CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Maeve wakes me up at the crack of dawn, shaking my good shoulder gently enough to avoid causing shock waves of pain. It’s days like these when I realize I used to take Tylenol for granted. When I open my eyes, she’s standing over me. Her hair is pulled back into a single braid, showing off the shaved half of her head. She looks like a punk-rock Katniss Everdeen. My eyes dart back down toward her jacket, a Fiona Apple Makes Me Feel Things! patch colorful against a wall of black.
I sit up before she has a chance to say anything. “So you listen to Fiona Apple?” I ask.
Maeve sighs. “Liz—” She pauses. “What exactly is your last name?”
“That seems like private information,” I grumble, still groggy from my rude awakening. Still, I offer it to her. “Flannery.”
Maeve clears her throat and tries again. “Liz Flannery, are you judging me?”
“Maybe,” I mutter. “I need to get it out of my system. I haven’t been able to judge someone in a while.”
She shakes her head in response. “You could have judged one of your precious customers, but you didn’t. You saved this animosity for me.”
There’s a pause as we stare at each other, wondering what could have filled us with such sarcastically argumentative energy this early in the morning.
Maeve exhales as she eases down to a sitting position beside the mattress. I wiggle out from under the comforter to sit beside her as she turns to face me. “Yes, I do listen to Fiona Apple. What about it?”
“It just doesn’t seem like something you’d be into. You give off more of a punk-rocker vibe.” I gesture wildly to her combat boots and shaved head.
“And you don’t seem like someone who’d be into sticking her hand into generators, but here we are.”
“Hey!” I say, cheeks burning red. “That was a low blow.”
I slowly make my way into the kitchen, pausing at the door. My arm still throbs and aches, but I’ve already started to get used to the feeling. The ache I now carry with me. A pain that never ebbs. I’m fishing through the cabinets with my good arm, looking for something to eat, when I notice an object out of the corner of my eye.
A backpack sits, fully packed, next to the front door, various supplies from Maeve’s cart piled on top of it. She’s ready to go.
Maeve is leaving me.
I don’t know what to say. I don’t know what to do to avoid the acidic bile rising in my throat. I’m not even sure why I’m shocked. I wanted her to leave, right? This was only temporary, anyway. I should be happy that I won’t have to see her smug face every morning, won’t have to deal with her sarcastic comments. But I’m not. All I can think about is how I don’t want her to leave. How I don’t know how to get Maeve to stay.
It’s like Eva all over again. I didn’t realize Eva was leaving until I saw the pile she’d made of her belongings in the corner of the apartment. It was well hidden, tucked behind the desk so that it wasn’t visible from where I slept. I had no reason to go over there. No reason to be looking for it, and if I did find it, I guess she assumed I’d think it was junk. But I didn’t. I noticed the way she had sorted her clothes, and the way she’d stacked the best copies of her favorite books. That wasn’t junk.
I waited for Eva to tell me. I waited and tried to convince myself that I was making things up. Of course she wouldn’t leave. She certainly wouldn’t try to hide it from me. But the pile kept growing. It kept growing until one day it disappeared. Two months after The Storm, she was gone.
Eva told me as she was leaving. She wasn’t going to, but I caught her sneaking out. She said she couldn’t stand the monotony any longer. She couldn’t sit around waiting for her life to change in some dusty old bookstore. She wanted adventure. She wanted freedom and exploration. And those were all things she couldn’t find with me, I guess.
It didn’t feel like a breakup; it felt like she’d died. It felt like an apocalypse all over again. Eva had appeared when I needed a family most, and I wasn’t enough for her. As I watched her disappear down the road, I cried, and then I went back to work.
This bag sitting by the door is déjà vu. It matches perfectly. Early in the morning, not telling me until she has to. Time is so cyclical in that way, always looping in on itself until the past is indistinguishable from the present.
A part of me hates that I’m upset. Hates that Maeve’s leaving feels like I’m losing someone who is important. In the grand scheme of things, a few days is nothing, but right now, Maeve is the closest thing I’ve had to a friend in a long time.
“When I said you could leave, it didn’t mean that I wanted you to leave.” The statement leaves a chalky taste in my mouth.
“What?” Maeve says, moving forward and maneuvering around the mattress on the floor.
“I just don’t want you to think that I don’t want you here.” I flounder for a second, unable to understand my own emotions. “I would have probably bled out without you. Or maybe died of an infection. You saved my life.”
Maeve rolls her eyes as she continues to move toward me. “Liz, I appreciate the flattery, but I’m not going anywhere.”
“But the—” My hand gestures limply toward the packed bag by the door.
