"Sometimes he had indulged in daydreams about finding someone. More often, though, he had tried to adjust to what he sincerely believed was the inevitable — that he was actually the only one left in the world. At least in as much of the world as he could ever hope to know." - Richard Matheson, I Am Legend
The best thing about being one of the last people left on the earth was that you could stand on top of the Carew Tower, legs aching after a 49 floor climb and a three mile walk, and see every star in the sky for billions of light years, pinpricks of light dotting the darkness that seemed to personify the Earth. It was dangerous taking the couple of trips up there every so often, away from the safety of the school with the tightest security around. It was intensely dangerous, but they stayed the night in the building, under abandoned desks or on employee lounge tables, and in the dawn, when the cries of the infected had ceased their nocturnal song, the two or three of them that would come at a time hopped back in the SUV, parked three miles away, and headed back up to the suburban area where their sanctuary was a high school, and days meant going and scouring the areas for canned food, anything still edible, bottled water and carbonated drinks, and sometimes even wine or champagne on special occasions, since there was no one around to enforce the drinking law. Smoking, too, though no one did that but Jack, who had drifted down from Detroit to join the group of six or so teenagers that, like him, like those in the Colony in Vermont, and like Dr. Robert Neville in New York, were immune.
He felt like he was babysitting them sometimes, these sixteen year olds that lived out of their high school and broke into homes and stole food with an expertise that had so often made him wonder if they'd been doing it their whole lives. When he went with them on runs, to hospitals for antibiotics, to stores and homes for food, they kicked down doors and broke through windows easily with punches, kicks, and the back ends of guns. They'd even taken furniture from houses that they liked; couches, chairs, beds, curtains. They went to the IKEA that had been opened back in 2008 and furnished the school like it was a mansion, barely feeling bad. "If we're going to live, it might as well be in comfort," one of the teens, Elizabeth, had told him.
It was she who had found Jack and taken him into their home. She was the de facto leader of the group, that was more than obvious, and it had been her idea to rally up these other children that she hadn't known, all only thirteen at the time, except for little Eli Roth, who was only two at the time. "This is our little army," She so gladly introduced, "We have Michael DeRoba," She nodded to a blonde teen with a rifle pressed against his shoulder like a marine at attention, "Dominique Hayes," A black boy with his hair in dreadlocks, his face illuminated by the glow of his laptop, "Yukihiro Atsunaga," an Asian boy who was asleep in a bed, "Myself, Elizabeth Coppola, and... oh, there they are. Melissa Raphael, we call her Mel, and Eli Roth. They're attached at the hip pretty much. Eli won't do anything without Mel, and Mel won't do anything without Eli. Everyone!" Her voice piped up, and everyone looked over, even the sleeping Japanese. "This is Jack Hanson, from Detroit. He'll be staying with us."
All Jack could register at that moment were Eli's deep blue eyes, boring into his soul.
