Sunday, April 4th, 2029. Hello, kids of the future, this is Aveline writing to you. Nothing much has changed since the Grabers broke out of labs in North America and started eating humans. Grabers are man-hunting giant spiders, in case you were wondering, which I hope you are wondering, because if you don’t know what a Graber is that means the generation before you managed to get rid of them before you found out what they are! That’s good news!
Unfortunately, I see thick, silver Graber webs everyday, tied from light pole to light pole in abandoned neighborhoods and the roads are always empty, so empty, you’d think rush hour was midnight. That’s all normal for me, but hopefully it isn’t for you.
Me and my soulmate, Yonni, have been all over the eastern end of the U.S. and we’ve run into nearly no one. Yonni’s plan is to stack up on food and other necessary supplies, then find an abandoned field somewhere and live in our RV secluded from the rest of the world forever. I think we should keep searching for people. There’s got to be one major city with a resistance team to fight against the Grabers. He says I shouldn’t be so optimistic though.
Today, I got lucky. While I was searching an old store for valuables, I ran across a girl named Bainee. She’s told me that she was raised by a small clan of Black Widows! If you know anything about Black Widows, it’s that they eat their husbands. Graber Widows only eat boys, so they didn’t eat her, but the Graber Widows soon died to another gang of Grabers (Wolf Spiders!), and she’s been left alone. I decided to take her back to the RV since she was all alone. My goodness, Bainee is so sweet and knows a lot about spiders! She doesn’t seem to know what it means to have fun though, so I’m going to play cards with her to teach her a new game. I don’t know if Yonni will like that idea though…
“Who’re you writing to?”
Aveline turned and jumped to see Bainee write beside her, her face aglow from the computer screen.
“The future generation.” answered Aveline.
“How do you know they’ll be one?”
Aveline thought a minute. “I…I just do. You’ve just got to think positive sometimes you know?”
Bainee smiled. “I guess so.”
Then the front door opened and the two turned to see a tall figure walk in and pull down his hoodie. “Aveline, you’ve got to stop leaving the door unlocked. I coulda’ been a predator!” He then shook his head and lifted up some small bags. “Anyway, I was able to find some provisions at the abandoned gas sta- who’s that?”
Aveline looked from him back to Bainee. “Oh Yonni, this is Bainee. I met her at the store earlier. You won’t believe it, she was raised by Grabers!” Aveline’s eyes widened, but Yonni stood still.
He just dropped his bags by the passenger seat and walked all the way to the back of the RV to the room by the bathroom and closed the door. Then he opened it again.
“Aveline, can I talk to you a moment? In here?”
Uh-oh, Aveline thought to herself. She turned to Bainee’s wide concerned eyes and gave her a smile.
“Don’t worry. I’ll talk to him. You just stay here. I’ve got some offline games on my computer, and there’s some playing cards in the cabinet behind you.”
Aveline then stood up straight and adjusted her glasses. She would convince Yonni to let Bainee stay. She just had to.
Yonni stared at her. “Aveline, who is that?”
“I told you. Bainee. After days driving through maybe tens of cities, I found someone not half-dead!”
“That still don’t mean you can just bring her up in our RV, what were you thinkin’?” Yonni’s face scrunched up.
Aveline sighed loud and ruggedly. “Come on, Yonni! We can’t leave that girl all by herself! She looks no older than 10! She’d be caught in a second!”
“And you can’t just take in anybody you see! The RV isn’t big enough to be driving around playin’ savior!” Yonni threw up his hands and slammed them back at his sides.
Aveline waved a hand to the window. “There’s nobody else out there! Her parents are long dead! She’s got nobody else. You may have lost faith in humanity, but I haven’t! She’s been with Grabers for so long, she was more scared of me than she was the spiders! She’s in bad need of human contact. Yonni, please. Just let her stay.”
“How ‘you know she don’t have any Graber-transmitted diseases!?” Yonni yelled.
“I don’t know! But what I do know is that if she does I’ll find a way to heal her. Life isn’t black and white Yonni, we can’t just hide in an RV and lock everyone else out for the rest of our lives!”
Yonni grit his teeth and pointed a finger at Aveline, but said nothing. He took a deep breath, and sat in the old brown chair next to the bed, where he massaged his forehead and rubbed his face. “Aveline, this is crazy. I’m trying to protect you the best I can, but you’re way too eager to help strangers that could lead the spiders right to us! This is just like the time you tried to pull that spider-bitten man out of a web. He was caught! Already dead! There was nothing you could do! Look, I know we weren’t able to have a family, and I know you would’ve loved a daughter but-” Yonni looked up and stopped mid-sentence. One look at her glazy eyes and he knew he had said too much.
Aveline swallowed audibly. There was silence, until her trembling mouth opened again.
“T-this isn’t about me, Yonni. This isn’t about us. This is about Bainee, the kid who has no home, and only knows a world of spiders. She can’t live like this. And I know this whole situation is hard. You never liked people or spiders, I get it. But that isn’t Bainee’s fault. She needs to have a fair chance at a survivable future. Please, for the time being, just let her stay with us.”
Yonni stared at his wife. He sighed and after a moment, heaved himself up.
“I guess we have those stupid foldable bunks for a reason,” Yonni said as he went over to her.
Aveline giggled and wiped her eyes. “At least now they’ll be put to good use.”
She put a hand to Yonni’s cheek. “I know you hate people. But you're a little too closed off. Trust me, you’ll see that-”
Glass cracked. A shriek was heard.
Both Yonni and Aveline grabbed the nearest thing to them and ran out of their room. Bainee was at the front of the RV, leaned back trying to heave a knife out of a huge, fury, thin leg that rested on the dashboard.
“Graber!” yelled Aveline. Yonni put a hand in front of Aveline and yelled, “Kid, get back from it!”
But Bainee kept trying to haul the knife out of the Graber’s leg. She strained, but eventually fell back with the knife in hand. Blue blood oozed out of the Graber’s leg before it hissed and backed up into the forest trees that striped the left side of the road.
There was a moment of silence where the only thing that could be heard was Bainee’s heavy breathing. Then she turned to the both of them with wide eyes.
“My bread knife!” Aveline said, running to the girl to lean down and pull the knife out of her hands. “Where did you find this!?”
“In one’a the cabinets. After I found the cards, I decided to explore a bit. Sorry.”
“Looks like your exploring came in handy,” Yonni said, smiling at the girl. “You’re pretty smart.”
Aveline frowned. “Using a cooking knife as a dagger is smart?”
“Like you said. You can’t be closed off to everything,” Yonni said.
Aveline shook her head, but she guessed she understood. “Bainee, I’ll show you your bunk. You get to stay with us.”
Bainee smiled and ran to hug Aveline. She whispered “Thanks for getting him to let me stay.”
Aveline smiled. “You’re welcome kiddo.”
Yonni looked down at Bainee. “Next time, I’ll leave you in charge of home defense.”
Hey there! I’m Shila! I’ve loved books since I could read, and decided I would write books I wanted to see written for others! Check my children’s book Imagination on Amazon!