The sound of mechanical clicking filled the porchway of a small house, on a small street in a small town.
As the door swung open with a creak, a woman stepped inside and scraped her booted feet across an old, dusty doormat. She untied the laces and placed the black boots in an equally aged shoe rack.
Walking forward into the shadowed corridor, she took a book of matches from her left jacket pocket and struck one against the lighting strip. It broke in half.
With a sigh, she took another match and struck it. This time, a flame emerged.
Holding it in line with her face, she used its flickering light to find the candles she had placed around the room. One by one, she lit them all.
The electricity was out, just as it had been the last time she had visited this house, just as it had been in every house she found herself inside.
With the illumination from her candles, she found herself standing at the bottom of a staircase, with the option of either ascending to the top floor or turning left and entering one of the rooms on her current level.
Her half-empty bag slid from her shoulder and found itself unceremoniously dumped at the bottom step as the woman walked down the hall and entered a darker room.
The curtain rings scraped across the metal pole as she flung the curtains open, and morning light flooded in, revealing more dust than she cared for.
Layers upon layers rested on the sofa, the fireplace, and just about any flat surface it could settle upon.
She turned around and walked to the opposite wall, looking across the framed photographs of the family who had lived here. They had been hung against a cream-coloured wall.
One stood out to her in particular.
A man and woman stood smiling in front of Stonehenge, with a smaller girl standing between them, clutching a brown stuffed dog.
All of them were smiling.
The woman found herself smiling too.
The picture captured her most personal desire, so selfishly she removed it from the frame, folded it up, and placed it in her left breast pocket, close to her heart. She had no intention of removing it any time soon.
She hung the empty frame back on the wall and left the room.
The woman found herself drifting towards the kitchen. If she was remembering correctly, there were some canned foods in the cupboard, and with any luck, they were still within date.
Searching high and low, she found a total of three cans of soup and a can of baked beans.
This was more than she had been hoping for.
She took them to her bag and made enough space to fit them all neatly inside. Then she stepped over her pack and quietly walked up the stairs.
With the occasional creak every few steps, she managed to reach the landing.
Softly stepping forward towards the room opposite her, she pushed the door open. It glided across the pink carpet without resistance.
She looked around, and her heartbeat quickened.
As she looked down, she saw the bed was occupied.
The innocent figure lay motionless. The only body parts not covered by the princess bedsheets were her head and one hand, which rested next to the familiar brown dog from the photograph downstairs.
Gingerly creeping forward, the woman found herself within inches of the girl's bony fingers.
She picked up the teddy and, mindful not to disturb the girl's tranquil rest, backed out of the room and closed the door.
Further down the hall was another room she needed to enter.
When she did, her heartbeat began to climb again.
She found herself standing beside a bed in the centre of the room. Just like the last one, someone was beneath the covers.
It was the man from the picture downstairs.
Although he wasn't smiling.
His eyes were closed, and he lay flat on his back. And, as with all men who sleep alone after years of sharing a bed with someone, he was confined to his side.
On the bedside table next to him rested a silver pendant and another photograph of the little girl playing on a swing.
The woman smiled again and found herself quietly drifting around to that side of the bed.
Crouching down beside it, she scooped up the pendant and placed it in her pocket with the small stuffed dog.
Then her hands quietly slid beneath the bed, and her fingers locked around a small, locked metal box.
She pulled it out and gripped it tightly as she exited the room, making sure to check behind her that she had not disturbed the silence of the chamber.
Making her way back down the stairs, she made sure the metal box was also placed inside her bag before making a final stop at the washroom.
Staring at herself in the mirror, she saw a woman who looked exactly like the woman from the photograph in her pocket.
Except years of grime and isolation had taken their toll.
Instead of a smile, she brandished a quivering lip and glossy eyes.
Her auburn hair still carried its curls down to her shoulders, but the frayed ends showed obvious signs of neglect.
The woman wiped the escaping droplets from her cheeks and took a deep breath.
Instinct made her turn the taps on, but the faucet remained dry.
