My mother and I survived on a boat after a supernatural plague killed the rest of humanity in 2023. This is my final post.

Part I – Part II – Part III – Part IV (FINAL)

No, you’re not losing your marbles. I suppose I’m being a little facetious with the title of this post, given I’m about to tell you the story of another Evie, before telling you mine. In fairness, however, these alternate memories are now so entrenched in my mind, lost among the loudly rustling thicket of my own, that Other Evie and I often feel indistinguishable.

Make no mistake that this is no beautiful thing. Two timelines coexisting in my thoughts, which were not quiet to begin with, is a horror beyond any earthly minds were built to withstand; another consequence of that unearthly Voice, charging its way through realities in a rage.

Nevertheless, thanks to such a bombardment of noise in the way of new memories, Other Evie has half-distracted me from my grief; instead, I am reflecting on hers.

I want to talk about what I have learnt from Other Evie. It may buy me, and all of you, a little more time. That is all any of us dream of having in the end, isn’t it; just a little room to breathe? Whatever the case, however this ends, it ends for me here.

This is my final post, and I am telling it from my true home: Papa’s mountain cabin.

Before I tell you the ending of my story, I shall tell you about the ending of Other Evie, in another version of this world:

Evie worked across Africa as a doctor, tending to the sick across borders. It was a bittersweet snapshot of what I could have been; what I became, in another life. Living vicariously through this Evie, with her wonderful life, was so intoxicating that I almost refrained from sifting through her many memories. I wanted to stop early because I had glimpsed what would come next.

On an ordinary day in May of 2023, as Evie tended to the sick in Morocco, the Phenomenon struck. Screams, and violence, and bloodshed; you know the tale by now, no matter the reality in question. The Voice takes twenty-five percent, day in and out. Evie and the surviving doctors tried to get out of the country, but airports were shut down, ports were closed, and roads were barricaded. Stories from her friends and family back home, in England and Italy, told similar stories.

On Day 3, having holed up in a hotel, Evie received a call from her mother, who told her to be at a specific dock on the north coast by nightfall. She made it to the rendezvous point with ease, given there were few soldiers and civil servants left manning the barricades; most had died of heart attacks, or scarpered back to their families.

Her mother arrived in a small yacht labelled ISABELLE, coming to her daughter’s rescue after three days stranded in the still-raging inferno of the city. Laura looked so like the beautiful woman I had already seen in your reality, though with a little more ruggedness to her features. She fastened the ropes to the cleat, for what would be a brief berthing at the dock, and ushered her daughter hurriedly onboard.

As the woman and her mother set sail, fleeing the mainland before the unexplained violence reared its ugly head for a third time, it struck me that I was purposefully avoiding some of Evie’s pre-Phenomenon memories. There was no Papa, because he had died in a car accident when she was very little. Of course I had buried that. I was already shouldering my own grief, so doubling the load would have been too great an ask.

Evie and her mother sailed only a few miles from the coastline, diligently listening to radio broadcasts from crumbling countries throughout Europe. Evie suggested they go ashore, to the British refugee camp, as they still had friends and family back home. Her mother refused, saying it wasn’t safe to be around people, as any human being, at one minute past two on any given day, could be next.

“Sure,” agreed Evie. “But that includes you or me.”

Her mother nodded, passing a small but sufficient rigging knife to her daughter, and that was the end of that conversation.

For days at sea, Evie and her mother would hold their breaths at that fateful time each day. The radio broadcasts became fewer and farther between, manned mostly by surviving civilians. There were no studios, or governments, or authority figures to whom Evie could cling, and I felt her growing anxiety at that fact; but she dealt with it well, and I was bewildered by this. The Other I was so much better at handling those fearsome intrusive thoughts, and urges to seek reassurance, or avoidance, or whatever else would reduce her anxiety.

On each day, twenty-five percent of humanity’s remaining sum would die of inexplicable fright, and that figure did not include the deaths of unaffected persons. Experts estimated the human race would be extinct by the end of August.

