Until the End of the World (Book 1)

by Sarah Lyons Fleming

  Adrian looked stunned. “Can’t we talk? I can’t believe…”

  “We can talk,” I said reluctantly, not wanting the relief to fade. “But I’ve felt this way for a long time now. I don’t know what there is to talk about.”

  I don’t know how I could have been that cruel. I ended all those years with a few sentences, unwilling to even discuss it. By the end of those ten minutes he looked battered and beaten down. I hated myself for doing it, but I told myself it had to be done. I just didn’t love him anymore. I continued holding out the ring.

  “Keep it,” he said. He looked at me like I was a stranger. “It was for you. Maybe you’ll want it again someday.”

  I gripped the ring in my palm, and we stared at each other for a few seconds. His open, honest face was closed. He shook his head as if in a dream and rose from the couch.

  “I guess I’ll go.”

  I wanted this over. “Okay.”

  He picked up his bag and stood there as though waiting for me to say it had all been a joke.

  “I’m sorry,” I said again. “I really am.”

  He shrugged like he didn’t believe me and threw his bag over his shoulder. He started down the hallway, but then he turned back. I’d never seen such sadness on his face, and I wanted to take it all back. But I didn’t.

  “I still love you,” he said. “Until the end of the world.”

  Then he walked out.

  CHAPTER 83

  Neil’s hand comes out from under the porch steps and grips my ankle, followed by what’s left of his grinning face. I scream, but it comes out as a wispy little breath. Adrian looks into the trees, deaf to my pleas for help. I wake with Beth sitting above me in the dark.

  “Cassie!” she yells.

  I’ve scared her. In my dream it was a whisper, but I could hear the tail end of a real scream right as I woke.

  “I’m okay.” I try to shake it off. “Sorry, I just had a bad dream, honey. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  I hold her warm hand and pat the pillow so she’ll lie back down. In a few minutes she’s out again, her arms flung up with abandon. I head to the living room and tell James to get some rest. It appears I’m done sleeping for the night, so I might as well do watch.

  My heart continues to pound. Now I wish I’d kept James up for some inane conversation to calm my nerves. Because even though I know Neil is really, truly dead, I can still feel his cold hand on my ankle. If Laddie were here he’d know just what to say.

  The strawberries are in full swing, and I mash a bowl for another batch of jam. We’ve been gorging ourselves on them. Between John’s patch and ours, we’ve canned pint after pint. Beth cheers every time a jar lid pings when we take them out of the canner. She and Peter place silly wagers on which jar will pop next.

  Peter asks what he can do and helps John with everything and anything. Everyone’s warmed to him. I guess they can forgive him because it wasn’t personal. But I know what he thinks of me, and I can’t forgive him for that or for what he’s said and done.

  Ana begs for target practice, and when she’s not getting it or doing chores, she practices with John’s new weapon. We’ve named it The Cleaver. It has a two-foot shaft and ends in a cleaver blade meant to instantly decapitate. It slices through almost anything you put it to, including, we hope, the neck of a Lexer. The other end has a spike, perfect for plunging into the base of the neck or an eye socket. When John explained this, Penny blanched but tried to take it in stride.

  I mix the strawberries with pectin and set it on the burner. I measure out sugar and start the oatmeal. At least my nightmares give me ample time to get things done. Once everyone’s awake we sit at the breakfast table and spoon up oatmeal. With strawberry jam, of course.

  Beth looks at me. “Cassie, would it be okay if I slept in one of the beds in Peter’s room? Because, well…”

  My face is hot. “Sure, honey. If it’s okay with him. I’m sorry I keep waking you up.”

  “S’ok. I have bad dreams every night, too,” she says with a solemn look. “Can I, Peter?”

  Peter grins. “Of course, Bits.”

  We’ve been calling her Bits. Peter pretended that he thought she was saying “Little Bits” instead of “Elizabeth,” and it’s become her nickname. She’s taken a shine to him, and while I still can’t stand him, I can see why. He dotes on her and teases her and insists on naming all her freckles.

