Volume II - Episode 32 Where: New York City, USA When: 4 days after E-Day, 10:14 am Despite sharing the house with his mother, Alex felt terribly lonely. His school was closed. His friends had disappeared. And worst of all, his mother was dying. The cancer in her lungs had lay dormant for years. She had first been diagnosed with stage 1 lung adenocarcinoma in the middle of 2007. A surgeon was booked, and a lobectomy was performed. Given the early stage of the disease, her prognosis had been rosy. Then, just two months before E-Day, the cancer had come back with a vengeance. Her days were spent in bed, coughing up thick, goopy chunks of blood and phlegm, the very sight of which made her feel nauseous. Every morning began with a coughing fit that rattled and shook her already frail body until she barely had the strength to move. There was nothing the doctors could do to stem the tide of the disease that was busy chewing its way through all her vital airways. The last thing they had told her - on the 5th of August, the day before all the doctors and nurses had disappeared - the cancer had spread to her liver. Alex loved his mother, but the burden of looking after her was almost too much to bear. He'd had no time to grieve for his missing father, his missing friends, and for the end of life as he'd known it. He'd had no time to explore the crazy, deserted new world that had opened up around him. He'd had no time to consider how E-Day had happened, or what it all meant, or how he was going to survive. Every day was spent attending to his dying mother, helping her get through the scant remainder of her life as comfortably as possible. His nights were restless, listening to her cough and wheeze in the bedroom across the hall from his. He found himself wishing that each coughing fit would be her last - that he would wake the next morning to find her motionless in her bed, at peace and free of pain. But when the morning came, and he looked into her loving (and somehow remorse-filled) eyes, he felt nothing but shame. How could he wish this woman dead? This woman who had loved him and taken care of him all of his life? And so it was, with a mixture of pain, love and loneliness, he went on day-by-day, looking after his mother, all the while secretly racked with guilt over how much he wished he was free from her. His home had become a prison - four walls beyond which there was a wide open world just begging to be experienced and explored. And on top of all that, and as perverse as it sounded, he missed Vanessa Cain. A crush that intense didn't vanish overnight simply because the world had ended. In fact, it had made it more intense. Life somehow just seemed more grey and empty without Vanessa in it. During the brief moments when he was alone, he often fantasised about a post-E-Day life with Vanessa Cain. What would life be like if she were still alive? He imagined the fun they would be having, running around in an empty world, keeping each other entertained, giving each other comfort and company. She would know what to do. She would bring the colour back to his world. But she had vanished along with everyone else. He had tried calling her the morning after E-Day. He had emailed. He had contacted her on Facebook, on Twitter, and on Instagram. He had even tried calling the Witches Of New York head office in Manhattan. But there was never any answer, and then the phones and power had all gone dead. She was gone, and there was nothing else to it. He sighed, walking through the living room to deliver his mother's mid-morning batch of pain medication. He glanced sideways... ...and froze mid-stride. He stared at the window, jaw agape, eyes wide in disbelief. Vanessa Cain was sitting under a tree in his front yard.