“I’m going out to get some food and supplies so we don’t starve, if that’s okay with you. I checked on the water this morning, and it seems like it’s a problem with the piping, which is fixable. But it’ll be a while before it’s gushing, you know? I figured that it might be better to err on the side of caution and have…” Maeve continues talking about water and spigots, but I’m not listening.
All the air rushes from my lungs, and I feel like a puddle. I’m overcome with a strange feeling. Relief. If our future alien overlords were here, they’d say 
, which roughly translates to Get a grip, for goodness’ sake.
All I can manage to say is: “I thought you were leaving.”
“You can’t get rid of me that easily.” Before I can react she reaches out and squeezes my hand, the good one. Her fingers hesitate slightly on mine, and I feel a momentary jolt of electricity before she quickly pulls away. As she pushes past me in the doorframe to pick up her bag, she turns. “You’re coming with me, right? I don’t think it’s a good idea to leave you here alone with your arm like that.”
I laugh, the sound bursting out of me. “Absolutely not.”
“What do you mean, absolutely not?”
“I haven’t left the bookstore in a year. Not since the—”
“What?” Maeve interrupts. “Like you’ve never left the building? For anything at all? Ever?”
I didn’t think the idea was so ridiculous. In all my favorite postapocalyptic TV shows, the main characters built a safe home base and stayed put. There’s a sense of comfort and protection that comes with having a place you can call home. “Why should I?” I reply. “It’s safer here, and god forbid anything happens to this place while I’m gone.”
Maeve pauses, as if she’s judging the validity of my response. She squints her eyes. “But what about getting supplies? What about finding food to eat?”
“People will trade me the things I need for their books, and for sending letters. When I arrived, there were some supplies already here. Brought some stuff from home as well. Built up a bit of a stockpile. The rest has sort of just figured itself out.”
“But what if it doesn’t?”
“But it does?”
Maeve groans. “Would you leave for one day?” she asks.
I haven’t even thought about leaving in god knows how long. This place is home. It is the only place left on Earth where, when I’m inside, I feel safe. This relic of a building that holds hundreds of stories, both fictional and real. It’s important. More important than I am, that’s for sure.
“But what if something happens?”
“Nothing’s going to happen in one day,” she says, rolling her eyes.
Even though every part of me is telling me not to, and that this is a stupid decision, I can’t help myself. I want to see the world the way Maeve sees it. I want to understand her world and escape from mine, just for a day. Is that so bad?
“Okay, fine. I’ll come.”
• • •
I walk back through the bookstore, doing a last-minute check to make sure that I haven’t left any windows unlatched, primed for an easy break-in. Someone came in earlier to trade a spool of twine and a bag of raisins for a copy of The Tell-Tale Heart and Other Stories. I shove them underneath the counter as I pass.
Maeve gave me a backpack to carry, stuffing odds and ends into a separate pack for herself. It’s made of brown canvas, covered in various buttons from different comic books and bands. One reads The Unbeatable Squirrel Girl. Another says Fetch the Bolt Cutters. I make the conscious decision not to question her about Fiona Apple again.
I told myself while getting dressed this morning that Maeve is prepared and knows what she’s doing. I’m sure that she’s made this sort of trip tons of times before. We’ll be back in a day and change, and everything here will be fine. I get a customer only once a week or so, and if I flip the Open sign to Closed, they’ll understand what’s going on. Anything to squash the anxious feelings fluttering around in my chest.
As we make our way toward the front door, I break off a piece of tape from the dispenser resting on the counter. Once the door clicks shut behind us, I turn around and start fumbling with the tape.
“What are you doing?”
I don’t say anything as I keep working, positioning my tape along the crack in the door. I use my nail to press it down until it almost blends in with the wood. One-handed taping is much harder than it looks.
When I’m finished, I pivot to face Maeve again. She looks confused.
“The door’s lock doesn’t work, so I used tape,” I explain.
Maeve’s brows knit even farther together. “I don’t think that’s going to hold. Sorry to burst your bubble.”
How nice it is to be the one with the upper hand, for once. “If someone uses the door the tape will break, and we’ll know.”
“Okay, Nancy Drew,” she replies. Her lips purse together as she stares at my sliver of tape. “Aren’t you supposed to use hair?”
I just shift the backpack on my shoulders. “That’s unsanitary.”
“Says the girl who bled all over the place days ago?” Maeve scoffs. “That’s unsanitary.”
With that, we start walking.
I’d never noticed before how disastrous the roads are. It’s not like the outside of the bookstore is looking much better, but I do my best to keep it clean and free of trash. Eva and I, together, moved most of the smaller debris before she left. The stuff that remains was too heavy for two people to lift.
