The First Year Read online

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  If you’re reading this, you’re probably a lot like Hannah Barton. She lives, or lived, in a world inside her own head. She didn’t fit into the world around her. I was much the same way when I was her age. Honestly, still do. I spent a lot of time in a lot of made up places.The First Year is on its surface a story about the end of the world. And I promise, there’s a whole lot of post-apocalyptic juiciness. But beyond that, it’s a story about growing up.

  Hannah is the last survivor of a global pandemic. The first year of her survival coincides with her migration from childhood into adulthood. In a lot of ways, all of our bouts with puberty make us feel like we’re the last people on the planet.

  Hannah is my favorite type of hero, female or male. Strong, smart and inventive. She’s also human, with flaws and fears and, let’s face it, sometimes she whines. We all do.

  A very sincere thank you to my first readers, without whom this book would contain far more errors. Reading a manuscript instead of a finished novel demands different things from a reader. Arielle Hendel, Amanda Glincher, Jennifer Summers and Sam Rosenplot, your input and feedback helped make this a much better book.

  I’m not a fourteen-year-old girl, and to the best of my recollection I’ve never been one. So I think it’s time to turn things over to Hannah.

  Jeff Rosenplot

  San Mateo, California

  February 20, 2018

  THE LAST YEAR

  Hannah

  It’s loneliest after the sun comes up. Before dawn, I can almost convince myself that everyone else is just asleep. I wonder if it’s the same for you. The streetlights don’t work, but the streetlights in this neighborhood have always been touch and go. Dad was fond of telling us that “undependable power is one of the trade-offs of living in such an awesome old house”. And it is an awesome house, full of weird little corners and hidden doors. My parents bought it for a dollar, part of Detroit’s desperate attempt to repopulate after going bankrupt. Power, water, heat, it was always anyone’s guess whether we’d be able to flush the toilet when we got up in the morning. Dad saw it as an adventure. Mom wasn’t quite so enthusiastic.

  “If I wanted to live on the Little House on the Prairie, I would’ve married Michael Landon,” Mom said. I could never tell if Mom was actually upset about it or was just trying to get a rise out of Dad.

  Being alone gives me a lot of time to grieve. But grieving isn’t exactly what I do. Grief would mean I’ve accepted what happened. And I sure as hell don’t.

  Whatever, I’ll get out of bed. I moved into my parents’ room a month ago. I guess it makes me feel safer. It also makes me hold onto my loneliness more tightly.

  The first pale little streak of dawn is lighting up the sky. The stars are still glistening. There are no lights in the city, just what the sky decides to provide. The morning and the night do battle until the sun wins out, painting long shadow stains across the empty street below. It’s how I mark time.

  With the light comes my reflection in the window. That’s the trade-off with sunrise. I get to see again. I’m bone-thin, despite the food I’ve scavenged and forced down my throat. My appetite doesn’t exist. I was never a tall or jocky girl, just a little mouse who looks a helluva lot younger than fourteen. I guess I’m still fourteen. Not sure it matters. My hair that Grace dubbed “peanut butter-turd blonde” is long past greasy. It itches all the time now. My lips and my eyes bulge. I look like one of those kids on the TV commercials, living in the dirty water and about to die unless I send them a penny a day. My entire body is filthy. Luckily I can’t smell it anymore. This skinny, awkward body Grace had been so quick to mock is even skinnier and more awkward now. I wonder what Grace would call me these days. Scarecrow? Ghoul?

  By my calculations, it’s April. April ninth, maybe the twelfth. I didn’t start keeping track right away, and I’ve had to fiddle with my numbers a bit. My phone died a while ago. I guess I could find another. But I don’t really care what day it is. It’s spring, I think. Winter’s grip is still clinging to the morning. I pull on an extra sweater, one of Dad’s. Smells like him.

  Tears, really? Still? They come and go with no warning. They feel like pop-up thunderstorms, here and gone before I realize it.

