2. Not Alone
Two
Not Alone
Aweek had passed since Sawyer’s voice emerged from her door—low, steady, and strange with that quiet confidence that simultaneously unnerved and reassured her.
One week since he’d disappeared back into his apartment, leaving her with his parting words and a silence that seemed almost deliberate.
She had no communication from him after that.
At times, during the late hours, she imagined she detected his stirring.
A soft scrape, a shifting sound, like someone dragging something heavy across a floor.
Enough to remind her she wasn’t completely alone.
But it would stop, and the quiet would stretch long and suffocate again. Her water supply dwindled.
She had been rationing carefully, counting every swallow, every drop she allowed herself. The bottles beneath her sink had almost run out—three remained, perhaps four if she made them last. Enough for a few more days, at best.
Addy sat on the floor with her back against the counter, staring at the dwindling stash.
She ran her thumb over the label of the nearest bottle until the paper peeled away.
She kept telling herself she’d figure something out before it ran out.
That perhaps when it got really bad, she’d go downstairs.
But the idea of opening her door made her skin crawl.
The world outside had gone completely silent. The emergency broadcasts that used to play in an endless loop had faded to static days ago. The internet had gone dark before that. Absolutely no sirens anymore. No voices. Not even birds.
Sometimes she’d stand at the window and stare out through the cloudy plastic she’d taped up during those first panicked hours. The street below was empty—cars parked crooked, doors open, a grocery bag rolling in the wind like a tumbleweed. No movement. No life.
And then, the odor.
It started faintly a few days back—a sour, metallic edge to the air that clung to everything. Now it had become impossible to ignore. The odor seeped through the vents, through the thin walls, until it seemed like the entire building had bathed in it.
The stench of death.
Addy pressed her sleeve against her nose, but it didn’t help. It was everywhere now, heavy and thick. She didn’t need to ask herself what it meant. She already knew.
Her neighbors.
The family with the baby. The old woman who lived downstairs with the wind chimes. The couple at the end of the hall who always argued about music. The odor was their answer—their silence finally explained.
Her stomach twisted. She tried not to dwell on it, but her mind filled in the blanks on its own. The cries that stopped. The doors that remained closed. The sudden, hollow quiet.
Addy pushed herself to her feet and crossed to the window. The light outside was gray and flat, the kind of light that made everything look already dead. She peeled back one corner of the plastic and peered out through the glass.
Still nothing.
No people. No movement. Not even Sawyer.
She wondered what he was doing now. If he were still sitting in his apartment, surrounded by his supplies and radios, waiting for a voice to come through the static. Or if the faint scrapes she heard were the only signs of life she’d ever get from him again.
Her throat was dry. She took another sip of water—small, careful—and immediately regretted it.
She needed a plan.
The tap still ran, but the water came out brown now, reeking of rust and something worse. The filter pitcher she’d relied on wasn’t helping anymore. If she wanted clean water, she’d have to go out of her apartment.
Her hand trembled as she traced the outline of her door with her fingertips, feeling the solid weight. She imagined what might be on the other side—the odor, the silence, the stillness—and forced herself to step back.
Later, as she sat waiting for something, anything, she decided she needed to tap on the wall—once—to see if Sawyer remained.
She sat on the floor, staring at the thin stretch of paint and plaster that separated their apartments.
For days, she’d tried to convince herself that the faint scraping she sometimes heard was proof enough.
That he was alive, that someone else in this building was still breathing.
But the silence had stretched too long now.
If he were gone too… she wasn’t sure she could take that.
Her fingers hesitated above the wall. The air was heavy, sour with the smell that had begun to cling to everything. She swallowed hard and rapped her knuckles softly against the drywall.
One tap.
Then another.
The sound seemed unnaturally loud in the quiet.
She held her breath and waited.
Nothing.
Her pulse quickened. She tried again, a little louder this time. “Sawyer?” she whispered. Her voice sounded strange, dry and unused. “Are you still there?”
For a long moment, only the soft hum of the building—the whisper of air through vents, the faint creak of settling wood. And then—
Tap. Tap.
