The Last Place on Earth

by Carol Snow

  “Ew.”

  “I know.”

  “Good bottled water? Or supermarket brand?”

  Henry laughed. It was so good to hear that sound it made me feel like I was with my best friend again.

  “I haven’t tested it,” he said. “And I don’t plan to.”

  I crouched down and splashed my face before settling on the bank and leaning back on my hands. “Henry. About this end-of-the-world stuff.”

  His face turned grim. “It’s true.”

  I backed up. “How long has your family been preparing for disaster?”

  He shrugged. “My parents? Like, forever. All those camping trips we took were really bugout test runs. We’d pack our bugout bags and time our escape and then compare all the stuff we brought along. I thought it was stupid, but sometimes I got to miss school, so that was cool.”

  “But why take off for the wilderness when you have so much survival stuff at home? I mean—ten years’ worth of toilet paper?”

  “It’s always best to get away from population centers in a crisis, but my parents stocked up on supplies in case we had to shelter in place. Like if there was an earthquake and the roads were impassable. And that’s only two years’ worth of toilet paper, by the way. So—I take it you searched my whole house.”

  I nodded. “I didn’t know what else to do. I found the note you left me in your room.”

  “What note?”

  “The one that said ‘Save me.’”

  “Oh. That.” He squatted next to the stream, cupped his hands, and splashed his face and hair. Henry’s dark hair was on the unruly side when I’d last seen him. Now it was almost long enough to tuck behind his ears.

  “It was for me, right?”

  He nodded. “I thought my parents were out of their minds when they told me we were bugging out for real. I didn’t want to go. At the pond I was going to ask you to hide me. But I chickened out. I knew how ridiculous the whole thing sounded.” He shrugged. “When I got home, I started to write you that note, but I couldn’t even figure out what to say beyond ‘Save me.’ Then I came to the conclusion that after a week or so, my parents would realize it was a false alarm and we’d come back.”

  “It’s been more than a week,” I said.

  He hesitated. “It wasn’t till I got up here that I realized this thing really could wipe out civilization—or kill a lot of people, at the very least. That’s when I sent you the coordinates. I wanted to save you. Help you escape before things turn bad.”

  He sat down next to me on the bank, pulled off his sneakers and socks, and dipped his pale, narrow feet into the water. Immediately, the hems of his jeans turned dark. He either didn’t notice or didn’t care. Remembering his swim in the murky pond, I guessed the latter.

  He said, “Madagascar is an island off of the southeast coast of Africa. It’s where lemurs come from.”

  “Yes, I saw the movie. With you, as I recall.”

  “Yeah, well, real lemurs can’t talk, but they’re still pretty cute, which means some people want them as pets. They are also primates, like humans, which means they can get us sick more easily than other animals. It’s illegal to export them, but of course people smuggle them out. There’s a network in Eastern Europe. They pretend to be breeders, but all their animals were actually poached from the island.”

  “And some of the lemurs had the plague.”

  He nodded. “Last month, six lemurs were brought into Texas, and at least two of them were infected.”

  He held my eyes. Clearly, this was my moment to express shock and fear and to thank him for saving me from the dangers posed by two lemurs in Texas.

  “This is fascinating,” I said. “And it would make a great movie. But here’s the thing: There is no Madagascar plague epidemic. No one is dying. And there was no good reason to lure me up here and imprison me underground.”

  “I didn’t want to put you into quarantine,” he said.

  I crossed my arms over my chest. “You let them.”

  “It was the only way they’d let you come. It was the only way I could save you.”

  I shook my head. “Everything you’re saying—I know you believe it. But it’s crazy, Henry.”

  He spun around on the rock and slipped his socks and shoes back on over his wet feet. “I need to show you something.”

  Twenty

  HENRY’S ROOM WAS upstairs, beyond the bonus room. It was surprisingly small for a house this size, plus, like most of the house, it was unfinished: The floors were plywood, and the one smallish window had yet to be trimmed.

  Instead of a real bed, a single mattress had been shoved into the corner. No baseball-themed comforter here, just a bottom sheet and a few rumpled beige blankets. A cardboard carton, turned upside down, served as a night table. There was no reading lamp, no desk, no chair, no rug. At least his guitar was here now. Since he didn’t have a stand, he left the instrument in its case and propped it up in the corner.

  The walls were plain except for a photograph of us tacked above his bed. It was from the summer. We had taken a box of orange Popsicles to the pond, but most of them melted before we got around to eating them. That seemed like a long time ago.

  “Did you decorate the room yourself?” I forced a note of cheer into my voice. “You have a real eye for design.”

  “There’s a room next door the same size as this,” he told me. “It’s for one of the other families, the Wards, but you can stay there till they arrive. There’s a couch—looks pretty comfortable.”

