Two days passed before Willa took her last breath. Two, torturous days of Daphne reading and re-reading and chewing her bottom lip to what felt like raw meat. She wanted to drink, but the thought of her young mother wasted swerving all the way up the highway had her stomach doing flip-flops, and she couldn’t handle it.

She stared at her reflection in the front hall mirror, staring at her traitorous icy blue eyes. The eyes of a man she’d never met, never knew, a man her mother had cheated on her father with. No, her dad, but not her father. She didn’t carry Dale’s DNA inside of her. She carried some asshole’s DNA from some biker bar in the city.

“Some one-night stand, some random fucking guy!” she cried, punching the wall next to the mirror. Her fist embedded itself into the wood and she jerked it out, clenching her jaw. She’d always been strong. Fast. It had come up once or twice with her classmates, but never got too out of hand, as far as she’d known.

She did, however, remember her mother pushing her to do less athletic things with her time. Coaxing her as much as she could to try more mental tasks, like nurturing her love for flowers, or enrolling her in chess club. Daphne hated to admit that she’d really enjoyed chess, despite her friends playfully calling her a nerd for having to go every week.

In all of the fun confusion of puberty and being a teenage girl, she had the added hardship of wondering why she had these parts of her that set her apart so much. Why she was so different. Over time, she’d just learned to live with it, learned to hold back so people wouldn’t ask any questions. She’d been terrified that if her parents found out, they’d take her to a doctor and find out that there was something really wrong with her. Her greatest fear had been being locked up in a hospital somewhere, being poked and prodded by a billion doctors. She shuddered at the thought of it.

How she wished she’d just talked to her mother about everything. So much uncertainty—so much fear—could have been avoided with one simple conversation.

But learning that Dale wasn’t her father? Daphne flinched, feeling like she’d just had a bucket of ice dumped on her head. That would have been ten times worse as a teen. She wouldn’t have been able to keep it from him, she didn’t think. And the look on his face when he found out…

“Oh, pumpkin,” he would have said, “I’ll always be yer dad.”

Tears sprang to her eyes, and her heart clenched as if someone were trying to squeeze it into dust. He was gone, and he’d never known the truth. Was that better? Better that he’d died thinking that he was leaving behind a loving wife and strong daughter? His wife who’d cheated on him in their most vulnerable years and then tricked him into raising her adulterous baby?

Daphne swallowed hard and scrubbed her hands down her face. She realized at some point she’d stomped back into her mother’s room, taking a seat at her bedside once again. Willa wasn’t going to last much longer.

-stomach acid boiling, eating all the flesh around it-

“Mom,” she said hoarsely, and then cleared her throat, swallowing hard. “Mom.”

Willa didn’t respond. Her breaths were shallow and ragged.

In concentrating on her mom’s chest rising and falling, Daphne’s eyes fell on a super-thin chain peeking out from beneath the collar of her pyjama shirt. She reached out and hooked it with a trembling finger, pulling ever-so-slowly to reveal a silver pendant that had hung low enough between Willa’s breasts to be hidden.

Daphne had seen the chain before occasionally around her mother’s neck. She’d never known there to be a pendant, but it had always hung into her shirts behind the fabric, and she’d never thought to ask what was on it. It was just a necklace her mom wore sometimes.

Apparently, the thing held special meaning. And if Willa had never cared to know the man that had fathered her child, if she never wanted him to come back to expose her, then why did she wear the stupid thing? Why would she want to remind herself of him?

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Had she maybe put it on during times of strife so that if something happened and Daphne ended up reading the letter, she’d know what it was?

“Mom,” she croaked, closing the pendant in her fist. “Mom!” She shoved at her mother’s still form, and it was then that she realized that her chest was no longer rising and falling.

-liver melting, sloshing, gone-

“Mom!” Daphne shrieked, and dropped the necklace, forgetting it for the moment, and shoving at her mother’s body. It was just a body, now. She opened her mouth to cry out the word again, but nothing came out but a ragged sob.

