Without You

Without You

Darkness fell over the great forest, laid in ruins and covered in soot. A giant moon hung above the trees, the stars all but blanketed in a permanent black fog. On a Thursday, nearly a year earlier, Earth was pulled out of orbit into a judder. Violent solar flares ignited the surface and fossil fuel reserves burst into the clouds. Whole cities toppled over as land heaved up and organisms below the water perished as rivers ran dry and oceans evaporated. Out of the few who made it underground, a scanter lot lived beyond a few months, having neglected to relocate near an aquifer.

It had been a year since John had seen another human. He’d had foresight about the events to come and began to collect supplies from the facility that employed him. His co-workers suspected foul play when multitudes of oxygen tanks went missing. Next, he bagged anything of use in the chemical stock and topped off the sack with containment suits. The contents of the lab were tightly packed into a multi-terrain rover which John drove off in one day prior to the blast. In regard, the food he would need and a means to grow it, John collected power reserve cells and UV lamps. Each cell had an estimated lifespan of six months and energy enough to power a turbine farm. He shopped furiously to collect the amount of soil and seed it would take to sustain after his various non-perishables were gone.

The supplies were enough for three; himself, Olivia, and the child. John’s girlfriend was pregnant and would’ve had their daughter in a few months. They’d spent hours on an old couch, paging through a book of baby names. The couch could’ve been replaced for years, yet Olivia insisted they keep it. It had been her mother’s and was where they’d watched Sleepless in Seattle every year for her birthday. Her mother had died of terminal cancer while she was away at college. Olivia was given the couch for her dorm room and during her mother’s last days in the hospital, a minor earthquake shifted the foundation of their home, pulling the frame apart, along with old wiring, creating an electrical arc that burnt the house to nothing. Everything was gone but the couch. John had thought about her each day as he survived. She was his purpose for living. In his life before, she seemed to be the only one who understood him.

John’s mother had been the controlling type and without a father figure, he’d been left to struggle with manhood on his own. This mystery man had been alive, nevertheless, his mother had kept him away. She was resentful that he’d failed to call during her pregnancy. Afterward, she had claimed John’s father was a different man who’d eventually left. Rather than cry about it, John poured his frustrations into school.

From elementary school all the way till graduation, he never received less than one hundred percent on a test or a homework assignment and scored genius level marks on national placement exams. He would've been sent to college when he turned 13 had his mother removed her tentacles. Instead, she had him finish high school at a private boarding institution that was close enough that she could drop in unannounced often. When John graduated high school he chose Stanford University as the next step, where the clouds began to part.

Life was funny the way it seemed to choose him and not the other way. In mid September, two boys in black t-shirts and torn blue jeans approached him in a library study room as he paged through a biochemistry textbook. Their hair looked as alien as the rings in their faces. John had never been anywhere aside from the boarding school where the other children seemed like xeroxes of him. It was odd when the two boys let themselves into the study room he occupied and even odder when the more heavy set of the pair removed a cylinder from a gaping hole in his earlobe and pushed a finger through.

“You should come with us tonight. There’s a show a couple blocks away,” calmly proposed the shorter of the two as they lingered in the doorway.

The young man pulled up a pen that had been hooked on his collar and wrote something in John’s notebook. John began to stammer a disjointed response as the two young men quietly closed the study room door behind them. Rotating his notebook 180 degrees, he could make out a crudely written message. It was a phone number and to the right of the last digit which was either a three or a six, the note read ‘cork tavern 7:30 call if you get lost’. For the rest of the afternoon, which had been intended for studying, John ruminated on the invitation and pondered whether or not he’d attend that evening. He’d begun to enjoy walks across campus and the view of life from afar. These activities required little to no interaction and felt secure. However, slowly but surely, a keen curiosity began to light up his eyes as people smiled toward one another in crowds.

At 7:15 PM on the dot that night, John locked the door on dorm room 17 that he shared with a boy named Seth. Seth had a girlfriend who lived off campus and he stayed there 99 percent of the time. Filled with anxious excitement, John made his way across the quad, down several flights of stairs, and onto the street below. He knew where "the cork" was. It was popular among his neighbors in the dormitory. They frequently talked about a drink exclusively made there called “the apocalypse” that was said to be “one and done”. It was 7:30 now and he could see a collection of people in the distance.

