Alone Together

By Tawna Hutchison

In the gripping novel, Alone Together, the world as we know it has been ravaged by an unforgiving virus, leaving Bree Wasson and her family to navigate a shattered landscape. As Bree reflects on her tumultuous journey from the age of fifteen to nineteen, a chilling reality unfolds—the global population has plummeted from over eight billion to a mere five.

United by an unbreakable bond, Bree, her sister Jenn, and their partners Zack and Hawk embark on a perilous quest, their young brother Davy in tow, in search of other survivors. However, the relentless hardships they encounter along the way test the limits of their endurance and resilience. Strained relationships and personal losses threaten to erode the flicker of hope that keeps them going.

Alone Together explores the delicate balance between survival and the human spirit’s yearning for connection. As this small family confronts the daily struggles of existence, they grapple with the complexities of their relationships and the weight of their individual grief. Yet, they refuse to relinquish the belief that somewhere out there, others may still endure.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Austin Macauley Publishers
• Release date: Sep 15, 2023
• ISBN: 9781638298427

Tawna Hutchison

Although born in Murray County Utah, when she was two her family moved to Baltimore Maryland where she spent her childhood until she was twelve years old. Her family then moved to Tucson Arizona. After returning briefly to Maryland they returned to Tucson when she graduated high school, where she currently lives with her husband William. In 2004, she obtained a BA in English from the University of Arizona and currently works as a substitute teacher.

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About the Author

Although born in Murray County Utah, when she was two her family moved to Baltimore Maryland where she spent her childhood until she was 12 years old. Her family then moved to Tucson Arizona. After returning briefly to Maryland they returned to Tucson when she graduated high school, where she currently lives with her husband William. In 2004, she obtained a BA in English from the University of Arizona and currently works as a substitute teacher.

Dedication

This book is dedicated to my mom Debbie who inspired me with her own creative spirit.

Copyright Information ©

Tawna Hutchison 2023

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed, or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other non-commercial uses permitted by copyright law. For permission requests, write to the publisher.

Any person who commits any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events, locales, and incidents are either the products of the author’s imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.

Ordering Information

Quantity sales: Special discounts are available on quantity purchases by corporations, associations, and others. For details, contact the publisher at the address below.

Publisher’s Cataloging-in-Publication data

Hutchison, Tawna

Alone Together

ISBN 9781638298410 (Paperback)

ISBN 9781638298427 (ePub e-book)

Library of Congress Control Number: 2023913193

www.austinmacauley.com/us

First Published 2023

Austin Macauley Publishers LLC

40 Wall Street, 33rd Floor, Suite 3302

New York, NY 10005

USA

[e-mail]

[phone]

Acknowledgement

I would like to acknowledge the support of my family and friends who always believed in me. I would especially like to thank Jackie Sheline, who gave me invaluable assistance in editing my manuscript. I would like to thank Sequoyah Wasson for her unwavering love and support.

Solus

Chapter 1

Freeway Camping

I was only twelve years old when I first heard the name Vito. No name I had ever heard, or ever will hear, would have more effect on mine or anyone else’s life. It was the name of a killer. It wasn’t the name of a person, however. It was the name they gave a virus, a virus that would kill almost eight billion people.

At first, Vito had started as only a minor news story. Small pockets of people across the country had been affected by an unknown illness. It started very much like the flu but soon intensified. In time, enough people had died to cause a concern, but not a panic. They discovered it was caused by a virus, but there was no immediate cure. That didn’t stop the CDC from reassuring everyone that a cure would be found in short order.

When I turned thirteen, almost a thousand had died across the country, with even more in hospitals. Still, we were told not to worry, new treatments were being developed every day and a cure was imminent, or so we were told. Before I had turned fourteen, almost ten thousand worldwide had died or were stricken with it. I learned the word pandemic. Wide-spread panic had only been adverted by the announcement of the much-promised cure.

