Bloodied and covered in dirt, Hanish hiked up the hill, his gaze fixed beyond the horizon. In the distance, he spotted a woman wielding a baseball bat, smashing it against a door while screaming. “Janice!” Hanish shouted.

  She turned, but she was not the Janice he remembered. Though still curvaceous, her face was marred by scars, and her rose-colored lips were busted.

  She wore a tattered, dark blue dress, her red hair pulled back in a bun. She smiled and waved as he approached. He noticed bandages wrapped around her legs. “Why are you breaking into this house?” he asked, observing her failed attempt to break the lock.

  “This house has a pool!” she exclaimed, swinging the bat into the door’s glass frame. Reaching through the shattered glass, she unlocked the door with a crooked finger. Hanish watched in amazement as she swung the door open.

  She entered the house as if she knew her way around. Hanish watched her, a headache tightening its grip as he began to feel lightheaded. He stumbled against the doorway as she skipped about the room, fading into her background. She was lost in her own world.

  He slid down the wall, paralyzed, watching her move about. A cough wracked his body. She turned and rushed to his side. Touching his forehead, she shouted, “You have a fever!”

  Hanish lay frozen as Janice searched the cabinets for medicine. “There isn’t a thing in here,” she said, slamming the cabinets. “They just have oils.”

  He shivered, finally able to move slightly.

  “Janice, it’s okay,” Hanish spoke, coughing again. “Let me rest here. You go on.”

  Stolen story; please report.

  “You saved me back then.” He woke up to find himself in his bed at home. Janice was sitting before him, wearing a jeans jacket, black leggings, and a white t-shirt. He thought she looked nice, and he smiled.

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “When you came back from burying Aleaha, I was out of the bunker then… you found me and rescued me.” Hanish looked at her and shook his head.

  “No, you came to me a couple of weeks ago with glass embedded in your stomach,” he groaned. He would have remembered saving someone back then; why would he forget that?

  “You might have forgotten because you didn’t know you saved me,” she said, placing a damp towel on his head. How could someone save someone and not know? She sat back in her chair and looked away from him. “You shot and killed Lila in the backyard… I was in the pantry hiding,” she said. “I knew she was half dead then. You left me alive, but you didn’t know I was in there.”.

  “Lila? She was the first woman I killed,” he said. “But we saw her when we were on our way to the department store.” He remembered because Janice had freaked out and was in pain then.

  “Because… that means they don’t stay dead… when they evacuate the city…”

  “Evacuated the city?” he said, confused. “When did they do that?” he said, trying to sit up, but he couldn’t bring himself to.

  “Two weeks after the presidential address … that’s why none of the living are here,” she spoke to him.

  “But you know, I thought it was just the two of us… we went looking…”

  “For more food,” Janice said, cutting him off. Janice forgot to mention that to him: that beyond the city, there were living people.

  Hanish shoved himself away from her. He began to sob; he had, for a long time, thought he was alone. That’s why he had given up on searching for others. He had just thought maybe that Aleaha would be the one thing that wouldn’t have left him, but she died on him.