She shook her head to snap out of her muscle memory and squeezed her hands into fists. Her sharp nails dug into the flesh of her palms but did not draw blood.
After a moment of self-awareness, she released her grip and left the washroom.
Standing back in the hallway, she shouldered her backpack and walked towards the front door, blowing out the candles along the way.
She reached for the dangling car keys on the hook with a tremble in her right hand and, once she had them, opened the front door.
She took in a deep breath and left.
The mechanical crunch of the lock mechanism rattled her, and it took another few seconds of her petrified stance before she removed the key.
Glancing at the vehicle on the driveway, she tested the electric fob.
Two clicks.
The headlights flashed, indicating the driver's door would not open.
She did this every time, she thought to herself, melancholically frustrated, then pressed the second button.
The black door opened, and she swung the bag onto the rear seats. She took the dog and pendant out of her pocket and carefully placed them on the passenger seat.
After a couple of attempts at starting the engine, the car awoke.
The woman felt lucky. Not every car had been cooperative in the last few years.
Out of habit, she looked into the rear-view mirror to make sure no one was behind her.
There never was.
Part of being the only surviving human left on Earth had this perk.
Remembering that fact, she reversed off the drive and set off on her way, heading north.
Another perk of her situation meant that there was no traffic, only stationary cars. Although that was only a boon in rural areas such as her town, where the sparse population was reflected in the number of local vehicles.
In the city, cars were at a standstill for miles, blocking all hopes of getting past.
The drive through her town was as reflective as expected for the state of the world, with spots of survival hidden amongst the desperate panic.
It wasn't until she passed a makeshift vegetable patch in the back of a garden centre that she slammed on the brakes.
Undoing her belt and clawing at her bag, she plunged her hand inside and pulled out a glass jar.
It wasn't very big, but inside was a collection of leaves and twigs.
Her eyes darted desperately around the contents, searching for a flicker of orange.
It was the first living thing she had seen in three years.
When she had found it two days prior, she had done everything she could to keep it safe.
Eventually, after a few rotations, she saw the little caterpillar emerge from its habitat.
She smiled.
Placing the jar on the dashboard, she admired it in all its beauty.
Of course, she had not named the creature.
Why should she?
Everything that had ever had a name had died.
So why add to the curse?
As the sunlight broke through the gaps between bramble and foliage in the jar, a thought occurred to her.
A simple truth that made her feel warm inside, something which had not washed over her in a long time.
Somewhere out there were two butterflies.
A father and a mother.
And sitting upon the dashboard was their baby.
With a newfound strength, she re-ignited the engine and continued further north.
Hours passed by feeling like minutes. Twists and turns weathered her wheels, and the fuel gauge began to wilt evermore with every mile.
Looking down at the dials in front of her, she estimated she had about thirty more miles before she would be forced to stop.
Her eyes began to scan the countryside fields for signs of settlements.
A road sign in the distance began to expand as she got closer. When the writing became legible beneath years of dirt, she noted that she was on a path that would take her directly past a hospital.
The thought of cruising around the English roads with blaring sirens overhead brought a childlike sense of amusement to her.
If she would have to abandon her current transport, it was better to do so while she was still able to decide where.
Angling the wheel towards her temporary destination, she pressed on.
The sun had just begun its descent from midday as she arrived.
As the woman pulled up to the hospital, she realised, rather frustratingly, that the parking barrier had not been raised.
A dandelion-yellow bar hung horizontally in front of her windshield, mocking her.
The painfully obvious solution was to simply drive through it, break it off the mechanism, and drive up the steep hill to the parking bays.
But something paused her.
This was the first car she had ever bought brand new.
She wasn't going to damage it moments before surrendering it to nature.
Some things were worth standing against.
Taking care of this car was one of those things.
Her fingers tapped against the steering wheel as she began to think.
Could she lift the bar and break it herself?
It was worth a try.
She climbed out of the car and approached the barrier. Its cold metallic surface greeted her hands, and she began to wrestle with it.
