Chapter Thirteen
Are We All Alone?

Grand Canyon, Arizona - July 2023

The RV rolled down the sandy road. Derek came to a stop at the viewing platform and smiled over at his wife. There were half a dozen cars parked opposite, some with bodies in the driver's seat and some without. He was ignoring them for the sake of having a vacation. He put the RV in park and opened the door to his left. Meredith followed him and they stood at the top of the red cavity. The fence and glass was the only thing stopping the from toppling into the great ravine.

"You ever think we'd get here?" Derek asked as she leaned on his shoulder, staring out into the void below them.

"Before...? Or-" She replied.

"After. You know us, sitting in our little house, the RV parked outside. You ever think we'd get to go somewhere new again? I didn't really think about it." He waved his hands around when he talked, but when he finished, he slid them back into his pockets.

"I didn't really think about it. We were alone for so long, you know? Being together just seemed like an obvious." Then she paused, turning to hum sharply. "Derek, do you think it made us crazy, being alone?"

He kept his eyes facing forward, but answered her. "Maybe, but I think it's okay if we're a little crazy. There's just us now, no reason not to be crazy."

They stayed at the canyon and stared into its depths for a while, even walking around a little to fully take it in. But then the sun was setting and they were sitting on top of the RV and Derek felt complete and incomplete at the same time.

"There anywhere else you wanna go? We have forever." He said the last part a little sadly, the sounds of the words drifting into the wind.

Meredith held his hand and said calmly, "home. Maybe just one last time."

"I know this was like a moment to look into the wind, but you mean New Orleans right?" Meredith nodded bluntly and then went back to staring into the wind, the moment mystical and serene.

International Space Station, Space - July 2023

Amelia floated past the window and stared into the mindless void of space. There were stars, but most of it was just black. She looked at her worms and pulled a face, they were her only connection to life. Even though they couldn't talk back, they offered some comfort. Then she stared at the thermal imaging camera and spotted a small, red dot in amongst all the green. She squinted and turned on the satellite imaging. She searched the open land in the midwest for life, but there was just nothing. She shook the thermal camera but the red dot remained.

"There's nothing there!" She yelled at it, but the machine didn't answer. She zoomed in even further, and the bird's nest on the monitor stared back at her. "Eggs, they're eggs." She put her face in her hands and tried to hold back a sob. She didn't look up at her worms for a few minutes. Every failure just felt more crushing than the last. Like the Earth was dead, and this was an eternal nightmare.

New Orleans, Louisiana - July 2023

They walked through the door to the house and Meredith stopped when she noticed Izzie's electric mixer sitting on the counter. She knew that seeing everything would make her think about it. What it was like to lose them. A tear fell silently down her cheek. Derek stood at her side, his hand nudging hers. This would be a difficult day for her. She sniffed loudly, wiping away the tear and shaking her head. "I'm not crying," she said. Burying her head in Derek's shoulder.

"I know." He replied, looking around but not recognising any of the stuff here as something Meredith would own. "Did you even live here? It's too happy, all baking stuff and books. You don't read, I know you don't. Your attention span isn't long enough." He kept talking until she wasn't crying anymore. She looked up at him and scowled.

"You don't know me, I could read." She poked him in the chest, and he laughed. "No you're right," she finally caved, "my room was this way." She pointed down the hall, and they kept walking until they found it. It was the master bedroom and it looked nice, but empty. "I slept at the office sometimes, I was always working late so..." Meredith said, there was a glass of water still on the nightstand. "When the virus broke out, I kept on working, not sure what to do. Then after George and Izzie, well- I took all the food and some clothes and left. I didn't think I'd ever come back." Derek looked around the room, picking things up here and there and nodding approvingly. It looked simple, like their bedroom back in Seattle. Meredith didn't have a lot of stuff. She never really made material commitments, so everything but the few photo frames of her family, was impersonal.

They walked through the rest of the house, stopping at George's room first. There were boxes piled up in there, "he was moving out when he got it, didn't want to infect us. He didn't make it." Meredith explained, slowly closing the door on his space. Izzie's room was more chaotic. "Izzie went a little crazy after George died. she started making things, she made so many muffins." Meredith laughed quietly, then turned back to the crafts, "the city was mania, well you probably remember." Derek nodded, "Izzie stopped going to work so she started knitting, making a new sweater for every person she knew who died. There all over there." She pointed to the box in the corner of the room and walked over it. She picked up the top one, a red turtleneck. She brought it up to her nose and inhaled deeply. It smell like the house, and Izzie, and her a little. She thought about keeping it. About wearing it when it got colder, but part of her thought it belonged in the past. That she had to move on.

As they walked out of the room, Derek grabbed the sweater from where Meredith had left it on Izzie's bed, and tucked it under his arm. Meredith packed up a few things from the house, but she'd already taken anything useable like food and medicines, a long time ago. She had to see it, one last time, to move on. She took a box of her mother's diaries she'd been keeping in the attic, and then they piled back into the RV.

They sat for a few minutes and watched the sun set, "I miss people." Meredith said looking over at her husband, "I miss Cristina."

Derek nodded, "there isn't anything else you want to see?"

Meredith shook her head, "and if I do, I know it'll be there for the future. I think we should be altogether, even if we're fighting. That's what makes us human, and I miss it. The world is too quiet." She smiled, thinking of their street, of Owen's truck, of the tomato patch outside their house.

Derek pulled the RV out of the drive and headed down the road. It was getting dark and they had a long drive ahead, so Meredith curled into a ball in the back, and went to sleep.

Somewhere on the side of the road between New Orleans and Seattle, Oklahoma - July 2023

Derek parked up at the EMCO and started filling the gas tank. Meredith climbed out of the RV and went into the store to see if they had anything useful. Derek didn't see her. He didn't know that when he sat back in the driver's seat and started the engine, that she wasn't in the backroom. He called out, "Mer!" but assumed she must still be asleep, and left her. He drove off without a second thought.

It was only when Meredith saw him leaving did she run out of the store, pistol in hand, shooting four times into the air. But he was too far away, he didn't hear her. He just kept driving forward into desert. Meredith clicked on her walkie but it'd run out of batteries. Then she yelled, screamed, and ran down the road after him but nothing worked. He'd come back, wouldn't he? He'd realise somewhere down the line that she wasn't in the back of the RV and he'd turn around and come back. She sat down in the store and gathered all the supplies she wanted. She put all the edible food into a pile and waited...