A Hopeful Heart

Gravel crunched as an old pickup truck came to a stop next to an abandoned family van. Torin leapt out of the truck as his partner, Joyce, peered in through the van's windows.

"Think there's any point?" she asked, wiping a thick layer of dust from the glass.

Torin shrugged, looking at the back bumper. "Reagan-Bush '84, Don't tread on me; those stickers pretty much scream I have a gun."

Joyce nodded, then lifted a crowbar and smashed in the driver side window. Glass fell around her feet as she recoiled from the stale, musty smell billowing out from the vehicle.

"Ugh," she gagged. "It definitely hasn't been scavenged before."

Torin glanced at the word spray-painted on the hood. Plague. Whoever had driven the van must have been infected. Either they'd died in the vehicle, or possibly, someone else had killed them to slow the spread.

He shuddered. When the plague first made its rounds two years ago, it had a survival rate of nearly sixty-five percent. Unfortunately, it was highly contagious, but in the end, the disease wasn't the worst problem the world dealt with. As the number of dead and infected rose, it became harder and harder to grow food, purify water, and then transport it. While millions died from the sickness, billions suffered from hunger and thirst. The virus the driver caught hadn't ended the world; it was just the catalyst.

Joyce pulled her shirt up over her nose. "New plan, I'll siphon the gas and you can dig through the cab."

Torin grimaced then pulled on a pair of latex gloves. By now everyone left was immune to the disease, but without modern convinces like regular electricity, running water, and medicine, what was left of humanity was worse off now than at the height of infection. The gloves weren't meant to protect him from the driver, they were protecting him from whatever was making the smell. Anti-biotics were a thing of the past, so anything picked up from a corpse or rotting food was just as deadly as the disease, maybe more so.

Torin pulled a facemask over his nose, reached in through the window to unlock the door, then prepared to deal with the driver that had been left in the vehicle for over two years. He swung the door open and jumped back a shapeless mass rolled out onto the gravel road. He turned his head, trying not to imagine the mass of bones and gore that must be before him. After a moment, he braced himself, then turned to see a pile of musty clothes lying on the ground.

Confused, he kicked it with the toe of his boot. No bones.

He leaned over and gave a hesitant sniff. No gore.

Torin leaned into the van and took a breath. Something had definitely died in that thing, but if it wasn't the driver, then what was it? He scanned the back seat, and his eyes landed on an old cooler stuffed with the remains of several mummified fish. Torin let out a sigh of relief. Bodies were just about an everyday occurrence since the world ended, but he was happy to find one less than he expected.

Torin crawled in and began dragging out anything he thought would be useful. A few cans of food, a first aid kit, lanterns, and batteries. He found a box of ammunition, but no gun. Torin dug through the van once more. He already had a decent haul, but guns were difficult to come across, and a decent pistol was probably worth three or four times more than what he'd already found.

After a moment, he slumped in the driver seat, and his eyes landed on a faded picture of an older couple. It was obviously pre-plague, just a man in his mid-sixties with his arm around his wife's waist. They looked happy, or at least they lacked the tired stare Torin had seen in most survivors. A flash of yellow caught his eye. Above the picture on the dash was a golden locket hanging from the rearview. Carefully, Torin reached out and pulled it off the mirror. It was heart-shaped and heavy, maybe solid gold.

Torin gave a half-smile. Gold wasn't worth as much as it used to be, but there was always a market for valuables.

A few hours later, Torin and Joyce sat on the tailgate of their truck, sharing a meal in front of their find.

"Anything useful?" Joyce asked.

Torin shook his head. "Not really, but I did snag this," he said, pulling the heart-shaped locket from his pocket.

He held it out for her to see.

Joyce hefted the locket in her fingers, testing the weight. "Not bad. It might be worth something." She held it up to the light, then read the inscription. "Hope springs eternal, our day will come," she said, "weird message for a locket."

Torin laughed. "It's optimistic, at least."

Joyce handed it back.

Torin reached for it, then stopped. Men weren't supposed to wear necklaces. "Actually, I want you to have it."

Joyce rolled her eyes. "Don't get any ideas hotshot. I'll settle down when I'm ready. Besides, you found it; see what you can get for it."

Torin blushed and took the locket back. Men aren't supposed to do that either, he thought. He looked down at the shiny, heart-shaped charm, then smiled. "I think I'll keep it," he said bashfully. "I kinda like it."

Joyce swallowed a mouthful of canned soup, then shrugged. "It's pretty."

"You know what I miss?" Joyce asked, leaning back. "Movies, and books."

Torin frowned. "I've had a tv hooked up to my generator for months. We watch movies all the time."

Joyce sighed. "Yeah, but nothing new has come out in years. I want something to look forward to, to get excited about. Not just something new to me."