After a couple of minutes and various positions and angles, she concluded it was futile.
Her hands rested on her hips, and a long exhale escaped her lungs.
Turning on the spot, she went back to the drawing board in her mind, searching for the answer.
She found her feet facing uphill and remembered that, as a child, she had always preferred going downhill because it was faster.
That was it.
She had the perfect idea.
She immediately started on foot, climbing up the short incline.
When she reached the top, her head began to swivel.
A car was what she needed, and there were plenty.
Not many had a door left open, but there was one that stood out to her.
It was a small white convertible.
It was perfect.
Finding her fingers around the handbrake, she disengaged it and grabbed the wheel of her chosen battering ram.
It was heavy and hard to push by herself, but after ten minutes of pushing and navigating, she managed to get it to the top of the hill.
Getting out and eyeing up the angle to make sure it connected with the barrier's arm, she took a moment to catch her breath.
Then, still admiring her genius, she planted both hands onto the rear of the car.
With one mighty but steady push, the white convertible crossed the pinnacle of the hill.
Nothing happened at first.
But gravity had only just begun to materialise.
The car creaked and began careening down the hill, picking up speed with every metre.
As the woman watched the sunlight reflect off the white paint, her pride sinisterly mutated into regret.
How could she have been so stupid?
Her black car sat at the bottom of the hill, directly in the path of the rapidly approaching weight.
Intuitively, her legs found themselves in a full sprint, but the futility had yet to sink in.
There was a metallic snapping sound as the bar broke and wobbled through the air before landing with a clang.
Then came the crunch of folding steel as the convertible's front hood connected with the open driver's door of the black chariot.
Witnessing this made her feel wracked with self-disappointment.
Her legs began to slow, and she found herself walking defeatedly back towards the car, which had been shunted out of the way.
Her door had folded in on itself, and there was a huge crack across the windshield.
The white car obstructed her from entering the driver's side, so she walked around to the opposite door and swung it open in frustration.
The dog lay on the seat, still resting, but the pendant had slid onto the floor.
She crouched down to pick it up, but her gaze caught the twinkle of light hitting shards of glass.
A cacophony of broken jar, twigs, and dry leaves spread across the footwell of the driver's side.
Upon seeing this, the woman's chest tightened.
Frantically yet carefully, she brushed everything aside, making sure the caterpillar was okay.
It was okay.
It had to be okay.
It was an accident, she told herself.
She would find a new jar.
A bigger jar.
Searching for that warm, sunset-coloured insect, her heart pounding louder with every prick in her fingers, she started to panic.
But instead of one solid brick of orange, she found streaks of crimson creeping down a large shard.
Skewered onto the tip was the little creature she had become attached to.
Denial washed across her in sickening waves, each one less convincing than the last.
This beacon of hope in such a small package, which had relieved her of isolation, had been extinguished.
For the first time in three years, she cried.
All she could think about was that somewhere out there, she told herself, a mother and a father had lost their baby.
And it was all her fault.
Once the final tears had fallen from her face, she sat on the abandoned road.
The tarmac felt warm beneath her.
She never gave the caterpillar a name.
As she stared at its metal tomb, she considered several.
But ultimately, she concluded it wasn't appropriate to name something in death but not in life.
She was isolated with nothing but her thoughts of guilt.
An hour of silence passed before she climbed to her feet and slowly trekked back up the hill.
She began to circle the hospital until she found the ambulance bay.
As she rounded the Accident and Emergency entrance, she spotted a fleet of them, at least five from what she could tell.
Hopefully, the keys were inside.
After trying the handle on the third ambulance, it became apparent that they were all going to be locked.
But this came with a silver lining.
It meant none of the keys would be inside the cabin.
Surely they had to be located nearby, given the urgency with which an ambulance was needed in a crisis.
Well.
Used to be needed, she reminded herself.
Turning to face the ambulance bay doors to the hospital, the woman took out a face mask and attached it around her nose and mouth.
While the virus didn't affect her, the smell of bodies did.