  He holds his hand up for a high five. “A slumber party every night! But you’ll have to ask Nel, it’s his bed.”

  Bits laughs and slaps his hand. He’s possibly the last human being I could ever imagine instigating a high five. I don’t know what to make of him.

  Nelly smiles and moves his stuff down the hall. “I’m ba-ack,” he sings.

  I know I can’t expect Bits to put up with me every night, but I feel like a freak. Nelly might want to start sleeping on the couch.

  “Prepare to be tortured. Obviously, no sane person would choose to be in a room with me at night.”

  “Well, they’ve never said I’m sane,” he says, and tweaks my nose.

  CHAPTER 84

  “Walk the fence line with me?” John asks.

  I stand from my mother’s flowers and brush my hands on my jeans. “Sure.”

  First stop is the Message Tree. John steps on a gnarled root and reaches into the hollow. He opens the old coffee can and removes a folded paper.

  “I wrote a letter to the kids and Eric, telling them Neil was coming. I told them where we might go, if we had to leave. But we have to agree on where we’d go, so they know where to find us.”

  I marvel at his foresight. Whenever I think I might be getting the hang of things, he’s already three steps ahead.

  “I want to put a letter in there for Eric, too.”

  It’s been over two months now. I can’t help but think he ran into something he couldn’t escape. Eric climbs mountains, he’s thru-hiked the Appalachian Trail; he’s not easily stopped. He’s got to be okay.

  I know there was an ulterior motive for John’s walk, and I wait for him to formulate the words. “So, Cassie, if we have to bug out should we go to Kingdom Come or Whitefield? We’re equidistant from them, so it doesn’t matter to me, but I’m thinking it might to you.”

  He does me a favor by busying himself with the can. When I speak my voice is strangled. “I’d like to go to Vermont.”

  He nods once. “Well, that’s settled, then. Let’s walk the line.”

  We move through the woods, making sure the line is still strung and nothing’s caught in it or the trench. John points out deer droppings and a new nest, but I’m thinking of the last time I ran through these woods. As we near the spot my mouth goes dry, and I’m certain I’ll see the Neil from my dreams stuck in the wire. But it’s the same old woods. Only patches of dirt showing through the leaves give any indication something happened here.

  John rests a hand on the barbed wire and looks me in the eye. “You did what you had to do.”

  He’s thinking I’m plagued by uncertainty, but that’s not exactly right. I try to explain. “I know, and I don’t regret it. I’d do it a hundred more times. But that doesn’t stop him from showing up in my dreams, from thinking about it over and over.”

  “Cassie, I’ve killed men before. Bad men, who deserved what they got. And, in Vietnam, men who probably didn’t. You carry them with you forever. They haunt you. You wish you hadn’t had to do it in the first place, but you did, so you find a way to live with it.”

  “But I wanted to do it. Not like I knew it had to be done, I really wanted to kill him. I took pleasure in it, John. Just a little.”

  I’ve been looking at the spot, and now I look up, expecting to see shock, but his eyes are sympathetic.

  “You weren’t taking pleasure in killing, honey. You were glad to see someone so threatening cease to be a threat. Not everyone could do that. You know what your dad used to say about you?”

  My heart leaps as I shake my head. Som
etimes the hardest part is that all I have are memories.

  “Your dad said that if he needed someone to have his back in a fight in a dark alley he’d choose Eric. But he said that if he ever needed someone to pull the trigger, it’d be you. He knew you’d do whatever needed to be done. He was the same way. Why do you think I wanted you in the barn with me?”

  I’m silent. I never had a doubt my dad would do anything to protect us, but I never realized that I’d inherited that trait. Suddenly, I don’t feel like a mass murderer, just someone who protected what was hers. It’s not a bad feeling.

  CHAPTER 85

  John, Peter and Ana return with a new vehicle after a day in town siphoning gas and getting more supplies. John jumps out of the black van and knocks on its hood.

  “Our new wheels,” he says. “We all fit in it. Plus supplies. That way, we’ll be ready to leave at a moment’s notice.”

