Lightship

The sky was getting dark, a sign of the storms brewing in the upper atmosphere. With a bitter smile Adam remembered the days when he didn’t care what the weather did. If it rained he’d get wet on the way to the office, but there was always somewhere warm to dry off again. Nowadays however, the offices provided no shelter. All the buildings were open to the elements now, the people who knew how to repair them gone just like all those who’d taken shelter for granted. Just like everyone.

There was still a way to go before he got to the coast, so he pulled the furs over his shoulders closer and upped his pace. If worst came to worst he could find cover up here, but he liked his visits to the sea. In a world without a calender it was a way to mark the passage of time, a change from the days of hard slogging to scrape a living off the land.

By the side of the weed-ridden road he followed there was a bent sign-post, the text long since rusted away, but he recognised it nonetheless. Not far to go now.

--

“Damn it.”

The sea was getting rougher already, and Zahra knew she needed to take cover. Long ago she would’ve started panicking, but when you were the last human alive it felt pointless to worry. Who would care if you died? It wasn’t like humanity was going to survive her after all; all she was doing was fighting against the inevitable.

And she planned on fighting like hell.

With more cursing under her breath she heaved at the oars she’d scavenged all those weeks ago, and not for the first time wished she’d been able to find a bigger boat. Her luck- which had done her pretty well so far- had wavered slightly, and left her with nothing more than a pleasure skiff. Surely once used by some rich bloke to fish and drink, or drink and fish, as he escaped the house from his wife, it meant she couldn’t do anything more than hop along the coastline. Anything was better than walking however.

In their heyday, humanity had covered almost all of the globe. What that meant now, when everyone else was gone, was that almost all of the globe was one extended mausoleum. On land it was almost impossible to avoid signs of the world before, especially if you were following the manageable trails.

Time had lost all meaning, and she couldn’t remember the last time she’d seen a person. A living person, that was. The last time she’d seen a corpse was only a few days ago. At the start she’d tried burying each one she found; now she just talked to them, though none of them had given her any useful information yet.

The waves were getting over the edges now, so she steered hard to the land, gritting her teeth as she rowed for her life.

--

The path crested the top of a hill just as the rain started to fall, so Adam jogged down the hill to the beach, letting gravity help him on. He’d been here before, and knew there were plenty of places he could rest afterwards. Today, perhaps, he’d let the rain get him wet. Live a little, like he used to, rather than just survive.

The first few months after the Events had been informative, and devastating. Never before had he, or any of the other people he’d travel with back then, realised how fragile humans were. Without central heating, without houses, without antibiotics and without clean water it had been a massacre. With each person they lost they learnt something new, but by the end Adam treated himself like glass. If he stayed wet and cold for too long he’d die, if a small cut got infected he’d die, if he ate the wrong thing he’d die. He’d lost count of the times he’d wished he’d trained in something useful, like science or geography, rather than bloody accounting. VAT rates weren’t any help when you needed food.

Every now and then though he deliberately forgot his fragile existence, and those days were normally the ones he spent on the beach. For a few hours at a time he could pretend he was just on holiday again. During term-time, his brains excuse for why everything was so quiet.

With a rare grin on his face he jogged out onto the sand and turned his face to the sky.

--

The waves were dark grey and bucking eagerly. By looking over her shoulder Zahra could tell she was making progress, getting closer to the shore no matter how much the waves dragged her back out again. But each stroke took more out of her, and now she could feel her strength waning. After everything, all the close misses and lucky escapes, and she was going to drown in sight of land.

At least I won’t leave another corpse, she thought. Not that one more would make a difference, but she’d seen them at all stages of decomposition. That alone was enough to drive her to stay alive.

Ghastly visions and their accompanying smells flooded her brain as the sea flooded the boat, and with a cry of anger she kept pulling, willing her numb arms to keep going.