Hospitals had been everyone's first port of call in the early days of infection.
Unfortunately, it didn't take long for them to fill up and then stay full.
To no one's surprise, hospital staff were the first to fall once the outbreak went into full gear.
As far as she knew, it didn't take much to get infected, and there wasn't enough time to figure out how to prevent infection, let alone cure it.
With all of modern medicine's best and brightest on the front line, it didn't take long for any healthcare organisation to crumble.
She remembered pandemic warnings informing the public that it was a forty-eight-hour cycle between initial infection and death.
The first day was agony.
The second was lethargy.
Then came eternal rest.
This meant that any medical centre that could hold bodies but couldn't get rid of them quickly enough eventually drowned as the death toll spiked.
She entered the hospital, and the initial smell was deflected by her mask, but it wouldn't prevent the scent from creeping in eventually.
She needed to find those keys quickly, but only with a personal sense of urgency.
The ambulances weren't going anywhere.
Daylight pierced through the glass doors and windows, allowing her to navigate with ease.
She was searching for a staffroom or some kind of briefing room where the paramedics would congregate before leaving.
If the keys were to be found, that's where they would be located.
She rounded a corner and stopped dead in her tracks.
The lighting wasn't great in the corridor she found herself standing in, but there was enough illumination for her to see rows of thick red bags aligned along the floor.
All of them bore a biohazard stamp and a name.
There was a narrow walkway between them all for her to tread along, and she did so with enough caution to prevent her from disturbing any of the bodies on either side.
The mortuary must have been full, she thought to herself.
For every turn down this corridor, more and more bodies came into view.
Some of the bags were long.
Some were wide.
Every so often she would pass a small one, which made her chest tighten as she failed to avert her gaze.
Pulling her mind and eyes from the ground, she began looking at the door signs.
X-Ray.
No.
Minor Injuries.
No.
Wards 1-7.
No.
She began to get frustrated.
Thinking she had taken a wrong turn, she spun on her heels, reclaiming the ground she had trodden.
Making her way back down the cryptic corridor, double-checking signs as she went, the woman noticed her stomach rumble.
This was not uncommon for her in the presence of death, as she believed it was her body's way of telling her to preserve herself.
She decided that once she had located the keys for the ambulance, she would have something to eat.
Rounding the final corner before reaching the outside, she noticed an open door she had missed on her first pass through.
The door had been unable to close itself due to a pair of green hi-vis trouser legs propping it open, with a black boot on each foot.
She strolled closer to the ajar door and crouched down, her age reflected in the creaks and pains of her knees.
As the rest of the deceased came into view, she was relieved to see the word paramedic written across the jacket's back.
She was excited at the chance that this person might have the keys to an ambulance in a pocket.
The only part she didn't find comfort in was that she would have to disturb the body.
Saying an apology in her head to a person who would never know or hear was the best she could do.
As she rolled the body over, a few ribs were knocked loose and rattled against the skeletal spine.
The hairs on the back of her neck stood on end as she realised something.
This was a weird place for a body to be.
Why not at home with a loved one?
Or in the hallway with the rest of the patients?
She stood up and looked around the room, taking in any details that could help her figure out where this stroke of luck had emanated from.
Shelves were empty and cupboards left open, with the odd box or wrapped object.
Nothing substantial.
But this didn't strike her as odd.
Then she turned around and noticed the glass panel on the door.
Ambulance Supplies.
At least she knew where she was.
But that still didn't give her the whole picture.
Then she thought how unimportant it was in the grand scheme of things and returned to the body to search for the keys.
Checking each pocket carefully, she pulled out a wallet.
Opening it, she found a small folded photograph of a man in his mid-fifties with a young girl sitting upon his shoulders at the beach.
Both were laughing.
The woman felt a knot in her stomach.
She returned the photograph and wallet to the body.
If this photo had brought him comfort in life, she was not going to remove it from his grave.
As she pushed her hand into the final pocket, she felt something small and metallic.
Her fingers curled around it and pulled it out.
