Last Woman by Jacqueline Druga Page A

a vacant south portion of town. A section of which was barren even before the flu. Run down businesses that once thrived decades earlier. Pizza shops and car repair places. Not a residential area by any means. And I knew, with one glance, we’d be at my house before it was even afternoon.
    Just blocks after crossing, we saw our haven. Dazzling Dan’s Buy Here Pay Here Car Lot. A virtual smorgasbord for Dodge. He moved around that lot, looking in each car, almost as if searching for something particular.
    Pick one, please, I thought.
    Then he did.
    He broke the window to the front door of the trailer office and emerged with keys.
    “Half tank of gas, I can fix this one if it breaks. I gotta plan for gas later,” He said.
    Later. Dodge always seemed to be thinking about later. We tossed the suitcase and backpack in the car, then after a few futile cranks, the engine turned over and we were off.
    We were a bout ten miles from my home.
    I asked Dodge again if he wanted to stop at his place or his ex-wife’s.
    “Maybe.” He replied. “Not now. I’m just not ready to see it. I know how sick they were.”
    “I understand.”
    It wasn’t until a mile into our trip, when we drove through the first stretch of road with homes that something clicked in Dodge and I know what it was. It was the bodies on the sidewalk, the shoulder and verge of the road. Some in trash bags, some in official body bags, and others covered loosely in what looked like drapery and sheets.
    Dodge turned and looked at me, then continued staring forward. “I think maybe I’ll have to go there. I’ll have to bury them. I owe them that.”
    “I’ll help you if you want.”
    “I’d like that but …. I’m gonna do it alone.”
    Another thing I understood. There was probably many reasons Dodge wanted to be alone to bury his family. The emotional aspect of it was private and personal. In a way, I was relieved he said he didn’t want my help. Seeing a child, would just be too much. I hadn’t seen a body of a child at all. It horrified me to even think about it, the torment that innocent had to endure. If I didn’t see one, then maybe, in my mind, I didn’t have to face the reality that children suffered.
    As we drove farther, I realized the river certainly drew a line between the contrasts of the two areas.
    In the city it was panic, chaos and fear. Signs of turmoil at every corner. In the suburbs it was quiet. There were little signs that people erupted in violence, they weren’t caged in. They were left to die without resources. They brought their dead to the edge of the road like Sunday garbage.
    Somehow in my mind, I envisioned my housing plan to be unscathed, that we’d roll in and have to slow down on the speed bumps, or stop because a child’s ball would roll across the street.
    The strict fifteen mile per hour speed limit was always adhered to. I lived in one of those housing plans, a step shy of a gated community. Where all the houses looked the same and the lawns were perfectly maintained. Where everyone pretended they had money and only a handful weren’t buried beneath monstrous mortgages.
    The second we pulled in I knew my fantasy was blown. My neighborhood was no different than any other. We brought out our dead just the same as the inner city.
    My head lowered. “Make the next right. That’s my street.”
    “Doesn’t look like any looting took place here.”
    “No.” I whispered. “Everyone was too busy being sick.”
    I felt the car turn left and reluctantly I glanced up. “Fifth house on the right.” I told him. Then I saw and a lump formed in my throat. The Reese’s had bodies, the Merrimen’s, they suffered too. Mr. and Mrs. Doyle, my next door neighbors, who constantly brought me food after my family died … they were not immune. One body was outside, I could only deduce the other was still inside, in bed, dying alone.
    The car turned and Dodge asked. “This it?”
    Looking up I nodded.
    Dodge turned off the car.