The Last Place on Earth

by Carol Snow

  “You are welcome to lick them off,” I snapped. “I’m out of here.”

  I grabbed my shorts and T-shirt from the floor and slipped on my pink sneakers. Henry could carry his own damn guitar. I pushed my way past the teenage boy, half expecting him to stop me, but he just gave me a creepy half smile and let me pass.

  I was halfway through the anteroom when I stopped short. It was too bright in here. Too warm. The second door, the one that led to the hole I’d initially fallen into, was closed. Instead, a rope ladder ran up the concrete wall to an escape hatch at the top. Daylight streamed down from above.

  I scrambled up the rope ladder and hauled myself out onto the ground and into the hot, dry sunshine. As I pushed myself to my feet, I tried to remember where the road was so I could run toward it.

  Something moved in the corner of my vision. I spun around and found myself facing a pack of children armed with slingshots and arrows.

  Clearly, that was the moment to say, Don’t shoot! But the whole situation was so bizarre, I had no words.

  “Don’t come any closer.” A little girl held her bow steady. She was young—maybe eight, nine years old. Like the rest of the kids, she wore army pants, which she had paired with a dingy white tank top.

  An older girl, about my age, slapped at the bow. “Kadence, put that down!”

  I don’t know much about archery, but smacking any kind of loaded weapon didn’t seem like an especially good idea.

  “I don’t wanner to gemme sick,” Kadence whined.

  “She made it through quarantine,” the older girl said. “She’s fine.”

  “She don’t look fine,” said a screechy-voiced boy of maybe eleven. “Her hair is a funny red color and her clothes is weird.”

  “My clothes are weird,” I corrected. “Subject-verb agreement”—then, glancing at the black harem pants cinched with red dental floss—“I didn’t have much to work with.”

  There were six in all. Two girls were teenagers, and the younger kids were between maybe five and twelve, two boys, two girls. Collectively, they had a Children of the Corn vibe, with pale eyes and pale hair, along with that weird square chin.

  Something clattered behind me. I turned to see the others climbing out of the hole. Henry was last. He hauled his guitar case and gas mask over the edge and scrambled out after them. Then he crossed over to me.

  “I want to go home,” I said.

  Henry shook his head. “It’s not safe.” He put the gas mask down and dusted dirt off his jeans—not because he is especially fastidious, but because he didn’t want to look at me.

  “Peter and my mother must be freaking out. I need to call them. Now.”

  Henry straightened but still refused to look at me. “I told Peter this was a nature program, and you’d get school credit. I said that my parents had agreed to supervise you, and we’d bring you home in a couple of weeks when the program was over.”

  “So you … saw Peter? And told him I was fine?” All this time, I’d assumed Peter would be out looking for me. That whole crews would be out looking for me.

  He picked up his guitar case and looped the strap over his shoulder. “Yes.”

  “But this isn’t a nature program.”

  He hesitated. “No.”

  After three weeks away, Henry looked different. His hair was shaggier. Sunburn colored his cheeks and nose. But it was more than that. He held himself straighter, with more tension, like he could spring at any moment. And the way he wouldn’t hold my eyes: That wasn’t Henry, at least not the Henry I knew.

  “Why did you cover the hole?” I demanded.

  “I didn’t. Mr. Dunkle did.”

  Mr. Dunkle. That would be the man with the square jaw. Which would make the children Dunkles as well. Dunklings?

  “But you let him trap me,” I said.

  “I didn’t want to! I wanted to explain what was going on and tell you to go into the bunker. But the others were afraid you might have a satellite phone and that—”

  “A satellite phone? Are you serious, Henry? We don’t even have cable!”

  “I know! I told them you wouldn’t have one but—”

  I shook my head with confusion. “Even if I had been able to call someone, what difference would it have made whether or not I’d talked to you?”

  “We didn’t want anyone to know we were here.”

  I stared at Henry. “Who are you?”

  “I’m just me. Same as I’ve always been.”

  I looked into his eyes. I’d never noticed how unreadable they were. “I don’t think so.”

