We were supposed to be celebrating Briana’s birthday today, not … not this.
Owen and Juniper and their families haven’t arrived yet, so the only person still unaccounted for is— “Mom!” I shout.
No answer.
Nononopleaseno.
She can’t be dead.
“Mom!” My heart feels like it’s trying to leap out of my chest.
I run from room to room like a madwoman, searching for her. She was here when I left this morning, already prepping for the birthday party, but now I don’t see her.
Gone is better than dead, I try to tell myself.
But then I glance out the living room window into the backyard. First I catch sight of the long wooden table already prepped with plates and utensils and some birthday decorations. Beyond that I notice the big oak tree that I used to climb as a kid. For a moment I’m able to trick myself into thinking that she was an exception, just like me, before my eyes land on the raised garden beds.
No.
My legs fold.
“Mom.” My voice doesn’t sound like my own. It’s too hoarse, too agonized.
She lays next to the raised beds, some gathered herbs strewn next to her.
I force myself to my feet and stumble towards the back door. I don’t know how I get it open, I can’t see clearly, my tears are obscuring everything.
I don’t want to believe this death. This woman saved me and took me in. She showed me what grace and bravery and compassion and love look like. To quote my second grade writing prompt, my mother is my hero.
And somehow, her incredible life is just gone.
I don’t know how I manage to get the rest of the way to her. Nothing feels right. I fall at my mom’s side. This close to her, I can see that her eyes, too, are open, sightlessly staring up at the sky as though it holds the answers.
A choked cry slips from me as I drag her body into my arms. Her skin feels wrong—warm where the sun has been beaming down, but cooler where it’s rested against the grass.
I still press my fingers to her neck; I can’t bear not to.
Nothing. No flutter of a pulse—nothing to challenge what I can so obviously see.
I close my eyes, bowing my head over her. Tears now freely slip down my face.
My entire family can’t be gone. They can’t.
I’m weeping and broken and I can’t process any of it.
This is what it must’ve felt like, all those years ago, when Jill Gaumond, my mother, rode into Atlanta against everyone’s pleas, looking for her husband. It must’ve felt unbelievable, seeing a city’s worth of dead and her loved one amongst them, taken by Pestilence’s plague. But at least then, the rest of her family had been in Temple, Georgia, safe from the Messianic Fever.
Now, that’s not the case. There’s no one left here besides me.
The longer I hold my mom, the colder her skin grows. And I’m still crying, and I know.
I know.
I know.
I know.
They really are all gone. Mom and River, Robin and Ethan, Nicolette and Stephen and birthday girl Briana, and little Angelina. All gone the same instant everyone else was taken. And they’re not coming back and no amount of wishing will change that.
“I love you,” I say to my mom, brushing back her hair. It feels inadequate. And my mind is still reeling, and grief hasn’t fully set in because none of this makes sense, and I’m so confused how everyone could just be … gone.
And why, even after facing down Death himself, I’m still alive.
Chapter 4
Temple, Georgia
July, Year 26 of the Horsemen
Death and I are old enemies.
Well, at least I assumed we were enemies. Apparently, he doesn’t actually know who I am.
The thing is, I’ve never been able to die—or rather, I can die. It just never seems to stick.
Not when I fell from the tree and broke my neck. Not when I was robbed and my throat was slit.
And perhaps most notably, not even when Pestilence rode through Atlanta long ago, killing a city’s worth of people, my biological parents included.
I shouldn’t have lived then—not from the plague itself, and not from the days that followed when little infant me went without food and water.
The way my mother tells it—told it—she was riding back home after finding her husband dead at the hospital he worked at when she heard my cries.
I went inside the house, and there you were, scared, hungry, and howling like you didn’t survive at least two days on your own. You saw me and ran into my arms and that was that. I lost a husband, but gained a daughter.
I can hear my mom’s voice in my head even now, and it causes my throat to tighten. My strange origins were what led to my name, Lazarus.
One who cannot die.
There’s a sick twist of envy in my gut. Envy for the dead. Who even envies the dead? And yet here I am, wishing that death had taken me along with my family instead of forcing me to endure this crushing grief all alone.
Of all the futures I envisioned, this was never one of them. It should’ve been. This is the world we live in, one where nothing works anymore and people cling to religion like some sort of talisman that will keep the monsters at bay when it so obviously won’t.
I let my mother’s body go and back away from her. It hits me then: I am surrounded by the dead. Not just in this house, but in this entire city. I swear I can feel it in the air—death pressing in on all sides.
The ground beneath my feet begins to tremble. I glance down at the earth, my brow furrowed. In the distance I hear the deep groan of … something large. Several splintering sounds follow it, then— Boom!
The ground shakes a bit more violently as something hits it hard.
I’m still trying to get my bearings when those same sounds start up again—only now, they’re coming from the walls of my house.
My gaze moves to the building before me, dread pooling low in my stomach. I begin to back up, even as the ground continues to shake.
Move, Lazarus.
I make it just beyond the oak tree near the back of the yard when my childhood home lets out a long, shrill screech. I turn around just as it starts to fall. The left side goes first, but as it begins to collapse, the right side follows.
BOOM!
I’m thrown to the ground by the sudden, close impact. A plume of dust and debris blows out over me, and I close my eyes, even as I breathe in the acrid air. A few final bits of building material clatter, then it grows quiet once more.
I stand, waving away the lingering dust in the air as I turn towards my house.
Only, my house is no longer standing. It, and all the dead who resided in it, are now nothing more than a pile of rubble.
The entire town of Temple lays in ruins. I see bodies and debris. Nothing more. The landmarks—the coffee shop I went to, the grocery store I shopped at, my old high school—are all gone.
Gone, gone, gone.
At the sight of all the destruction—and all the people I recognize lying out in the streets—I begin to cry. I cry until my voice is hoarse from sobs. Then I simply stare at the sea of bodies.
Can’t stay here, I realize. There’s no shelter left—no people left.
I look desolately around me.
Where am I supposed to go?
Chapter 5
Eastaboga, Alabama
July, Year 26 of the Horsemen
Three nights later, sitting off to the side of Highway 78, I roll my mother’s old wedding ring round and round my finger as crickets chirp around me. It’s the only thing I managed to salvage from the wreckage of my house, though that’s because my mother was wearing it, and she was one of the only things not buried beneath the rubble.
I took it off her finger. Bile rises to my throat at the thought. I took it like some shameless grave robber. What I should’ve done was bury her with it. It meant a lot to her. But I didn’t, and honestly, my guilt is eclipsed by the relief I feel that I have at least something of hers.