It was Morrigan’s turn to scout for supplies and so I stayed behind with the Priestess. The desert was particularly hot today and I had objected to anyone going alone, especially in this heat. But Morrigan insisted that she had seen lights to the east, not the flicker of campfire nor the straightforward movement of headlights. She thought maybe it could have been some utility shed owned by the state, still running off of solar after the lights had gone out everywhere else. So she had decided to go investigate, taking a gun, hand held radio, a solar charger and a one-person tent along with her. She’d probably not be back for a few days but no matter the distance the portable HAM radios would still be able to reach each other.

I watched her go. In a previous life we had been good friends, now we were family, all of us. We were in it together whether we liked it or not. In a previous life she had gone by another name, we all had. Now we had new names, not just one new name but many. The names of our previous life were only used in private, like when we talked to each other. In this valiant new existence we were allowed to choose our own names for the first time, the three of us had actually spent a good day in a library trying to figure out what suited us best, even though I knew what mine would be all along. Sometimes though people give you names, and in this valiant new existence it is as rude to deny these given names as it is to deny water to a dying person. 

I was the teacher. Morrigan was the creator and my best friend. And Luce was the High Priestess. These were given names, the names we gave to each other.  Morrigan and Luce weren’t their real names either but they were the aliases we most often used. Mine was Levi. Anyway, I didn’t much care for my title. I had never fancied myself a teacher but Luce insisted that without me she wouldn’t have the knowledge to be considered High Priestess. Her title fit her much better. She captivated me with her every word and the rituals she performed put both me and Morrigan into a trance on par with a small dose of hallucinogens. To say I was a bit infatuated with The Priestess would probably be an understatement. She was my equal in every way and in our previous lives she had been one of the few people I could spend all day talking to. Our relationship never went beyond friendship but it did not dismay me, I was just as happy to stay platonic.

I reflected on my feelings as I watched the silhouette of my friend fade into the desert haze. Once she was completely out of sight I keyed the talk button to do a radio check and after getting a clear and quick reply I turned around to head back to camp.

Levi stood silently over his Grandmother’s body. He didn’t want to believe she was gone, he desperately reached out and grasped her wrist feeling for a pulse but knowing he would find none. Her body was now completely devoid of heat and her mouth hung partially open as if to steal one last breath. The morning light reflected off her glasses momentarily concealing her lifeless gaze. Levi let her wrist fall back to the bed and let himself fall back into the chair behind him. He had known people who died before, he’d seen the process that a person goes through from being completely healthy to being a husk devoid of spirit and life. He’d worked with cadavers and been to funerals of friends and family but he had never in his life had to actually watch with his own eyes someone die. He had taken care of his grandmother for almost a month and he’d watched as her once ample and healthy form had faded and shriveled into the corpse that now lay before him. 

Jack, his grandmother’s chihuahua-pomeranian mix, was curled beside her with his one eye locked on Levi. Jack wasn’t an unintelligent dog, a moody one prone to holding grudges but not stupid. Levi knew and Jack knew that the woman who had cared for them for the past five years and who had helped raise Levi as a child had like so many other’s before her succumbed to her disease. The last thing he had said to her was that when she got better he would go with her to Italy to visit her hometown. She had smiled at him and held a week hand to his cheek, mumbling something in Italian he couldn’t understand. He had smiled back and merely whispered back ‘Si’. 

But now she was gone. As far as he knew she was the last of his family and she was gone. Levi reached across the bed and removed her glasses from her face, folding them gently and placing them on the nightstand. He carefully closed her eyelids and mouth with his hands and made to start wrapping her body in the bed sheets but Jack would not move from his spot beside her.

“She’s gone Jack, come on. Get off the bed,” Levi muttered grimly, but the dog only pricked his head up slightly at the sound of name, “Come on, off,” Levi said more urgently as he tugged at the sheets. But still the dog would not budge.