Covered in rubble, leftover cars, dust, and god knows what else, the pathways are hard to maneuver through, and I’m curious how Maeve will fare with her cart. At least it’s not full anymore, only an empty blue jug sitting inside next to a dilapidated backpack. Just something to help us carry whatever things we find.
As if sensing my thoughts, Maeve makes a show of dragging her cart through the streets, expertly weaving around potholes and cracks. I try, and fail, to suppress a smile.
“So did you just reference Nancy Drew? I thought you didn’t read.”
Maeve doesn’t respond; she just keeps walking, eventually overtaking me so that I’m struggling to keep up with her. I may have long legs, but I’ve never quite mastered the proper way to use them.
She leads me past the hardware store. The entire facade of the building has crumbled, the once-faded concrete reduced to wreckage. The interior of the top two floors is completely visible as we walk by. On one floor I can see a clawfoot bathtub and part of a bathroom sink. On the floor above, there’s peeling red wallpaper and a tattered La-Z-Boy. On the bottom floor, a “summertime fun” display is still sitting in the window, a once-black-and-white whale inflatable now faded to a solid shade of gray. The windows are smashed. The glass crunches under my Converse as we walk past.
This is the farthest from home I’ve been in a year. The feeling makes my heart flutter, even though it’s foolish. I’ve depended so much on certainty for the past year. Nothing new. No changes. But today that’s over, because Maeve decided to wake me up at an ungodly hour and drag me out of the store. I guess it’s better than sitting behind the dusty front counter, unable to do anything at all.
Yet that still doesn’t take away the stinging feeling I have, deep inside me, as I finally take in all the sights I couldn’t see through my dusty front windows. It’s all gone. The places I grew up in, spent my afternoons after school, frequented with my parents on weekends, they’re gone. The people who inhabited those spaces are gone too. I’m all that’s left, and do I really deserve to be? Or perhaps it’s my punishment to inherit this destroyed Earth.
I don’t know what I expected. It would be ridiculous to expect anything else, right? To emerge from the bookstore and for everything to be just fine? Maybe a part of me was hoping that there’d be someone here, someone else who remembers what this place used to be like, holding on to whatever strands of normalcy that they can in their own little corner of the universe, just like I have in mine. But there’s no one here. Just me. Me and Maeve.
It’s ironic, now that I think about it, to still be stuck in New Jersey. Even worse to be stuck in the same four blocks of suburban New Jersey. I’ve become a hermit. A recluse.
Maeve continues to walk, unaware that I am currently crossing my own invisible barrier. We pass a row of identical houses in various states of disarray. Mold crawls up the once-white exterior of a Tudor-style home. I carefully dodge part of a children’s play set that lies discarded in the road.
“Have you always moved around like this? Since The Storm?” I ask, although I’m not sure why I’m so curious. I’m not sure if her answer will make me hate myself for never leaving.
Maeve pauses, as if weighing options in her mind. The sound of her cart’s squeaky wheels fills the air. Does she tell me the truth, or does she say what makes her feel better? “Yeah,” Maeve replies slowly. “I never stay in one place for too long. To create some sort of false ‘normal’ only sets you up for failure in the long run, right? If you get too comfortable, then you become sloppy. You start putting your hand into generators.” I stick out my tongue, and Maeve laughs. “I’m joking, of course.”
“Of course.” My cheeks are red, but for the wrong reason. I’m not upset with what she said; I’m more embarrassed for being so ridiculous. “What about the new Storm, the one that’s supposed to be coming?”
“If I’m not with you, you mean? I’ll figure it out, though. I always do.”
If I’m not with you. She says it as if it’s a given, as if the thought of her riding out The Storm with anyone else is ridiculous. I am suddenly aware of every vein in my body.
“But what about staying put?” I ask. “I came back here because it was all I knew that I still had. I spent two weeks at home, with ghosts, eating the remains of the rotted food in the fridge. Everywhere I walked, I had reminders of them. But I needed it, I think. I think I needed the reminder that things were once okay, normal, and that things would be that way again someday. I couldn’t leave. I couldn’t go far, so I came here.”
Maeve chews her lip for a moment, running her free hand through her dark hair. “But why here? Didn’t it feel stifling? Like you were being haunted or something?”
“Haunted by good memories?” I reply. “Why wouldn’t I want that? And when I got here, it was like nothing at all had happened. Sure, the place looked like hell, but it felt familiar. And the books on the shelves were familiar. And the stories within them were familiar. I couldn’t let that go. I don’t think that feeling is false, right?”