  “Nice,” Nelly says. He makes his way to the van with barely a limp. “It’s like the van we left the city in.”

  “Peter spotted the used car dealership and had the idea to get something bigger. This fit the bill and it’s got a full tank,” John says.

  He claps Peter on the shoulder. Ana grins at Peter, and he smiles back at her. The way they look at each other makes me think there’s something more there than friendship. And they are friends: they always volunteer to help each other and walk the line together. They’re always laughing. They don’t even play Zombie Zagat anymore.

  Something like jealousy rises up in me, even though I try to convince myself it’s not. They look happy. I try to swallow down the feeling and plaster a fake smile on my face. I stay as long as I can stand it and then head into the house.

  I try to sort out my feelings, but there’s too many zooming around inside. Jealousy, anger, hopelessness, fear: if you can name it, I’ve got it. I’m no closer to figuring it out when everyone troops in, laughing. I hear them tell everyone that town’s still empty. I can’t think with the chattering and want to scream at them all to shut up.

  “John?” I walk over to where he’s measuring the window glass. “Can I go to your house for a while?”

  He turns to me, concerned. “Of course, just turn on the radio so we can contact you if need be. Are you okay?”

  I don’t look him in the eye. “I’m fine. I just need to be alone for a while.”

  I sit at his kitchen table and stare out the window. Since that day when Peter and I fought, I feel like everything’s gotten worse. There’s no imminent threat from either live people or infected, but I don’t feel relieved. All I feel is that gray, floundering feeling that overtook me after my parents died. It’s underneath everything, trying to get a toehold again.

  I refuse to let it. When Peter said Adrian didn’t love me, I believed him, but I’m not sure why. It’s not like he knows. I grow angrier and angrier at Peter. He does whatever he wants and still comes out with accolades. I clean up his mess, and all I get is feeling left out and sad.

  I sit there until everyone comes in for the radio broadcast. Peter, Ana and Bits have stayed behind to play a board game. I wonder if my having left the house has anything to do with it. At least Peter’s been staying away from me like I asked him to.

  Matt Burns starts in with his usual reports. He names all the Safe Zones, including new ones in Pennsylvania and northwestern New York. Then he talks about the food they’re growing in Whitefield, how much work it is to lug water to the plants and the endless weeding.

  “So we’ve become soldier-farmers,” he laughs. “Thankfully, we’ve got Kingdom Come Farm to help us with all the logistics. And we’ve got one of the leaders or—I don’t know, what would you call yourself?”

  There’s a familiar laugh and my heart stops. The universe must have it in for me today. I want to hear his voice so badly that I must have imagined it. But there it is, calm and measured, an octave deeper than you’d think it would be.

  “I call myself Adrian,” he says.

  I grip the edge of the table as everyone turns to me. I stare straight at the radio. He’s alive. Now I know for sure.

  “Okay, Adrian. Adrian Miller is here from Kingdom Come Farm in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont. It’s your farm, right?”

  “Well, my partner, Ben Sullivan, and I started the farm a year and a half ago. We met in grad school and landed a grant to start an experimental farm. We found an old farm and bought it. We started work on it the winter before this past one and had our first harvest last summer.”

  I remember Ben. I met him once, before my parents died.

  “Tell us about it.”

  Adrian clears his throat. He hates being the center of attention, and he’s nervous.

  “Well, we wanted to make it as much like an ecosystem as possible. Where the food grown fed us and the animals, and the animals’ waste fed the earth, which in turn fed the plants. Our goal was to even produce the vegetable oil-based fuel that our modified farming equipment would run on.”

  “You’re talking in the past tense.”

  “Well, we’re still doing it, but right now we’re more interested in defending and feeding ourselves. We’ve had about two hundred people show up so far, but we think we can handle many more. The nice thing about the area is that it’s pretty isolated and surrounded by mountains. We have neighbors, and we’re all working together to make an even larger Safe Zone.”

  “How?”

  “We send out patrols to eliminate any threats, whether they’re alive or dead. We’re very, very serious about that.”

