I remember driving. The sound of my mother’s laughter. I remember the smell of my favorite restaurant, down the block from our apartment. I remember the city in December, illuminated and hopeful with thousands of little white lights. I remember freedom, racing down the highway with the windows open and the radio on. I remember when snow meant snow days and skiing, the threat of freezing never present. I remember high school, complaining about homework. I remember darkened movie theatres, staring up at a larger-than-life screen. I remember television and books and music, tabloids with the faces of celebrities splashed across the cover. I remember Claudia’s graduation, the white dress she wore and how proud she was to give the Valedictorian speech. I remember sitting in the audience and watching her, my sister, speak. I remember Mother crying when Claudia drove away to college. I remember how empty the house felt and how excited I was whenever she’d come back to visit. I remember fighting with my mom when she wouldn’t let me stay out late, wouldn’t let me go on a road trip with friends even though we were practically eighteen. I remember rolling my eyes when my mother told me the world was a dangerous place, that a girl could get hurt on her own. I remember Easter morning and the taste of coffee. I remember train rides and plane rides and crowded beaches with white sand and blue waves. I remember birthday celebrations and the comfort of knowing I’d always have a home to go to, the comfort of never having to worry about food or money. I remember when I had no idea how much we take for granted.


It’s been ninety days since Mother died, ninety days since Claudia and I abandoned our city, setting off alone. We sold the car, Claudia pocketing the small sum of money we received. It’s illegal to own any form of transportation now. Wheels and engines quicken the spread of disease, bring us ever closer to the increasingly inevitable end of the world. We’re left to walk, hiking along the maze of streets and highways that once carried millions of cars. Claudia keeps track of the days that have passed, keeps track of the months. It gives her a sense of power, a sense of control to know where we stand in time, to know how long we have survived. Soon winter will come and scholars speculate it will be the end. The cold will drive people indoors, bring too many people too close together and the already staggeringly high death rates will rise, rise until there is no one left. All of humanity wiped out by a disease we invented, the undefeatable virus scientists created and never meant to release.

Everyone who is fit to travel is leaving the north, an exodus of people racing against time, against the seasons and the fast approaching cold. It’s not safe to stay inside anymore, not safe to gather in groups larger than two or three. The more people present, the greater the chance of infection, and with infection comes certain death. Years ago, when the sickness was just beginning, doctors worked tirelessly in their labs, ceaselessly attempting to find a non-existent cure. But there is a limit to all selflessness, a moment when self-preservation kicks in, and the labs now stand empty, the doctors fleeing with the rest of us. Some argue it is useless, refuse to abandon the city where they once were happy, preferring instead to welcome death, welcome mortality as the only way to escape the fear and sickness that has gripped our world. Before she died, Mother shook her head at that, said they were simply too scared to try to live. You must learn to adapt, Mother had said again and again. You must learn to survive.



I woke this morning with a cough. All morning I’ve been coughing. My throat feels dry and I can barely speak. My hands shake as I try to write. The nights are coming earlier and earlier each day and we can all feel the cold. Claudia shivers next to me in her thin autumn jacket but she won’t stop to light a fire. We’ve got to keep moving, keep heading south. Winter is coming. Every so often we pass someone else on the roads, but we never stop, and barely acknowledge one another. There’s no way to tell who’s infected until it’s too late. Whenever I cough anyone near me moves as far away as they can, but hardly any of us are completely healthy anymore. We’re all too thin, too sad, too scared.

We pass a man stumbling along the path, his hands waving in the air as he speaks loudly to the nearly empty road. His voice breaks the tense silence, loud and booming over the usual whispers Claudia and I share. In his hand he clutches piles and piles of pamphlets, handwritten on old folded up receipts and recycled paper. It’s hard to find anything new now as all the factories have shut down. Nothing’s made anymore, money has no value. What’s the point of money if it can’t buy survival? All of the comforts we were used to are useless in the face of the disease. He comes closer to us now, and I can hear what he’s saying, yelling about Jesus and God and the disease as a pestilence sent to wipe sinners from the Earth. His eyes are wide and frantic, his arms waving in the cold air. He shoves a pamphlet into my hands, full of warnings of the approaching judgment day.


We only stop walking when it’s too dark to carry on, too dark to see our feet in front of us. In the beginning, we had flashlights and candles, but batteries and matches are hard to come by now and waving a bright light around is asking for trouble. There’s nothing desperate people won’t do, nothing anyone won’t do to help themselves survive. Mother told us that on her sickbed, her voice scratchy and weak and her eyes half-closed, her body too thin and her face sunken in. There’s nothing desperate people won’t do, and we’re all desperate now. Claudia only stops to make a fire when we’re as far from the road as we dare travel. It’s a risk and fires are difficult to start without matches, but the nights are so cold we would not last without it. Once the fire begins to blaze I toss the pamphlet into the flames, watch it as the heat consumes it. It burns faster than the wood, curling up into ash.

This is no biblical disease, no punishment sent from a wrathful god. It was created in labs, created by scientists with white lab coats and goggles. If they could create a invulnerable disease, surely they could then find ways to make humankind invincible? No one knows how the disease was released, how it escaped the laboratories where it was created. Perhaps no container can contain an unstoppable germ. Perhaps it was a careless mistake. In the beginning, everyone had a theory as to how the disease was released. But that was months ago, before we realized the extent of the disease, before we realized how powerless we were to stop what we had created. A disease that kills everything, plants and animals, any organism in its path. A disease we bear a certain responsibility for. Humankind, always unable to accept our limitations, always looking to create more and more and more.


