The Oasis Read Free

to hers now.
    “Why?” She felt his presence but kept her back to him as she shut the curtains.
    “I don’t know. I just never expected to meet someone like you.” He reached out to touch her but then withdrew his hand and turned back to the kitchen, tucking his gun into the back waistband of his pants.
    She turned and watched him walk away, knowing what he felt. The desire to reach out to someone else, needing to finally find comfort with someone else, after being alone for so long. She sighed and continued to make the coffee. He sat down at her table and watched her work.
    “So, are you going to tell me your name?”
    She laughed and put a mug of coffee in front of him. “I’m Helena Matheson but most people call me Lena.” She paused. “Well, at least they used to.”
    They drank in silence before she asked the question she figured they both were wondering. “Do you know what happened?”
    He had expected the question. It should be obvious to anyone that at some point he had been associated with the military, and if anyone knew anything the military would. “I don’t know,” he said, his eyes guarded. He laughed at her stunned look. “I mean, I do know some things, but probably not much more than you do.”
    “I doubt that,” she scoffed.
    “What do you mean?”
    “Well, I don’t know much. One day I was a student, the next I was a survivor.” She pushed her hair out of her face, trying not to remember the night she found Becky. “Everyone was gone. Everyone except the… others .” She hesitated, wondering how much he knew about the others .
    “Were you attacked?”
    She was surprised by the concern in his face. “In the beginning,” she said, remembering. “But they were pretty uncoordinated and unpredictable back then.”
    “I know what you mean.” He laughed nervously, remembering being attacked on the base where he was stationed. “Is that why you moved out here?”
    “Yeah,” she said. “There seemed to be so many of them in bigger cities. There are a lot fewer of them out here and they don’t give me too much trouble. Sometimes they come at the house like they know I live here, but usually they are in the town where you saw my truck. The ones who live here tend to be fairly predictable. I have at least five living around here but, like I said, I mostly stay away from them. I try to avoid them as much as possible.”
    Jasper found himself nodding when she spoke. He had seen the others that she talked about and had evaluated their territories before he had approached her. It somehow seemed less than accurate to call them humans now, and Lena’s term—the others —seemed to fit. What had surprised him was how she had managed to set up a permanent home and live with the unpredictability of the others . He had never trusted their “predictability” like she was doing. All it took was one day of unpredictability to lose your life. He chose a life of nomadic avoidance.
    “Have you eaten?” she asked suddenly, making him smile. She didn’t wait for him to answer before she turned on her gas tank to boil some water. Having someone to share something as simple as a meal seemed more important than finding out what he knew. Right now, she just wanted to enjoy having someone here.
    They laughed throughout dinner, enjoying each other’s company and avoiding any more talk about what had happened and what they had been through. Jasper thought her eyes sparkled, her skin glowing under the lamplight. She had remained so beautiful, even under such strain.
    After cleaning up the quick meal she had thrown together Lena glanced down at her watch, shocked at the time. “I really need to get some sleep,” she said, reaching into her closet for some extra sheets. “Bertha needs to be taken care of pretty early, so…” She threw the sheets on the couch. “Are you going to be here in the morning?” she asked tentatively, afraid of the answer.
    He smiled at her as he stood and took a few steps