The Last Place on Earth

by Carol Snow

  At the far end, beyond shelves stuffed with sheets, towels, pillows, and blankets, a narrow door opened to a spectacularly small toilet and shower room.

  What was this place? Some kind of nuclear bomb shelter? I thought those had gone out of style years ago. Maybe it was a hermit house, though surely the hermit would have turned up by now.

  A writing pad sat on the corner of the desk. Only now did I notice that it was covered with unfamiliar writing.

  Welcome! And make yourself comfortable.

  You have plenty of food, and the air is clean.

  TV needs to be plugged in. No cable but lots of DVDs in lower cabinet.

  Water is probably okay to drink, though you should add iodine tabs to be safe.

  Enjoy your stay.

  “Hello?” I called out, but of course no one answered me.

  I hadn’t simply fallen in a hole. Someone had been expecting me. I had been lured out here in the middle of nowhere, led to a trap, and then shut in darkness until I found my way into this underground prison.

  Henry wouldn’t do this to me. But someone who knew Henry did, someone who knew he could be used against me. What did that person want from me? A hundred old news clips flashed through my brain: girls who went off one day and simply disappeared—some forever, and others for what felt like forever, presumed dead while being held captive by some lunatic. At least if the tap water turned out to be contaminated enough to kill me, I could knock “long-term captivity” off my list of things to worry about.

  It was so cold in this underground tomb, and I was so frightened. I retrieved the guitar from the anteroom and shut the spaceship’s door behind me. I heard a click and yanked on the door—once again, I had locked myself in. I could only hope I was locking my jailers out.

  I pulled a blanket from the cupboard, wrapped it around myself, and curled up on the couch, fully intending to stay awake, to watch the door, to protect myself from my captors. But within minutes, I was fast asleep.

  Fourteen

  WHEN I WOKE up, the scrape on my arm stung, my ankle ached, and I was still imprisoned underground. But I was alive, and that was something. The long room was much brighter than before. A quick check revealed a series of solar tubes in the ceiling—narrow reflecting pipes that ran up to the earth’s surface, sneaking in tiny splashes of daylight. Maybe other tubes were letting in air from above.

  Or maybe I’d use up all available oxygen and suffocate down here. That was another possibility.

  My stomach growled. I pushed myself to my feet, careful not to put too much weight on my injured ankle, and limped over to the food cabinets. I climbed onto the desk chair and pulled down the cardboard box with the premade meals, going with a southwestern omelet, which I made even more southwestern by dousing it with three packets of Taco Bell fire sauce.

  From the bathroom shelves I retrieved a surprisingly fluffy white towel. At home, our towels dated back to before I was born, and all softness had long since been washed out. But the fluffy towels didn’t make me happy because remembering the scratchy towels at home made me think of my mother and brother and whether I’d ever see them again. Such an enormous knot of panic lodged in my chest that I began yanking things out of the closet with a new vengeance, just to get my mind off my situation.

  Behind the towels, some black knit fabric turned out to be several pairs of drawstring pants and long-sleeved T-shirts. I took the smallest pair, and shoved the rest back in the closet. Then I dug around some more until I found a bar of soap and a comb.

  In the tiny bathroom, I shut the door behind me. The shower was an odd contraption, with no drain, just a big metal pan to collect the water underneath. It made sense once I realized that the toilet would flush only after water had been deposited into the tank.

  But that wasn’t the worst of it. The smell of iron and sulfur that filled the room when I turned on the water wasn’t the worst of it, either. Nor was the lousy water pressure. No, the biggest problem was that the shower had no hot water. Had my body been just a little less encrusted with blood and dirt, I would have turned off the tap and just changed into the black stretch clothes, but I had to clean my scrapes and get the dust and soil out of my hair.

  By the time I had scrubbed every inch of myself with Ivory soap, I was shivering so hard I almost stumbled climbing out of the icy metal bucket. Cold, soapy water sloshed on the grainy concrete floor.