However, days turned into weeks, and weeks into months, quicker than Evie or her mother had expected. August came and went. Then September. Then October. They hadn’t become affected, and they weren’t the only lucky sons-of-guns. Survivors on radio stations were speaking gleefully of the Phenomenon’s end, talking about how folks weren’t dying anymore, and welcoming people to their camps.

By December, fearing the colder weather and suspecting they might not survive on their meagre diet of cod and treated water, Evie’s mother tentatively agreed to return to land. She and her daughter settled in that British refugee camp around the midlands.

That could have been the end of their story, for they spent two years living a somewhat safe and normal life. However, in the winter of 2025, the Phenomenon returned. The Voice was driven, this time, purely by wrath; it sought to finally claim all those stubborn little unaffected souls who had been immune to its decrees.

On an unrecorded day, at an unrecorded time, every last human left on Earth started screaming.

Evie started screaming.

This is the memory that frightens me the most, for it is naught but a fog to me. I do not know what Evie saw or heard, so I am still oblivious to the true form of the Voice, and the ways it terrifies affected persons into compliance. What I do know is that Other Evie, like my dear father, managed to defy it.

She managed, as a matter of fact, to survive it.

Evie did not wrestle, in some futile bid to make the Voice go away. Yes, she screamed at first, closing her eyes and clutching her temples; much like everyone else in the refugee camp, and everyone else in every camp across the world.

But after maybe thirty seconds, Other Evie, and Laura, and perhaps half of the other survivors managed something I had never seen an affected person manage before: they became calm. Their screams did not cut out suddenly, serving as a precursor to acts of violence. Their voices faded gently into low murmurs, and though they twitched a little, and breathed somewhat erratically, perhaps half of the affected population, at least in that refugee camp, seemed stable. They did not jabber at the air, bargaining with the Voice.

The other half of the affected persons committed suicide by the hundreds, maybe to prevent themselves from living long enough to endure that one final fright, which they had witnessed stop billions of hearts before theirs.

But Evie and her mother, and many others, simply sat with it.

They sat with whatever cosmic terror they were experiencing.

They sat with the unknown.

Perhaps Papa was right, that we immune survivors are those already mentally unwell, and accustomed to terrifying voices in our broken heads. Then again, as always, I may be trying to impose rationality and explanation on what will not ever be rationalised or explained; for, after all, many of the refugees did still succumb to the Voice, and they had thought themselves immune to it for so long too.

But I had, and have, to cling to hope, because Evie and her mother, along with hundreds of others in the camp, survived the Final Hour of the Phenomenon and came out the other side unaffected, and without heart failure.

They had survived the Voice.

I’m not so naive as to believe the Voice went away for good, because it never does and never will. But I do believe Other Evie paved a path for me. I keep thinking of the nightmares threatened by the Voice spoke in the mountain village. It spoke of completing its mission by dealing with Papa and me, then dealing with Dawa and the last of his group.

I believe, and I may be wrong, that the Voice burnt through endless worlds, expecting to consume all realities without any resistance. However, having instead met with humanity’s stubborn endurance, it now seeks to clean up all loose threads from its existing conquests before moving on. It is blinded by a sort of tunnel-visioned indignation at the handful of “rats”, from certain realities, who have not bent to its will. Maybe more are out there than just Dawa, his mother, and me. I certainly hope so.

My point is this: what if your world survives as long as I survive? And this comes from an obsessive-compulsive woman who knows she shouldn’t entertain what-ifs. Obviously, I know I will die one day, but I’m not talking about conquering Death himself; I’m talking about conquering death via the Voice’s influence. My father already did that, but he’s gone now, and if I go too, the Voice will move on to its next conquest.

I told Dawa my thoughts, based on the things I saw through Other Evie’s eyes, and he wasn’t so sure. He said we all could have died up in that mountain village, when the Voice tore apart different worlds and caused them to converge; he argued that the “Devil” was all-powerful, but I pointed out that we were still standing.