  “Are you sure the Wards are coming? Why aren’t they here yet?”

  He shrugged. “My dad sent them a message before we left. No one’s been able to make contact with them or the Platts for a couple of weeks, but this is where they’ll come. Unless they’re sick already.”

  I felt the need to state the obvious. “Or … maybe they haven’t shown up because there was no reason to leave.” I sat down on Henry’s mattress. It was so much harder than his bed at home, and the dust tickled my nose.

  “You don’t believe me about the plague.”

  I considered. “I believe that this Madagascar thing exists. I just don’t believe it’s a serious threat.”

  He stood over me for a moment before speaking. “Wait here.”

  He went into the room next door and returned with a couple of sheets of paper. The first one he showed me was a statement of some kind. At the top, it said Forever Friends Pet Insurance: Benefit Statement.

  “Your mom’s company?”

  He nodded.

  Underneath the heading were names of a pet owner, Catherine Williams, and her insured animal, a male cat named Jeronimo. The payable benefits list included a whole lot of drug names, medical procedures, and codes.

  I looked up from the paper. “So?”

  Henry sat on the mattress next to me and pointed to a notation: Yersinia malagasi. “See the diagnosis? That’s the bacteria that causes the Mad Plague—that’s what the press is calling it. The cat was never anywhere near a lemur. They think the disease was transmitted by a flea.”

  “Is the cat okay?”

  Henry shook his head.

  “Poor kitty.”

  “The owner died, too. They tried all kinds of antibiotics, but nothing worked.” He handed me the second sheet of paper. “This is a memo from the president of my mom’s company.”

  CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION MEMORANDUM

  TO: All Claims Managers

  FROM: Richard Baracov

  RE:Yersinia malagasi

  We are all understandably shaken by the news of a human death resulting from bacterial infection with Yersinia malagasi (YM), which medical professionals are assuming was transmitted by her companion feline. Unfortunately, this case was not isolated. There have been reports of five other pet infections in the past week, two of which have been transmitted to humans. Please note that there have been no human-to-human contact cases confirmed.

  We remain confident that an effective treatment will be identified
shortly and urge your discretion regarding the case. Please remember that you have all signed privacy agreements in regards to our clients and that any contact with the press is prohibited.

  I handed back the paper.

  “This is real, Daisy. We are on the verge of a pandemic.”

  “I never understood the difference between a pandemic and an epidemic.”

  “A pandemic is bigger. More people get sick. More die.”

  “Three people doesn’t sound like a pandemic. Or even an epidemic.”

  He shook his head. “That was just the beginning. The day after that memo was written, that woman’s boyfriend got sick. He was dead within days. It was all over the Internet. Didn’t you see it?”

  I shook my head.

  “That was back when the CDC was insisting the Mad Plague wasn’t very contagious. But in most of the human cases, the bacteria has infected the lungs. Once that happens, it goes airborne. You can catch it in a classroom, on an airplane, in a store—anywhere. The disease can travel between humans, between animals and humans, or through fleas. There are antibiotics to treat the bubonic plague, but if there is anything that cures the Madagascar plague, no one has found it yet.

  “In the week you’ve been underground, there have been over a hundred human cases reported in eleven states. Isolation wards are maxed out. Some health workers are refusing to go to work. It has passed a tipping point. There’s no way to contain this thing.”

  “Everything was fine,” I said, trying to convince myself.

  “I know this is scary, but look, the odds of this actually being tee-ought-walkie are slim.”

  “The end of the world as we know it.” My voice was flat.

  He forced a smile. “Would it help if I played the song on my guitar?”

  “Not really.”

  “A lot more people are going to get infected,” he conceded. “But it will all blow over in a couple of months. Either there will be a cure or there won’t, but epidemics pass, even pandemics pass, and life goes on.”

  I swallowed hard. “Unless you’re dead.”

  “Yeah. There’s that.”

  “If what you’re saying is true, I can’t just hang out here while Peter and my mother are in danger.”

  “Peter never leaves the house. He’ll be fine. And your mother’s office is small—that leaves less opportunity for infection.”

  “My mother just got back from a cruise.” I started to shake. “With thousands of people.”

  “But no pets,” Henry said. “At this stage, that’s a pretty safe place to be.”

  Footsteps sounded in the corridor. A child’s voice called out, “Lunch!”

  Henry sprang up. “I’ll figure out a way to get a message out to them. It may take a few days, but we’ll find a way to keep them safe. I promise. Come on. Let’s eat.”

  Twenty-One

  “I’M NOT EATING possum stew,” I told Henry, following him into the enormous kitchen.

  “It’s not really possum stew. They just call it that.”

  “What is it then?”

  He shrugged. “Lamb, maybe?”

  Remembering the depressed-looking sheep in the backyard, I shuddered.

