The unshaven man lying on the soiled air mattress refused to die. He struggled for life, sweating and gasping as his chest expanded and contracted. Sister Martha continued her futile vigil at his side, powerless to help him.
The Internet had fallen silent. Radio and TV yielded only static. The sickness—a global pandemic—had extinguished the last electronic voices.
The devastating virus had started in Asia and leapfrogged around the world, initially through air travel. Had it been started by an astronaut returning to earth from outer space? Could it have been a deadly germ that escaped from a secret government laboratory? Or had the final payment come due after centuries of human destruction of the earth’s air, land, and water?
The man’s rasping breaths frayed Sister Martha’s nerves. She detected a new sound like the rattle of beans in a dried gourd in his congested lungs.
She shivered in her jeans, long-sleeved shirt, and tennis shoes, clothing suited for squeezing through broken windows and doors hunting supplies. But at least she lived. Everyone else at the medical center where she worked—doctors, nurses, and patients—had died.
Her eyes returned to the man, who tossed fitfully and mumbled indistinguishable words. A roll of fat about his waist suggested he had scavenged food as she had. Why, she wondered, had either of them survived? Did they harbor some genetic quirk that made them immune?
When the plague first struck, Sister Martha had continued her duties at the hospital where she comforted the dying and their relatives. But when the medical staff began succumbing, some falling beside the gurneys bearing patients that jammed the corridors, she panicked, unable to face death revisited so many times. Taking several bottles of water and two loaves of bread from the kitchen, she fled to her refuge, a small chapel, seldom visited, on the seventh floor. Let death find her. She hid there for days, venturing out in the silenced hallways only to visit a restroom. She thumbed her Bible and prayed by rote to a God she feared had abandoned believers and nonbelievers alike.
Finally, she left the chapel and roamed the hospital, seeking signs of human life. There were none. Then the lights and air conditioning failed.
“I am not alone,” Sister Martha assured herself repeatedly, a litany much like the familiar prayers she still recited. “I am not the last.” But was she? Other than food, what did she need to continue surviving? She made a list: Loose fitting, comfortable clothes, flashlights and batteries, insect spray, books and magazines, a first aid kit.
In the parking lot, she found a Ford SUV with keys discarded on the front seat. She siphoned gas from an abandoned Toyota with a rubber tube taken from the Emergency Room. Now she could gather supplies and broaden her search for other survivors.
She refused to give up hope. Someone else might live! Each night Sister Martha trudged up stairs to the 20-story roof of the medical building, passing stalled elevators.
Waving a lantern, she walked about the roof, praying for a response. One night, she saw a flickering pinpoint of light and dashed to the parking lot. Driving at reckless speeds through the littered streets, she sought the source. It was a sign! The dim, flickering light led her to the top of an office building and a sick man. A hissing lantern had been placed on a ledge.
A series of coughs drew her attention. She poured water into the man’s half-open mouth, but he couldn’t swallow. His eyes remained closed.
Exhausted, she leaned against a wall and shut her eyes, yielding to fatigue.
As the first faint rays of morning light bathed the tower, Sister Martha jerked awake. Silence. The hissing of the lantern had stopped. So had the labored breathing. Too much! It was too much! She put her hands to her face and wept, long, strangled sobs that wracked her body. When she was through, Sister Martha covered the silent form with a blanket and left.
Back at the hospital, she stopped, struck by a glimpse of herself reflected in a window. She saw an exhausted woman with a pinched mouth, sunken eyes, and a lined forehead.
Why? Why hadn’t she contracted the disease? Why had a 37-year-old nun been spared? To what end?
In time, Sister Martha knew, limbs weaken, eyes dim, and hair whitens. Loneliness leaves an invisible mark. She bowed her head in despair. The scientists were dead as well as the doctors. Who knew what discoveries that might have saved humanity were fated to end as puddles of melted water in the thawing freezers of research labs like the one in the hospital’s medical center?
The dying man on the roof had been her last chance to…She blinked. Wait…The medical center had a back-up generator to prevent meltdowns during power outages. And the freezers contained more than just experiments. Some contained…
Sister Martha hurried up the stairs to the 3rd floor library. Rows and rows of books on shelves faced her. The computer system was down so she found a card index file and sorted through the entries, narrowing her search. Then she prowled the stacks until she found what she was looking for and removed several books. Hours passed as she took notes carefully, writing them on a lined, yellow pad in the weak light leaking through windows.
Finally, she left the library with a new sense of purpose. She returned to the medical center directory on the ground floor. Her eyes traveled down a list of departments. Following colored lines on the floor, she hurried to the research wing. She wandered through the dim hallways until she reached her goal. Sister Martha paused and read the sign:
Sperm Bank.
Offering a silent prayer, she pushed open the door and began preparing for a world in which she wouldn’t be alone.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Arthur Carey is a former newspaper reporter, editor, and college journalism instructor who lives in the San Francisco Bay Area. He is a member of the California Writers Club. His fiction has appeared in print and Internet publications in the U.S., Canada, the U.K., and Australia. Carey’s novels and short stories are available at Amazon.com. He is a graduate of the University of Michigan and UCLA.