2. Not Alone #2
The Midwest had always been unpredictable in the fall—warm one day, frost on the windows the next, but this wasn’t weather.
This was something else. The sun hadn’t looked right for days, dim and blurred behind a haze that turned the sky a color somewhere between ash and bruised yellow.
When she’d last peeked through the plastic on her window, she’d seen a thin film of dust collecting on everything outside—cars, rooftops, the empty street below.
They’d called it dust on the last emergency broadcast before the static took over—not nuclear, not radiation. It was something else. Airborne particulates from the burn sites, they’d said. The number of bodies they would have had to burn to make that much “dust” sent chills down her spine.
Stay indoors. Shelter. Seal. Wait.
So she waited.
Now, as she pressed her palm to the wall, it became colder than ever, like the concrete beneath the paint was holding the chill in its bones.
She hesitated only a moment before knocking. Two quick, deliberate taps.
“Sawyer?” Her voice came out hoarse, small. “Are you still there?”
A long pause followed, and then, finally—his voice, low but steady. “Yeah. I’m here.”
Relief hit her in a wave so sudden it made her knees weak. She sank down to the floor beside the wall, clutching the blanket closer.
“Good,” she breathed. “I wasn’t sure.”
“I said I’d be here,” he replied. His tone hadn’t changed; it carried that same measured calm that made her wonder if he’d ever been afraid of anything.
“Did you sleep?” he asked after a moment.
“Not much,” she admitted. “It’s too cold.”
“Yeah,” he said quietly. “Power grid’s starting to go. I figured it would.”
Addy stared at the dark ceiling. “You sound as if you expected it.”
“I did.”
Of course, he had. He was a prepper—the kind of man who probably had a generator and backup filters, while she had… duct tape and granola bars. A man who’d read about collapse and held the conviction it was coming long before the rest of them saw the signs.
“You said you might have a plan,” she said finally.
There was a short silence on the other side of the wall, the kind that made her think maybe she’d imagined his voice the night before.
Then, softly, “Yeah. I’ve been thinking. We can’t stay here much longer. The air’s getting worse. You’ve seen the sky.”
Addy glanced toward the window. Even through the layers of plastic and tape, a sickly gray-yellow glow pressed through, staining everything it touched. It wasn’t sunlight anymore; it was haze, heavy and unnatural, like the world itself was running a fever.
“What do we do?” she asked.
“I’ve been tracking the last emergency broadcasts,” he said. “Before they went dark, there was one from a point about ninety miles west, outside of town. They claimed maybe a safe zone. Could’ve been military. Could’ve been civilians trying to hold out.”
“You think it’s still there?”
“I think it’s worth finding out.”
Addy pressed her palm flat against the cold floor, grounding herself. Ninety miles. It might as well have been three hundred with the way the streets looked now—empty, dangerous, thick with that strange haze that made her lungs ache when she forgot and opened the window too wide.
“Ninety miles is a long way.”
“But doable,” he said. “I can get us there.”
Of course, he could. Sawyer had always looked like the kind of man who planned for the end of the world. The quiet, watchful type who didn’t trust much but kept everything he might need tucked away, just in case.
“And if my truck is still where I left it, we should have the gas,” he added. “We can make it before nightfall. But we’ll have to move fast. The longer we wait, the worse this gets.”
Addy hesitated, then asked the question she’d been avoiding since the first day. “What about others? Do you think anyone else is still alive here?”
Silence stretched thin between them. Too long.
When Sawyer finally spoke, his voice was quiet, low enough that she had to press her ear against the wall to hear him.
“There aren’t any others, Addy. It’s you and I.”
Her throat closed up. She’d known it, but hearing him say it out loud made it real. Made it final.
Outside, the wind shifted. The taped plastic rustled softly, and for a moment, Addy could almost sense the metallic tang in the air, faint but unmistakable—the sensation of decay, of something gone wrong in the world’s lungs.
She sank down beside the wall, knees pulled to her chest, and whispered into the space between them,
“Then I guess it’s just us.”
There was no answer for a long time. Then, barely audible, Sawyer said,
“Yeah, just us.”
* * *
Addy spent the rest of the evening packing what she thought she might need to leave her home, probably for the last time.
Her hands moved automatically, but her mind kept slipping backward.
She remembered the day she’d first moved into the apartment—twenty-five, fresh out of college, her first real teaching job waiting for her at the small brick school down the street.
Back then, she thought she’d stay a year or two before moving somewhere bigger.
But the town had a way of wrapping itself around her.
It reminded her of where she’d grown up in Texas, just colder, quieter, but still full of that same small-town warmth. The corner diner that remembered her order, the kids waving when they saw her car, the way the air was a mix of wood smoke and rain in the fall. It had seemed safe. Familiar.
Now it had an odor of decay and grit and chemicals, and the dark corners of her once-cozy apartment seemed to lean closer with every passing hour.
The walls that had once been like home now pressed in on her, heavy and stale.
She should have been sad to leave, but she wasn’t.
Not really. The fear of staying had started to outweigh the fear of what waited outside.
Still, her hands trembled as she packed. A change of clothes. Her warmest coat, gloves, hat, and boots. A few protein bars, what was left of her bottled water. Her small flashlight, its beam flickering weakly. The notebook where she’d been writing her daily entries. And finally, a photo of her mom.
She paused, staring down at it.
It was from a few years ago, taken on a beach trip to the Gulf; the two of them squinting into the sunlight; skin touched golden by salt air and laughter.
Her mom’s arm was looped around her shoulder, her smile so bright it almost looked defiant.
Addy brushed her thumb over the image, tracing the edge of her mother’s face, the faint curl of her hair that always blew out of place.
A tear slid down Addy’s cheek before she even realized it. She wiped it away quickly, sniffing. “You’d tell me to stop crying and get moving,” she whispered. “You’d say it’s going to be okay.”
She wasn’t sure she believed that anymore, but she wanted to.
She slid the photo carefully into the bag, zipped it shut, and sat on the edge of her bed for a long moment.
The air was cold enough that her breath clouded faintly in front of her, and every sound seemed sharper: the creak of the pipes, the rustle of the plastic on the windows, the faint scrape that told her Sawyer was still there.
He was calm. Steady. Like someone who had seen this coming all along. That steadiness anchored her, even through the wall. She didn’t know him—not really, but right now, that didn’t matter.
She was terrified. But at least she wasn’t terrified alone.