The Lonely Traveller

Chapter Three

     I saw someone hanging from a light post. It looked recent, they smelled like rotting meat. There were flies buzzing around them. It was a woman, a little older than I. How old was I? If it is 2022, I would be 22. She looked to be around her late twenties. The nameless woman was thin, thinner than me. She resembled a skeleton with her thin bony arms and sunken dead eyes. She looked like a type of person whose name would be Becky. Kit and I sat there for a while watching her body sway whenever the wind blew.

     I got used to the smell of rotting flesh rather quickly when this all started. People were dropping dead, in the beginning, faster than bugs getting zapped. Bodies didn't disappear; they laid motionless and decomposed slowly. Originally the smell was putrid to the point where it made me vomit uncontrollably whenever I exited a once populated building. The bodies were everywhere. It wasn't as bad anymore. A lot of the bodies now, from before, were piles of bones wearing clothes. 'Becky' I dubbed her, continued to sway slowly back and forth.

     I wondered what drove her to this? Was it loneliness or the starvation she was facing? People like me, the recluses who enjoyed isolation lived the longest. Others couldn't bare being by themselves for the rest of their life. I could bare it. I have been alone for a long time. What would be the difference without everyone else around? If anything, it was quieter, easier to think without other people around. Kit was bouncing up and down trying to bite at her loose shoelaces. It was amusing watching her tiny puffy black figure walk in circles excitedly jumping up and down to try and reach something impossibly high up. "You were probably a blogger or something." I said aloud to Becky.

     Becky looked like a blogger. Maybe even a writer. She probably had a cozy apartment in a city with a window that had a view of the surrounding buildings. I imagined her sitting with her computer wrapped up in blankets typing away at her blog while drinking a steaming cup of coffee. Becky looked smart. There was a pair of glasses, lenses cracked, on the ground below her when I first found her. She also seemed to be the type of person to go for long walks and meet up with her friends for comfortably priced dinners. Maybe Becky and I could have been friends.

     It was too bad she was dead. I couldn't do anything about that now. After a while when dark grey clouds began to roll in over us, I stood and called Kit over. Before I left, I took her glasses and put them on. My vision was slightly blurred; I felt better. I drove passed her one last time before moving on down the road. There was nowhere I was going in particular. I always wanted to travel, I haven't been able to until now. Maybe one day if I remember where this place is I'll see Becky hanging there. She'll be waiting, swaying around until the day I come back.

     Who knows, it could be tomorrow or in three years from now. I put her cracked square framed glasses on my dashboard. They slid from side to side whenever I turned a corner too sharp. In my rearview mirror were the approaching dark clouds. They were like grumpy grey masses coming to swallow me whole. It was going to rain, or snow. It was pretty cold already. For the rest of the drive, I wondered if Becky liked the snow.

     It started to snow weeks later. I parked underground in an old parking garage. I was in a city; whatever city it was I didn't know. Maybe New York. Detroit? The buildings were certainly tall enough. Was I even in the States anymore? I had been in this parking garage locked inside of the truck for a few days. I occasionally left to take a bathroom break, Kit needed one as well every few hours. It was cold in here, not as cold as outside. I laid awkwardly across the back seats in my makeshift bed reading the books I collected from the store.

     This was a fine excuse as any to begin reading them, again. I was nearing the end of the first novel in the series when I sound startled me. I felt my body tense at the loud clanging noise. It sounded like one of the doors to the stairwells slamming shut. There were many vehicles already parked down here when I drove in a few days ago. My pickup was just one of many others parked. Kit startled me, jumping onto my lap. The anxious feeling in the pit of my stomach made me want to puke.