Dawa implored me to stay, but I was set on a plan, so I told him to remember what I’d told him about Other Evie. I told him we had to fortify ourselves against the Voice, because it would come back for all of us. The longer we could deny and delay the Voice’s power over us (perhaps until we die of old age, and the Voice finally moves on), the longer we could save this reality from its influence. Maybe.

“Many maybes,” said Dawa, then he eyed me with curiosity. “You care a lot for a world that is not your world.”

I smiled. “It is my world, Dawa. It’s the only one I’ve ever known.”

I left the boy and his mother with a wave and a faux smile, then I booked out a flight to England with the last of my savings.

Today, I landed in the midst of a storm; the Voice’s tempest, kicking about rain and huffing gusts of disapproving wind. I pushed onwards, nonetheless, telling the rather nervous taxi driver to take up me up to an eerie little mountain town I had not seen in eight years.

“Are you sure, miss?” the driver asked. “Weather’s pretty bad up there today.”

“I’m sure.”

“Right. Hope you’ve got somewhere indoors to be.”

I looked out the windshield and up the mountain as I handed him some change. “I do.”

The weather was dreadful, so I wasn’t surprised to find the streets mostly empty, save for a few stragglers hurrying to get out of the rain. Still, there was more to the emptiness of the place than that. The mountain town was, to my eyes, still reeling from the events eight years earlier. I’d seen that look in the taxi driver’s eyes. I’d booked him from the next town over, so I wondered whether he’d heard things about what happened here. Secrets the villagers weren’t supposed to share.

Maybe they weren’t ever scared of the men in suits who told them to keep quiet, I considered as I wandered to the town square, and the taxi drove away. Maybe they kept quiet about what they’d seen because they were terrified of whatever had affected their loved ones; terrified it would come back for the rest of them.

I looked up at the rain, broadened my arms, took a deep breath, and yelled at my loudest volume. “I’M HERE!”

I repeated those words to the heavens for a good hour or more, and a few passers-by chortled; even atop the rain, I was sure my calls could be heard by a fair amount of residents.

Eventually, an elderly police officer pulled up in his sedan, got out, and instructed me to stop, because my anti-social behaviour was disturbing the neighbourhood. The old man lectured me for a good while longer than felt necessary, perhaps secretly thrilled to have something to do with his day in that tumbleweed town. I felt more like a scolded schoolchild than a criminal, and I started to doubt my entire mission. Feeling rather silly, I apologised.

The police officer sighed. “Do I need to call anyone for you? Do you—”

At precisely one minute past two o’clock in the afternoon, the old man abruptly stopped talking.

In a flash, he had closed his eyes, put his palms to his temples, and begun to scream at a deafening pitch; with the gusto and vigour of a man half his age. Atop the roar of the rain, and the wind, screams sounded throughout the town.

The Phenomenon, I thought in horror, stumbling back from the affected police officer.

Seconds later, a couple of pub-goers hurried out into the street. Given the terror in their eyes, as they fled the screaming residents inside the establishment, I knew these two men had witnessed the Phenomenon eight years prior. I could tell by the determination with which they hurried to a car parked alongside the road, one of them trying to fish out his keys as he ran.

“GET US THE FUCK OUT OF HERE, LARRY!” the other man shouted. “THEY’RE GONNA CHANGE. THEY’RE ALL GONNA FUCKING CHANGE!”

The designated getaway driver managed to unlock the doors, and he made eye contact with me for a second, hesitating to clamber into the front seat. He looked ready to offer me a ride out of there, but his gaze shot suddenly to the police officer standing in front of me; the old affected man, screaming piercingly. The driver then shot me what may have been an apologetic glance, then he got into the vehicle and slammed the door shut. The car screeched off, aquaplaning slightly as it tore along the puddle-slicked road out of town.

I wanted to do the same, but I had come back to this town for a reason. I had wanted to draw the Voice’s attention.

I had succeeded in an unexpected way.

