Last Light Over Rockland

Posted on Mon May 19th, 2025 @ 4:38am by Survivor Graham Lockridge
Edited on on Tue May 20th, 2025 @ 5:04am

644 words; about a 3 minute read

Mission: Please Sir...
Location: Lockridge Auto Repair, Route 1 – South of Rockland, ME
Timeline: November 11th, 2010

The wind had teeth this far up the coast.

Salt air knifed in through the crack in the roll-up door, carrying the brine of a dying sea and the stench of things long dead. Graham Lockridge pulled the flannel collar tighter around his neck and leaned on his good leg as he stared out toward Route 1 — quiet, as it had been for weeks. The coastal road had once carried lobster trucks, tourists, and the occasional rusted-out sedan headed south for a better winter.

Now it carried nothing but fog.

He took another look through the sight glass on the improvised fuel still — nothing. Dry. The water faucet dried up months ago, back when he'd filled the bathtub in September which now had maybe two inches left, murky and stale. His canned food stash had gone from choice to chance, and the last of the beer had vanished before the leaves turned.

And yet he was still here. Against all odds. Against his own sense. Because she might be alive.

He turned away from the road and dropped onto the garage stool beside his shortwave radio. The metal groaned under him. He thumbed the power switch and waited for the glow. Static answered first — his only companion for the last six days. Then came the familiar click of his looping message.

“This is Lockridge. If you’re within range, I’m just south of Rockland off Route 1. Garage is fortified. Shelter’s available for the unbitten. Repeat — unbitten only. Don’t come if you’re sick.”

He pressed down the mic again, this time with more care and spoke from the heart rather than his recording.

“Name’s Graham Lockridge. If the name means anything to you — maybe… maybe you’re lookin’ for me, too.”

He sat back, throat tightening. There was no reply. There never was.

Graham reached for his mug, the one with a chipped Union Jack fading on the side, and took a sip of boiled rainwater that tasted like dust. He didn’t flinch. Just stared past the edge of the bench at the photo nailed above his workbench — Jayna and Caroline, back when the world made sense. Jayna was in university now and made it clear she'd wanted nothing to do with him. That didn't stop him from playing guardian angel from a distance, little good as it did now.

The Wildfire broadcast from late August had come too late. By the time they named it, the world had already burned. The CDC said shelter in place. The government converted Journey’s End Marina and its Coast Guard Station in Rockland into a fortified quarantine site for the uninfected. It lasted eleven days. Turned out it lived up to its name.

He remembered the sound of the screams. The smell of the BuyMax supermarket going up like a bonfire. The final cutter pulling out to sea, its wake red in the dawn. He hadn’t fired a shot until then. He hadn’t needed to. But his shotgun ate through shells like candy, and now he had to be judicious. The last shell had his name on it iff'n it ever came down to that.

“God’s long since left Rockland,” he muttered aloud, his Portsmouth accent thinned by years in Maine but still rough around the edges. “Time I did the same.”

But he didn’t move. Just stared out the sliver in the garage door, the road beyond silent and gray.

And then, almost to himself, “Jayna… I’m still here, love. I’ll wait a little longer. Just in case.”

He keyed the mic one last time for the night, and let the loop play again.

"This is Lockridge…"

Outside the wind scraped a road sign until it moaned like a warning. Inside his dank garage, Graham sat quiet and alone, but listening.

 

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