids won’t see me get real sick and cleaning up my body will be easier. We can do it at the grave Hank dug today,” said Carl.
She took a sip of her beer, draining the last of it and cracked open another. She leaned forward to pass him another bottle.
“I don’t know how you’d clean that room if I died in it,” he paused. “Or, what you’d do about, uh, me,” he looked away, embarrassed at the thought of her washing his body. “Think about it, Bea.”
Bea tilted her head back and watched clouds slowly pass over the gentle blue of the sky. She felt strangely calm in the quiet. She could have stayed like this for hours, making drawings out of the clouds and feeling nothing. She thought about the first time Everley brought him over for dinner and he shook Hank’s hand and shyly handed her flowers. She thought about the first time Everley called her crying, bruises and lumps disfiguring her pretty face. She thought about Jonas as a baby and the way Everley and Carl carefully tended him and swooned over his every move. She thought about what was left of the valley below and the people they left behind.
“Bea?”
“Yes, Carl?”
“Will you do it?”
“Yes, Carl.”
The two of them sat like that, drinking beer and watching clouds until Hank came out of the woods, shovel in hand and dirt on his face.