Later that year, people seemed to be recovering as the number of deaths tapered off. Thirteen thousand seven hundred and eighteen was the official body count. Confirmed deaths the news had called it. People started coming home from the hospitals and things started to go back to normal.

Everyone thought the crisis was over and eventually, Vito faded from the headlines. A year and a half later, when people started to get sick again, no one wanted to admit Vito was back, that was until it got to the point where they couldn’t deny it anymore.

Despite my parents’ reassurances that they wouldn’t let anything happen to my sister Jenn and me, I continued to worry. Every day, I checked the Internet for any stories regarding Vito. The cure they had thought they had found had only managed to slow the progression of the virus. It seemed as if nothing could stop it, and nothing did.

The day my baby brother, Davy, was born was the same day my mother died. By that time the hospitals were so overcrowded, only the sickest bothered going. You went to the hospital to die, not get better, so Davy was born at home. My dad delivered him, despite his already having a fever, the first sign of Vito.

Amazingly, Davy has never shown one sign of Vito or any other illness for that matter. He hasn’t even had one cold in all his young life of three years. It’s even more amazing that out of eight billion people, only five of us have survived, at least just five that we know about. We’ve been searching for other Vito survivors for three years now.

So far, we haven’t found so much as a hint of anyone else. Why did we survive? None of us has a clue. If there were any doctors left, maybe they could explain it, but there doesn’t seem to be a reason for our survival. It all seems so random and pointless. We keep going though. We keep going. We keep searching.

Since we survived the Vito, it stands to reason others must have too. It’s the only thought that keeps us all going. It’s taken us three years just to get from northern California, across Utah, and over to Arizona. Each day is more of the same. We walk, we scavenge, we sleep, we do it all again the next day. I was hoping today would prove to be different.

I wasn’t quite ready to wake up yet, or rather I wasn’t quite ready to get out of the van yet. I’m always awake before I need or want to be. It’s been like that since I was a kid. If I want to sleep until seven or eight, I’m up by five or six. I’ve learned to live with it. I can usually lay still for about an hour or so and pretend I’m still asleep.

That’s how I usually spend the first thirty to sixty minutes of my day. If I put my mind to it, you probably wouldn’t even know that I was fully conscious. Occasionally, I can drift back to sleep for a little while, but not this morning. I just couldn’t shut my mind back off. I wasn’t thinking about anything important or pressing, just a million things at once. I let out a quiet sigh. It seemed I would have to get up whether I wanted to or not.

I estimated it had been about forty-five minutes since my brain had dusted off the grogginess of sleep. My watch battery having ran down long ago, estimating time from the sun or stars is the best I can do. Things like watch batteries are pretty impossible to replace these days, so I only wear the watch out of habit.

Slowly, I opened my eyes and raised my head just high enough to look out the window of the van. The worn leather bench I had been sleeping on squeaked slightly. I hoped it wasn’t loud enough to wake Zack, who was asleep in the front passenger seat. Hearing only his soft breathing I let out a second sigh. Relieved, I turned back toward the window. I could just see some light peering over the horizon.

Judging it to be only about six thirty I sighed a third time. I had wanted to rest a bit longer, but knew it was futile at this point, besides Davy would be awake anytime now. He’s as early a riser as I am, and as a three-year-old can get loud without meaning to be. The last thing I needed was for him to wake Zack. Animals can be pretty dangerous, especially at night, and since we have to keep windows open for air, one of us has to be on watch at all times.

Having been on last watch, Zack would have only been asleep now for an hour or two. Glancing down I saw Davy was still asleep. Of the three of us in the van, Davy was the smallest and thus best able to sleep comfortably, which made it all the more confusing that he chose to sleep on the floor. A second bench seat behind mine would have been more than adequate for him, yet he remained on the floor in the fetal position.

