The Old Barn

It was obvious the previous owners had left the old barn derelict long ago. The once white fence around the corral was weathered and broken. The brownish-red of the barn itself was faded, like an old picture left in the sun too long. The main house also looked deserted. Its front door stood open, swaying gently in the breeze. The flowerbeds were overgrown with weeds, but even they were dried out and weathered.

Emma knew this was it. This was her place; her forever home. She laughed.

She wandered around the pasture, wishing she had been a painter. The colors were amazing. Everything was so bright. Poppies dotted the field. She thought they were poppies, anyway. She never could distinguish flowers from weeds. It seemed to her the fierce, striking beauty of the flowers others called weeds were more alluring than the manicured plants others saw as prize flowers. If beauty wasn’t the standard in flowerdom, what was? What distinguished a flower from a weed, anyway? Was there some sort of rule? Moths, too. Some of the most stunning butterfly-type insects were in fact moths. Was there a fine line between the two? She’d likely never know. It wasn’t as if she could Google it or anything, not this far out.

Emma turned back to the barn. The wind caught and played with her hair. It brought the faint scent of Rosemary, for which Emma was grateful. She drew the scent deep in her lungs and held it. Any scent was better than her trip through the city, but Rosemary had always been a favorite of hers back when things were normal. She remembered walking past the local health food store and running her hands through the Rosemary bushes planted outside. She’d bring her hand to her nose and inhale deeply. The scent made her spine tingle and gave her a feeling of comfort.

She could hear the occasional song from a bird, but birds were few. It seemed they hadn’t come through unscathed, either. Some were better than none, though, right? She couldn’t see the singing bird, but she could hear it and the reply.

The barn was the classic red, though faded. It stood tall against the sky. Side rooms jutted out right and left. They seemed to be tack rooms. The double doors stood wide. She could see a loft at the back of the barn. She had once dreamed of finding an old red barn and converting it into her home. The downstairs would be one open area with kitchen and living space. Her bedroom would be upstairs, in the loft. She would convert the little window in the loft where bales of hay were hoisted to double doors and build a balcony off her bedroom. From up there she could watch the landscape, the animals. This was a dream come true. Emma laughed again. Her voice sounded hollow, a little flat to her ears, and she stopped laughing.

As she walked closer, lugging her backpack and bedroll, she called out. There wouldn’t be a response. You could tell no one had been at that farm for a long time, longer than the 6 months everything else had been abandoned.

The ground was firm beneath her feet, even though it had rained the night before. It had been a whopper of a storm, too, bringing flashes of lightning and booms of thunder, though it didn’t last long. It had taken half the day to walk there since the rain, giving the hard-packed earth ample time to dry.

Emma finally stepped into the barn. Sunlight dimmed, and it grew dark. There was the occasional shaft of light in the interior from where the roof was broken through, but under the hayloft, in the shadows, it was very dark. Emma didn’t linger. It wasn’t as if she was afraid of the boogeyman. Even he no longer lived, and there wasn’t anything left to fear, or anybody. It was just her primal brain associating darkness with danger. The reason made little difference; she didn’t stay long. She looked around, found a couple of useful items, and hurried to the ladder. She wanted to get up into the loft.

Leaving her gear in the middle of the barn, except for her prize from deep under the loft, Emma approached the ladder. She gave it a shake. The only way to find out if it would hold her weight was to get up on it, so she did. She stood 2 rungs up and gave a little jump and shake, testing the integrity of the wood. It seemed like it would hold her, so she climbed. Near the top, one of the rungs groaned in protest, and Emma hurried the rest of the way up. She didn’t need to worry about getting back down.

She dropped her prize and approached the hay door. The view was stunning. As far as she could see, there was nothing but farmland. From that high up, the overgrowth of crops gone to seed wasn’t visible. Instead, it looked like patches on a quilt. Each square of land was a different color and texture. She imagined the fields as a blanket tucked around a sickly earth.

The sky was clear. It hadn’t taken long for pollutants to be filtered out. If only those climate change people had known the cure to global warming was eradicating most life on earth, things might have gone a little differently. She could think of a few groups of people the world was better off without. This, however, had been a bipartisan, nondenominational purge, and it seemed to be working beautifully.

Emma noticed off to the right, way out in the distance, a stream of smoke rising to the sky. Her heart quickened. It could mean there was someone besides her. Her hopes were dashed, however, when she realized the size of the stream of smoke compared to the distance meant it was something much bigger than a campfire. Something must have been struck by lightning the night before. Who knew how long it would burn or which direction it would travel?

It was no concern of hers.

Emma returned to her prize and picked it up. She walked to the edge of the loft and looked over. It wasn’t as high as she thought it would be, but it didn’t need to be any higher than a couple of inches past her height.

She dangled her feet over the edge and picked up the rope she had found under the loft.

Emma had absolutely no clue how to tie a noose. She knew there was some way to make the rope tighten up, but the real trick was something about putting the knot behind the ear so the neck would snap instead of strangling the person being hung... or the person who wanted to hang herself. Same difference.

She finally decided on a slip knot and tied the other end around an exposed floor beam. She put the rope around her neck and took one last look around. She thought about leaving a note, but why bother? There was no one around to find it. It had been 6 months since the Uber Flu had taken hold and killed off everyone she knew, and while logic dictated that if she survived, others must have survived too, it made little difference. She had begun walking out of the city six months prior, trying to escape the stench of rotting flesh, and in all the time she hadn’t seen a soul. There were no dogs, either. Most of the birds were gone, which was why so many bodies were left to rot in the streets. She hadn’t even seen a rat, though she did see a few cats. They were plump and satiated. There was no point in surviving if there was no one to survive with. If she could have died of loneliness, she would have been another corpse on the street long before.

Emma slipped the makeshift noose around her neck and leaned forward. All she needed to do was slip off the edge. She didn’t even need to stand up first. She could simply scoot forward and slip over the edge. The rope would do the rest.

Just a scoot. Nothing, really. It required nearly no effort at all.

She wasn’t scooting.

She violently shook her arms and head, as if shaking off the cobwebs of the human desire for life, and quickly slipped forward.

Emma hit the ground on her knees, rolling over to her right.

Emma’s neck hurt and probably had rope burn, but the noose never came close to tightening or strangling her. It had broken. Like the barn and farmhouse, the rope had been sitting out unattended for who knows how long. It couldn’t hold her weight.

Emma sat on the ground, hugging her left knee in pain, and laughed.

OK then, she thought, I keep on keeping on. The thought of a second attempt was just too much for her. She had pulled the trigger and had gotten an empty chamber. That had to be a sign.

She couldn’t be the only person left alive, she decided. She would keep going until she found others, or until she died of exposure or starvation, or whatever life and death had in store for her. Evidently, she wouldn’t be dying from hanging, though.

Emma got up, tested her knee by gently putting weight on her left leg, gathered her kit, and limped out of the barn. She had plenty of daylight hours left. Maybe she’d get lucky and find a bicycle, or even a living horse, though she doubted the latter.

She needed to make good time to stay ahead of the fire.