I backed away from the police officer, looking desperately about me for some sort of doorway that might have opened; that had been what I’d wanted from the Voice, but I’d forgotten that it was not the one who adhered to rules. My temporary bout of courage was replaced with fear, but I still refused to flee; my heart seemed desperate to escape without me, pulsing through my ears as if trying to get out that way.

I remembered what Papa had said. Face it. Face it.

The police officer stopped screaming, and spoke to me in stammering sentences, amidst convulsions. “I… Miss, I’m… sorry… Miss, I’m so sorry, but… I have to do it.”

I finally let out the scream my heart had been dying to unleash, as the old man removed his baton and gave chase through the town. As I made my way up the pavement, shoes sloshing in the puddles and fringe matting to my face, I thought I had outrun him.

Then there came a heavy thump against the back of my head, still wounded from its severe blow two days earlier. I stumbled forwards and spun to see the officer had struck me across my crown with his baton, now stained with fresh blood. The man was about the same height as me but with half the mass to his frail frame, so I took my chances.

I put my palms out front and shoved.

A deep dread coursed through me as I pressed against his uniform, having never come into such close contact with an affected person before; thoughts raced through my mind as to whether the Voice might be contagious after all. I feared the affected man’s curse weaving through the textile of his cotton shirt, then through the skin of palms, and finally into my brain.

Alternatively, and this fear was much harder to rationalise away, I feared the officer might simply be stronger than he looked and manage to overpower me, then strike me to the ground; before bludgeoning me into pulp with his baton.

I was thankful, pacifistic though I may be, when he flew onto his back and hit the pavement with what seemed to be a painful impact; though it wasn’t his fault.

“Sorry,” I said, as an affected person might; after committing an act of violence, as an affected person might.

Stop it, I told myself, realising I was listening to that cruel voice of my own.

I ignored the fresh throb at the back of my head, turned, and continued through the town. Shoes pounding the pavements from an adjoining street, and I chanced a glance, catching a middle-aged couple gunning for me and shouting in overlapping voices. They offered apologies, I think, but I didn’t stop to find out; I picked up the pace, as did my heart, and I wondered whether it might give out in fright.

Stop it, I told my intrusive voice again, but that only made the fear louder.

When I reached the edge of town, I started up the foot of the mountain, into the trees and the quiet. Running, and hiding, and running, and hiding. Old ways never really died, no matter how brave I pretended to be.

I took a look over my shoulder, horrified to find I was being pursued not only by the middle-aged couple, but half a dozen other crying stragglers. What had the Voice promised these unwilling assailants, in return for their servitude? Had it promised to spare this world, or perhaps simply their families, as long as they killed me?

It didn’t matter. I had no room, and certainly no time, for such noise. I pushed onwards, nausea overwhelming my every sense as my body begged me to stop and catch my breath; but nausea was better than death, I tried to explain to my body, so I kept on. I was about an hour up the mountain when I finally collapsed onto the forest floor, eyes filling with static as I skirted dangerously close to passing out; I had never run so far for so long, and I hadn’t eaten for hours.

I managed to push myself back up to my feet, eyesight clearing, and I turned to squint behind me. My pursuers, constricted by human stamina much like me, were nowhere to be seen. They had likely taken similar breaks farther down the mountain slope. Of course, I knew they wouldn’t stop; and I knew the Voice would tell them where I had gone.

I turned back to the uphill route ahead, through the forest, and continued for another few hours at a much slower pace, still cripplingly winded; then emerged a welcome and long-forgotten sight.

Papa’s log cabin.

Its front wall was overdressed in green trellises of moss and vines, and tattooed with graffiti. I was shocked on two counts: that my father hadn’t sold the place, and that someone had clearly stumbled upon it since we moved away. I wondered what my father would have done if someone had stumbled upon us during those first fourteen years, before he realised the world (this one) hadn’t ended. Would he have gone for his shotgun and put them down on sight?

