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Trust, but verify. The Russian proverb had been made famous by a former president. Decades dead, Ronald Reagan hadn’t been around to witness the apocalypse, but his words lived on. She would go to town to verify if Grav had been telling the truth.

She stopped first at her parents’ home. She approached the stone-and-clapboard farmhouse with caution, ducking through the trees to view it from all angles. It appeared undisturbed. In a year of hiding, she’d dared to venture to the house only twice for some needed supplies. She hadn’t gone to her own apartment in town at all.

She would have expected the murderous intruders to occupy Washington, D.C., Boston, New York City, London, Paris, Prague, Rome, not nowheresville, Missouri, USA. But they’d marched through small towns, farms, and ranches, so maybe they preferred the small-town lifestyle.

But if the coast was clear, she’d be able to get out more, gather more supplies and food. She craved anything not freeze-dried. She wouldn’t need to be so quiet. She could run the generator, warm up the cave with an electric heater. She could drive to town, which was why she’d stopped at the house—to get her car.

The world had gone deadly quiet. Afraid the enemy might hear the motor, she hadn’t attempted to use a vehicle before. Making noise still worried her, but if she did encounter the enemy, she’d be better able to outrun them in a car than on foot.

Leaving the bag with the oil-soaked blanket in the trees, she pulled her gun and sprinted to the side door, entering into the laundry room. Creeping into the hall, she listened. Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse.

It was so quiet she probably could hear a mouse. The refrigerator wasn’t humming or dropping ice into the receptacle. No heating unit switched on and off. No phones chimed with an incoming text.

Gripping the handgun tighter, she tiptoed toward the great room. From behind the wall, she peered into the space. The living room, kitchen, and dining room were vacant. “Hello? Anybody here? Hello?” she called and prayed she didn’t get a reply.

Not getting one, she stepped into the main room and crossed to the other side of the house to check the bedrooms. The four doors off the hall were shut. A good sign, but not conclusive. The last time she’d been in the house, she’d taken care to shut the doors, hoping if aliens entered, they wouldn’t bother to close them, and she’d be able to tell if the house had been breached.

Room by room, she hid behind the wall, pushed the door open, and peered inside the two bedrooms and a bath. Lastly, she came to the master bedroom at the end of the hall. Vacant. She expelled a shaky sigh of relief and holstered her weapon.

Two suitcases sat next to the king bed. Her parents had been packed and ready to run as soon as they heard the aliens were headed their direction, but they hadn’t acted soon enough. Everything had happened too fast.

The master suite still smelled like her dad’s aftershave. Most men stopped splashing on aftershave a few decades ago, but not her dad. Her mom loved the scent of his cologne because he’d been wearing it when they met, so he continued to wear it well past its fashion-end date. As a teenager, she’d been embarrassed. “Do you have to put that stuff on? People a mile away can smell you.” As an adult, she’d found it endearing.

Now, the scent was heartbreaking. She left the room before she started to cry. She would never again be enveloped in her dad’s warm embrace. Never talk to her mom or her brother. Maybe never talk to anybody except the alien.

I can’t kill him. I can’t release him. I can’t keep him. I don’t want to leave. What the hell am I going to do?

She passed her old bedroom, which had become the guest room when she moved into her own place, and her older brother’s, which her mom had wasted no time in converting to a craft room when he left home. “Geez, Mom, could you at least have waited until I got down the front steps?” he’d joked.

“I need to ensure you don’t boomerang back. I plan to enjoy my empty nest years,” she’d said, but her parents would have welcomed either of them home in a heartbeat if they’d needed help.

She fled the memories, moving into the great room again, noting how dust motes danced in the sunbeam shining through a skylight. A year’s worth of dust coated every flat surface. Trekking across the living room, she’d left footprints in the dust on the dark hardwood floors. Her nose itched, and she felt a sneeze coming on.

“Achoo! Achoo!” She sneezed into the crook of her arm. “Good thing Grav isn’t here to demolish the house.”

She couldn’t believe how he’d freaked. Thank goodness she’d got the fire put out. She could have lost everything. They could have died!

He’d feared she’d had the plague before correcting his wording. He hadn’t had any trouble coming up with the right words until then.

A top commander had died because the Progg lacked immunity to a harmless Earth disease. Could more of them have died? A lot of them? Chances were the leader would have spread the rhinovirus to others before realizing he was ill. Was that why Grav referred to it as the plague? Because it had spread?

Maybe the commander hadn’t contracted a cold but the flu. Symptoms were similar, but influenza killed hundreds of thousands of people every year, and historic flu epidemics had killed millions.

Maybe the admiral got COVID. Her spirits brightened. Did that make her a bad nurse? Oh, well.

After a final glance around the house, she entered the garage. In the corner, she spied two five-gallon red jugs of gasoline. Her dad had been prepared—for all the good it did him.