"Hmm," Torin replied. "Maybe we can track something down."

Joyce giggled. "I could break into Hollywood. There has to be something that just didn't get released." She sat up. "Wouldn't it be fun to find something no one else has watched yet?"

Torin chuckled, then finished his can of soup.

A few hours before dusk, Torin and Joyce were pulling back into town. In reality, "town" was just a name for a gated neighborhood that had been mostly abandoned as the plague crawled across the globe. Some houses had been repurposed as a hospital, shops, and other businesses to meet the community's needs. Roaming bands of thugs and murders were usually nothing more than rumors, but the gates served to keep out wild animals and the occasional thief.

Torin carried his loot up to the trading post, an open garage stocked with different goods like tools and building materials. The post was run by a middle-aged man named Hugh. Torin had always thought Hugh was a little strange, but he couldn't tell if he'd always been that way or if the end of civilization had gotten to him more than most others. Hugh kept track of his price of goods with a made-up currency he called "credits."

Torin and Joyce each set down a crate on Hugh's folding table and gave him a moment to pick through it and decide on a price. Hugh slicked back what was left of his stringy black hair and jotted some notes down on paper. He ran some numbers, then lifted his head.

"I'll give you two hundred for the ammo, eight for everything else," he offered, "Each."

Joyce considered it. "Seven for the rest of it, and you hand over the cake and a bag of coffee grounds."

"Seven-fifty, and I want that stack of movies," Torin answered.

Joyce raised an eyebrow.

"What?" Torin asked. "Maybe the same old movies will be more fun if you have someone to watch it with."

Joyce shrugged, but she did a poor job of hiding her smile.

Hugh glanced back at the pair, then nodded. "Seems fair," he said, passing the goods over. "Mrs. Maria made that cake yesterday. It's the first I've sold so far."

Joyce looked back in surprise. "I beat Lance to it?" she said, thinking about her tall neighbor with a sweet tooth.

"Lance left," Hugh replied. "So did some others. A few days ago, someone pulled with a van from the power company and said they were getting together to get the plant running again. They were asking for a few guys that they could train to work the place in exchange for room, board, and free electricity."

"The power plant is running?" Torin asked incredulously.

"Will be," Hugh said. "Then we'll have running water, maybe even get a refinery too."

Torin's eyes widened as Hugh smiled.

"I'm not sure about details, but it sounds like whatever's left of the government is trying to bring some normal back to what's left out here."

Torin took his stack of movies, said his goodbyes to Hugh and Joyce, then stumbled back home in shock. He knew the city's infrastructure should still be in decent shape, so it wasn't impossible to think that someone would try to get everything working again. Still, that meant in just a few months, water would come from the tap and not a river, heat from a thermostat, not a fire, and his thoughts wouldn't be drowned out by the ever-present sound of generators.

Torin walked up to the door and shuffled inside, careful not to wake up his older brother. Even though it was nearly four in the afternoon, James would usually sleep for another hour or two, either because he worked a night shift with the neighborhood watch, or because he was nursing a hangover.

Torin glanced at the work boots still on his brother's feet, then the half-empty bottle of foul-tasting cider sitting next to the couch. "Maybe both," he thought.

Torin took some time to tidy up the house, waiting to move to the living room until his brother woke and dressed for another night on patrol. Outside, Torin picked through his garden for enough produce to put in a salad for dinner. He lifted a tomato, then grimaced as he watched a series of grubs chew through it. He tossed the tomato aside and sighed. Maybe when the power plant came back to life, it would bring pesticide with it.

The thought of a garden full of fresh produce brought a smile to his face, and he clutched the optimistic locket at his throat. Later, when James changed his clothes and left for patrol, Torin stood to answer a knock at the door.

Joyce stepped in, carrying her cake, and took in a deep breath of roast and Caesar salad.

"I hope you didn't go to all that trouble just for me," she said, batting her eyes.

Torin felt another blush touch his cheeks, then led her to the couch. "I don't know about you, but I thought we could start with something funny."

Joyce plopped down next to him, the couch shaking as she laid her head against his shoulder.

"I thought I wasn't supposed to be getting any ideas?" Torin asked with a grin.

Joyce reached for the unfinished bottle of cider. "Maybe I need to settle down so you don't leave for the power plant," she smirked. "You know, like the cute ones."

Torin rolled his eyes but smiled as the movie started.

Later, in the middle of their third movie and when Joyce had already fallen asleep, the generator died, and the power went off. Torin sat there in the dark but smiled. The night might be over for now, but soon the power would be back on, he could watch movies till the break of dawn, grow a garden free of worms, and maybe, just maybe, Joyce would be there too.

He felt the locket around his neck. "Someday," he thought, "our day will come."