Until the End of the World Box Set

by Sarah Lyons Fleming

  “Bye, hot springs,” I say from the passenger’s seat. “I’ll miss you.”

  “Bye, Cassie,” Peter says in a deep voice. I crack up, and he says, “I figured one of these times the inanimate object should talk back.”

  “And that’s the hot springs’ voice?”

  “Hey, it was pretty good.”

  “It was great. Although it did sound a bit like Scooby Doo,” I say, and dodge his retaliatory pinch.

  Everyone left of last summer is in the VW. It magnifies the people we’re missing, but I take comfort in the fact that anyone is left at all. I poke around in the Grateful Dead-stickered glove compartment and find a CD case. This VW is nowhere near as nice as Miss Vera; the only upgrade is in the aftermarket CD player.

  I flip through the case. “Let’s see—Grateful Dead, Grateful Dead and surprise, surprise, Grateful Dead. Well, we’ve got all the concerts that are highly admired in the Deadhead community.” Nelly groans and flops back on the bed next to Adam.

  “How do you know they’re highly admired?” James asks from the floor near Penny’s feet. Hank is crammed by the gearshift, head resting on my thigh.

  “The daughter of Patrick and Abigail Forrest knows her spacejams. Even if, according to them, she doesn’t appreciate their genius.”

  I flip until I find a few that aren’t The Grateful Dead, and one of them couldn’t be more perfect. “This one goes out to Peter Spencer,” I say in a radio announcer voice. “For talking me down off the ledge.”

  “What is it?” he asks.

  “You’ll see.”

  I stick in the CD, find the track and turn up the volume. This stretch of road is empty, the windows are rolled up, and I want to drive with music blasting one more time in my life. Just for this song, I’ll pretend that everything is normal and sane. I glance at Peter when “Don’t Worry Baby” begins. He looks away as though embarrassed, and I tug his non-crunchy hair until he cracks a smile.

  The Beach Boys’ harmony fills the car and tells us in the loveliest way possible that everything will be all right. That it’ll all work out in the end. We travel through lush, colorful forest and wind our way past a deserted car as the song fades away.

  “Again,” Hank whispers.

  Peter rests his hand on Hank’s head before bringing it back to the wheel. I press the button and wipe my eyes. I notice I’m not the only one who does.

  We’ve passed through one other town on our way to Whitehorse, which was empty but for the requisite Lexers. Our cheer at the Whitehorse city limits wakes Bits, who’s asleep on my lap. “Are we here?” she asks.

  “We are, baby girl,” Peter says.

  She presses her face to Hank’s. “We’re here, Hank!”

  “I know that,” he says matter-of-factly, but his smile is dazzling.

  “Why would they want the Safe Zone in the middle of everything?” I ask. Whitehorse is one of the Safe Zones in the middle of a city, or as city as it gets in the Yukon. If I’ve learned anything, it’s that the more populated a place before zombies, the more zombies there are now.

  “Look here,” James says. I spin for a view of his map. He points out a ridge that runs along one side of the downtown, with the river on the other side. “John said they dug out the ridge to make a wall so they only had to close off two directions. He wished we had something like that.”

  And I wish John were here to see it. The road’s sides have been dug away, leaving only a bridge of asphalt to the first gate—the open first gate. It’s not a good sign, and I tighten my arms around Bits when she slumps. The road dips and makes a sharp left at a wall of concrete and rebar. We travel its length until we hit another wall. Mark and Zeke leave the pickup to knock on the giant wooden doors.

  “Hello?” Zeke booms. No one answers. Peter pulls close for a view over the barrier and we climb to the roof.

  I can see why they chose this area: The large metal buildings offer plenty of housing, and a wide expanse of field to the north appears to have been gardens. And I can see why they left: The field is mostly empty, but the rest of the Safe Zone is inhabited by Lexers. They walk and stand and crawl in and out of the buildings. Windows are shattered. Clothes and everything from lanterns to furniture are strewn on the streets.

  Nelly rests his head on the wall. “Of course. Why did we think it would be any different?”

