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The wooden people were inescapable.
Every road, every house, every abandoned store, had at least one. Their faces were featureless, but he still felt like they were watching him. There was nowhere he could go to escape their eyeless gaze.
There were three thousand of them in the small town he'd been living in for the past four months. He didn't know the name of it. A wooden person was draped over the city's sign, as if it had tripped while it started to turn. One of its arms was extended, like a plea. Ben didn't dare try to move it. He’d never touched any of them. Instead, he counted.
The house he lived in had two wooden people in one of its bedrooms, still in bed, turned while watching a movie. A smaller one, of a child, resided in the attic, a barbie clutched in their hand. Ben kept the doors to those two rooms closed, a chair propped up under the door handles for good measure.
Maybe it was silly, all the precautions he took. In the three years since the... event, he hadn't seen any of them move. If they could, they probably would've done it by now. But he couldn't fall asleep if those doors were open, and so they remained closed.
It wasn't like there was anyone who could judge him for it.
He lived in the basement, in a nest of blankets on a leather couch. His only sources of light were the small window on the top of the left wall, and the light that streamed in through the door at the top of the stairs during the day. The electricity had stopped working at the end of the first year.
A pile of guns lay next to his couch, along with his supplies and books. He'd considered sleeping in the library when he'd first arrived, but he'd quickly ruled that out. There were thirty-three wooden people there, and there were no doors to close on them. Besides, the basement served him well enough.
It had doors.
• • •
On the 1187th morning since the event, or at least since he started counting, Ben woke up the same way he'd woken up for the last four months; from the sunlight streaming through the window. He stretched, got dressed in a simple white t-shirt and jeans, and marked a tally in his journal. He had ten full pages of tallies. Ninety to go.
He grabbed the book he'd finished last night and shoved it in his bag, along with a pistol. For emergencies. He'd never actually shot it before.
With a can of tomato soup in hand, he removed the chair from the basement door and walked to the kitchen. The family had a camping stove, and the gas station a few blocks down the street had more than enough propane. It was laid over one of the counters. Ben quickly opened the can and dumped its contents into a pot, before turning on the stove.
Mom had spent so much time trying to teach them how to cook. It had been a losing battle. They were seven twelve-year-olds who would sooner bungee-jump off the roof of their house using a bedsheet as a chord than listen to their mother. Vanya and Diego had been the only ones who'd actually listened. Ben had used the same excuse as Klaus; we'll learn when we're older, Mom. Let us be kids!
Now look at him. Master of shoving canned food in a pot and turning on a propane stove. He’d never learn how to cook now. The perishables were long gone.
The image of Mom flashed in his mind, hovering over a stove, cooking forever, Diego waiting at the table behind her. The only way he’d known it was them was from their heights, when he found them. They’d been his first discovery, but far from his last.
Ben cringed and gripped the counter just as the soup finished cooking.
After breakfast, he headed to the river with all his dirty clothes and a towel. It was close to the town, and surrounded by a small forest with short trees. The river was his favourite place in the town. Only one person had been taking a dip when the event occurred, having since been swept onto the shore. It was easy to avoid them as he washed himself and his clothes.
Next came the grocery store. Usually, these trips resulted in only one or two cans being grabbed, and maybe a chocolate bar if he was feeling frisky. Seeing as he was restocking his supplies every day, he rarely actually had to restock anything besides one or two items. But routine was routine, and he grabbed a new can of tomato soup.
Then came the best part of his day. The library. It was a small building, with only two floors and a far smaller selection than the one he’d gone to with his family in Los Angeles, but he still loved it. Reading had always been his favourite activity, even before the event. Now, it was all he had left.
Klaus used to think reading was boring. Ben had thought he was an idiot for that. Not that Klaus cared. A week before the event, he’d roller-skated through the biggest library in Los Angeles and gotten them both banned. Diego and Allison had thought it’d been hilarious. Ben had thought it was the end of the world.
He walked into the library, using the sunlight through the windows to guide him. There were two books to return today, both in the fiction section. Even though there was nothing making him put the books back on their shelves, it felt wrong to him to leave them on a table.
Then he picked out two new books, both on bears. He’d been really interested in bears. It was crazy what the end of civilization made you interested in.
At first, he’d tried to figure out what caused it. He’d scoured every bookshelf he could find, looking for something, anything. In the first year, he’d read countless books on anything to do with wood and disease. He was young and stupid, and believed wholeheartedly that there must be some way to reverse it, to change all the siblings he’d found, frozen in chairs and on beds and playing the violin and putting on rollerskates back. He tried everything short of touching them. Every instinct he had told him to never try that.
He’d been unsuccessful, of course. By the end of year one, he’d finally accepted the truth; that Diego, Klaus, Allison, Five, Vanya, Mom, Luther; they were all gone. In some ways, that had been worse than finding them.
That had been when he left. He’d never gone back. He doubted that he ever would.
He read his book on bears for the next five hours where he always did, in the reading lounge chair across from the two wooden people. A mother with a child, reading together. The book was still held open in her hands.
Then the sun started to set, and he packed everything up and started the walk home, past forty wooden people, frozen in their tasks. It had to be midday, he figured, when the event occurred. People were too active for it to be anything else.
He’d been sleeping when it happened. Or, at least, he assumed he had been, though he’d never slept past nine before. He woke up in his chair, slumped over with a headache, a book carelessly thrown next to his feet. He swore he’d fallen asleep in his bed.
Yet another mystery he’d never solve. There were too many to count.
In year two, he’d found another survivor. She’d shot herself, relatively recently. From loneliness, nihilism, it didn’t matter. She was dead now. If only she’d waited a little while longer, for him to find her. That would’ve dealt with the loneliness, at least.
Or perhaps it would’ve changed nothing. He’d never know.
He arrived home, and started cooking dinner, his book propped open on the counter. The last few minutes before sunset were spent eating and reading. When the light finally trickled out, he turned on his flashlight and made his way back to the couch.
The next day, he marked another tally in his notebook. 1188. Ten pages full.
Ninety to go.