  Mr. Hawking and the man with the square jaw, Mr. Dunkle, approached us, so I changed the subject. “Will your parents really bring me home?”

  Henry looked uncertain. “Eventually, maybe. I hope so.”

  “There won’t be a home to go to,” Mr. Dunkle said.

  “There might be,” Henry said.

  “Don’t count on it.” He scratched his beard.

  I shook my head. “I don’t understand.”

  Mr. Hawking said, “We’ll explain everything once we get back to the compound.”

  The children were starting to fidget. “I’m hungry,” one of the little girls whined.

  “You’re in luck then,” Mr. Dunkle answered. “’Cause your mama’s cooking up a great big pot of possum stew.”

  I checked his face to see if he was joking, only to realize that the man had never told a joke in his life.

  “Is this some kind of cult?” I asked Henry.

  His father answered. “Of course not. People in cults are crazy.”

  Seventeen

  IT WAS A sweaty half-hour walk (hike, climb, scamper, trudge) to the compound. During that time, I confirmed that the man with the square jaw was named Mr. Dunkle, and the Children of the Corn were all his. The teenage boy was named Kyle. At seventeen, he was the first-born Dunkle. The two oldest girls were Karessa (“with a K”) and Kirsten. The remaining four children were Kevin (nicknamed Killer), Keanu, Kadence (“with a K”), and Kelli-Lynn.

  I am guessing the Dunkle parents never invested in a baby name book.

  Karessa, who was sixteen, told me that her father’s name was Kurt, and her mother’s name was Barb. I didn’t know whether to feel sorry for Barb or to applaud her individuality.

  The sun was so bright that it hurt my eyes. The forest wasn’t nearly as dense as it had been in Big Bear, and the underbrush had turned a burnt yellow. Underground, the bunker had been cool; up here the air crackled with autumn heat.

  I had more questions than I could count (“What is this place?” “What is the compound?” “How many of you are there?” “What is the infection everyone keeps talking about?” and on and on), but after failing to receive any answers, I gave up and reviewed the K names once more.

  There were two more Dunkles, Karessa told me, two-year-old twins, a boy and a girl.

  “Keith and Kimmy?” I guessed.

  She pursed her lips. (Note to self: All those K names are not funny.) “Kentucky and Kansas.”

  I nodded, like, Yeah. Of course.

  “We call them Tuck and Sassy. They’re napping right now. That’s why I was able to come.”

  I nodded again and kept walking, pushing myself to stay ahead of Henry. I could hear the guitar case thumping against his body with every step. I wouldn’t look at him. I still couldn’t believe he had done this to me.

  And yet: I was furious and confused, but I wasn’t frightened. I had spent a week underground and was now being led to an undisclosed location, but at some level I knew that no one would hurt me because Henry wouldn’t let them.

  “Are you having withdrawals?” Karessa asked. She wore her blond hair in two French braids pinned to the top of her head, which made her look, from the neck up, like she had stepped out of another century. From the neck down, she looked like she had stepped out of army boot camp.

  “Am I … what?”

  “Experiencing withdrawal symptoms. My daddy says that all the k
ids in American high schools are addicted to methamphetamine. So I wondered if going off it would make you feel sick. Or maybe you detoxed in the bunker?”

  I checked her face. She was serious. “I don’t do drugs.”

  “Really?”

  “Truly.”

  “It must be hard to resist all that peer pressure.”

  “Um … not really.”

  “But you see them a lot, right?” she pressed. “Like, in the hallways and the bathrooms and the cafeteria?”

  I thought of Gwendolyn. “From what I’ve heard, the drill team is pretty heavily into heroin. They shoot up before every football game. But it’s not so bad since the pep club held a bake sale to raise money for disposable needles.”

  Karessa blinked furiously.

  “I’m kidding,” I said.

  “Oh!”

  Her eyes were wide. Karessa exuded an innocence I’d never seen on a girl her age, unless you count smarmy characters on kiddie TV shows.