One of the cart’s wheels squeaks as it bumps over a twig. “Do you still have that feeling?” Maeve says, her green eyes looking deep into mine. “Now that we’re together here.”
I nod.
I think long and hard about what together means as we walk, quiet once again filling the air between us. I don’t think I’ve had a together—the type of together that I took for granted—for a long time. The together of doing my homework at the kitchen table while my mother cooked dinner, listening to Ella Fitzgerald. Those rare summer nights when I’d sit with my friends in the middle of the football field, gossiping and shouting at random passersby. Going to work and being surrounded by people. Not even having to speak to them, but knowing they were there and that you weren’t alone.
There is a difference between being alone and feeling lonely. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. But right now, walking with Maeve, I realize that for the first time in a long time, I am neither.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
We stop at an old Target off Route 46. It takes us a few hours to get there, weaving through abandoned cars with Maeve’s cart. The building is in better shape than anything else I’ve seen. I guess concrete and cinder blocks will do that for a place. As we make our way through the automatic doors, which have been pried open by prior visitors, I turn to Maeve.
“Have you been here before?”
“Once or twice,” she admits as our eyes adjust to the darkness. “It’s not as good as hunting, but it does the job…and hunting isn’t always an option.” She fishes around in her cart for something as we move forward, enveloped by the darkness that consumes every aisle. I hear a small grunt of satisfaction as Maeve pulls out a camping lantern and clicks it on, casting a green glow over our surroundings.
“It’s battery powered,” she explains, turning at the end of the aisle and entering the grocery half of the store. “I nabbed some double-As from a bin under the counter.”
“Those were mine!” I protest, although I only half mean it. “Someone gave them to me before you even got here.”
Maeve laughs, her eyes glinting in the dark. “You snooze, you lose.”
We make our way into the canned-food aisle, and Maeve slowly pivots, taking in our surroundings. A few cans lie on the shelves, filled with creamed corn and the least appetizing varieties of soup. Broccoli cheddar, cream of mushroom, and a couple of cartoon-shaped chicken noodles. I nab the latter and pile them into the cart haphazardly before looking back at Maeve.
“How is there even anything left?”
“I don’t know,” she mutters. “Maybe people grew tired of all this canned stuff after eating it for months on end with no variety—I know I did. It was the monotony. It drove me insane.”
“You can’t just starve in the name of variety,” I say, moving on to a Styrofoam cup of instant noodles. “I have this stuff all the time.”
“Not all of us had doting customers who were willing to make those kinds of trades with us. Anyway, it’s not like the stuff on this shelf is the best of the best. It’s not home cooking.” She smiles, lost in some distant memory. “I’d rather grow something or kill something or harvest something than eat this junk every day.”
I swallow down the lump rising in my throat as I remember Maeve’s bloody knife. “You kill things? And eat them?”
She nods in response. “Do you think I’ve been grocery shopping?”
I guess that this makes sense. People had occasionally traded salted meat or some dried beans for a book, or a story, or a letter, but I never thought about where it all came from. Is everyone who comes into the bookstore like Maeve? Have they all done what they needed to stay alive? Am I really so different?
Maeve continues moving down the aisle, grabbing a can of black beans in one hand and some pickles in another. “If you could have any meal right now, what would you have?” The question comes out of the blue. Maeve has never struck me as the type to partake in small talk, but I indulge her anyway.
I stare at the cup of instant ramen in front of me and imagine that it’s something else, anything else. “A burger,” I say. “A burger fresh off the grill with a chocolate shake that’s so thick you can barely drink it. A ripe peach and a lemonade filled to the brim with ice, maybe a sprig of mint on top.” I pause to think before continuing. “And some sort of potato, and maybe a Caesar salad.” A smile creeps onto my face as I imagine that meal, the way it might smell, the people I might share it with if it were only a different time. A different place. A different timeline completely.
Maeve laughs behind me, softer than usual, as she tosses her cans of beans into the cart. “I’d have something made by my mother, of course. Maybe lamb, maybe some steak too. A cold Coke and a whopping slice of chocolate cake. I want so much frosting on it that it outweighs the cake, you know?”
I nod knowingly. “Of course. The frosting is the best part.”
“Glad we’re on the same page.”
Maeve disappears down another aisle. I follow her, suddenly surrounded by outdated kids’ toys made from the most blindingly neon plastics in existence. Maeve doesn’t seem to notice, so I do the honors, reaching for a bright blue Nerf gun and fumbling with its cardboard packaging. The motion sends a shock of pain up my arm, but I do my best to ignore the feeling.