I’m getting sicker now. Each day I’m able to travel a shorter distance, my breath coming in short gasps before we’ve even traveled a mile. The cough is getting worse and I know Claudia is worried. She’s still healthy, still able to travel, but she refuses to leave me. At the rate we’re moving, we’ll never escape the winter. Occasionally we pass houses, abandoned and ghostly but still warmer than the outside, still so much more inviting. Going inside is dangerous. The sickness can cling to sheets, hang in stale air for months. Some days the temptation to go inside is nearly impossible to resist. I can imagine myself curling up in someone else’s abandoned bed, letting the disease overtake me like all those people who refused to desert their childhood homes. You must learn to adapt, Mother’s voice repeats in my mind like a mantra. You must learn to survive.
But how can I adapt to a desperate world, a world that’s given up hope? If I survive this disease, what is there left for me? A ghost town of a planet, empty villages filled with memories and voices long since departed. A world full of fear and sadness, each survivor lonely and locked in their own past, locked with their own ghosts. My feet are blistered from the journey, but I barely feel them anymore, cold from the winter. Once, years ago, winter was my favorite season. Years ago I thought snow to be beautiful. I’d pray for snow each night, wish for a snow day. But that time is long since gone, another thing the disease has slaughtered. I close my eyes now and I imagine I’m inside, four walls to keep out the cold. I would do anything to keep out the cold. I imagine a bed made of something other than leaves, a soft pillow on which to rest my head. Claudia walks ahead of me, her head lowered and determined. I know she’ll make it through, know she’ll survive somehow. She was always good at that, always good at surviving. But I’ve made my decision. She’ll reach the south and I won’t be there to keep her from safety, won’t be there to slow her down. The end of the world is approaching. The end of the world is near, and each day I’m getting sicker.

I wait until night falls and Claudia drifts to sleep before setting off alone. I don’t bring a backpack or food. Nothing I bring will keep me alive, nothing will do more than put off the inevitable. I stumble blindly through the woods, cracking branches and tripping over tree roots. It’s too dark to see anything, but I know the general direction of the road and I know we were not far. I force myself to focus on the feel of the cold air, the way my knees sting from each fall, so I won’t think about the decision I’ve made. It’s too late to go back now, too late to hope again.
At every turn I imagine faces, shadowy forms, ghostly hands. I don’t know if it’s the disease finally taking control of my mind, or just normal fear, innate dread of the woods and the dark and the uncertainty. I smell food behind me, fresh coffee and croissants, and I turn around, ready to fight my way back. A sharp branch snags my hair, pulls me back into the present. I turn around. I imagine fire, roaring, out of control. I imagine the crackling sound, the heat. I imagine stepping into the flames, more warmth than I have ever known.
I find the road more quickly than I expected, stumbling out of the forest onto the dark, abandoned pavement. I can make out a house a little ways ahead of me and I start towards it with quick steps, more determined than I’ve been in days. I remember passing the house in the daylight, remember the front porch and the light blue shutters. If you squinted a bit, ignored lightless windows and peeling paint, it almost looked the way it was supposed to, almost looked as though it hadn’t been left behind.
The porch creaks as I walk up the steps, the sound magnified in the silence of the night, but the front door opens easily. There’s no point in locking the door of a house you’ll never see again, I suppose. Inside, the house is incredibly still. I wander from room to room, brushing dust off of table tops and pushing spider webs out of door ways. In the moonlight, each room looks like a stage set, furniture perfectly placed for a performance of my old life, a performance of a life that will never be real again.
I find a bedroom on the second floor, soft and welcoming in a way nothing has been for months. Lying on the soft mattress feels better than I remembered, the luxurious comfort overwhelming. I close my eyes and try not to think of what my mother would say if she could see me now. I hope she would understand. Soon Claudia will wake up. I know she’ll look for me and I know she’ll cry when she finds I am gone, but I also know she’ll continue on. Of the two of us, she was always the one to persevere when everyone else had given up. Of the two of us, she’ll be the one to survive.
I know when I fall asleep tonight I won’t wake up again. I’ve given up now, alone with no one else to live for. I’ve given up, and finally, I can sleep.

I remember music. I remember dances and dresses and heels. I remember planning my life, visiting colleges. I remember restaurants, serving sizes so large there was always food left over. I remember how I used to complain about appointments at the doctor’s office, getting my yearly shots. I remember fighting with Claudia, before she was all I had left. I remember the smell of cinnamon and the cookies we used to bake, the scent filling the house. I remember Thanksgiving and family reunions and trips to cities I’d never seen before. I remember coming home to our apartment, sleeping in my bed without worrying whether or not I’d wake up the next morning. I remember the excitement of the last day of school and lying by the ocean, waves roaring in the background. I remember the feel of the sun beating down over me and the way I always ignored my mother when she told me to put on sunscreen. I remember magazines and pulling out posters of celebrities I loved. I remember the taste of popcorn and how overpriced movie theatre food always was. I remember ice skating and skiing and falling in the snow, only to come in to warm mugs of hot chocolate in the winter time. I remember how much I wished I were older, how desperate I was to grow up. I remember months ago, when we all felt as thought we’d live forever.