“Jack get off the bed now!” Levi yelled angrily, slamming a fist down on the bed beside Jack and causing the frightened dog to flee from the room tail between his legs. Levi watched him go. He truly felt bad for scaring Jack but his anger and pain would not let him apologize just yet. Levi sunk back into his chair and put his hands over his face trying to hid the sudden flow of tears. The first funeral he had been to was his grandfather’s funeral, his Opa’s funeral. He remembered crying but that was the only time he had ever cried for any of his family’s deaths until now. For many minutes Levi just sat there sobbing but he finally worked up the strength to go on with his grim task.

He picked up her wrapped up body like it was nothing, he knew that he wouldn’t have had the strength to do it when she was healthy and the thought of his grandmother’s subtle slip from life to death brought fresh tears to his eyes. The house was cold and dim, the morning sun barely peaking over the hills and penetrating the foggy air. Levi nearly slipped and fell down the stairs but he regained his footing and carefully carried his grandmother outside to the garden. At first he had planned on just outright leaving, he had packed his belongings a few days ago in anticipation of this moment, but as he put more thought into it he realized that he might need to come back here some day. And the as he thought about it more he felt guilty for not even considering giving her a proper burial. She was religious and he knew that she would have had the decency to give him a real funeral if she were in his shoes. 

There was a spot in the garden that Levi had prepared for her just yesterday. He had dug up an ugly yellow bush and planned to make a hole seven feet deep. He would bury her next to the roses and then plant the fig tree over her. His grandmother had always loved figs and he thought she might enjoy the thought of helping to bring life to something, even in death. When he was finished digging he made the sign of the cross over her body and began piling the dirt back into the hole. He uttered a short prayer that he had looked up in her bible and painstakingly translated into Italian. The whole thing seemed fake, unreal to him, both her death and the ceremony honoring it. Levi had never been religious and it all seemed bogus to him. If there were a god he would not have done this to the world, Levi thought to himself. But he knew that it would have meant a lot to his grandmother and quickly dispelled his irreligious thoughts.

Levi got up off his knees and brushed the dirt from his pants. There was still more work to be done. 

Introductions were always hard to write for me. That sentence alone had me chewing on the tips of my hair for about thirty minutes. Supposedly it’s Halloween today. I’m not sure if that’s true. I’ve mostly stopped keeping track of time. It’s too cold for costumes but I guess that I’d be fit for a costume party with my pelts and gear wrapped about me. I don’t really miss parties, I was never a party person. 

None of this story will ever be published. Probably not by me at least. Maybe when I die someone will loot my house and find a moldy copy of the manuscript in one corner or if they’re lucky they could siphon the original off of my laptop. That’s just wishful thinking. I doubt there are a lot of people left who’d be willing to publish it. By the time I die there might not be anyone left at all. And it’s not like it would win any outstanding awards if it were to be published. The free time that the apocalypse has allotted me has not improved my writing skills. I cringe with every keystroke and I know that lack of schooling has not done any wonders for my grammar, hopefully one of my friends can help me edit this mess. 

But this story isn’t about me. Though it may not be evident by my longwinded introduction I do feel awkward writing about myself. That’s not to say I won’t be in the story but really this is about all the characters, not just me. And some point in time it became a shared experience anyway. Hell, Artemis’ damn bird is pecking at my ear as we speak, Tim is reading over my shoulder even though he knows I hate it, and everyone else is laying about trying to stay warm.

That’s enough of that though. This isn’t a diary or a journal, it’s a story meant to entertain and if I’m ever to have an actual audience I’d better start writing entertaining things. So as I was saying, it is October Thirty-first. It has been 5 years since this all began, since disease, war, and poverty put an end to society and the wolves came out of their dens to reclaim what was theirs. It was the end of the human age and the beginning of the wolf age.

But the world didn’t end. It didn’t end in 2000, it didn’t end in 2012, and it didn’t end a year later when disease and strife put a stranglehold on what was left of organized society. The world just kept on going and we were along for the ride. So let’s start from the beginning shall we?