Maeve pauses at the noise, slowly pivoting. She glances at the foam bullets in my hand as I carefully load the orange clip and slide it into my weapon.
She shakes her head. “What could you possibly be doing with that thing in your hand, Liz Flannery?”
“My parents never let me have these when I was little,” I tell her. “My mom was too into pacifism, and my dad was too distracted with work to argue with her.”
“So what? Is this your childhood dream coming to fruition?”
“There’s no time like the present,” I reply.
I carefully aim my weapon at a stack of trading cards sitting on a dust-covered shelf. I’m a terrible shot, and that fact is only confirmed as my foam pellet pings off the aisle’s metal siding and drops to the linoleum floor rather unceremoniously.
“You’re horrible.”
“What? Like you could do any better?” I pause. “No, wait, you’re the incomparable Maeve who is so good at everything.”
“You’re not usually right, but I will say that you’re right about this. I’m a whiz at carnival games.”
She selects her weapon of choice from the rack on the wall and peels off the plastic, inspecting the revolver-like barrel with a furrowed brow. “They make these things terrifyingly realistic. No wonder my cousins turned out so badly. They had a room filled with these things when they were little.”
“You sound like my mother,” I say.
“Well, look how you turned out….”
Maeve cocks her weapon and aims it at the trading cards before pulling the trigger. The boxes come tumbling to the ground with a loud thud. Of course, Maeve is better than I am at this as well. What isn’t she good at?
She grins at me as she playfully blows on the tip of her weapon. “Bull’s-eye,” she croons, suddenly adopting a Southern accent.
“You’re insufferable,” I mutter, aiming my toy at her. “It’s a shame it had to end this way.”
“Oh, the betrayal!”
Maeve takes off running through the darkness, carrying her lantern with her. My Converse slap against the linoleum as I run, my legs churning, my arm throbbing with each step. She turns a corner, running down the next aisle, and I scramble to change my direction and follow.
I’m stopped only when a stuffed toy bounces off my forehead.
“What the hell?”
Maeve beams at me through the darkness, her Nerf gun held out in front of her. The lantern is on the floor, a stuffed dalmatian in her free hand, ready to be launched in my direction.
“What, you thought I never got caught in a Nerf war with my cousins?” she asks. “Do you surrender?”
Summoning my bravery from deep within, I straighten my back and look defiantly into her eyes before shouting “Never!” Then I stick out my tongue for good measure.
“Big mistake,” Maeve says in a low, gravelly voice that sends shivers up my spine. Not wanting to wait around to face her wrath, I sprint down the makeup aisle, pausing at the end only to glance behind and make sure I’m safe. There’s no one there. I double over, catching my breath, and try to listen for the sound of Maeve’s boots thudding against the linoleum floors. I hear absolutely nothing and let out a sigh of relief, thinking I’m safe.
Wrong.
Out of nowhere, Maeve runs up and collides with me, sending us both tumbling to the ground. I make contact first, my tailbone striking the floor, my good arm underneath me in an attempt to break my fall, my other arm throbbing from the impact. Maeve falls forward, her hands slapping against the linoleum as our chests slam into each other.
She stops herself, her nose mere inches from mine. I can feel her breath on my skin as we stare at each other, unsure of what to do or say.
Maybe I’m all right with that. Maybe it feels nice to be close to someone again like this. Maybe it feels nice to feel Maeve, even if her touch is unintentional.
Eventually, she laughs and rolls to the side, her hair brushing over my skin. We lie there, side by side, in the darkness.
“Did you ever think you would be here?” I ask.
“You mean Nerf battling in an abandoned Target in New Jersey? Scavenging for food with a relative stranger who practically got her arm ripped off a day ago? No,” she scoffs. “I can’t say that this was included in my life plan.”
“Me neither.”
Maeve leans in closer, her head resting on my shoulder.
I hear her exhale, air escaping through her teeth. “Still,” she says, “I’m glad I’m not alone.”
“Me too,” I whisper.
Cameron Fraizer
67 years old
Horsham, Pennsylvania
Part of me thought that surviving the rain would be the worst of it, but I guess I should have known from our shared human history that destruction often causes more chaos. I’m not young, but I’m not dead yet. Sure, it was quiet for a day or two after the rain and the death, and a naive portion of my brain was telling me that was how it would stay. But that was just the floodwaters keeping people from coming out, moving around. And once people left home and saw the full scope of the destruction around them, that was when everyone started worrying about resources. You know someone shot me in the foot over a box of stale Mini-Wheats? Yeah, we were doomed from the start.