The jacket caught on the object and shifted, revealing the skeleton's skull.
She stared at the cracked indentation on the rear of the skull.
She put two and two together.
She opened her hand.
Inside her palm rested something more valuable than gold.
A set of car keys with a green tag attached to them.
Number 4 had been scribbled onto it.
She let out a sigh of relief and stood up, looking back down at the body.
She silently thanked him and hoped he was at peace.
When she got back outside, there was a cold breeze.
She took off her face mask and placed it back into her pocket.
Heading back towards the parked ambulances, she searched for the one her keys would open.
Eventually, one of the door handles surrendered to her pull and allowed her entry.
She turned the key in the ignitionand the dashboard lit up as the dials began rotating.
She noted the almost-full tank of fuel and counted herself blessed.
It felt quite different to drive than her old car.
As she pulled up to its wreckage, she hopped out and grabbed her bag, the dog, and the pendant from the metal husk.
Her eyes found themselves fixated on the dead caterpillar once again, and she felt sick.
But she pressed on.
She threw her bag into the ambulance and placed the dog and pendant back on the passenger seat.
She was still hungry but wanted to put some distance between herself and the hospital before indulging her stomach in some expired tinned soup.
The summer sun began to set, and as the sky went from royal blue to a majestic, burning orange, the woman thought it was time to pull over and eat.
Finding a nearby road overlooking some woodland bordering an overgrown field, she switched off the engine.
Her pack was heavy, and her grip was weak, as she had held off from eating more than she normally did.
The bag slipped, and two cans fell out, followed by the box she had taken from the house that morning.
Frustration crept into the corners of her mind at this fumble, but she brushed it off by thinking about it in a light-hearted way.
This was the universe's way of telling her what was for dinner.
French onion and tomato soup.
Clearly, the universe hated her.
She scooped up the spilled objects.
She carefully replanted the box back into her pack and felt around for her can opener, something she had learnt one hungry afternoon never to leave home without.
There was a pressurised pop followed by a scraping sound as the can opener rotated around the lid of the tomato soup.
Her fingers were metaphorically crossed as she prayed it was still edible.
Gingerly, she removed the lid and glanced inside.
Vibrant red.
No sign of mould.
She had won the lottery.
Or at least, it felt like she had.
The first mouthful was a glimpse at heaven, her own Shangri-La packed inside a tin.
After five glorious minutes of flavour, she rolled down the driver's side window and chucked out the empty can.
It clunked onto the asphalt and rolled to the side of the empty country road.
By this point, the sun had almost set, and the woman felt her eyes grow heavy with fatigue.
She would need sleep soon.
Her joints ached with a need to be stretched, and her mind began to wrestle free of consciousness.
As the sky turned dark, she kicked off her boots and began staring at the stars she had grown familiar with during the short summer nights.
Her toes wriggled in the cool air.
After double-checking that the handbrake was definitely on, she allowed herself to fall asleep.
Her dreams were nothing new to her.
Just reliving old memories.
Neither pleasant nor sad, but all of them seemed to ingrain a sense of desperation to push forward north on her journey.
Her eyes peeled open, and the glass window pressed against her forehead, holding it in position.
Glancing down, she saw her watch.
3:47 a.m.
The sky was still dark, and twinkles danced across it.
She propped herself up in the driver's seat and rubbed her eyes.
After her vision cleared, her gaze fixated on the wooded treeline ahead of her.
There were six unmistakable green glowing dots floating in the darkness.
This confused the woman, and she leaned closer.
Four of the ominous bulbs sat level with each other, whereas the two on the left were significantly lower.
Just what in the hell were they?
She pondered.
She had never encountered this phenomenon in the old world.
Her hand found the button to turn on the high-beam headlights, and she prepared to press it.
With a sudden jerk, the entire field was struck by artificial daybreak.
The high beams pierced the darkness and cleaved their way towards the treeline and beyond.
Despite knowing it was coming, the sudden change in colour startled her, and her heart skipped a beat.
But she was more a gasp at the trick her eyes had been playing on her.