  Once I’d dried off (the towel really was nice), I applied antibiotic ointment to the scrape on my arm and covered it with several large Band-Aids—not Hello Kitty, but they would have to do. Then I wrapped an Ace bandage around my ankle, looping the stretchy flesh-colored fabric around the bottom of my foot.

  The black knit clothing was too wide and too long, but it was a relief to get out of my shorts and T-shirt. Further rooting around in the linen closet turned up a stash of black socks, which I slipped onto my icy feet. Weirdly, my black outfit made me feel not just warmer, but better, more secure, and braver. Like a ninja.

  I returned to the long, white room. There was really nothing for me to do but wait, even if I didn’t know what I was waiting for. And to stay down here without going completely insane meant I’d have to stay busy. I went to the shelves crammed with books and papers and pulled out a booklet.

  Beekeeping in the 21st Century. Okay, that was unexpected. I pulled out another. Herbal Remedies. And another. How to Survive a Zombie Apocalypse.

  Peter would love that one.

  I settled on the couch with the zombie book and began to read.

  Fifteen

  THE DAY PASSED. And then another. And another. No one came to rescue me, but no one came to maul or mutilate me, either, so it was a wash … sort of. This subterranean exile couldn’t go on forever. Peter would have told the authorities I was missing. Search crews would have spread out all over the forest. They would find me. It was just a matter of time.

  I thought about school and all the things I was missing. An essay revision in English. A class party in Spanish. A chapter test in history, and another in math. I never imagined I could miss late nights doing geometry homework, stressed out because I was barely pulling a B and because I’d never catch up on my sleep.

  My daily routine was the only thing that kept me from completely freaking out. If I didn’t think more than an hour or two ahead, I could get through this. After all, I had light. I had water. I had surprisingly tasty food. (Having grown up in a family that didn’t cook, my standards were pretty low.) Most important, my air showed no signs of running out, which made me think there must be some kind of ventilation system in place.

  This, then, was my schedule:

  When the light from the solar tubes woke me up, I got out of bed. I pulled down one of the cardboard boxes and chose my meals for the day. After eating breakfast and cleaning my dishes, I heated water on the stove, which I’d add to the shower basin. After that first morning, I’d sworn off the torture of cold showers, opting instead for warm sponge baths with the quickest possible cold rinse at the end.

  After bathing, it was on to inventory. I had no idea how long I’d be down here before my rescuers came. (When they came, I told myself again and again and again. Not if.) I needed to know what food and supplies were available. Besides, taking inventory required complete concentration, which took my mind off things like suffocation, dehydration, and aliens intent on medical experiments.

  By day three, the inventory was complete. There were tons of miscellaneous supplies, including scissors, hammers, screwdrivers, sewing supplies, bandages, tape, tarps, lanterns, propane tanks, and fire extinguishers. There were ten rolls of cinnamon-flavored dental floss, which seemed excessive.

  As for the food, I recorded the following:

  • Premade individual meals: 72 (and diminishing daily)

  • Rice: 10 lbs. white, 10 lbs. brown

  • Pasta: 9 boxes

  • Dried beans, assorted: 20 lbs.

  • Flour: 10 lbs.

  • Sugar, Salt: 5 lbs
. each

  • Dry yeast: 40 packets

  • Olive oil: 5 lbs.

  • Canola oil: 5 lbs.

  • Oats, Cornmeal: 5 lbs. each

  • Dehydrated eggs: 10 lbs.

  • Dehydrated potatoes: 10 lbs.

  • Dry milk: 6 boxes

  • Velveeta cheese: 4 blocks

  • Canned fruits (peaches, pears, mandarins): 20 lbs.

  • Canned vegetables (peas, corn, green beans, broccoli): 20 lbs.

  • Jarred fruits and/or vegetables (unidentifiable): 14 jars

  • Canned tuna, chicken, sausages, Spam: 40 cans total

  • Peanut butter: 3 giant jars

  • Orange Tang: 3 canisters

  • Homemade beef jerky (I hoped it was beef): 6 large ziplock bags

  • Sriracha sauce: 1 bottle

  • Taco seasoning: 20 envelopes

  • Taco Bell salsa packets: 83

  • Garlic salt: 1 small jar

  • Instant coffee: 4 large jars

  • Tea: 71 bags

  • Honey: 10 jars

  When I ran out of real stuff to inventory, I began a fantasy list of all the stuff I wished I had down here. Highlights included Frosted Flakes, chewing gum, glitter nail polish, and a kitten.