They were dressed like the two intrusive strangers from earlier with brighter colored hair; some with mohawks and others with dreadlocks. The line moved quickly and before he knew it he was paying the cover charge which was five dollars. As fate would have it, this was all he had in his wallet. He removed the money to pay and showed his ID. It was an 18 plus show and he was 18 which meant his hand would get the pink X instead of the black one.

Inside, he quickly saw the duo whose offbeat invite had led him to the show. The band was playing a song with the chorus line “I turned into a martian” as he approached his new acquaintances. Standing next to them was a girl with bright red hair. Her fair skin showed that she was blushing as he made his way down the bar. The two boys’ name’s turned out to be Gary and James. Gary handed an underaged John his first ever shot of alcohol and introduced the red haired girl, whose name turned out to be Olivia.

“To the apocalypse! One and done,” the other three shouted as John stood confused, just before choking down the shot.

Little did he know, the whole night had been planned. Olivia sat three rows behind him in advanced calculus. She was too shy to talk to him herself and though Gary and James became his closest friends, their initial intentions had been to do a favor for Olivia. She and John were perfectly awkward together. The never fought. The last time he’d seen her haunted him. He had promised he would do whatever it took to get to her if she went into labor up north. She handed him her necklace just before boarding the plane and kissed him goodbye.

The memories helped him remember why he was still breathing. Each day was an effort to gather enough resources to travel for one week and begin again. He’d been able to harvest food enough to make the journey upstate to Olivia’s last known whereabouts. Checking over his list of supplies, he confirmed that they were packed appropriately in the vacuum containment storage beneath the rover. The vehicle was a gaudy piece of futuristic looking technology straight out of a science fiction movie. The institute he’d worked for spared no expense, equipping the vehicle with a fully functional espresso maker. He felt like Bruce Willis, about to save the world from sleep.

Opening the hatch, John closed his eyes and prayed for the first time since he was a child. The rover’s tracks crawled up the dark grey rock and out the cavernous entry into the pale daylight. If he’d kept track of the days correctly, it was mid July and the position of the sun hinted at approximately five AM. Next, was the week-long trek up the west coast that now overlooked an endless bed of sand. The rover only traveled 15 miles an hour and its battery was built inefficiently. The only way he could sleep was by day, as two solar panels worked to recharge the power supply. Electromagnetic radiation had mutated what life remained and it was hungry. Creatures that populated the wild wailed at nightfall when they yearned to feed and fill their empty stomachs. When one ate another, the attacks were not quiet and went on for some time.

Despite some rude awakenings, he made it to Humboldt county, just outside the mouth of the cave Olivia had mentioned as their last call dropped amid explosions and car alarms. John reached into his pocket and rubbed a necklace between his thumb and index finger. It was the heart shaped locket Olivia had been wearing the night they met. She’d given it to him when she left that day, almost a year ago. She told him it would remind him of their love when he missed her. As he made his way deep into the cavern, his heart beat so loud he could hear it echo off the walls. The light was gone now and he fumbled for the electric lantern in his pack. Suddenly, he lost his footing and fell for what seemed minutes till the bottom arrived. Was this it? Had he come all this way to die? He knew it was too late. He was bleeding out and would lose consciousness in a matter of minutes.

It was hard to imagine anything getting darker than it was. After all, he was deep in a hole, inside a cave. Despite his imminent death just moments away, optimism struck. The feeling of cold rock subsided and was replaced by what seemed like warm fur draped over him. A muffled noise grew clearer and for a moment, he was frightened. Was a mutant absorbing him into some venus flytrap like orifice where he’d dissolve into paste? Curiosity overcame fear and he began to feel around in the dark. Why wasn’t he dead yet? Suddenly his hands ran over a warm, round body that giggled. There laid everything he’d survived for in a dream unlike any other.

“Livvy, I gotta stop watching Sci Fi,” he proclaimed with a relieved sigh, having just pulled the blanket from his face to reveal brilliant rays of sun, peeking through leaves.