Read Online The Last Tribe by Brad Manuel - Free Book Online

desperate for company as he was. 
    “Should I knock?” he asked
himself.  “Should I just open the door and say “hello?”  The front door was
wood framed with a large glass upper half.  There was a storm door with a sign
reading Model House – Rutledge . 
    “This isn’t even the girl’s house,
she’s squatting.” Greg noticed.  He wondered where she lived before moving into
this house.
     “Here we go.”  Greg muttered to
himself.  He raised his hand and knocked politely but firmly.
    The girl was on a couch reading a
book next to the fire.  Her head popped over the back of the couch and looked at
the door.  Greg wore a big grin, waving slowly.  He spoke in a loud voice,
making sure she could hear him through the glass doors “My name is Greg.  Can I
come in?  I’m 14 and alone.  I just want to say hello and warm up by your
fire.”
    The girl jumped up and ran to the
door with a huge smile on her face.  “Oh my god!  A cute boy’s here to rescue
me!”  She screamed through the other side of the door.
    “A cute boy?”  Greg thought to
himself.  The first person I run into in months is a teeny bopper?
    The girl hesitated for a second. 
“You’re alone, right?  You’re not with the army or anyone else?”
    Greg shook his head.  “At least she
is a smart teeny bopper.”  He thought.
    The girl turned the deadbolt and
let Greg inside the house.  She threw her arms around him and hugged him for a
few seconds.  “Oh my god!  Oh my god!  You’re real, and you’re another person! 
And,”  She paused.  “You’re all wet.”  She stopped hugging him, pulled back and
hit him with a barrage of questions.
    “What’s your name?  Where did you
come from?  I can’t believe you found me.  I haven’t seen anyone for 7 weeks,
since the army truck with like four people in yellow suits drove through town
really fast.  Have you seen anyone?  Is there anyone else alive?  Is the world
going on somewhere?  Oh my god, my name is Rebecca.  What’s your name?  I
already asked you that, and you already told me your name is Greg, sorry. 
Okay, I’ll be quiet now.”  Rebecca was a out of breath from the excitement and
asking so many questions.
    Greg stood in the doorway and felt
the warmth of the house in front of him.  The cold air was still on his back. 
He let the questions come.  “Hi Rebecca, my name is Greg, Greg Dixon.  May I
come in and sit by the fire.  Maybe heat some of my food?”  Greg lied about
having food in hopes of eating some of hers, or because he was too tired to remember
he did not have any.  “I’ll tell you everything I know, I swear.  I am just as
excited to meet you.  I haven’t seen anyone, and I mean anyone, in months.”
    “I’m sorry!  I’m sorry!”  She
replied excitedly.  “I can make you some soup.  That’s pretty much what I have,
lots of cans of soup.  My parents ran the local grocery store, and they held
the last two shipments of soup in the basement.  I have just about any kind of
soup you want.”
    “Do you have the one with little
hamburgers in it?”  Greg loved that soup, but would eat anything she had.  She
could warm a bowl of water, and he would drink it just to heat his insides.
    “I do.  Let me get it.”  She moved
aside to let Greg into the house.  “Come in.  Put your stuff anywhere you want,
and sit by the fire.”  Rebecca bounded through the living room ahead of him.  She
opened a cupboard next to the fireplace and pulled out a can with a red label. 
She pulled the tab off of the top and poured the soup into a metal pot, more a
cauldron, with a wire handle.  She hung the pot on a metal rod with a hook and
swung it over the fire.  “I looked at a house with a woodstove, but there were
people upstairs, you know, not alive, so I decided I could work with a
fireplace instead.  My dad loved the store that sells all this fireplace
cooking stuff.  I make it work.  Oh my god I’m so lonely.