There was nothing left. She was the last. Every person that had meant a single thing to her had died a horrible death, leaving her behind.

And the pendant shone in the sunlight, as sparkling and beautiful as if it weren’t attached to dead flesh.

*  *  *

The internet had been out for a few days. Daphne wasn’t savvy on technological inner workings, so she didn’t know if it was because the people manning the companies were dead, or if there were just no people to maintain any of the servers hosting anything because they were dead… or a combination of the two.

This was how she found herself in the public library, old encyclopedias strewn around, her mother’s pendant sitting next to a steaming mug of coffee. Thanks to the nearby wind farm, their little town still had hydro. Daphne fed her coffee addiction hard, though she lamented the fact that she’d be out of good beans soon. Pre-apocalypse, she’d always ordered them online from a small-batch roastery in Ontario. They had the absolute best Brazil Peaberry, unmatched by anyone else. Her stash was down to two and a half pounds, and it wasn’t going to last her forever.

I could just drive to Ontario and raid the place for beans, she thought. Maybe if they still had hydro she could figure out how to roast the damn things. There had to be a manual or something there.

A hysterical laugh bubbled up out of her throat, imagining dumping green beans into a roaster in the middle of a deserted town and roasting up some fresh coffee like a normal day. She scrubbed her hands down her face, trying to iron out the smile that curled her lips.

Why am I laughing? At a time like this?

… Am I going insane?

She’d worried when people got too sick to really converse that eventually she’d lose her mind being so isolated, but she hadn’t thought it would happen so fast.

Looking at the pendant grounded her a little. She’d come into the library to try to find the symbol in a book somewhere. Some clue to her heritage, where this mysterious guy had come from. She couldn’t help but wonder if it had something to do with why she was immune to the disease that had taken the whole world.

The books held nothing. She even found an old compendium of Celtic symbols, and some of them were close, but not exactly right. It was definitely unique. Where was a reverse-image search when you needed it?

She drew her sore bottom lip between her teeth and winced. The coppery taste of blood assaulted her tongue and she swallowed it, taking a sip of her cooling coffee to try to wash it away. She fought the urge to smash the table and throw the books everywhere.

She was torn and lost. Everyone she’d ever known was dead. Everyone she’d ever loved. And now this knowledge that changed everything she’d ever thought about her mother. A small voice inside of her berated her, saying she shouldn’t judge, shouldn’t think ill of the dead-

-muscles tightening and twisting until bones snap-

-but she couldn’t help the deep sense of betrayal brewing in her gut. Her father had been her best friend, one of the most selfless and wonderful people she’d ever known. He’d always worshipped the ground Willa walked on, and to know now that she’d treated him so horribly and then cheated on him… Daphne was angry. Angry on her father’s behalf-

Stepfather, that small voice hissed, and she growled in response, her hands clenching the side of the table.

Dale was her father.

The wood groaned beneath her iron grip.

He’d been the one to raise her, thinking she was his own. This mystery asshole that seduced her drunk mother in a bar almost three decades ago was not her dad.

Regardless, his blood ran through her veins. She flexed her fingers, staring down at her hands. Down at the splintered and cracked wood of the table below.

How many pencil crayons had she broken clean in half when colouring as a child? Her mom had always taken them and hidden them in the garbage quickly, hissing at Daphne to be more gentle.

She was always berating her to be gentle, as long as she could remember.

Was it because she had the strength to break things without realizing it? She clenched her jaw, pressing her lips into a thin line. So many things were falling into place. Too many secrets to unpack in her head.

“I guess I have all the fucking time in the world, now,” she muttered, and threaded her fingers through her greasy locks. She hadn’t showered in days. Not exactly the top of her list of priorities.

A vision of her parents’ bodies, organs leaking out of their orifices, flashed through her head and bile rose in the back of her throat. She shoved a particularly heavy stack of books off of the table with a scream. She snatched up the pendant, chain billowing behind her as she stalked out of the library towards the pub.