  After inventory, I spent time doing sit-ups and push-ups before moving on to lunch. Making lunch meant opening the pouch I had chosen at breakfast, mixing it with the metallic-tasting water, and nuking it for sixty seconds. It was tempting to wolf down the food while standing at the counter, but I forced myself to use dishes and sit at the table.

  After cleaning my lunch dishes, I’d read for a couple of hours. It was unlikely I’d find anything more entertaining than the zombie survival book (my favorite tip: “Avoid medical schools, which attract the undead”), but I was learning all kinds of stuff about how to forage in the forest, avoid bears, and use honey as an antibiotic—though maybe not when bears were around. Did bears really eat honey? Or was that just Winnie-the-Pooh?

  Since the scrape on my arm was healing nicely, if itchily, I didn’t need to put the honey thing to the test. My ankle was also getting better, though it hurt first thing in the morning. On the third day, I tried adding jumping jacks to my fitness routine, but that might have made things worse.

  Instead of this wilderness survival stuff, I really needed to be reading about the Renaissance for AP Euro. Also, our English teacher had recently handed out a new novel, something set in Africa. The book was sitting on the coffee table at home. It had a red cover, and I was supposed to have read the first three chapters by Monday. And then there was chemistry. That textbook was intense—not something I could skim when I got back. I was going to be so far behind.

  If I got back.

  I won’t allow myself to think that way.

  After reading came arts and crafts, my favorite part of the day—as much as you can have a daily highlight when you are trapped fifteen feet under the earth. The summer before, I had volunteered at our town day camp, where I was quickly dubbed the Glue Guru. Beads, macaroni, yarn, poster paint: bring it on. Alongside the little kids, I’d made masks, necklaces, and flowerpots that served little purpose aside from being adorable—which, if you ask me, is purpose enough.

  For underground arts and crafts, I started with my black knit clothing because the pants were too long and I kept tripping on them, while the sleeves kept coming unrolled. A hem and a drawstring (made with crocheted red dental floss) turned the bottoms into harem pants. I attacked the top with scissors, widening the neck and hacking off the sleeves.

  When my clothing was as good as it was going to get, I moved on to mosaics. My mother had shown me how to smash glass and pottery in a pillowcase. I set aside a plate, a bowl, and a mug for my meals. The rest of the crockery I demolished with a hammer, gluing the resulting mosaic pieces to a chair. With flour, glue, cornmeal, and Tang, I concocted a grout, which I smeared over the shards.

  The glass mosaic chair was super ugly—also kind of dangerous—but it kept me occupied, so when that project was complete, I moved on to food mosaics, which gave me new appreciation for all those beans I had inventoried: so many shapes, sizes, and colors! On the door to the bathroom, I fashioned a palm tree out of brown lentils and dried peas. Rice represented tropical sand, while cannellini beans formed clouds drifting above the palm fronds. On the other door, I went in an entirely different, more abstract direction, gluing the beans in squiggles and swirls, a style I refined while covering a patch of the ceiling.

  By the time I gave up on the ceiling—standing on the desk chair hurt my back, plus I was afraid I’d fall off—I’d been underground for six days. I’d given up my fantasy inventory and had tired of reading about leaves, bees, animals, and all the other above-ground things I might never see again.

  I forced myself to eat, even as I recognized that the ready-made meals wouldn’t last forever. Most days, I took a sponge bath, telling myself that cleanliness mattered. Reminding myself, At least there is water.

  Two or three times a day, I stood under a solar tube and screamed at the top of my lungs, hoping a search crew would hear me and investigate. But no one came.

  I watched a few action movies because those were the only DVDs available. I quickly tired of explosions and tidy endings. The heroes made everything look so easy. Nothing was that easy, ever.

