The Last Woman

I had a dream.

My father straddled me. His knees drilled into my elbows, driving them through the dirt. A knife blade, nicked and rusted, wavered in his trembling hand. His jaw clenched, baring blood-red fangs. His wet eyes narrowed, then closed.

“I’m sorry,” his breath blew sickly-sweet. “I must.”

The blade shot toward my throat, then froze as if grasped by an invisible hand.

“Do not touch her.” A resonant voice sounded from above.

“I must,” father hissed, dribbling spittle into his matted beard.

“She must be lovely, and be loved,” was the lilting response.

The knife fell from father’s hand, and he collapsed, crumbling to the earth next to me.

My head turned. His eyes screamed. His mouth mimed.

I’m sorry. I’m sorry.

I touched his face and closed my eyes.

When I opened them, a pale dawn oozed through the mouth of the cave. My father lay on his side, wrapped in the soiled wool blanket he’d found weeks before. His cracked, weathered features faced me. Tender breath whistled as it escaped his nose.

I rolled to my stomach and pushed up, wary of waking him, and draped my mother’s quilt over my shoulders. Each square was a memory, long gone. Our beloved spaniel. The red robins who called the birdhouse in our back yard home. A heart with a date etched inside for each of her daughters.

I stumbled outside and sat cross-legged on the dry riverbank, staring at the leaden sky. Craggy cliffs littered with the corpses of dead trees soared in a majestic attempt to pierce the soot but fell short.

My stomach pined. How long had it been since our last meal? Eight days? Ten?

Father has a plan. He knows the way. Follow the river through the mountains to the valley. To live, we must find the valley. The valley is salvation.

I heard rustling behind me. Heavy boots on fallen pine needles. A hand stroked my hair.

“Are you ready, my love?” The rifle bolt opened, then slammed shut with a metallic crack.

“Almost, father.” I rose, shaking the soil from the quilt and folding it into a neat square.

Retrieving my backpack from the cave, I stuffed the quilt next to a grungy pair of socks and plucked the water bottle from the pouch on the side. The cap was bright orange like the sun used to be. I twisted it and raised the bottle to my lips, letting them touch the stale, greasy water.

The valley. Father said there is water in the valley. We must find it.

“Hurry, my love.” He called out. “We must go.”

I slipped my thumbs underneath the straps and raised the backpack to my tender shoulders. I cinched the straps, zipped my heavy jacket, and returned.

“Ready.”

“Stay close,” he began his morning ritual, “and keep watch behind us. Stop if you see an animal. Do not call out. Do not scare it away. If you see another person, run. Run as fast as you can as far as you can. I will fight them and find you.”

“Yes, father.” I placed my hand over his on the rifle and squeezed. With him, I always felt loved.

He set off down the river.

Step. Step. Step. Pivot. Twist.

I settled into a rhythm, ten paces behind father. Step. Step Step. Scan the horizon on the left. Pivot. Twist. Study the trail behind. Step. Step. Step. Survey the mountain to the right. Pivot. Twist. Hour after endless hour. The rhythm remained the same. The scenery remained the same. Step. Step. Step. Waste. Ruin. Death.

Then father froze, breaking the cycle.

He dropped to one knee, raised the rifle, and cocked his head to look down the barrel.

I searched the riverbed in front of us, seeing only rocks and sand and pallid trees.

He lowered the rifle and lifted his nose to the gentle, gusting wind. I waited. He waited. Then he nestled the weapon into his shoulder again and fired.

A puff of smoke materialized beyond a rock anchoring a bend in the river. The report ricocheted off the escarpment to our right and tumbled down the stones, gathering speed until it washed over us and down the riverbed.

Then, silence.

Father rose and slung the rifle on his shoulder. “We eat tonight.”

I ran after him, my stomach lurching in anticipation. Was it a rabbit? A raccoon? Squirrel? Warm saliva flooded my parched mouth.

Father seized my arm as I caught up to him. “Stay here,” he growled. “Keep watch. We’re in danger.”

“Yes, father.”

“Come running when I call. Load your pack. Then we must go, quickly. We must get as far from here as we can.”

“Yes, father.”

He scurried to the kill. I crouched inside the snarling roots of a felled tree and scoured the path behind us. My midriff protested. There was food nearby. I needed to eat. We needed to eat. But father said we were in danger.

He has a plan. He knows the way.

I turned to my left, and from the corner of my eye, spotted movement in the rocks above. A ghost of a shadow. I fixated on it, sinking deeper into the tree. Was it a falling rock? A decaying branch nudged by the wind? A figment of my imagination?

Father whistled. The signal. Giving the rocks one last look, I sprinted down the riverbed until I saw him straddling a half-naked man.

The man wore no pants. His limp penis lolled to one side, resting on a thigh carved open by father’s knife. The meat hanging from the waxy white bone was red and juicy.

“Here,” father thrust a slab at me. “Put this in your pack.”