  I know the look on his face right now. His jaw is tight and his eyes glow. I knew he was like my dad, but I guess I never realized that he and I were alike in that way, too.

  “Bandits, take heed,” Matt jokes. “What can people expect if they make it there?”

  “Food, a relatively safe place to live, a really great group of people and a whole lot of work. I’m not kidding about the work.”

  Adrian laughs and his voice softens. “We welcome anyone who wants to join us. When we fly over the more populated areas and see what’s become of them, I’m not surprised we haven’t had as many refugees as we expected. But I hope people hear these broadcasts and make it there.”

  “I know you’re needed somewhere, Adrian,” Matt says. “One last question: Did your family make it okay?”

  “My mom was visiting my sister out west. They made it to a Safe Zone in Idaho. I was lucky.”

  I’m relieved. I hoped they were with him, but this is the next best thing.

  “You are lucky. So there was no one else?”

  I wait for some hesitation, some sign. But he answers too quickly to even invent a pause where he may have thought to mention me.

  “No, there’s no one else. They got out just in time.”

  “Thanks for coming on, Adrian. I practically had to drag him here. But Kingdom Come Farm is hoping that some of you make it there if you can.”

  Adrian murmurs thanks, and then it’s just Matt running through the lists again. I ignore everyone, push back my chair and walk outside into the woods.

  The house is mostly dark by the time I go back. I’ve broken our rule by staying out past sunset by myself, but I don’t care. John’s on watch, but he only nods at me and goes back to his book. I change into pajamas and get into bed with Nelly. I don’t have enough energy to brush my teeth. I lie there and listen to Nelly breathe.

  “It doesn’t mean anything,” he says.

  “Maybe nothing means something,” I say.

  He’s silent, but he grabs my hand in his rough paw as we fall asleep. At least this time I don’t have to see Adrian in my nightmare, since Neil and I are alone on the steps.

  CHAPTER 86

  In the morning I start to transfer the star ring to my clean jeans. When I realize what I’m doing, I stop and put the ring in my top drawer. I’ve made my bed and should stop feeling sorry for myself while I toss and turn and have nightmares in it. I head to the kitchen and start pancakes. Penny
comes in with Flora’s milk as I’m flipping the first batch.

  She stands next to me and puts her head on my shoulder. “Hey, lady.” I know she wants to bring up Adrian, but she doesn’t. “Love you.”

  “Love you,” I say. “How’s your love life?”

  “It’s good.” Her face is guarded.

  “Please. You’re all aglow with love and you won’t even tell me about it. I’ve been a shitty best friend, and I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make you think I didn’t want to hear it.”

  She smiles and raises an eyebrow. “Aglow?”

  I nod. “Aglow. Now sit down and have a pancake and spill it.”

  In the garden I’m still smiling at Penny’s furious blushing when she told me she loves James. And as I yank weed after weed, I realize I really am happy for her. It makes me feel a little better, like I haven’t turned into a completely awful person. Bits kneels next to me and pulls up the tiny plants she’s sure are weeds.

  “Hey, Bits,” I say. Her freckles have multiplied, and there’s color behind them instead of that fish belly white. “How’d you sleep?”

  “I had the same dream, but Peter held my hand until I fell asleep.”

  I laugh inside because Nelly did the same thing for me. I’ve regressed to being a seven year-old.

  “Do you want to talk about the dream? Sometimes if you tell someone it might stop, or at least not be as scary.”

  Fear fills her eyes. Then she nods and speaks so low I have to lower my ear to her mouth.

  “Remember the game I told you… where they would tie up…?” I nod and grab her hand in mine. “Well, the time they made me watch, it was after my mom tried to leave with me. That was—my mom was the bait. That’s what I keep dreaming about.”

  I’m frozen to the spot. Those motherfuckers. For a moment I wish Neil were in front of me so I could shoot him again. And this time I’d drag it out, nightmares or not. She shakes with sobs and I pull her into my arms. After a long while, she quiets. I cradle her face in my hands and look in her eyes.