  Where was everybody? Why hadn’t they found me?

  I examined every inch of the bunker, looking for a secret doorway, a ventilation window—anything. But there was no way out of here except for the way I’d come in, and that door, decorated now with beans, wouldn’t budge unless I set off an explosion with the propane tanks. As muddled as my thinking was, I knew that kind of tactic only worked in the movies.

  I couldn’t take this much longer. The food wouldn’t last forever, especially now that so much of it was stuck to the walls.

  I screamed until my throat hurt and the sound coming out of my mouth was little more than a squawk.

  And then, on day seven, to my fear and relief and astonishment, a rattling sound came from the anteroom. After some scratching and banging, the door flew open.

  Sixteen

  THEY WERE ALIENS. Definitely. Shaped like humans but with big bug eyes and vents where their mouths should be. One of them rushed toward me, and I screamed because that is the natural reaction to an alien invasion, and besides, I had gotten really good at screaming lately.

  The alien halted and whipped off his head. No, wait—it was a gas mask. And it wasn’t an alien, after all. It was Henry.

  Henry had saved me. Of course he had.

  “It’s you,” I said.

  Behind him, a male voice commanded, “Get back in the decontamination room. And put the mask on!”

  In addition to Henry, there were three others, all wearing gas masks.

  “She’s fine,” Henry said. “If she were infected, she’d be sick by now.” His dark eyes glistened.

  “Henry? What’s going on?” My voice cracked.

  “He’s right,” said a different voice. “Quarantine’s over.” The man pulled off his mask. I didn’t know him, yet something was familiar.

  “I fell in a hole,” I babbled. “Out there. And I called for help and people came, and I thought they’d get me out, but instead they put something over the hole, and I found my way in here, and I thought I was going to die; I really thought I might die.”

  Henry continued to look at me, eyes shiny, but he didn’t say anything. Why wasn’t he saying anything?

  “I came to the mountains to look for you,” I said. “I thought you were here. And you are—now, I mean. But were you here before? How did you know to look for me? Are there search crews? Did you see Peter? I brought your guitar.”

  “Daisy…” Henry’s expression was odd. Unreadable. Behind him, the man who had mentioned the quarantine looked vaguely angry. Or maybe that was just his natural expression because his chin, under a scruffy blond beard, was so weirdly square.

 
Wait.

  “It was you,” I said to the man with the square jaw.

  “Daisy—” Henry said.

  “It was him,” I told Henry, suddenly feeling cold. “He trapped me in the hole. He knew I was down here, and he just covered up the hole and walked away.”

  “Daisy—”

  “I was so frightened. I thought I was going to die.”

  “Daisy…”

  And then I knew. I held Henry’s dark, shiny eyes. Waited for him to explain. But he didn’t, so I filled the silence. “You were there. Weren’t you? When they trapped me.”

  The two other gas masks came off, revealing first an unfamiliar teenage boy and then the man who had scolded Henry, who had told him to stay away from me. Henry’s father.

  “Mr. Hawking.” My voice was hoarse. Henry’s tall father had always intimidated me because he rarely spoke and because he looked like a skinny, cranky Mr. Clean.

  “You have put us all in danger,” he said. It seemed an odd choice of words for someone who had imprisoned me underground for a week. “I hope we don’t regret allowing you to come here.”

  “Allowing me?”

  The guy with the square jaw strode into the cylindrical room. He was wearing army fatigues, the desert camouflage kind. “There is something stuck to the doors. And the ceiling. Are those … beans?”

  The teenage boy—also wearing desert camo and also with a square jaw—loped across the room to the mosaic chair. “What are these white bits? Like pottery or something. Was this the … dishes?”

  “I was just trying to protect you,” Henry said, his eyes pleading.

  “From who?”

  He shook his head. “Not a who. An it.”

  Now Square Jaw was at the far door, examining the palm tree mosaic. “She glued food to the door!”

  The boy with the matching chin and pants laughed. “Mama said to bring her some of those beans. Said she was gonna use them for supper.”