Born 01 - Born

Chapter One

    They say that the world is built for two, but in the silence of the old cellar, two feels like a long lost dream. It's an ice cream cone on a boardwalk with the sun above and the sea below. It's the wind rolling around you gently, trying to persuade in all the directions at once and mixing sand over your feet as your toes dig in. It's a perfect place that none of us tries to remember.
    In any mind left functioning, the world was built for pain. Perhaps once there had been a place where love and companionship was something to push your life toward.
    This isn't that world anymore.
    To me, that world had never existed anyway. The world has always been a selfish place where love is fleeting and people are fickle. Once upon a time, true love accidentally happened to the fortunate. They polluted and corrupted it, and like everything else, it got sick.
    I've seen it. I've seen it and in the end, when it's taken away, the people who protested or cried the loudest were the ones who had taken it for granted the most.
    I look around the cellar. In four days I have barely moved. It's my rule, and now because of it, I can leave easier knowing I'm safe. I always end a shopping trip with a quiet few days in a cellar or basement.
    I wasn't born to this. I've had to learn how to move around quietly, how to sit still.
    I know what I need to do to live. I have lain amongst the dead. I have run through the woods in the dark, feeling my eyesight clear like a wild animal and embracing the darkness.
    I creep out into the beam of dust lingering in the air, sparkling from the sunlight that found its way down two stories into a dark cellar. The beam of light almost makes me smile. I admire the light's determination. I shake my head to bring my thoughts back around and take my first step toward the stairs.
    The explosions never destroyed this home in any way. The stairs are in one piece, which has become a bit of a novelty. The old farmhouse is too far from any major center to have even been aware of the problems, at least in the beginning.
    The blood smears on the white siding outside prove that the infection has touched every inch of this world.
    The hardwood creaks under my first step. I hold my breath and hope the creak went unheard. I take a breath and the second step slowly, allowing my body weight onto it softly. I hesitate taking the third, giving the sounds space and distance. My heart is beating like it might attempt to get free from my constricted chest. I wait a second longer; it's another rule. Never leave when you feel it's safe. Always wait one more second.
    I put my feet to the far sides of the stairs, where the nails attach the boards to the frame. Shallow breaths make sounds in the new world, in the borderlands, anyway. No electricity, no cars, no phones, no buzz. The world sits quiet, as if sighing and taking a long inhale after what seemed like forever with mankind and the noise pollution. I am at peace when I am home, but here in the open world, I am one of them. One of what is left, what scrambles to survive, most of the time separate of anyone else.
    I look through the cellar door and try to keep my anxious heartbeat low and my breath quiet. My body needs to make some noises, but others can be controlled.
    The house is simple. Farmhouses are the best houses. They always sit a long way off the road, not that roads matter.
    They always have canning and pickling that will outlast any human. They always have safety supplies and extras of everything. Farmers lived the longest, just like my father always said they would.
    Two trips a year is rarely enough, but I know if I travel anymore than that, I will be caught.
    I walk into the country kitchen and am amazed at how pristine it still is. Everything is still in its place, just as it was the first time I came here. Now though, layers of dust have found their way into the home, along with the bits of weeds that grow in though the cracks. With no busy little granny to buzz around dusting and tidying it, everything shows its years of abandonment. Vines grow up the sides of the house like all the houses. As always, I stand against the doorframe and put my hand at the top of my head as a measurement. I turn and look at how much higher it is than the mark I once foolishly put there.
    I look away from the mark and push away the memories of the little girl. I walk low to the ground toward the backdoor.
    I can't help but laugh inside at how I still feel safer leaving