  The walk was long, and the bugs were biting. Scrambling up a rocky hillside, I glimpsed a panorama of mountains, valleys, and trees that in another situation would have impressed me with its majesty but right now disturbed me with the vast expanse of land uninhabited except for the circling birds of prey and whatever creepy critters they preyed on.

  Something pricked my arm. I slapped and came away with a bloody mosquito.

  Just when I thought the wilderness would go on forever, we came upon a chain-link fence topped with the kind of barbed wire that lent the forest a homey, maximum security prison kind of look.

  I peered through the fence. “Are those beehives?”

  “We go around,” Mr. Dunkle commanded, jostling his way to the front of the pack.

  “They are,” Henry said, catching up to me. “Soon we’ll be able to make our own honey.”

  I didn’t respond but instead turned to follow Mr. Dunkle. We wound along the fence, stepping through long grass and ducking under tree branches. When the fence reached a corner, we turned and followed it some more. Through the fence I spied a yellow school bus, a shed, and a Porta-Potty—which explained the pungent odor that cut through the sweet mountain air. A spiderweb snagged my face. I yelped and stumbled into a bush, leaving prickers on my black harem pants.

  When the fence rounded another corner, the vegetation thinned out. A rough dirt road disappeared in the trees. Inside the fence, a row of tall bushes blocked the view until we reached a padlocked gate, which Mr. Dunkle undid with a key attached to his belt. He swung open the double gates, and we stepped into the compound.

  An enormous house loomed against the blue sky. It was made of wood and stucco and stack stone, all topped off with a red clay roof largely covered with solar panels. Giant log columns flanked the enormous front door. I don’t know much about architecture, but this place seemed to mix about five different styles, and not in a good way.

  The Hawkings’ black Expedition, along with a couple of other large vehicles and one small car, sat on a swath of white gravel that passed for a driveway. At the edge of the lot, next to the fence, a big, beat-up RV, coated with a layer of brown dust, managed to steal some shade from the forest beyond. Otherwise, the yard was all tan dirt, interrupted here and there with weeds and piles of tires, plywood, broken plastic chairs, and assorted toys.

  “Not the place you’d expect to find a McMansion,” Henry said, coming up from behind. “Wait till you see the backyard. It’s got a pool. And a spa. You might not want to go swimming, though.”

  “I looked this place up on Google Earth,” I said. “Using the coordinates you gave me. All I could see was green.”

  “It was hidden by trees until we got here, but that meant the solar panels didn’t work.”

  For the first time, I noticed the fat stumps scattered around the yard and alongside the house.

  Henry said, “Daisy, I know you’re freaked out, but I’m so glad you’re here.”

  “I’m still not ready to talk to you.”

  I hurried to catch up with Karessa. At the front door, she used the brass bear door knocker to tap out a complicated rhythm. The door swung open to reveal yet another pale girl. It was so dark inside the house that it took a moment for my eyes to adjust enough to realize that she wasn’t another K-Kid.

  “Gwendolyn?”

  She wore her yellow DRILL T-shirt, which seemed absurd under the circumstances. If I had a verb shirt right now, it would say PANIC.

  “You’re alive,” she said, like she might say, You cut your hair, if she cared what I did with my hair.

  “They almost killed me, but it didn’t take.”

  Gwendolyn raised her eyebrows. She took a couple of steps forward and joined us on the front step. She’d acquired a sunburn since I’d last seen her. “You thought we are the danger? You should be thanking us.”

  I held Gwendolyn’s gaze. “Just tell me one thing. Are we on the cusp of a zombie apocalypse?”

  “Ugh.” She rolled her eyes in disgust. “We should have left you to perish along with the rest of them.”

  “Is that a yes?”

  To my left, someone giggled. Kirsten, the second-oldest Dunkle girl, held her hand over her mouth, trying to contain her amusement.

  I let out a long breath. “No zombie apocalypse?”

  She shook her head. A smile appeared around the edges of her hands.

  “That’s a relief.” It was, actually. It was also a relief to hear someone laughing and acting almost human.

  “Amusement is not the appropriate reaction at this time!” Gwendolyn spun around and disappeared into the house, just as another female figure, this one dark haired, appeared and stepped into the daylight.