  Losing the business and our lives in Flint had been toughest on Dad. Great-Grandpa Donny had started Barton Heating and Cooling. Dad was the third generation owner. When the business went under, everything else that followed felt like dominoes falling. First the cars, then the house. It all went fast. Flint had been dying for years, and the recession hit everything that remained really hard. I learned all about recessions and “economic downturns” the hard way. Even though the recession eventually ended, it didn’t matter. There wasn’t much left to leave behind, and so we left it. Grace raised a fit, of course. Her friends were her life. Grace was fourteen then, like me now. She was the oldest of us, and always wore an expression on her face like she’d just smelled something putrid. Gabe and I, neither of us had much to lose. I was eleven then and lived inside my books. I didn’t have a whole lot of use for the world outside of me. A couple of friends, but most of the time I just disappeared. Gabe, he was happy wherever you dropped him. Gabe was eight then, scrawny, scruffy, always on the prowl for the next big adventure. Just like Dad. Being deaf didn’t hurt, either. Gave him an excuse for being in his own reality.

  So we left Flint, moved the few belongings that remained and tried to figure out how to start over. We’d been in the house in Detroit less than eighteen months when General Tsao first surfaced. Detroit was sparsely populated and we lived through the first round. The second round was what killed everybody. One month. A solitary month. That was three months ago.

  Pull on my shoes and open the bedroom door. For a moment, and just like each morning before, I almost believe I smell coffee. I listen for the sound of Mom’s footsteps, maybe some muttered profanity as she stubs her toe. But I’m still alone. Well, except for you.

  The chemical toilet was Dad’s solution to our plumbing problems. When life had been good, we’d all loved to go camping. Even Grace. The chemical toilet was one of the conveniences on which Mom insisted. It reminds me of the device we set up beside the regular toilet when Gabe was being potty trained. Gabe had never really mastered the concept. Toilet training Gabe is one of the first things I remember.

  The chemical toilet has been pretty effective for a long time. It stinks like some of the buildings downtown, but seems to keep up with what I put in it. It’s lasted much longer since I became the only one using it. When it did finally stop working a few days ago, I realized I had no idea how to fix it. It’s still sitting where I left it on the back porch. I really don’t want to try to move it. So I’ve got a Plan B.

  I’ve become very good at digging holes. It isn’t a skill I wish I’d acquired. Necessity has always been the birth mother of skill. I read that someplace. Didn’t understand it. But now there are five holes in the backyard. So I understand it now. I dug one for each of them, one after the other. And so far I’ve filled four of them back in.

  Gabe was the first one to die. I’ll admit, a part of me was grateful when did. How awful is that? Well, you’re certainly not judging me. I know that. Gratitude is a selfish thing to feel. But to be honest, Gabe’s death made things better. Three patients were easier than four.

  I tried to call the hospital. The police. Even the morgue. I found a lonely phone booth at a gas station three blocks from our house. An old fashioned one, with a phone that was attached to a cord. There was a dial tone, but no one answered. How could no one answer at a hospital? Or 911?

  Dad, Mom, Grace, they all drifted in and out of consciousness. Most of the time, none of them had any idea who I was. That made things easier. Yeah,
I said it. Because it would’ve made things worse if they’d known.

  I found a shovel in the basement. I dug the first hole, Gabe’s hole, in the back corner of the backyard. The ground was hard. Despite the late winter chill off Lake Huron, I was sweating. By the time the first hole was finished, I’d shed my winter coat, gloves and sweater. The cold air froze the sweat on my forehead.

  The four graves are aligned against the rotted wood fence at the back of the property. I tried to keep them all in a straight line. Mom would’ve appreciated that. She was the organized one.

  The fifth hole I dug, I set apart from the others. The stench from it hits me like a brick wall as soon as I walk outside. Throwing dirt over the contents of this hole has done little to keep the smell at bay. Three, four day days of poop from one person, it’s amazing how much has accumulated. I don’t really mind the smell, though. It obliterates the other smell. I had hoped I’d dug the graves deep enough. Turns out I didn’t. Six feet, it’s there for a reason.

