He drank two full cups of water and slurped every last drop of the soup she brought back to him on a brown plastic tray. Thom’s stomach gurgled restlessly. He had no idea the last time he’d eaten anything, even something as simple as chicken soup. It very well could have been more than a decade based on what Ana had said. He hoped his body remembered how to process actual food.

“Alright,” he said, wiping his mouth with a raggedly torn brown paper towel. “What is it we need to discuss? How did I lose more than 10 years of my life? And where the hell am I?”

She was sitting on a tall metal stool, beside that same counter with the sink. She held her hands closely together, the right one picking at the skin around her left thumbnail. It looked like a nervous habit.

Seeing him watching her hands, she frowned, folded them together and took a deep breath.

“We will get to the where and the how later, but something else must come first.”

“I’m all ears,” he replied anxiously. He didn’t like that she seemed tense and hesitant.

“We know that it started in Los Angeles, but not exactly why or from where. Maybe if there’d been more time we would have found the source. What we do know is that one day, the world was normal. The next, people started getting sick. The first case was reported on October 29th…”

“First case of what?”

“Please don’t interrupt,” she chided him, “this is difficult enough. Let me get to the end.”

Thom began to issue a sarcastic reply, but something about the set of her eyes or her general apprehensiveness warned him against it. He swallowed the remark and motioned for her to continue.

“They ended up calling it Charon after the ferryman of Greek mythology that carried souls to the world of the dead. The first case was reported on the 29th, the first death was on the 30th. On average, once identified, a patient had about 36 hours; three very unpleasant days. It began with congestion followed by a fever and welts, then vomiting and diarrhea, and eventually profuse bleeding, both internally and externally. The old, young, and those already weak were generally lucky and developed pneumonia within a day or two and were gone before it got to the painful last stages.”

“Two days after Halloween, LA was quarantined. On November 5th, with cases being reported among the soldiers maintaining the quarantine and fear of a lethal epidemic mounting, the President authorized firing a nuclear warhead on L.A. I was told later that it was launched from the Nevada desert and basically went up and came right back down. I don’t know if that’s true, but I know that every living soul in the Los Angeles area evaporated that day in a blinding flash of light.

“A day later, with the nation in mourning and the inevitable finger pointing just getting started, the first case was reported in New York. The next day Washington, and then Baltimore, Philadelphia and Boston followed. After that, we lost track. Charon was everywhere, and there was no stopping it. The President died exactly six days after ordering the infamous missile launch, his predecessor 18 days later.”

“It spread worldwide like a summer wildfire, and almost no one survived it. It took just about 8 weeks, give or take, for humanity’s reign on Earth to come to an end. There are only a handful of us left now, and among us, a good many were…damaged…by the plague one way or another. I’m sorry, Thom, but the world you remember, your loved ones, friends, it’s….everything is gone.”

The last few words were nearly a whisper, as if she ran down like the ballerina in a music box. She sat motionless, watching him. Waiting for it.

Thom idly wiped at a discolored spot on his tray with the same ragged paper towel while he stared at the floor beneath Ana’s feet.

He looked back to her and caught her eyes. “Bullshit,” he spat. “Lady, look, I don’t know who you are, or what your game is, but that’s about the worst joke I’ve ever heard. Now why don’t you get me a phone so I can call my wife before this gets unpleasant.”

She sagged visibly and sighed. “I was afraid you wouldn’t believe me. Your wife, Heather, died on November 13th, 2007. I’m truly sorry.” She stood up from the stool and reached behind her, producing a stack of what appeared to be old newspapers. “This is a collection of material for you to read,” she said, placing it next to him on the bed, “starting with the L.A. Times from October 31th.”

“Look, lady…Ana…” he began.

She cut in. “I’ve got a number of other errands to deal with at the moment. Read these while I’m gone. Hopefully they will help you see that I’m telling you the truth. I’ll be back in several hours and then we’ll talk more. You are still weak, stay in bed.”

She turned and left the room without another word, leaving Thom with a stack of newsprint and a look of shock.