In this life or the next

Ninety eight days since the tribulonian plague decimated almost the entire human population. Ninety days since she started to appear in James’s dreams, or nightmares? It’s been hard to tell the two lately. He can’t capture the full likeness of her, only short glimpses. Her deep hazel eyes, her long brown curls. Each night every detail about her getting more vivid. But one detail about her that draws him in more; her beautifully engraved heart shaped locket. The details in the piece, oddly hypnotizing. Tonight it happens, he’s asleep, he see’s her, He reaches for the locket, almost as if being lured, he wakes up. Every single time.

It’s now 4 in the morning, and he knows he won’t be back to sleep. “Who are you?” He asks himself, but really to the woman that appears when he goes to sleep. James lays awake in bed for the next 2 hours. At first light, he gets dressed, brushes his teeth, and starts his day. James is an architect, he helped build half of the new encampment. After the tragedy, the remaining survivors had to look for a new home, with most of the population gone, there was no one to maintain buildings or streets, so everything started to deteriorate. A lot of things had also been destroyed by remaining bandits and looters, or wild animals. The plague didn’t seem to have an effect on any type of animal. After weeks of searching, they found a vacant stadium. There was only 117 people apart of James’s camp, so it was big enough to sustain them all. He is usually out collecting materials to make new innovations for the camp for the first couple of hours, and then moves on to his next task. But today, there was more activity in the camp than usual. He starts to see faces he’s never seen before, more survivors. “I need stretcher over here now!” Clarke shouts, the head doctor of the camp. She looks up to see him holding a cart full of freshly cut wood and scavenged metals, alongside other materials. “James, Get over here!”

Without hesitation, he drops the cart and runs over. “What’s going on?” He asks as he kneels down to help her tend to what seems to be a deep claw wound.

“I’m not entirely certain but, I think these people were attacked by some kind of animal.” She replies. One of the nurses rush over, and they lift him onto the stretcher “not an animal” the man says as he grab James’s arm. “Please find my daughter.” Before he could get a description of her, the man was already being taken to the infirmary. He picks up his cart, empties it at his workshop, and sets out to help anyone who seemed to need it. Throughout the day, he’s helping tend to the new survivors, some of them critically wounded, others with just minor scrapes. He finds his way back to the infirmary, and then remembers that the man from earlier needed help finding his daughter, he looks around to find him but he is nowhere in the infirmary. He finds Clarke standing next to a bucket of bloody water and bandages and goes over to her, “hey, where’s guy from earlier?”

“Can you be more specific?” She responds.

“The one I helped you with, he said he needed help finding his daughter”

Her face saddens, “He was apart of the few that didn’t make it” she points over to where the deceased victims are laying with sheets covering their bodies, and walks away to help the wounded. He leaves the infirmary saddened, he wanted the man to know that someone was going to look for his daughter.

Now the sun has almost set, exhausted from everything that happened today, he see’s a chair near the water supply and takes a seat. The chair to his back felt like drinking ice cold water on a hot summer day. He needed a break more than he realized.

“Water?” He hears a soft voice ask behind him. He turns around and meets her eyes, and everything around them seems to fall away. He feels it, he knows that she feels it too. He gets up to answer her and he towers over her. “Yes, thank you.” she hands him a small water pouch, and as she does a spark sets between the touch.

What’s your name? He asks

“Alyssa, yours?” she smiles and asks

“James”

He looks down and see’s an engraved heart shaped locket. He freezes. It can’t be her, he thinks to himself. Her long brown curls, her deep hazel eyes, her as a whole standing in front of him. Nothing else would explain the connection he just had with her. “But who is she? And why?” He thinks to himself. She must have come in with the survivors but she didn’t seem to be hurt from the attack.

He wants to ask her if they somehow knew each other, but he knows that it would be foolish to try. This is his first time meeting her.

“I’m looking for my father, have you seen him?” She reaches in her back pocket and pulls out a photo of her father and shows it to him, and his heart drops to his stomach as he realizes. Her father is the man from earlier that was apart of the deceased.

He doesn’t know how to tell her but he know that he has to.

“You might want to sit down.”

“Why? Have you seen him or not?” she anxiously responds.

“I helped your dad when everyone first came in”

“Thank you so much, Can you take me to him?”

