LIVE NOVEL
The Day When It Happened
The Last Human in the Milky Way, Chapter 20
It was like a dark dream. Everyone was gone. He was the last to live in the Milky Way. His house was at the top of the road, so he had barely noticed the changes. It had happened gradually, with fewer and fewer people who in the afternoon came home to the neighborhood from work, from shopping or school. (From chapter 2)
20
In the morning the next day she was more like the day before. Inward-looking, hidden within herself. She was again the person she had been the first day.
He had woken up quite early, and he did not feel rested. But that was not a problem, he was not going to drive a car now. He was just going to go up, and force himself further over this mountain ridge, this mountain that rose more than 1000 m over the high mountain plain.
He lingered, but finally got himself out of the sleeping bag and walked barefoot to the tent, where there no longer was smoke from the embers in the campfire they had lit the night before.
He looked for her, and he observed that she did the same as the day before; she came back from the scrub forest with a handful of branches, dried branches which she put next to the fireplace.
He saw her come over to him, and he had such an urge to go closer to her. He got up and thought: “I’m a little unsure.”
He smiled and walked over to her and put his hand on her shoulder. It was just a friendly hand in order to gently say hello, good morning, how are you? But it happened again, the same as the day before. In the critical seconds, she stiffened, and he noticed a kind of resistance in her.
He took his hand away and took a step back. She said nothing and he thought he should give her time. She turned and walked towards the car and took out her backpack.
He began to clean the sack, took out everything that was there hollow to bolts and began to pack the food again so that there would be no mess. He was standing with the rucksack and was busy with this when he suddenly noticed that she was standing right behind him. She touched his shoulder lightly with her hand.
“Sorry,” she said, “that, it’s a little difficult, you see. Yes, it’s a little difficult that you get so close, I was not prepared.”
He felt as if it were a heavy stone being lifted from his heart. She could talk about it! Seemed uncomfortable, but at the same time she was able to speak and use words and describe it.
He thought he should try to make her safe and assure her that he was not the kind of man who forced himself on her. But it was not natural to say anything more. She had turned away from him again and had bent down and crawled into the tent and started clearing things out inside.
They both worked on packing things. They worked in silence. He tightened the straps around the bag on the outside of the rucksack and lifted the rucksack on his back. Then he looked up and stood for a little while examining the mountainside and the towering mountain. And he started walking.
He let her go first. He could see her as they walked. She walked with easy steps. She seemed fit, was probably one who had walked a lot in the mountains before. She was used to this.
Early in the afternoon they came to a large mountain that towered over them.
They stopped and looked up. There was no way out. No path, no passage around the mountain They had to climb, climb the steep, force themselves over the mountain. Probably close to 800 altitude meters.
They walked calmly, he felt the sun warm in his neck and the sweat began to run.
When they got to the first top, he could see 15 to 20 km away and it looked good. There were no people to be seen, and he recognized the simple hut that lay down in the valley.
He waited until she came to where he stood, raising his hand and pointing,
“There, you see that cabin, it still seems to be in good condition. We can spend the night there; it will be much better.“
He turned to her and saw that she was smiling.
“How far is it?” she asked.
“Just over an hour,” he replied.
In the evening, after unpacking the sacks and tidying up the things in the hut, they each sat on their tree trunk by the fire.
“Where were you when it happened?” he asked.
“At home, where I lived.”
“And what happened?”
“What happened?”
“Yes, and why did it happen? Do you know that? What do you think?”
“What happened,” she said, “-no, nothing special happened. But there was a change that came almost without us noticing. I cannot put my finger on it, not exactly.”
“Where I was it was not like that. There was an abrupt change. Suddenly it was no longer like it used to be in the neighbourhood. Yes, I feel that way — it was, as I experienced it, a kind of sliding change — for the worse.”
“Oh? How is it? What happened?”
“Yes, one day a lot of cars came into the neighbourhood. There were mostly men, men in all the cars. They had firearms, and when they drove through the streets, they fired shots into the air.”
“It sounds scary.”
“Yes, and they took several women with them. It was cruel, it was absolutely awful.”
He stopped. He saw that it was difficult for her. Hard to talk, to say anything about this. He sighed.
“Yes. The crisis!” he said. “It’s a real crisis.”
They sat still for a long time. She was far away. He saw that she was inside something he did not know about.
This is chapter 20 of the novel The Last Human in the Milky Way. The novel is written and published “live” chapter by chapter in ILLUMINATION Book Chapters.
To see all published chapters, go here.
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19 Now She Was a Different Person
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Chapter 21 The Dream Cabin