She pressed the garage door opener, but nothing happened. “Well, duh. No electricity.” There had been when she’d parked her car last year. She disconnected the door from the opener and lifted it manually.

The car fob was still under the floor mat where she’d left it in case she needed to make a quick getaway and didn’t have time to get her keys. She settled in the driver’s seat and pressed the start button.

Click. Click. Click. Click.

“Shit!” Dead battery.

She dashed into the house and rustled up her mom’s spare keys and climbed into her mother’s SUV. “Please start; please start.” She pressed the starter.

The vehicle purred to life.

“Thank goodness.” Even better, the car had a full tank of gas.

After backing out of the garage, she got out to close the door. Leaving the car idling in the driveway, she retrieved the trash bag and flung it into the rear of the vehicle. She would have to dump it somewhere, but it felt wrong to leave it in the woods. I s hould have brought the other trash. She didn’t produce much garbage, but she’d collected a sack of food wrappers.

Driving along the gravel lane, she encountered only a few stalled vehicles before she reached the paved road.

As she’d expected, smashed and stalled cars blocked the on-ramp and were scattered helter-skelter across the highway. Drivers and passengers had been vaporized while attempting to flee, but the vehicles had kept running until they hit something or ran out of gas. She’d expected as much, but the sight still came as a shock. It looked like a scene from a religious movie about the Rapture. All good Christians have been beamed up to heaven.

And then there’s me. Never a believer, she wasn’t going to start now.

Navigating the obstacle course on the highway would be challenging at best. She swerved around a pickup truck and headed for the scenic farm road. As she drove, she scanned the fields, keeping her eyes peeled for movement and other signs of life. She spotted no aliens or humans; however, a reassuring abundance of deer grazed in the fields. The animals are coming back. At least they didn’t kill everything.

When an area got vaporized, all pets and wildlife died, too. Charlie, her parents’ black lab, had been killed. She knew all the animals at the Dickerson Park Zoo in Springfield and the cats at the National Tiger Sanctuary in Saddlebrooke—located in the vaporization zone—would be gone.

On the outskirts of Big Creek, she stopped at a gas station and tossed the bag into the dumpster. “No trash pickup today.” No trash pickup ever.

She proceeded to Big Creek.

Her hometown resembled a Hollywood studio movie set, rows of building facades with a few cars parked along the curb for props. Arriving at the empty town on that fateful day, she’d heard the sirens blaring—and had raced to her parents’ house to find them gone. Praying they’d escaped, she’d run through the woods to the cave.

Vacant.

The sirens were silent now, having petered out with no electricity to power them.

The scarcity of automobiles here and the clutter on the highway showed people had been vaporized from the air as they fled. Tears slid down her cheeks as she drove slowly through the devastated town. “I hope the Progg all got colds, the flu, and COVID!”

Storefront-window placards valiantly proclaimed, WE SHALL WIN, DEFEAT THE ALIEN BASTARDS, and LONG LIVE THE RESISTANCE. Although fearful, people had remained determined through the end.

American and Missouri state flags drooped from their poles outside the post office. No wind today. Most of the ice had melted, too, she noted—and then fishtailed around a corner as she hit a patch of it.

The Progg were gone—but would they return to the scene of the crime? That was the big question. Smaller, but no less important question: What had drawn Grav to the area?

She braked alongside a two-floor green building. Big Creek General was a tiny rural hospital of twenty-five beds. People needing major surgeries or specialized care went to Cox Medical Center or Mercy Hospital in Springfield, but Big Creek General served most of the medical needs of local residents with a caring heart and community-minded spirit. Patients weren’t just organs or conditions requiring treatment or a way for the physician to get another Mercedes. She’d been proud to work there.

I should get some antibiotics, pain relievers, and medical supplies. There was no point stockpiling a huge amount because medications lost their potency over time and expired meds could be dangerous. But, it wouldn’t hurt to have some on hand for as long as they were good. The prepper had left supertankers of OTC pain meds, but they’d expired a decade ago. She could check the pharmacy, too.

But that’s for another day. Today was a brief reconnaissance mission, and it didn’t seem wise to leave her prisoner unguarded for too long.

A couple of blocks from Big Creek General, she parked outside the hospital annex, aka her apartment building. Most of its residents had worked at the hospital in some capacity. It was so close Laurel had walked to work every day.

Fortunately, her mom had a key to her apartment on her ring because she’d left hers under the mat in her car.

She climbed the stairs to the second floor and let herself into her unit.

The apartment remained as she’d left it—not an item out of place, and like her parents’ house, covered in dust. She dragged her finger across the bar separating the functional kitchenette from the living space. She’d eaten her solo meals at the bar rather than at the small table.

On her days off, she’d go out with friends to Springfield or hang out at her parents’. While the apartment hadn’t been a home, just a place to crash, a pang of loss ricocheted through her. She’d been robbed of whatever possibilities life would have offered.