“Hold on.” His face darkens, “he was taken to the infirmary but, he didn’t make it…I’m sorry”

“What?” She asks as if offended.

Are you sure it was him?” She says as tears start to fill her eyes. But James is sure that was him, he never forgets faces.

“Would you like me to take you to the infirmary?”

“Please.”

As they make their way to the infirmary, they pass by nothing but bloody, wounded victims from the attack.

“What happened?” He asks her.

“We were attacked by these…” she stammers to find the right word.

“Creatures”

“Creatures?”

James heard rumors going around the camp about large creatures attacking camps couple of weeks ago, when their livestock started reducing in numbers, but that has happened before with the wild animals surrounding the outskirts of the stadium. So everyone dismissed it as that.

“Can you describe what they looked like?”

She tries to gather an image of the creature in her head “they had elongated skulls, they were at least nine feet tall, their arms almost as long as their body, and claws sharper and longer than I’ve seen on any animal”

“That’s all?” He asks curiously

“It all happened so fast, I was trying to get away from them.”

“Two months after the plague, they started to show up. They started to eat the animals surrounding the area. We weren’t sure what they were, only that they were predators, and not prey. And then they broke onto our camp and slaughtered two of our forty members. That was enough for us to leave everything and find somewhere else to go. Once we did, we searched for weeks changing locations every other day and today were attacked again.”

“That’s horrible, I’m so sorry”

“Are you okay” he asks with genuine worry.

“Im fine, thank you. I just need to find my father”

They get to the infirmary, and James guides her to the area of deceased victims. Alyssa is frantically searching under each sheet to check if her father is there. She pulls over the last sheet, and drops to the floor.

“No no no” she says weakly with tears streaming down her face “Papa.”

The sight of her dead father is taking away all the strength she has in her. She can no longer bear seeing him like this, so she kisses is forehead one last time, and leaves the infirmary, James follows behind her.

Alyssa just stands there with tears still streaming freely down her cheek.

“I’m so sorry” James says as he goes to stand beside her. “Is there anything I can get for you?” She doesn’t say anything for a few seconds, and then responds

“I really don’t want to be alone right now. Do you mind staying with me”

“If that’s what you want, I’ll stay with you.” He replies. She looks over to him, and hugs him tightly. It feels right so he doesn’t say anything, and hugs her back.

They walk around the stadium steps for the next hour, as they talk about their life before the plague, their connection growing stronger by every minute. Alyssa yawns, visibly exhausted from today.

“You should get some rest” says James

“We have extra cots in the infirmary, let’s go over and get one for you.”

Her face darkens, he quickly remembers that her father is still there, he feels bad for reminding her.

“Actually, I’ll go instead.” He counter replies.

“James it’s okay. I don’t want to be alone, Remember?”

“Okay”

They walk over to the infirmary, but all the extra cots were being used to help the wounded victims. They leave once again, and he leads her to his room.

They stop at his door, before they enter he looks at her.

“You can take my cot, I’ll take the floor” he says.

“That’s very kind of you, but I won’t let you sleep on the floor because of me.”

“Well, Did you have anything else in mind?”

“Maybe we can share?”

Although it’s big enough for two, James never had to share his cot with anyone in his camp. Especially with a woman that he’s just met. But he didn’t mind at all, she’s kind, and very still distraught over the death of her father.

“are you sure?” He responds

Alyssa isn’t sure about anything in her life, but she certainly knows that she does not want to sleep alone tonight. Even if he was a stranger.

“Yes.”

He unlocks his door and opens it for Alyssa to go inside first, he follows her in. She takes in the new area like a breath of fresh air. She walks around his room, running her fingers along the paintings layed against the wall, she flips through the stacks of book on his reading table.

“Do you paint a lot?”

“Not a lot, but when I have the time to”

“When I was younger, I sketched a lot.” She says, still flipping through the books.

“Do you sketch now”

“No” she responds, “I haven’t since I was a child, I guess I just lost interest as I got older”

“Are you trying to call me a kid?” he jokingly says.

“of course not” she says laughing

He laughs as well.

It’s nearly midnight now, and they still haven’t gotten any rest.