He claims to like sleeping the way he does. No matter how many times I’ve tried to explain that he would be more comfortable sleeping on the seat, he still insists on curling up on the floor, usually right in front of where I sleep. My best guess is it makes him feel safe. Whatever the reason, he refuses to sleep anyway else. Davy may be the most comfortable in these tight quarters, but at only four foot eleven, I am a close second. A rare genetic disorder had kept me from reaching a normal height.

Despite what you might think, being so short does have its advantages from time to time, such as when you have to sleep in the back seat of a van. I was much more comfortable as we traveled than the rest of my family. My sister Jenn is five four and both Zack and his brother Hawk are five-ten, although Hawk claims to be five-eleven. It’s a source of friendly contention between them.

I don’t know which of them is right and I guess I don’t really care. To me they actually look the same height. Besides what does one inch matter? All I know is that I’m the oddball of our little family, at least when it comes to height. I don’t mind being short though, a least not as much as people used to think. It’s annoying once in a while when you have to reach up high or something like that, but I never felt bad about myself because of my height. Like I said it does occasionally have its advantages, like sleeping in a van or playing hide and seek with Davy.

Actually, the only thing that does bother me about my appearance is my hair. It’s been over a week since we’ve been able to bathe. As a consequence, my hair is a tangled matted, dirty mess. I hate it, but we have to save our water for drinking, at least until we find a river or a lake or some other water source, we can immerse ourselves in. This desert environment doesn’t provide many of those.

It’s also getting much longer than I like, having been quite a while since I’ve been able to cut it. I like to keep it just about to the bottom of my ears and now it was touching my shoulders. My bangs were the most annoying. I hate having them in my eyes. It’s an annoyance I have to live with, however, at least for the time being.

In my opinion, the guys have it much easier. They both look good with a little scruff. It makes them both look ruggedly masculine, although Zack is much better-looking than Hawk. I’d never say that to their faces though.

They both keep their hair long, though Zack usually keeps his in a ponytail. Hawk has a pocket knife they share for shaving, but as it’s the only thing we have to cut anything with it’s gotten a bit dull, so neither of them shaves much. Hawk hates his beard or so he says, but Zack doesn’t seem to mind his.

As for Jenn, if the length of her hair, or anything else about her appearance, bothers her she doesn’t let on. She’s always kept her hair longer anyway. I’ve always thought she looks like an old actress, Julia something; I can’t ever remember her last name.

She was popular when my parents grew up. I’ve seen some of her movies and always thought she was very attractive, for a girl, and so is Jenn. I’ve come to accept the fact that I’m not very beautiful, at least not in a worldly sense. I’m too plain looking to be beautiful. I can’t complain too much about how I look though. On the scale of our problems, appearance is pretty light.

Our daily routine is pretty monotonous. During the day we travel and at night we try to find the largest vehicle we can sleep in. Although lately, I have the feeling even if we found a bus Hawk and Jenn would still choose their own vehicle for privacy. One of the advantages, if you could call it an advantage, of a deserted world is that there are plenty of abandoned cars to choose from.

Of course, the only thing they are good for are sleeping in. Even if we had the gas and could get any of the vehicles started there’s no room on the roads to drive them. Most of the freeway is littered with endless rows after endless rows of abandoned cars. Even when we come to the occasional break, it never runs long enough to make much of a difference. At least, it hasn’t yet. Just where everyone thought they were going we don’t know.

Our best guess is that there was word of a cure, a cure that people had to travel somewhere to get. As to why everyone abandoned their cars, we didn’t even hazard a guess. It’s the second of the two biggest mysteries of our strange lives after why we survived.

My dad’s final instructions to us were to get everyone to our family’s cabin, high up in the Sierra Nevada mountain range. Vito was spreading uncontrollably and it didn’t take a clairvoyant to see things were bad and would be getting worse.

Dad felt we’d be safer at the cabin. Mom had died and Dad had already begun showing signs of the illness. He wanted us as far away as we could possibly get before things turned to chaos, as he predicted they would. He told us he would meet us there. He never did. The cabin was rustic, with no electricity and no television or radio.

