She daydreams about the end of the world. She rereads Revelations again and again and wishes it were true. When the generator is working well enough, she watches zombie flicks and misses the internet. Once, she never thought she’d know so much about how humanity imagined it would end. Robots, war, gods… Fire and brimstone, sudden, hot, survivors fighting and scraping by, if only barely. How foolish. How hopeful. She wishes they had been right.

An alarm goes off, one of her still working egg timers. She stands up and checks on the food that’s been boiling over the fire. Just a corn-meal porridge, but it’s not like she’ll get complaints. It’s done, so she ladles even and measured amounts into bowls. Nineteen altogether. There’s not quite enough for the last but that one is hers and she’ll eat something more because eating is one of the few pleasures left. She puts several on a tray and carries it to the first room.

It was easy to secure a hospital and since it was so well prepared for emergencies that’s helped her out greatly. It’s not as well kept as it probably should be, but it is just her right now so she doesn’t beat herself up too much about it. In the first room sits a man and a woman, each on one of the beds. The woman is asleep and the man stares up slightly at the ceiling. He doesn’t even look at the door as she comes in.

She takes the bowl and sets it on the small table attached to his bed before sitting on the chair next to him.

“Time to eat!” she says with a smile. When he doesn’t turn his head she gently does it for him. Luckily for her, when she lifts the spoon with the porridge, he opens his mouth. Today it won’t be a fight to get him to eat.

Her attention turns to the woman next. She picks up the chart next to her and sighs. It is this woman’s day. She tries to tell herself that getting this task done in this room is for the best, that it means it’s over with and she doesn’t have to dread it. But it doesn’t matter; she dreads it just as much, first or last.

She debates for a moment, then wakes the woman up first to feed her. It’s a bit more of a struggle. Sometimes she refuses to swallow, sometimes she tries to go back to sleep. It’s a good sign for later. Well. Depending on how one defines good.

Her attention goes back to the man. He’s staring at the wall just past her, his bright blue eyes lost and cold. She pulls down the blanket of his bed and her hand goes right to his cock, flaccid beneath his hospital gown. Her fingers have gotten skilled at teasing them erect, if more clinical than a man would enjoy. Well. Enjoy once anyway. Today it’s a struggle though; he starts to get hard then goes flaccid once more. Frustrated and tired, she goes to the cabinet and cuts a blue pill in half, returns, and feeds it to him. While she waits she takes the time to force the woman to walk around. It takes so much work to get them up and moving but she knows how important it is to force them to move their bodies now and then. If her goal is to be achieved, they need to be healthy.

Hands on hers. She remembers hands on hers, the way they gripped, the strength of them. As she guides the woman back to her bed after just a lap around the room, she forces a smile. She never lets them see her cry. They have it bad enough already.

This time as she teases the man’s cock, it’s easy to get him hard. She exposes him and after a few minutes of vigorous stroking, she gets her sample. After washing her hands, she pulls down the blanket from the woman, opens up her legs, and transfers the sperm inside her. It’s inexpert, crude. She worked in technology before this happened; it’s the best she can do. Sometimes she pokes at the wealth of information about fertility available in the hospital but so much of it would risk the few healthy and living people she managed to find. Only nine men and nine women left that she has.

As she moves away from the woman and covers her back up she notices that she’s being watched by her ward. The other woman stares at her. There are tears in her eyes. She shakes.

“I’m sorry,” she says.

“Keep trying,” comes the reply. It’s the first words she’s heard in months. It’s the last she’ll hear for just as long.

She feeds the rest then returns to the kitchen, sitting down to her now cold bowl. Today she doesn’t have the strength to make more for herself. Her curse is that tomorrow she probably will.

One day the world laid down to die. Sometimes she daydreams that she did too.