“I was going to take a shower, but you can go first.” he says

He reaches in his nightstand to grab a shirt and a pair of shorts for Alyssa.

“These are for you, and there are clean towels in the bathroom”

Alyssa looks up at him, as if seeing him for the very first time. Everything suddenly comes flooding back to her memory.

When Alyssa was 16, her father gave her the locket that she’s wearing. He would always tell her that it would be help in her darkest times, he never told her where he got it from. Alyssa never had friends growing up, but she always had her imagination. She was always good at sketching people. But there was one person she would sketch for hours every single day. A man, with brown wavy hair, sage green eyes, a sharp jawline, a body toned, and carved to her idea of perfection, lips the shape of Cupid’s bow. The details could go on, she spent hours perfecting him. Once she had a final look for him, she made a tiny drawing of him and placed it inside the locket. After that she would never take it off, he was hers. It gave her some kind of hope that she would never be alone. But he was only a tiny drawing in her locket so years went by, she eventually forgot about him as she got older, until now.

She wants to say something, but begins to think about how she would even be able to explain it to him, so she doesn’t.

“Thank you” she says,

she goes to the bathroom and closes the door behind her.

Once she finishes, James goes in.

While he’s in the shower, Alyssa sits on the cot and starts to think about her father and begins to sob.

She hears him starting to leave of the bathroom so she tries to wipe away her tears before he could see, but there was too much. He comes out if the bathroom and notices.

“Whats wrong?” He asks as sits beside her

“My papa” she says sobbing harder. “He was all I had left, now he’s gone.”

He embraces her, knowing that all he could do is be there for her. So he just holds her, and she lets him. He turns off the lamp on his nightstand, it’s dark now with only the moonlight seeping through one if the tiny windows.

They lay back into the cot, James still holding her.

“Goodnight” he says

“Goodnight.”

She melts into the warmth of his body, and falls to sleep. He follows moments after her.

A few hours later, they are awaken by blood hurdling screams flooding through the stadium.

“Did you hear that?” She asks

“I think so.”

Another scream, just as loud as the one before.

They get up hurriedly, and make their way to the stadium.

“What do you think is happening?” She asks as they get to the field

“I’m not sure but whatever it is, it can’t be g-“ before he can finish his sentence, he’s interrupted by shriek of the creatures Alyssa described to him last night. The creatures rampaging through the stadium, slaughtering and destroying everything in sight.

“Everyone get to the locker rooms” James shouts, as people desperately try to escape.

As they are helping everyone get to safety, a creature comes hurdling toward them. Before it could get to them, Clarke runs into it with one of the med carts.

“Get out of here now” she shouts

“We can’t just leave you here Clarke!” James responds.

“Im fine, get everyone to the locker rooms NOW!”

James grab Alyssa’s hand and they bolt to the locker rooms, being the last two in that area, barely making it.

“Is everyone here?” A man asks

“There’s still others out there in different parts of the stadium, I counted at least 9 of those things!” Another woman frantically responds. “We can’t help them, if we go out there, we’re dead!” Say another man.

As they begin to barricade the doors. The creatures start to pound on the locker doors. They pile everything they can in front of the door. There’s twenty other people in the locker room, everyone crying and hold onto one another. James grabs Alyssa and guides her to a nearby corner. By then, she’s shaking and crying.

“I’m scared” she says with tears pouring down her cheek.

He holds her tightly, running his hand through her hair.

“I’m right here” he responds.

“James?” She says, as she puts a little space between them “I have to show you something.”

“What is it?”

She takes off her necklace, and opens it. James looks inside, and in this moment, he finally understood what it all meant. He starts to tell her of the dreams he had been having of her and in this moment she finally understood why she was there. They understood that like two moths drawn to the same flame. In the midst of all the chaos were two soulmates drawn together, before their very end. The doors are weakening, the barricades are not enough to hold the creatures out.

She looks up at him, their eyes piercing each other’s soul. “No matter what happens, we will always find each other, in this life or the next” she says, as tears continue to stream down her face. They share their first, and final kiss.

“Always” he says, as he holds her tighter than he ever has before.

She wraps her arms around his waist and holds him tight.

“I love you” she says

“And I love you” he whispers into her ear.

As the creatures break through the last barrier and flood in, they know that this is it.

And their world goes dark.