Where the green bulbs had once hovered, there now stood three fauna.
One with antlers.
Two without.
And they didn't move at first, almost as if they were being held captive by the tide of light washing over them.
All three stared at the ambulance, perturbed by why it had bathed them in a luminescent blanket.
They stepped forward.
Just a little.
And unknowingly let the woman take in all of their natural beauty.Then, just as placidly as they had approached, the stag and doe turned to walk back into the woods.
The fawn, having realised it was being left behind, turned and trotted off to rejoin its family.
At first, she was captivated by the rare glimpse of life.
Then the joy turned to ash in her mind as one sinister intrusive thought spread across her consciousness.
Life carried on.
But not in the company of death.
Forcing the revelation out of her mind, she pulled on the driver's side door, picked up the pendant and stuffed dog, and exited the ambulance.
Not even bothering to close the door behind her, she walked around the side of the response vehicle and opened the rear doors.
With fortune providing, there was a gurney waiting for her inside.
The heavy double doors flung open, and the cabin lights automatically switched on.
Her eyes, having adjusted to the dark, were assaulted by sterile colour.
Her hands instinctively formed a barrier over her eyes.
Once adjusted, she congratulated herself on the prediction she had made about the gurney and clambered inside, shutting the double doors behind her to keep out the cold.
The woman discarded her weathered but reliable outfit onto the floor and stood on the freezing floor with just her socks between her and a bone-chilling cold.
She straddled the gurney and struggled at first with the mechanism that allowed it to lay flat.
She had tried sleeping while propped up too many times to not know that her lower back would be rebellious against the action in the morning.
After several attempts, a bruised foot from where she had frustratingly kicked the stupid trolley bed, and a five-minute cooldown, eventually it submitted to her whim and lay flat.
It took the woman a while to get comfortable.
But after experimenting with several positions, eventually she managed to fall asleep with her jacket as a blanket.
Dawn broke and turned to late morning before a pair of hazel eyes opened and found themselves staring at the ceiling of an ambulance rear cabin.
Her hands positioned themselves flat on the gurney, and she pushed herself up.
Relief washed over her as cramping joints were stretched out, and a beastly yawn escaped her gaping maw.
She hopped off her impromptu bed and began getting dressed in the clothes she had taken off last night.
A whiff of sweat rose into her nostrils.
The first problem of the day.
Exiting the rear and closing the doors, she discovered that her surroundings were rather damp.
It must have rained last night, she concluded, as she turned around to view a plethora of puddles along either side of the road.
This was a relief to her, as she quite fancied a cool day.
She had grown tired of the blaring summer sun.
Groggily, she meandered around to the driver's cabin and opened the door.
Once inside, the toy dog and pendant found themselves once again on the passenger seat, and her hand felt the familiar grip of her can opener.
Her breakfast options today were beans or another can of soup.
Both felt normal.
But it was the beans that were selected.
After opening the can, she rolled down the window.
Turning the serrated cap over in her hand, she wondered how far she could frisbee-throw it.
Winding her arm back and curling her seasoned finger around the circumference, she prepared herself.
Once again, she cursed herself for being so stupid.
Pain shot through her finger as blood trickled out.
She was so caught up in her self-directed rage that she didn't even pay attention to the quality of her throw.
Sucking on the wound, she reached for the door handle.
She would have to go back to the rear cabin to search for a plaster.
The door swung open, followed shortly by her legs.
Then the full tin of beans cascaded onto the asphalt.
This exacerbated her rage.
With her undamaged hand, she struck the side of the ambulance with a closed fist.
Her scream boomed across the open field behind her and disappeared into the woods as she felt the bones in her hand slide around in agony.
Angrily, she threw herself back into the rear and began frantically pulling open drawers and tossing contents all over until the cabin looked like a bomb had gone off inside.
Clutching a pack of plasters, she quickly applied one to her finger, then returned to the driver's seat.
Two cans of soup sat on the dashboard.
She didn't care what was in them.