The man’s neck arched, his lips parted slightly. A single drop of blood trickled down his dusty cheek like a river carving a path through the earth.

“Did you kill him?”

“He was already dead, my love. Take this.” He dropped the man’s flesh on the ground and dug the knife into his other leg.

“Why? We’re so close to the valley.”

“We are in danger, my love.” He hurriedly hacked another long strip of skin and ripped it from the man’s body. “Put these in your pack. We have to go. Now!”

I ran.

I ran as fast as I could as far as I could until my heart nearly burst through my ribcage. Falling to my knees, I sobbed and sucked air into my aching lungs.

Father wasn’t far behind. He sank to the ground next to me and rubbed my heaving back.

“It’ll be night soon,” he said, soft and understanding. “Let’s get to that outcropping before dark.”

He offered me his hand. I lifted myself up and scrambled to the rocks.

We sat side by side on a wide flat ledge, watching in silence as the light faded to nothingness. The man’s smell called to us from father’s pack.

“You must eat.” He opened the flap.

“Where is the valley?”

“You know this. We follow this river through the mountains to the valley on the other side.”

“How could you kill him if we are so close?”

Father pressed squishy flesh into my hand. “This is hard, I know, but you must eat, or you’ll die.”

“Where is the valley?”

He sighed. “I don’t know, my love. But I do know we must survive until we find it.”

“We can’t survive alone.” I turned my hand over. The man’s skin plopped down on the rock beside me.

“People have turned against each other. They’ll kill me. To you, they’ll do worse.”

“Last night, I had a dream. You were going to kill me until God commanded you to stop.”

“God died long ago, my love. If he were still around, would he have permitted all of this?”

“Would you do it? Would you kill me?”

Father took my hand in his, smearing the man’s blood between our fingers. “I would. If it meant saving you from the monsters, I would kill you before you fell into their hands.”

“They’re people. Like us.”

“Maybe they were once. They’re not anymore.” He released my hand and reached into his bag for a fresh piece of meat.

“Please, don’t.”

“I must.” He tore it with his teeth, chewed once, and gulped it down. “If you won’t. I must. To keep us both alive.”

I laid down and wrapped mother’s quilt around me, tight. Resting my head on a rock, I listened to father eat and closed my eyes.

When I opened them, father was awake, ready to begin the ritual. I folded the quilt, stuffed it into my pack, and twisted the orange cap one more time.

“Are you ready, my love?” Father asked.

Hoisting the pack on my back, I turned and climbed the rock.

“This river is this way.” He called after me. “Where are you going?”

“To find the valley.”

“Wait! That way is dangerous.”

I climbed, reaching the top of the ridge, and stared at the country around us. Blight. Destruction. Death.

Then, a shadow flitted between the trees below.

Father caught up to me. “Please stop, my love. You’re in danger.”

“Hello!” I shrieked at the shadow. “Is anyone there?”

Father grabbed me, slapping his stinking palm over my mouth. I bit it and wriggled free, and slid down the slope toward the shadow.

Another! More movement near a rock.

Then a third. A head and a shoulder. A person!

Father slammed the rifle bolt forward. “Do not touch her!” His cry echoed down the hillside.

I turned to him, palms outstretched. The barrel was pointed at me.

“Who are you?” The raspy question floated toward me from the deadfall below.

I swung around and saw wiry black hair and kind amber eyes poking up between two trunks. A man. A beautiful, emaciated, petrified man.

“I saw you yesterday.” I stepped forward, and the man recoiled. “You’ve been following us.”

“We need clothes,” the man stammered. “We have food. To trade.”

“No!” Hissed another, to my right.

I took two more steps down.

“Stop right there!” Father bellowed.

The man rose to his knees, exposing a torso covered only with a flayed, dingy tank-top. He shivered uncontrollably, jiggling the chain looped around his neck.

I shrugged the pack from my shoulders, climbed over a smooth, white trunk, and sat.

“Is that a locket?” I pulled the quilt from my bag.

“Yes.”

Gravel crunched to my left. They were creeping closer.

“Please, my love,” father whimpered. “They will kill you.”

“My mother made this,” I unfurled the quilt and pointed to the hearts. “These are my sisters.”

The man straddled the trunk opposite me and opened the gold heart attached to the chain. “This is my wife.”

I stood, holding the quilt with both hands, and draped it over his back.

A flurry of feet scampered behind me, snatching my bag from the tree trunk.

“Give it back!” The man shouted.

A shot erupted from father’s rifle, and the slug snapped past my right ear.

I glanced at the man, who pointed to a creased canvas bag at his feet, then raised both hands in the air. “We have food. To trade.”

Behind me, two teenaged boys, nearly naked and not much younger than me, stood rigid, each holding a strap of my pack. Their heads were locked on father.

I gazed up at him. He released the rifle, and it tumbled silently to the ground.

“Come, give me your jacket,” I commanded as I unzipped my own and placed it on one of the boys. “We eat tonight.”