I was surprised he had kept up the lie at all after visiting the town, as a matter of fact. He must have known that there was a chance some unwitting hiker could pass by. I had to assume he was always on alert, praying the Voice wouldn’t find us through the eyes of some passing human. We were fortunate; or unfortunate, depending on how one views my tale.

There were not-so-distant shouts from the forest, as the pursuers neared, so I shook my exhausted mind and body awake, then hurried to the front door. It bore scratch marks and dents from the affected persons who had come for us years earlier. I tried the handle to find the door locked, which I hadn’t considered in my dazed stupor. I remembered we had left the back door open in our great hurry to escape, so I circled the back of the cabin, went in through the rear gate (also still open from our escape), and found myself face to face with a door swinging in the breeze.

Revealed were the forebodingly dark innards of the cabin, and I was disheartened to find myself feeling unwelcome in the place I had once called home. It might have been, in those eight interim years, left to the designs of wild foxes or a squatter; responsible for defacing the front of the property. But the yells from the forest terrified me into action.

I had to hide.

I stepped into the unlit cabin, then hurried to lock the back door behind me. The interior ponged of damp and rot, and rang with the skitters of small rodents, but my fists unclenched a little as I realised there sounded no heavy clunks of large wildlife. Sunlight worked through the rot-forged holes and slats between wooden planks, still nailed to the windows, and tears stung my eyes. I realised the cabin had always been my home.

Without Papa, it was a coffin.

Another prophetic thought, I decided, startled by the shapes suddenly moving outside in the setting sun, visible through the slight openings over the windows. The convulsing runners came up to the front of the property and pounded on the front door, just as their affected friends and neighbours had done all those years ago.

“Evie?” one affected woman yelled from the other side. “Evie, please… Please just… We have to do it… Just come out, Evie…”

I squeezed my eyes together, willed myself to brave just once, and yelled back. “I’M READY TO GO TO MY REAL HOME!”

The affected woman said nothing, likely having no idea what I meant, and she and her cohort continued rattling the door in its hinges to an excessive degree; it was then I realised everything was rattling to an excessive degree, just as it had in Dawa’s home, half the world away.

The ground was quaking.

The air was quaking.

A needle-eye doorway was cut through reality to reveal, on the other side, a hunting cabin decorated with vines and moss throughout its visible interior. This was the cabin Papa had intended to be our retreat from civilisation, twenty-five years ago, before we had slipped into another reality.

My head ached as I eyed the doorway; my home turf, on which the Voice would be able to exert its influence over me, or so it has always claimed. I thought of the world I was about to leave behind; the one which felt more my own. I sat and started writing this, my final entry.

Stepping through that doorway might not be the way to fix any of this, but it’s the only possible fix which makes any sense to me in this moment. I have to hope I will be like that Other Evie, and I will hold firm against the Voice when it tries to affect me. I have to hope, in a fit of rage, it will not give up on me; but it will, as it focuses all of its energy on me, give up on you.

Maybe I’ll last years as the last human in that dead world, or maybe I’ll only last months, or weeks, or days, or hours. Whatever the case, I’ll use the lessons my father taught; not only in terms of growing food, but in terms of facing my fears. I like to envision myself as an old woman, who has distracted the Voice for a long time; sparing Dawa and his mother, and all of you, and everyone in every reality.

The Voice will forever angrily buzz about me, trying to worm its way back in for the rest of my miserable days in that little hovel; however few or many they may be. But it will be distracted. That is what I tell myself. It gives me the courage to do what I have always needed to do, and it denies the Voice a little. I want him to forever be denied, by all of us. Be the stubborn rats he so loathes.

We must enrage the Voice.

We must weaken the Voice.

It cannot die, but I will do my damnedest to trap it here until my end. I will, once I have posted this final entry, leave my phone on the dining table, walk through the doorway, and finally learn the truth of being affected. I will learn what terrifying cosmic truth killed billions, in countless realities, with a fright too great to bear.

I want to say the Voice will never return for you, but it will; so, when it does, do not wrestle.

Face it.