Two short knocks in reply.
Addy’s breath caught. She closed her eyes and pressed her forehead to the wall; the cold surface grounded her. “You’re still alive,” she murmured, relief washing over her so fast it left her dizzy.
She waited, half expecting him to speak. But only silence followed.
Addy leaned closer. “The odor is getting worse,” she said, voice low, as if afraid to be overheard by the dead. “It’s in the vents. I think… I think it’s them. The others.”
A pause. Then his voice came through—muffled, steady. “Yeah,” he said. “I know.”
She could almost picture him sitting on the other side of the wall, with that same expression she’d seen in passing—focused, detached, like he was already living in a different world than the rest of them.
“I’m running low on water. And food.”
“You’re not the only one,” he replied after a moment. “The stores were stripped bare the first day. If anything is left, it won’t be much.”
Addy rested her head back against the wall. “I can’t stay in here. The smell—it’s getting into everything. I can barely breathe.”
There was a rustle on his side, the sound of something metallic being set down. “We’ll need to leave soon,” he said quietly. “But not without a plan.”
Her chest tightened. “Do you have one?”
“I might.” He paused. “Give me until morning. I’ll figure something out.”
The faint scrape came again—a chair shifting, or boots against the floor.
Then silence swallowed it whole. Addy remained in that spot, one hand pressed flat to the wall, reaching for something that wasn’t present.
The plaster was cool against her skin. On the other side of that thin barrier was another person, breathing, thinking, surviving.
It shouldn’t have been comforting, but it was.
Her throat ached. She hadn’t spoken that much in days, and the words she’d just said still lingered in the air, fragile things that didn’t belong in this new, ruined world.
She wanted to say something else—to thank him, or ask what he meant—but the silence had closed in again.
He was gone, or choosing not to answer. Either way, she couldn’t bring herself to break it.
Addy let her forehead rest against the wall and closed her eyes.
For a moment, she pretended she could feel warmth radiating back, the presence of another human being instead of layers of plaster and emptiness.
When she finally pushed herself upright, her legs trembled from hours of stillness.
The air in her apartment seemed heavier than ever—thick with the stench of decay seeping through the vents, mingling with the faint chemical tang of duct tape and plastic.
Her flashlight flickered, casting a thin, sickly light across the countertops and walls.
Morning seemed impossibly far away. But morning meant there might be a plan, and a plan meant there was still a reason to move.
She crossed to the counter, footsteps soft against the floor.
The notepad sat beside the last, half-empty water bottle.
She tore off the previous page and laid down a new one, the paper curling at the edges from the damp.
Her hand shook as she wrote:
We are still here; I’m not alone.
Somehow, she had gone from I to we. The shift was small, but it caught her off guard.
It was strange how easily that word—we—slipped out now, how much comfort it carried.
She stared at the words for a long time.
They didn’t look like her handwriting anymore; they looked like something carved out of survival.
Like a message meant to be found long after she was gone—proof that she’d been here, that she’d lasted this long, that someone else had too.
Her voice broke the quiet, rough and thin from disuse. “I’m not alone.”
The words hung in the air, soft but heavy, and for a fleeting second they made the silence bearable. It wasn’t just silence anymore—it was shared.
She set the pen down carefully, afraid even the scrape of plastic against the counter might shatter the fragile calm that had settled over her.
Outside, the wind sighed against the taped plastic covering her windows, a low, tired sound that matched the groan of the old building shifting in its bones.
Everything seemed worn out—the walls, the world, even her.
Addy closed her eyes and listened. The quiet no longer pressed against her like a threat.
It moved around her instead, slow and rhythmic, like breathing.
* * *
The next morning, Addy moved to the wall.
The air had turned sharper overnight, the kind of cold that crept in through every crack and seam.
Her breath fogged faintly in front of her as she crossed the room, wrapping her blanket tighter around her shoulders.
Even under the layers, she could feel it—the unnatural chill that had settled over everything since the sickness had begun.