  How do you dig graves for your entire family? I don’t mean physically. I know how to do that. I think you know what I mean. I hope you don’t. No one should have to know.

  There’s more than enough toilet paper. I guess that’s one of the perks. I’ve scavenged it from the nearby houses. That’s where I found my food, too. Cans mostly, fruit and soggy vegetables, the occasional baked beans. None of it exciting, but I’m not that into eating, anyway.

  When it became clear I wasn’t getting sick like the rest of them, I tried to figure out why. At first I thought I was special.Chosen, maybe, like Joan of Arc. I did a report on Joan in sixth grade. Maybe God chose me for someLord of the Rings-style quest. That’s when I still believed my family would get better. It’s easy to daydream when real life doesn’t interfere.

  Dad was the last to die. I wrapped him in his soiled bed sheets and dragged him down the stairs. I covered his face, just like I covered all their faces. The sheet I wrapped around Grace slipped off during her trip down the staircase. My sister’s pale, empty face stared back at me. Grace’s exotic green eyes were cloudy. Like mud.

  Dying would be easier. I’ve got every reason to want to die. I think about how I’ll do it. Maybe someone in a neighboring house has a gun. Probably. This is Detroit. Haven’t found one yet, but I haven’t really looked. Or maybe a sharp knife. Prescription pills. But I know I can never do it. And the reason why is simple. I’m afraid of dying.

  “Who’d bury me?” I talk to myself out loud just to hear the sound. I know the only person I’m talking to is you, anyway.

  The girl I used to be, the one that people called Hannah Renee Barton, turned fourteen last month. March ninth. I’m not exactly sure what day that had been. I didn’t start keeping track of the days right away. I’ve had to make up my numbers a bit. What I do know is that I am fourteen. In Neanderthal times, I’d be middle-aged. If I lived on the prairies like Mom complained about, I’d probably be getting married soon, too. Not much chance of that now, unless I want to marry one of my stuffed animals.

  “What do you want to do for your birthday?” Mom asked. We were in the kitchen, cutting up vegetables for dinner. It was the middle of November. Food was always scarce in our house, plague or not, and fresh vegetables, they were a luxury. That was the last time I’ve eaten anything fresh.

  “It’s okay, Mom,” I told her. “It’s not ‘til next year. I don’t need to do anything.”

  “Are you worried?”

  I remember glancing up at my mom. The name the world called her was Melissa Barton. We all had names, but names are only important when there’s some reason to identify. She was tall, with a mane of unruly blonde hair and soft green eyes. Grace was her twin. Gabe was a carbon copy of Dad. Me, I was the hybrid, or the chimera as Grace so delicately put it. Short and thin like Dad, with the same misbehaving blonde hair and gentle eyes as Mom.

  “I’m always worried,” I told her.

  “Yeah, you are, aren’t you?” Mom said. She put a firm hand on my shoulder.

  “Life has a funny way of working out,” Mom said. “Bad times are what allow you to enjoy the good ones.”

  “But haven’t we kinda’ had our share of bad times?” I asked.

  Mom bent down and kissed my forehead. The world had yet to begin to unravel. The first round of General Tsao was becoming a memory and the second round had yet to really blow up. Despite all the bad news from around the world, General Tsao had brought people together. The United States government began to function. FEMA trailers appeared across the country, power grids were retrofitted with solar and wind updates and it really did seem like things might get better. It didn’t, but you of all people probably know that.

  So the answer to my question is still anybody’s guess. Had we had our fair share of bad times? It’s hard to remember anything good. But therehad been good, once upon a time. A real house. Normal food. Working toilets. We even went on vacation. I was ten. We’d rented a beach cottage along the coast of South Carolina. For a week I ran barefoot along sun-drenched beaches, was serenaded by the crashing surf of the Atlantic Ocean. My skin bronzed and my soul, it felt as if the sun and the sea had found their way inside. That’s the last good thing I remember.