--

The light was already fading. Adam knew he should find shelter first, and then prat about later. The smell of the sea brought back childhood memories however, warming him in a way the sun couldn’t any more. The faces and the voices in his memories had started fading, their images now replaced with skeletons as he forgot what actual people looked like, but he could still recall the happiness he’d felt then. He had to hold on to that.

As he turned to head down to the cliffs and find a cave, his eye caught sight of something out to sea. An old boat, being tossed about by the waves. It must’ve broken free from its moorings at last. If it came up here there could be some good firewood from it in the days to come.

The waves dipped and he saw inside the boat. Movement, against the motion of the sea.

There was someone there.

Someone alive.

--

Determination could you get far, but eventually biology caught up. Zahra had only eating sparingly at sea, and now that little energy was spent. Her battered hands couldn’t keep a grip on the oars any more, and even if they could she didn’t have the power in her muscles to fight against the sea.

Unsure whether to give up or not, she turned to look at the land. If she was going to die she wanted one last memory, and there was nothing to remember in the vast bleakness in front of her.

There were cliffs topped by green fields, and she wondered how green they’d been when humans still ruled the world. Nature grew back quickly, though with her death no-one would be around long enough to see how long before all traces of humanity were erased.

Her death.

There wasn’t any point fighting it. The land was still far away, and even if she got there she’d be mostly dead, and-

Movement. Was that- yes, there was movement on the shore. Arms held high, waving.

There was someone there.

Someone alive.

--

The boat looked in a desperate state, and Adam’s heart was in his mouth. Why had the person stopped rowing? They were so close, so close to landing and then there’d be someone. Why weren’t they coming?

But the sea was getting rougher and the little boat was being pulled away.

“Damn it!”

Adam wasn’t thinking as he ripped his backpack off. There was a tiny grain of hope still left inside him, waiting for something, and now he realised it was waiting for this. Waiting for someone else to come along and make everything better. If he lost them now, he’d lose that spark of hope as well.

Without even time for a final prayer he waded out into the water.

--

Zahra’s pack lay in the bottom of the boat, sodden through already, but it would only drag her down. Everything in it had been scavenged; she could scavenge again. The only thing she wouldn’t be able to find in the ruins of civilisation was her own life.

After one last gallant heave on the oars, checking that she was truly beaten with them, she kicked off from the brow and launched herself into the water.

--

From the shore it had looked easy. A straight line between him and the boat. Adam was barely fifty feet in though before he'd been spun around at least three times. Against the dark grey clouds he couldn’t work out what was land and what was sea. At this rate he’d end out swimming out, drowning himself as he searched for the land he’d stupidly left.

Then the boat loomed up a few crests away, and he picked up speed towards it.

--

If she’d been cold before, it was nothing compared to being totally submerged in the water. The cold drained the last of her energy, and for a blissful moment Zahra thought about letting go and just sinking.

Then a hand splashed through the water in front of her, and the hard-wired need for social contact made her grab it.

--

When his hand was grabbed Adam tried to yelp in surprise, only to choke on a mouthful of salt-water. Between his coughing and spluttering he couldn’t make out the person, but when they started to get tugged away he followed.

Better to die hand in hand with someone than all alone.

--

Fresh off the boat Zahra knew which way land had been, and now she kicked that way as hard as she could. Even in the cold of the sea the hand felt warm- so much warmer than all the bones- and she had to survive now. She needed to know who they were, she needed to hear a voice, see a face, remember what it was to human.

She needed to get out the sea.

--

It felt like hours, but experience told Adam that they wouldn’t have survived that long. With a tag-team of effort they clawed their way to shore, and when he felt something solid under his feet he started crying.

Now they both had a fresh burst of energy and were-

-running towards the shore, breaking free of the grip of the sea. Each step was easier, and by the time the sea was nothing more than a puddle at their ankles Zahra was crying. They kept running, far above the high-water mark, still being soaked by the rain, until they both collapsed onto their backs.

Adam and Zahra, both out of breath but full of hope, looked at each and smiled.