All That's Left in the World (All That's Left in the World, #1)

by Erik J. Brown

I trail off because he knows what happened. The refrigerated trucks for the bodies, the mass unmarked graves that couldn’t be dug or filled fast enough. And no one in power doing anything to help or stop it. They just kept trying to force everyone to go about life as usual. To get back to the idea of normal.

Everyone was full-on Live Free or Die in America. And so they did.

The Voyage Out and it’s by Virginia Woolf.

Wake up, smile: the apocalypse has provided a cute boy to nurse us back to health.

One guy told me that once and I looked him up and down, pointed at myself, and said, “You couldn’t catch this gay if you had tickets to Hamilton.”

He kneed me in the balls and pushed me into the mud. But then I got the satisfaction of telling everyone his knees touched gay balls—through two layers of clothes, and everyone knows the gay spreads even faster through natural fabrics.

“I have to get some more wood.” As soon as I say it, I expect him to make a dirty joke. But all he says is, “Okay.” I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little disappointed.

“All right, smartass,” he says, shaking me from the downward spiral of queer existential dread.

then holds out a hand to help me up. I take it. And I’m worrying about what happens if I stay.

My Jamie. My stupid, stupid Jamie who left his home and followed me because he thinks I’m a good person. It’s selfish and I so clearly have not learned my lesson because right now I want him here.

I could listen to his laugh until the day I die and never get sick of it.

His logic is sound, but it’s also so full of hope. That makes me smile, and we continue on our way.

Oh my fucking God, is that adorable or are my standards apocalyptically lowered?

Honey, if all that stops people from killing each other is the laws of men, then maybe we deserved to be wiped out by the flu. You have to trust people sometimes. The good in this world might surprise you.

And I remember those first days out from the cabin when he was limping and I carried more. Or when I was injured and he carried everything. That’s how we’ve survived together.

If things get hard again, I’ll carry him. And he’ll carry me. And we’ll be okay.