As a consequence, much of what happened to everyone else remains a mystery to us. It’s hard for me to think of those days. If it hadn’t been for the rest of my family, and the promise I made to Dad to take care of Davy, I would have never been able to leave. I would have stayed and probably would have died like everyone else. I pushed the memory from my mind. I didn’t want to think about it. It’s pointless to obsess over things you can’t do anything about, but it’s hard not to sometimes.

I closed my eyes and began to listen for sounds. Specifically, I was listening for the sound of birds. Aside from light breathing noises coming from Zack and Davy, I heard nothing. This concerned me. Birds in the morning were a welcome sound. It was a good indication that there weren’t any predators around.

We had to be constantly on the lookout for animals. Dogs were the biggest problem. Since Vito’s decimation of the human population, most dogs seemed to have reverted to the ways of their undomesticated past. In our experience, we’ve found them to be quite unpredictable. They might lick your face or tear it off. We’ve had a couple of close calls but so far, none of us have been bitten.

I’d hate to think of what would happen if one of us were. We had very few medical supplies and even if we acquired more, there was nothing we could do against something like rabies or tetanus.

Early on in our travels we had established the watch system. We each take our turn sitting up on watch for two hours, that way we each get at least six hours of sleep. Hawk was on watch now; so in theory, he was supposed to be keeping an eye out for animals, keeping the rifle handy in case of any trouble.

We have two weapons with us, a twenty-two rifle and a nine-millimeter Glock, with a limited amount of ammo for each. Zack usually keeps the Glock, while whoever is on watch gets the rifle. All of us, except Davy, know how to shoot, although Hawk is by far the best shot. My dad thought it was good for us to know how to protect ourselves and Zack and Hawk’s family had been avid hunters.

Both skills come in handy, almost on a daily basis. Often, there isn’t much food other than what we can hunt. When the choice is between prey and predator, I prefer to be the predator. Hunting is our main source of food, but we also scavenge. Most of the stores we come to have been looted out a long time ago but we can occasionally find a few canned goods. It usually takes a few stores to find anything useful.

I say that Hawk is on watch in theory because I knew that if he was awake chances were good that Jenn was awake also. She was off watch last night and so had presumably slept while Hawk did. There’s a reason lookouts are supposed to be alone. I try not to be negative but the reality is that Hawk and Jenn together increased the likelihood that he would be distracted and miss the approach of a dog, a snake, or something else dangerous.

I know he’s Zack’s brother, not to mention Jenn’s boyfriend, but sometimes he’s not my favorite person. To be fair I can’t really say it’s him I don’t like, just his behavior sometimes. We may both be nineteen but sometimes I think I must be about ten years more mature than him.

On the other hand, Zack is quite different from Hawk. He’s much more mature, practical, and reliable than his brother. You could say that Zack and I are together, just not as ‘together’ as I’d like to be. I wouldn’t mind if Hawk and Jenn took Davy for a night or two, so Zack and I could have some privacy for a change.

I knew that wasn’t going to happen anytime soon for several reasons. The first one being that Zack, who as an ancient twenty-one-year-old, has taken on the role as the ‘father’ of our family. It’s a responsibility he doesn’t take lightly. Since all of our parents were victims of the Vito, both Zack and I have had to take on much more responsibility than either of us had bargained for at such young ages. He feels that the added pressure of maintaining a relationship would be too much right now.

At least, that’s the excuse he gives. I can’t say I completely disagree with his logic, but I hope to someday change his mind. A kiss here, an embrace there, is all he allows, despite my desire to be closer to him. I love Zack and I know that he loves me, even though he’s never said it out loud. I can’t explain exactly how I know he loves me, but sometimes, I catch him looking at me, and I just know.

There may be another reason, Zack wants to take things slow. The fact is he’d be my first. It sounds like an old-fashioned idea, and maybe it is, but I had truly intended to wait until I got married. Abstinence before marriage was far from the norm when I was growing up, but I still believed in it.