  I rub his back before he jumps down. Zeke tries to smile when our eyes meet, but he looks as dispirited as I feel. The only thing that’s been keeping me sane after a long night of nightmares has been this moment. It was going to be a dream come true. I look over the wall one more time. This Safe Zone is ugly and flat and rocky, so far removed from Vermont and its pretty green mountains and farmhouse and fields. I tell myself I wouldn’t want to live here, that I wanted to be in Alaska anyway, but I’m lying to myself. All I really want is to be safe.

  44

  We have to spend the night near Whitehorse, since it’s afternoon, but we’ll do it farther north. We don’t want to wake up surrounded. It only takes ten minutes to be clear of the city—ten minutes in which no one speaks, except for James to say that we have enough gas to get two vehicles to Talkeetna. We’ve just passed a few homes when we hear a yell and turn to see a thin woman with short dark hair running up the street waving her arms.

  James slams on the brakes. The woman nears and he says, “Dude, is that Liz?”

  I gasp. It is Liz, our friend and fellow patroller from Kingdom Come, who was in one of the first trucks to leave when the giant pod arrived. We’d assumed they’d been stuck in the giant pod and had met the same fate as everyone else. We throw open the doors and she stops with her legs spread and arms thrown in the air.

  “Holy shit!” she screams. “Holy motherfucking shit!”

  I don’t know who starts crying first, but by the time we’ve reached each other we’re both in tears. “I can’t believe this.” Liz uses her sleeve to wipe her face. “You’re here, right? I haven’t gone nuts?”

  “Nope,” Zeke says. “If you’re nuts, then we are too.”

  “Holy. Motherfucking. Shit.” She gives us all back-clapping hugs and steps back. “Is this…everyone?” We nod and her eyes flicker around the group, cataloging all the missing people. Her mouth thins.

  “Who’s with you?” Nelly asks. “Why are you still here?”

  “Mikayla, Ben and Jasmine,” she says. “We’re out of gas.”

  She directs us to a fenced-in house with a metal roof. Liz closes the chain-link gate behind us and kicks it with her boot. “Not that it’d do dick against a pod, but it’s better than nothing.”

  Zeke laughs and tugs his beard. “Why are you here, then?”

  “We were hoping someone would drive by and give us a ride.” She shakes her head in disbelief and punches Nelly, which is much more a Liz-type show of emotion than crying, then opens the door and calls, “You’ll never guess who I found.”

  We walk into a living room with couch and kitchen table on one side and mattresses on the other. A large woodstove graces the back of the room. Mikayla drops her spoon when she sees us and brings her hand to her chest. She runs forward, screaming, “Ben!”

  Her ringlets are greasy and there are streaks of dirt on her clothes, but her golden-brown skin glows and her eyes are bright. Ben enters in a panic and stops, eyes bulging. His compact, muscular frame is as limp as the curly mop of brown hair that lays flat on his head. He’s one of those still-waters-run-deep kind of guys, but when I throw my arms around him he almost breaks my ribs.

  Half an hour later, we’re eating boiled potatoes and listening to the end of their story. It’s similar to ours, except they drove across the top of the United States and southern Canada. It wasn’t so bad after they reached the Dakotas, narrowly escaping the pods we’d last heard were in Iowa.

  They’d managed to save eight year-old Jasmine from the school bus by waiting out the zombies for two days before driving back to look for survivors. Jasmine answered their calls from under
the seats, blocked in by bags where her mother had stashed her, and they had to kill a lot of good friends to get in. Liz tells me quietly that Henry was taken care of, but they didn’t check the roof of the ambulance. I’d like some closure, but I know there’s no surviving a zombie bite. Dan is gone either way. She tears up at mention of John.

  “I would’ve looked at the bodies if I’d known he was there, Cass,” Liz says.

  “I know.” I squeeze her arm and resign myself to never knowing what’s become of him.

  Jasmine inherited the doe eyes and serious demeanor of her mother, but when she saw Bits she dragged her to the floor in ecstasy.

  Ben rubs his eyes. “So we’re all that’s left.”

  Everyone stares into space until Mikayla says, “Nineteen is better than four, right?”

