• The sun rose red over the eastern horizon as it had for many years and somehow reminded her of the stars that shone with sad light that seemed to barely reach the planet. Everything was strained and wild, nothing really made sense anymore. The cities were in ruins and so was almost everything else, except the forest. The wild had taken back the land that humans had unknowingly stolen from it.
    Cecile watched that blood-red sunrise every morning, casting shadows around her on the top of her secluded hill, next to her parents’ grave. She talked to them sometimes, it brought her peace of mind and prepared her for the day ahead.
    She still had no idea what had happened to her brother and it bothered her to the point of going insane. One part of her said he was dead, there was no way he survived; the other part said he was living somewhere in Oregon because she knew him and if she lived then why didn’t he.
    Cecile lifted herself up from the moist ground, looked at the wooden stakes piercing the ground where her parents lay, and headed around the house. It was almost exactly the same as it had been ten years before, leaving painfully happy memories to drift across her mind and her heart to clench itself. Even though the house was almost untouched, the patio around it was cracked and laced through by redwood roots, moss, rose vines, and just about every other plant life. The poison oak that was once held at bay loomed over her home, dangling out of the nearby redwood trees’ limbs in its blood-colored glory.
    The now old Jeep and Ford truck were parked outside her garage where her bike and valuable resources were stored safely inside. The garage door still worked now and then, along with all the other electrically powered things around. Cecile had no idea why it all still worked, but it seemed to be that, without humans to shut it off, everything just kept going.
    She wrenched open the boarded-up glass doors of the garage and picked up each canister of gasoline that she had siphoned from the gas stations in Fort Bragg and Mendocino nine years earlier. She rarely used the gas, since it was probably all she would ever have, and lightly shook or stirred it each day to keep it from separating or going bad.
    All of her food was stored in the garage along with the gasoline and there was probably enough of it there to last her another twelve years since, like the gas, she rarely ate the canned foods. She knew they would keep longer than all the other food she had and chose to benefit from the growing population of wildlife. Plus she had basically turned the garage into a refrigerator by boarding up all the windows as tightly and precisely as possible and covering the boards with good ol’ duct tape on the inside to insulate it.
    Cecile finished mixing the last canister and headed up toward the pump house to be sure that the water pump was still running and then up to the barn to check on Doriana and Jimmy, her two surviving horses. Tooey had died at the age of thirty, five years earlier, and Dori and Jimmy were going on twenty-five and twenty-three. The two of them were in pretty good shape for old horses and very useful when she had to cross the now-rugged terrain of Surprise Valley looking for fresh food.
    “Hey, guys,” Cecile said quietly as she slid the barn door open. Two faces were looking at her with big, friendly dark eyes. They both neighed softly in greeting as she started toward them. She unlatched their stall doors and stepped aside as they walked calmly out to go eat. “Stay close now!” she called down the hill after them. They never strayed far, and Cecile knew that, but she told them to stay close to reassure herself. She didn’t think she could handle losing anyone or anything else in her life again, even though she knew that was inevitable.
    Cecile sighed deeply and went back down to the house. It was still warm inside and very welcome compared to the chill of autumn that had set in outside a few months earlier. She tested the light switch as she passed, going down the hall into the living room. The light over the counter flickered and then crackled as it went out. She swore under her breath and went back up the hall to the pantry, which was now more of a tool room, to get a new light bulb. She would have to make the journey into town soon to see if there were any unbroken bulbs lying around the stores.
    There was the sound of little running feet and the click of nails on tile as her little yellow dog, Mica, sprinted up the hall to say good morning to her and squeak happily. The other three dogs, Spot, Lily, and Jed, had all died and Mica was the only one left. Spot, being the oldest, had died eight years ago; Lily and Jed had died almost five years ago. Every time Cecile looked into Mica’s amazingly bright eyes, she was reminded that her little dog probably wouldn’t live to see the next ten years go by.
    The wood stove’s door creaked loudly as she opened it to throw another chunk of wood on. She shut it again and looked around the room at the couch, the TV that worked but never showed anything but a blue screen, the dust-covered Xbox, and the extremely old piano that had managed to stay relatively in tune all these years. That silly old piano somehow always managed to make Cecile smile, being the only thing that really still worked.