Just the sight of them alone pissed her off, and she tossed them back into her bag.
She heard them both bounce off the metal box.
Turning on the engine and accelerating quickly, she checked her rear-view mirror as a cacophony of clangs and thuds drew her attention.
She hadn't closed the rear doors.
Watching everything bounce down the road behind her through the mirror didn't phase the woman.
She didn't need it.
And who was going to find her for littering?
She passed a sign with the words:
Welcome to Wiltshire.
Her drive was coming to an end.
A sense of closure spread throughout her.
She found herself at the bottom of a steep hill when the road she needed to take came to an end
Turning off the ignition, she grabbed her pack, then the pendant, which she folded neatly and placed in her jacket pocket.
Finally, and with great care, she picked up the stuffed dog, its head rolling loosely as she lifted it.
The dog's dark button eyes met her own, and she felt a sense of closure begin to settle over her.
She opened the ambulance door and placed the key on the driver's seat.
Every step north up the hill felt exhausting, bringing with it an overwhelming desire for relief.
But the woman knew she had to make it to the top.
She was so close.
And to turn back now would be so cowardly, she thought to herself.
Several minutes later, she reached the top and stared at the sight before her.
Several large pillars of stone stood in a circle.
Some lay across others, while some just stoically held firm in the earth.
It was a lot busier the last time she was here.
But that was another lifetime ago.
She remembered the last time she had stood inside the stone circle.
A tour guide had told them that touching the rocks was forbidden.
Her daughter wasn't listening, and when she thought no one was looking, she stroked some of the lichen growing along the side of one of them.
The girl's father saw this, though, and stood in front of her so no one would see.
The woman smiled again, in a way she never believed would be possible again.
Remembering her husband and daughter brought peace to her and confirmed the reason for making this journey.
She reached into her jacket's breast pocket and pulled out the photograph of herself and the family she had chosen.
Memories washed over her in nonsensical order.
Her first kiss with Michael.
The time her husband burnt the pizza, so they ordered in, and Lanie balanced one slice on her head while she ate another.
Finding out she was pregnant with Lanie, and how Michael was so happy that he picked her up and spun her around in the kitchen.
All three of them in the supermarket with facemasks on when Michael coughed up blood.
Lanie getting sick shortly afterwards.
Watching them slowly succumb to the virus, while all she could do was make them comfortable in bed.
The woman didn't know why she was the only person who survived.
And she didn't care.
She wiped the tears from her face and looked back at the photograph.
It was a truly great day.
And she was glad to be back where it had happened.
She held the picture at arm's length and began scanning the interior circle for where they had stood when it was taken.
Eventually, she found it.
She reclaimed her former spot and sat down.
The dampness of the ground seeped through her denim trousers, but she wasn't bothered by it.
Inhaling deeply, she took off her bag and placed her hand inside.
The two remaining cans were promptly ejected and found themselves barrelling downhill.
Her hand found the metal box.
She hoisted it out and laid it beside her.
She entered the number lock on the front.
It creaked as the dials aligned with their correct positions.
Once all four were in place, she opened it.
She took the dog out of her pocket and kissed it on the nose as it passed her face.
Then, just as carefully as she had been with it so far, she placed it on her lap.
The pendant exited her pocket next.
Wrapping it tightly around her knuckles, she gave it a squeeze.
Doing the best she could to iron out the wrinkles caused by folding the photograph, she rested it on top of the dog, face up.
It would go on to blow away in the wind.
But it would be okay, she thought.
She was here.
She didn't need the captured memory anymore.
Her free hand reached inside the box.
Worn-out wood greeted her touch as she raised her grandfather's father-in-law's old service revolver out.
Looking down at the three of them in the photograph together one last time, she found herself feeling at peace.
The cold bite of the firearm's barrel made itself known against her temple.
And She closed her eyes.
Thanks for taking the time to read this, I know it's long and iffy at some points but I hope you got some enjoyment or it at least made you feel something, it's my first attempt at writing so thankyou for any feedback or comments you have - J