  It’s hard to dismiss her optimism because she believes it wholeheartedly. And she’s right, nineteen is better than fifteen and most definitely better than four. Ben wraps an arm around her shoulder. They still have each other. I’m glad someone does, and I’m happy that I’m finally able to feel glad instead of bitter.

  Jamie stands, eyes averted. “I’ll go check on the kids.” We sent them to another room to play with Jasmine’s scavenged toys while we spoke.

  “How is she?” Mikayla asks once she’s gone.

  “Better than you’d think,” I say.

  “So what’s the plan?” Ben asks. “Talkeetna?”

  Kyle nods. “What else is there? Can’t stay here.”

  “What were you planning to do for the winter?” Mark asks.

  “We’ve been stockpiling as much as we could,” Ben says. “There’s a back way down into the potato fields at the Safe Zone. We used the last of our gas to load up the truck and now we’ve been going by bike. We fill up bike trailers and bring them back.”

  “We were going to be pretty sick of potatoes by spring,” Mikayla says with a soft smile. “But we thought we’d move into the Safe Zone once they froze. It looks like the survivors left quickly. I’m sure they left behind food, like we did.”

  “There’s got to be fuel in there, too,” Ben says. “The rest of the city is dry.”

  “And ammo, for hunting,” Liz says. “We tried to get in there once. I’m not trying that again without an army. Or at least not without Zeke.”

  Zeke bellows. He and Liz have always been friends who admire each other’s badassery. “Well, we think we’ve got enough gas to get two vehicles to Talkeetna,” Zeke says. “We don’t want to hit Anchorage in the dark, so we’ll take two nights to get there.”

  As the sun goes down, we light the lanterns, close the drapes and I ready my toothbrush. “You have any mouthwash left?” Nelly asks, and proceeds to tell the others about my dousing Peter in mouthwash. By the time he kneels and mimes my panic, they’re in tears.

  Sorry, I mouth to Peter and wiggle what’s left of the bottle. He answers with a shake of his head and upturned mouth. I’m lucky he finds me amusing most of the time, since he’s stuck with me for as long as we have the kids. Actually, I’m lucky just to have him at all.

  45

  I sit to play with Bits’s hair on our mattress while they go over tomorrow’s route one more time. It’s damp with sweat. I press my lips to her cheek and call Peter over. “She has a fever.”

  He kneels with his hand on her neck. “You feel okay, baby girl?”

  “Not so much,” she says. “My chest hurts and my throat is sore.”

  I know it’s probably a run-of-the-mill fever, but I remember the runny eyes and coughing of Boss’s men. It could have been from their diet, or a cold, the flu or even something worse. The fact that I can’t name what it was scares me. I tend to overreact when it comes to Bits, but I can feel the reach of those men hundreds of miles away. If they manage to kill her too, I might lose my mind. “Let’s give her some antibiotics.”

  “They won’t work if it’s a virus,” Peter says.

  “I know, but…” I don’t want to alarm her, but I’m going to pump her full of everything we’ve got just in case. Peter acquiesces and helps Jamie figure out a dosage.

  Bits swallows a pill, takes her ibuprofen and asks, “Do I have to brush my teeth?”

  “No, sweetie,” I say. “Just curl up with me.”

  She’s asleep immediately. I brush her hair away from her face and hope the medicine does its job. Peter lies on Bits’s other side and I whisper, “Why don’t you sleep with Hank? You don’t want to catch this.”

  “Neither do you,” he says, and stays put.

  Bits kicks off blankets and coughs all night, and I give up on sleep to watch her by lantern light. Before dawn, Peter sits up like he’s been shocked out of sleep.

  “Bad dream?” I ask.

  He runs a hand down his face. “Yeah. What are you doing?”

  “I can’t sleep.”

  “It’s just a fever.” Peter leans against the wall, shoulder touching mine. “She’ll be fine, I promise.”

  “You can’t promise things like that,” I say, angrier than I ought to be. “You promised you’d come back before, when there was no way to be sure.”

  “But I did come back.”

  “It doesn’t matter. You can’t promise—”

  Bits coughs, a deep sound full of phlegm, and sits up choking. Peter holds her while she gags and throws up last night’s dinner. I run to the kitchen for a bowl, but by the time I’m back she’s asleep on Peter’s chest. The next coughing spell wracks her body until even Peter looks alarmed.