    With a grin slapped across her face and a little yellow dog trotting happily along behind her, she slogged out to the chicken yard after shutting up the house tightly. Somehow she had managed to keep the reasonably rickety chicken pen intact and all the living chickens inside. The fence was constantly getting holes torn in it and boards coming loose. By now the remaining chickens looked more like mud-matted, two-legged rats with a beak and wings. But, they still layed eggs and chicks still hatched some springs, so they would be all right for a while.
    The eight birds cooed and chuckled as Cecile tossed scraps from the garden on the ground for them. She had managed to scrape together the last seeds from the garden and continue it, not really having any idea of what she was doing exactly. For some reason the plants grew and she fought the wild plants to keep her plants alive every year.
    Cecile had gone out hunting the day before and had enough fresh food for a couple more days, so, the daily chores done, she ventured back into the house, this time followed by a little yellow dog and a black cat named Frida.
    She spent hours sitting in front of the fire reading or teasing Mica and Frida. The sun drifted across the sky overhead to its apex and then back down toward the western horizon. Cecile opened the stove doors and gazed into the orange and gold patterns of the fire until her eyes hurt and there was a cat pushing at her side.
    There was a loud, broken-sounding noise and all three of them jumped then froze. It was a sound that Cecile hadn’t heard in what seemed like forever. The phone was ringing. Someone was still alive out there. She was too shocked to move, and when it stopped she shook herself and headed to where the answering machine was. There was silence for a minute and she began to fear it wasn’t working.
    “Mom?! Dad?! Are…zzz...there?!” a static-broken voice came through. “Please…zzz… pick up! Someone…zzz…ick up! It’s me! …zzz…alker!” At that she froze again, listening to the static.
    “Hello!” she finally answered into the mouthpiece.
    “…zzz…ank god! I…zzz…ew someone was…zzz…ere! There…zzz…ad to be!” he rattled triumphantly. “Who is this? I…zzz…an’t…zzz…ear very…zzz…ell!”
    “It’s Cecile! Where are you?” she said frantically. “You’re breaking up!”
    “Ce…zzz…ile! I…zzz…n’t be…zzz…ieve it! A…zzz…ight,…zzz…ay there! I…zzz…m co…zzz…ing!” SNAP! The connection died and all Cecile could do was stand there staring at the phone. Someone is alive! And it’s him! I knew he was! she thought disbelievingly.
    Ever since that minute the days felt like years and she was always anticipating his arrival. She knew he would come. The only thing that could stop him was death, and she hoped with all of her being that he would elude death as she had for ten years. But her hope began to dwindle when the days turned to weeks and the weeks turned into a month and then it was November and winter was knocking at her door. Oh, god, I hope he comes before the first winter storm! She was on the verge of panic and about to go look for him, but her parents always told her that when she wanted to be found or was lost to stay in the same place, and so she did.
    Depression set in to the point that she no longer woke up before the sun but still managed to keep everything working. On one of her worse days, she lay on her bed with the sun streaking across her face, Frida sleeping in her cushioned chair and Mica barking in her ear. She flew down the stairs just in time to hear a knock on the boarded-up window of the front door. There was a tiny peephole in the wood so she could see outside, and what she saw left her breathless. She unlocked the door and launched herself at her brother. He wore rather ragged clothes and probably hadn’t shaved or had a shower in weeks, but she didn’t care. He was alive, and with her again.
    They went inside and they told each other all about what had happened to them. He had spent five years practically locked inside a science lab at Lewis & Clark, researching and studying the disease that caused the pandemic. He had discovered that certain strains of DNA, when combined, created an antidote and immunity to the disease. By the luck of their roots and genes, the two Mitchell children ended up immune to the disease and lived long enough to figure out why.
    “Walker?”
    “Hmm,” he grunted from where he was sprawled out on the couch.
    “You know what I just realized? There are probably others alive out there…”
    “I figured that out a long time ago.”
    “…and it’s November twelfth,” she finished. He turned to look at her and grinned at the sweet irony of it. “Happy birthday Brubby,” she grinned back. With the knowledge that their journey wasn’t over quite yet, the two of them laughed together by firelight once more.