Alice's Last Look

The outside world was unknown to her, but she could see a glimpse of it through the window in his room. The soft, silent fall of gray ash. The dark clouds that obliterated all but a faint glow of red sunlight that limned the clouds in blood-red edges. The ever-present tint of brown that filled the air beyond the windowpane and dusted the glass until it obscured the view beyond the chain-metal fence a stone’s throw away.

The ash clung to the eaves of the roof and piled in small hills along the outside edge of the windowsill. It enveloped her vision for a moment and drew her in to its stillness.

“It’s still falling hard. Almost a blizzard if it were snow instead of ash.”

Alice looked up from her book to follow Jack’s gaze out the window. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen snow. Couldn’t remember snow, in fact. Other than it was white and fell soft and silent like the ash beyond the window, but that was only because Jack knew and had told her. Jack knew or remembered. He’d lived where there had been snow, soft piles of it that had made walking difficult, but upon which one could throw oneself down, move arms and legs, and make angels in the indentation. She wasn’t even sure she’d ever seen snow, much less lived in it.

Making angels in the ash didn’t sound near as fun. Though surely it would be more comfortable than in cold snow.

“I’m glad you find it funny,” Jack grumbled. “I swear, I’d believe my nose hairs were burnt if I didn’t know better. That damned smell is everywhere. I miss flowers, Alice. Strawberries even!”

“You’re allergic to strawberries.”

Jack sighed. “Not to eat them. I just want to smell them.”

“You can’t smell them either. You practically stopped breathing last time.”

A memory started to float to the surface and Alice shuddered, forcing it back into submission in the back of her mind, but the sudden movement left her momentarily unbalanced and she caught herself with a palm against the window. Beyond, in the deep reds and browns of the outside, just above the point her fingers made on the glass, a small whirlwind of ash lifted and spun. It moved erratically across the broken surface of Main Street.

“Like a drunk,” Jack interjected. “Can’t walk straight.”

“Like a ghost,” Alice whispered.

“No such thing as ghosts, Alice.”

Alice whimpered, pulling her hand from the glass, and turning to survey the empty room. That memory resurfaced and she struggled with it, wrestling it as it wrapped around her heart. “But you’re a ghost, Jack,” she whispered to the room.

The room that smelled of him still. Of Jack. Of roses. And that damned strawberry he’d found.

Twenty years, Jack Arden had survived living in almost poverty in a small town along the Great Lakes. He’d learned to hunt, to fish, to garden to put food in his belly. Ten years more, he’d survive the Aftermath. Finally making it to this little hole in the wall and making his stand with twenty others in what had become known simply as the Compound.

Alice was already living in the Compound by the time Jack arrived. She’d been barely a toddler when all hell had broken loose, It happened, and ninety percent of all living things had perished. From start to finish, it hadn’t even taken 24 hours. The cities had gone first. Military outposts. Then the larger towns. Island populations. Anywhere people were densest.

It had been a miracle that she’d survived.

An even bigger miracle that Jack had.

She had hung on every word as he’d regaled their company with his ordeal. None of them had left the Compound since It had happened and although it was difficult to hear about the devastation Jack had seen in his travels, it was uplifting to believe there might be more like him out in the world. Or more like them, holed up in Compounds dotted across the globe.

Maybe one day they’d all venture outside and find each other.

Or maybe, like Jack and the little whirlwind of ash and dust edging its way back to the chain-metal fence they’d simply all become ghosts.

“Am not,” Jack finally harumphed.

“You ate the damned strawberry, Jack,” Alice growled at the whirlwind. Silently daring it to breach the fence and enter the Compound’s outer perimeter.

“The genetically engineered strawberry,” he growled back.

“Which genetically engineered an allergic reaction, you selfish bastard.”

The memory came flooding back a third time and for once she didn’t try to fight it. Her hand, palm flat against the windowpane again to balance herself, was worn and wrinkled, the skin nearly translucent against the flesh beneath.

They’d found a way to create plants that they could grow under special lights down in the basement of the Compound. Thankfully, long before their food stores had been depleted enough to matter. Problem was, they couldn’t account for everything a human body needed to thrive just from the plants they’d been able to save and reproduce. It hadn’t been an immediate problem, but it had taken its toll over time.

The oldest of them hadn’t lasted more than a few years after that.

Then the youngest stopped growing and no more babies were born.

She’d tried to talk Jack into leaving the Compound to search for other survivors. Maybe they could combine what they’d learned and produced with the inventions of other people and make a better go of it. For the good of humanity, he’d finally agreed.

Then his strawberry plant had born its first fruit.

Alice couldn’t really blame him. Her own mouth still watered remembering that shiny red skin and that magnificent scent.

And Jack had been prepared. Or so he’d believed. A couple of the others had engineered a medicine to prevent his allergy from affecting him. The botanist who’d helped him make the plant argued they’d removed whatever it was that triggered his allergy in the first place.

In the end, maybe it wasn’t the allergy after all that had made Jack a ghost.

They’d fought.

All of them.

Over that one damned strawberry.

Fought so bad she’d run to Jack’s room and locked herself in. She’d even barricaded the door to keep them all out, until Jack’s raspy voice had floated to her through the gap between the door and the floorboards. He could barely move when she’d opened the door. His face swollen and purple. One eye shut tightly and weeping blood-tinged tears.

First, she’d tried to pull him into the room. Failing that, she’d done her best to help him breath for a time. She’d screamed for help, but no one came. It wasn’t until she knew he was gone that she’d gone in search of the others. Only to find she was alone.

“Dry them tears, girl,” Jack murmured, his deep green eyes smiling down at her and his fingertips caressing her cheek. “You ain’t never gonna be alone again. I promise.”

Alice nodded, sniffled, then pulled her hand from the window to dry the tears from her cheeks.

Taking a deep, shaky breath, she checked outside one last time. The whirlwind of ash and dust was gone, and the air had brightened with the rising, distant sun. The broken, jagged asphalt that had once been Main Street called to her.

“Time to go, Alice.”

She turned to the bed and grabbed Jack’s old, faded knapsack. The bearer of all that still mattered in the world. Drawings that Jack had made, notebooks from the botanist and some of the others, food, the last of the water, her mother’s rag-tag copy of Alice in Wonderland, and most importantly, seeds. Seeds from all the plants they’d managed to engineer for survival. The ones they hadn’t managed to destroy during the fight, at least.

As she opened the door of his room, she turned one last time to glance out the window and at Jack standing there with that encouraging smile of his. Then she plunged headlong out into the unknown to search for others. To share hope and survival and yes, even that damned strawberry plant.