  The thermometer reads almost 105 degrees. I look to Jamie, who’s been woken by the coughing along with everyone else. “Can I give her more ibuprofen?” She nods and brings me the bottle. It wasn’t full to begin with, and now it’s less so.

  I measure out the dose and hold the cup to where her head lolls on Peter’s arm. “Bits, wake up. You have to take some medicine. It’s the good stuff.”

  Bits rouses enough to swallow and sinks back into sleep. Jamie takes the cup and says, “It’s okay. She probably just has the flu.” I think but don’t say that people die from the flu every year.

  We load up early, and I tuck Bits next to Adam on the VW’s bed. “I’m sorry, Adam. I know you don’t need any germs on top of a bullet hole.”

  He squeezes me with his good arm. “Don’t worry about that. Just take care of Bitsy for us.”

  “I had the flu one time, Cassie,” Hank says. I half wanted him to ride in the truck so he doesn’t catch this, but I kept him with me in case we get separated. “I was so sick it was crazy, but they just said to drink lots of water and juice.” He thinks for a moment. “Well, we don’t have juice, but we can give her water.”

  I kiss his cheek. I want juice for Bits—juice and doctors and my mother here to tell me that I was sick like this too, once, and everything turned out fine.

  The mountains in the distance are the same brown peaks as yesterday. A few hours in, we stop at a rocky beach on an immense blue lake. I make a compress using the icy water, careful to filter it first, and rub Bits’s skin to cool her down. She mumbles in her sleep and kicks at me in a foggy, mindless way. But this is what the book says to do, so this is what I’m doing even if she pummels the shit out of me. I murmur softly and take her temperature again—the medicine has barely made a dent.

  The previous group who rode in the pickup bed has raw noses and looks desperate for warmth, which means my time has come. “I’ll go first,” I say to Peter. “She can have more medicine in a half hour. Rub her with the cold water even if she yells at you, okay?”

  “Let me go,” he says.

  “I just want to get it over with.”

  “I’ll do yours so you can stay with Bits.”

  It’s too long to be out in this weather, which has taken a turn for the worse and looks like rain. I almost take him up on his offer, but he doesn’t want to spend hours away wondering about Bits any more than I do. “That’s okay, thanks.”

  Adam kicks Nelly, who’s perched at the end of
the bed, hard enough to make him grunt. “I’ll take your turn,” Nelly says with a sigh.

  “You already went. You don’t have to take mine for me.”

  “I’ll never hear the end of it if I don’t,” Nelly says. He raises an eyebrow at Adam, who nods and pats the bed for me to stay.

  “I’d do it if I could,” Adam says. “So think of it as my turn. And you can’t say no to me. I’ve been shot.”

  “Thank you, Nels,” I say. “And Adam, of course.” Nelly grumbles and rubs my head as he leaves. Of course he rubs it harder than he needs to, but it’s a friendly noogie.

  “These mountains are amazing,” Adam says once we’re rolling.

  I have to crane my neck to see the cloudy sky now that we’re surrounded by mountains. The two-lane road barely fits in the space between peaks and lake. It’s absolutely stunning, but it also feels secure to be encircled by mountains this enormous.

  “It’s like a giant bear hug from nature,” I say.

  “That was one of the stranger things you’ve ever said,” Peter says over his shoulder with a laugh. “But it does.”

  He turns on the wipers to clear the drops of rain that have begun to hit the windshield. “Poor Nelly,” I say.

  Adam waves off my concern. “He’s fine. He would’ve offered anyway. And if he didn’t, he would’ve ruminated on it until he felt so guilty that he stopped us to switch.”

  “You know him well. He’s the best pain in the ass ever.”

  “He is.” Adam rests back on his pillow with a suppressed wince. He doesn’t complain, but a bullet in the shoulder must hurt like crazy.

  “You’re good for him. You’re what he was looking for all along. It just took the zombie apocalypse to make it happen.”

  I think of what Dan once said—that maybe this happened so the people who belonged together would find each other. I don’t really believe it—not after losing Adrian—but it makes for a nice story when people like Nelly and Adam find true love.