  I almost didn’t recognize her. “Mrs. Hawking?”

  “Daisy.”

  Gone were her crisp, conservative work suits, replaced with khaki trousers and a matching shirt, buttoned to the neck and wrists. A red kerchief hung around her neck. She looked like a Boy Scout leader on the verge of heatstroke. Her short, sensible haircut lay flat, and her severe face was even thinner than before.

  Her eyes ran up and down me. I didn’t look so great myself.

  She looked over my shoulder, to where her husband stood next to some tires. “No signs of infection?” she asked.

  Mr. Hawking shook his head.

  “You’re sure?”

  “We wouldn’t have brought her here if there was a danger.”

  She narrowed her eyes at me for a moment before addressing her husband once more. “Has she been briefed?”

  “Negative.”

  Mr. Dunkle approached. “As the chief OPSEC officer, I should be in charge of the briefing.” He tilted his square chin up.

  Mrs. Hawking adjusted her kerchief. “That’s not necessary.”

  “OPSEC is always necessary.”

  “We realize that,” Mr. Hawking said. “Better than anybody. But my wife and I have agreed to assume responsibility for Henry’s … friend. So we will take responsibility for her intelligence and training as well.”

  “But—” Mr. Dunkle began.

  “Headquarters,” Mr. Hawking interrupted, pointing in turn at his wife, Henry, and me before striding up the steps and into the house.

  Mrs. Hawking held my eye and nodded once. “Follow me.”

  Eighteen

  THE FRONT HALL was one of those soaring two-story affairs, with a giant three-tiered fountain (running dry, sadly) and a wrought-iron chandelier that looked like it had come out of a medieval castle. Twin staircases curved around the sides of the foyer and led to opposite ends of an exposed hallway above.

  Henry and I followed his parents up the right-hand stairway. Downstairs had been surprisingly cool, but the air grew hotter and heavier with every step.

  Mrs. Hawking paused to pick up a plastic wrapper, muttering something under her breath. They led us along the exposed hallway to a big, doorless space that would be called a bonus room if they were normal people in a normal place. The drywall had been taped but
not painted. Mismatched carpet remnants partially covered the plywood floor.

  “This room is headquarters,” Mr. Hawking said. “You don’t come in here unless invited.”

  In a sane world, the bonus room would have a pool table and an Xbox, but here in Krazy Kountry, it featured a long laminate table like you’d see in a school library, and an enormous whiteboard. Pinned to the walls were maps of the forest, the state of California, the United States, and the world, dotted here and there with multicolored pushpins.

  Mr. and Mrs. Hawking sat on one side of the table. Henry chose a seat on the opposite side, and I sat down next to him. The air crackled with tension and reproach. It felt like I’d been called to the principal’s office for pulling a fire alarm or cheating on an exam. If I’d been expecting them to apologize for, oh, say, imprisoning me underground, I would have been disappointed.

  As usual, Mrs. Hawking did most of the talking. “We are accepting your presence among us only because we had no choice. When Henry told us he had revealed our BOL and you were on your way…” Her nostrils flared.

  “BOL?”

  In the distance, there was a crack. I jumped a little, but no one else seemed to notice the noise.

  “Bugout location,” Henry said.

  “We cannot take in every Pollyanna who appears at our gates,” Mrs. Hawking continued. “After years of preparation, we have formed a community of carefully selected, like-minded individuals. If we are going to offer you shelter and protection, you will follow our rules and become a fully contributing member.”

  “A community? How many of you are there?” I asked.

  “In addition to ourselves and the Waxweilers, there are two families we expect to arrive at any time. The Wards and the Platts. Fine people. Dr. Platt trained at USC.” She turned to her husband. “Any word from them today?”

  Mr. Hawking shook his normally shiny Mr. Clean head, which was now covered on the sides and back with a salt-and-pepper stubble. He needed a shave, too.

  “What about the Dunkles?” I asked.

  Mrs. Hawking cleared her throat. “Their status in the community is … different. But they are an integral part of our society. They are here for the long term. As are you.”