  General Tsao

  The anatomy of a pig and the anatomy of a human are almost ridiculously similar. I studied that in one of Dad’s science magazines. In the last decades of the human species, more and more pigs found their way into human bodies. Insulin, veins, skin cells and, at the end, hearts. In an ironic twist, bacon had become the go-to ingredient in over-the-top food concoctions. In the end, though, it was the pigs that undid everything.

  It started in Asia. Most of the new bugs did, according to the news. At first, like most new bugs, the symptoms were misinterpreted. It was just the flu after all, a strain of Asian swine flu that barely registered a mention in the World Health Organization’s weekly alert. The news barely mentioned it. And then they never stopped mentioning it, until the news stopped altogether.

  Patient Zero was never found. The prevailing theory involved an international traveler, someone passing through a series of airports on his or her way to their final destination. The practice used by airlines to create hubs had sped up the disease’s progression. If the passenger had taken a direct route, containment might have been possible. I heard some guy in a suit say that on TV. The disease appeared everywhere at once, and almost overnight. In the course of a few weeks, it seemed like half the world was sick.

  Symptoms varied as the strain mutated, but the general process involved a virulent five days of vomiting and diarrhea, then a small reprieve during which patients felt like their old selves. Two, sometimes up to six days later, the illness returned and the patient died from prolonged fever. It was quick, it was efficient, and it was deadly. In the short window scientists had to study it, they determined it was airborne, and that it was natural. There were a lot of wild theories. Bio-warfare, terrorism, even aliens. But as one of the DJs on the radio put it, “sometimes a plague is just a plague.”

  It had a proper scientific name of course, but we all just called it General Tsao. Late night comedy shows had particular fun with the Chinese takeout jokes (“I’ll have fried rice, hold the influenza”), until it stopped being funny.

  The first wave passed within three months. The mortality rate was virtually one hundred percent. Not everybody got it, but those who got it all died. The problem then became what to do with two billion dead bodies.

  Some places were hit harder than others. The denser the population, the more communicable the disease proved to be. The bigger the city, the more bodies piled up. That was in August. There was a heat wave all across the northern hemisphere. Major cities around the world became ghost towns. In some places, the military quarantined those cities. In other places, there was no military left.

  General Tsao came back in early autumn. By then, its effects were compounded by diseases like cholera. Peoples’ immune systems were unprepared to multita
sk. If enough engineers in one particular area died, vital services such as water and waste treatment shut down. The disease wasn’t selective. Survival was hit and miss. Some locations still had people who knew how to keep the power on. But because the power grids in most countries were daisy-chained, if one link went out, they all went out. Dad told me that. Electricity was a luxury most places didn’t enjoy. Refrigerators no longer worked. The dependence of human beings on others for survival, the compartmentalization of skills as Dad called it, meant those who survived the first wave of the disease were completely unprepared for the second.

  People like my family who didn’t die the first time around easily succumbed to the second, more powerful strain. By the first day of winter, most of the human beings were dead.

  The Last Year

  The first wave hit last May. Like a lot of other places, Detroit closed its schools a few weeks early. People thought that was a big part of why they were able to get a handle on containing it. Schools were big bacteria incubators, always had been, and eliminating them from the equation prolonged things. It didn’t take long for life to resume. Millions and millions of dead people all over the place, and before a few weeks had passed everybody was back to hating each other again. The government people were the ones who told us to get back to our lives. Hour after hour on TV, the short bursts we were able to see when the power clicked back on, were the same conversations over and over. Go back to work, buy stuff. Dad even found a job. He cleared dead bodies out of houses. In August, schools opened back up.

  Douglas Layne Middle School is a huge, dark, old building a few dozen blocks from our huge, dark, old, haunted house. August tenth was my first day in middle school. Seventh grade. For the first week, all I could smell was bleach. It burned my eyes and made me look like I’d been crying. The building had been scrubbed from floor to ceiling.