She slid the patio door open and stepped onto the tiny veranda to survey the street and its environs, peering over rooftops. The hospital and the apartment complex were the sole two-story buildings. The town sprawled in front of her, tragically still and quiet. Life would forever be divided into before and after.

“It’s just me and the alien.” Her murmured comment sounded loud in the silence.

Except, somebody had shot him. Had the shooter moved on or remained in the area?

She went back inside and got her binoculars then studied the area again. Not a single solitary sign of life. Good —because that meant no Progg, but bad because deep down she’d been hoping somebody alive remained. Somebody human. She’d hoped that some people, like her, had been gone the day Big Creek had been vaporized and maybe returned.

Would it ever be safe to live in the open again? And what about the colluders? She assumed more of them had survived. They may have had advance knowledge of which towns were targeted and would have steered clear.

With a heavy sigh, she went inside.

She collected some clothes, tossing into a duffel three pairs of jeans, a pair of leggings, four warm shirts, pj’s, underwear, socks, and her running shoes. Then she removed two of the jeans and substituted more leggings. She had to wash clothes by hand in water hauled bucket by bucket from the creek. She used a mechanical clothes wringer to squeeze out the excess water, but denim took a long time to air-dry.

When she’d fled, she’d had only the clothes on her back and a few changes of clothing in the bugout bag she’d grabbed from her car.

She collected a few personal items, toiletries, and some novels—she’d read and reread all the romance ones from her teenage years. “I’ll have to drop by the library one day.” She gave the street a final perusal and then left the apartment.

“Can’t leave the alien unattended for too long. He already lit the cave on fire.”

Guarding a prisoner had become a big pain in the ass. While he’d been truthful about the town, she didn’t doubt those blue-blue earnest eyes concealed more secrets than they revealed. Now that she’d had time to think about it, she wondered if he’d been as freaked out as he appeared. Maybe it had been an act. Maybe the admiral hadn’t died at all.

“But he knocked over the oil lamp and started a fire,” she mused as she walked to her car. “Maybe he was trying to get me to release him.

“Hell of a risk to take. We both could have been killed. Maybe he felt it was worth the risk. Or he knew I’d save him since I didn’t kill him when I had the chance.

“I still have a chance to kill him.” She could go back to the cave and shoot him in the head.

She shuddered. It would be cold-blooded murder, not self-defense. If I do what they do, then I’m no better than them.

She drove away, vowing to return soon for medical supplies and books. Besides novels, she’d get some survival manuals, home remedy books, and edible-plant field guides.

Most of her books were on her eReader, and its battery was stone-cold dead.

Except …if the aliens weren’t around to hear, she could use the generator. She’d have electricity for light and heat and charging stuff. It would make life much more comfortable.

What I wouldn’t give for a hot shower. She’d never take hot water for granted again.

She’d been reduced to sponge baths and a weekly “sun shower” in the metal washtub she used for laundry. To save potable water, she hauled water from the creek to fill the shower bag, heating it first, pot by pot, on the alcohol or propane stoves. By the time she got enough water heated to fill the bag, the first batches had cooled off. Showers were lukewarm, labor-intensive affairs.

Survival was a never-ending camping trip. She used to love to camp when she could go home afterward, and when she still had the option to check into the Hilton.

“Ungrateful much? Billions have perished, and I’m upset about a tepid shower?”

She redirected her thoughts to what she did have. The ability to use the generator—

“Oh my god! Mom and Dad have a generator!” She could run the well pump, fill the water tank, get the water heater running, and take a hot shower in less time than it took to haul water from the creek.

Excited, she pressed the pedal to the metal and sped to her parents’ house.

* * * *

“Oh, my god.” Laurel groaned as she stood under the glorious hot spray. She could stay here forever—or at least until the water ran cold, except she’d left her prisoner alone for much longer than intended. Reluctantly, she shut the water off and stepped out of the stall.

She couldn’t forget how he pretended to not speak English and doubted using plague had been a simple language error. Freudian slip, more likely. He’d freaked when she sneezed, which suggested whatever the admiral had caught had spread to others.

Then again, as she’d already considered, maybe the panic had been a ruse.

“I don’t know what to believe anymore,” she said as she toweled off.

She dressed in fresh clothes from her apartment, combed the tangles out of her long hair, and blew it dry. Her brunette hair hung to the middle of her back, having grown a good six inches. The ends were a little straggly—she needed a trim. She jotted a mental note to do it the next time she came for a shower—which would be soon. No more hauling water from the creek for baths and laundry. She could bring her dirty clothes here and use the washing machine. When she depleted the fuel for the generator, she could siphon more out of the cars in town.

“I’d better quit dawdling and go tend to my guest.”

She deposited her dirty clothes in the laundry room and left through the side door.