  The air was so cool that my sweat made me shiver. “Solar panels run the air-conditioning,” Henry explained. “But it only works downstairs.”

  We approached the giant stove, and that was when I got my first look at Mrs. Dunkle. I was expecting meek and mild, maybe even sweet. Instead, I found myself under the glare of a wiry, sour-faced woman in army fatigues and a filthy, cherry-patterned apron. She grabbed my arm—hard—and thrust a ladle in my hand.

  “Ow!”

  Instead of apologizing, she said, “Where in Sam Hill have you been? You were supposed to be on duty an hour ago!”

  “Who’s Sam Hill?” I asked, baffled, the ladle dangling from my hand.

  “It’s just an expression,” Henry said. “So she doesn’t have to say hell.”

  “Work assignments are over there.” Mrs. Dunkle pointed across the room, where several whiteboards, mounted on unfinished drywall, held a colorful web of names and duties, such as LUNCH PREP. And LOOKOUT. And SEWAGE REMOVAL.

  I was speechless. (It happens.)

  “Serve!” Mrs. Dunkle yelled.

  For a moment, I thought she was going to shove me. The line between her eyebrows was so deep one could only assume she had been frowning nonstop since childhood, perhaps since first recognizing the injustice of not having been given a name that began with the letter K. She wasn’t especially large—I had a good two inches on her—but she exuded a toxic energy that felt dangerous.

  Behind me, in a semi-orderly line, the little Dunklings waited with mismatched plastic bowls in their unwashed hands. They shoved one another but managed to avoid their mother’s gaze.

  The first kid in line—blond, square chin, first name began with a K—handed me his bowl. I slopped some stew inside. Hunks of meat swam in a greasy broth speckled with something greenish and something orangish. It smelled gamey.

  “Not. So. Much.” Mrs. Dunkle hit the counter with her fist. “You see how many people gotta eat?”

  After indulging in a brief fantasy that involved the giant stew pot and this awful woman’s head, I took a few calming breaths and reminded myself that I’d be out of here soon. I filled the next Dunkling’s bowl with half a ladle’s worth.

  “Well, you can give her more than that. Oh, just let me do it.” Mrs. Dunkle snatched the ladle out of my hand.

  An image of my mother flashed in my head, and I gulped back a sob. If only I could know she was okay.

  * * *

  We ate lunch in an oversize room at the very front of the house, with views out to the decrepit RV, the dirt yard, assorted garbage, and the chain-link fence that separated us from the forest. Unlike most of the house, this room was finished, with slate floors, wood-paneled walls, and an enormous stone fireplace that practically begged to have a moose head mounted above it.

  The furniture, however, was just as bad as in the rest of the house. The “table” was a long series of plywood sheets balanced on wooden sawhorses. The chairs were the stackable white plastic kind that people in the real world only use outside.

  Karessa, the oldest Dunkle girl, entered the dining room with a sleepy-looking blond twin balanced on each hip. It was hard to believe the twins were the same age since the sweet-faced little girl (who seemed to have escaped that square chin) was so tiny and delicate, far smaller than her scowling, chunky brother. With full cheeks and his father’s jaw, his head was shaped like a block.

  I love kids. Have I mentioned that I love kids? And they usually love me, too. So when Karessa deposited the boy on the plastic chair next to me—“This is Kentucky. Say hello to Daisy, Tuck!”—I widened my eyes and gave him a big, bright smile as if to say, Let’s be friends!

  In response, he grabbed a spare spoon off the table and hurled it at my head. The motion caused his chair to topple over backward, which caused him to scream, which caused Mrs. Dunkle to say, “Now look what you done!”

  And then things got worse.

  Once Tuck stopped crying, and there was a moment of blessed quiet, Mrs. Dunkle ruined the moment by saying, “Where’s she gonna sleep?” There were a lot of people at the table who could qualify as a random she, but I had a feeling she meant me.

  “Girls’ dorm.” Mrs. Hawking spoke without looking up. She was squinting at her stew with something like fear.

  “Outta blankets,” Mrs. Dunkle said.

  “We have extras,” Mrs. Hawking said.

  Henry looked around, baffled. “There’s a couch in the room next to mine. I thought Daisy was going to sleep there till the Wards came.”

  “Your father and I never agreed to that, Henry.”

  “But no one’s even using it,” he protested.

  “It is not appropriate,” his mother said, “for your friend to stay overnight in such close quarters.”

  “Girls’ dorm not good enough
for your friend?” Mrs. Dunkle asked. It was the first time I had heard her sound even a little bit happy. Henry hadn’t shown me anything dormlike earlier, but this was a big house. It could be anywhere.

  “The girls’ dorm is fine for me.”

  “It’s not.” Henry looked alarmed.

  “Of course it is,” his mother said.

  Defeated, Henry hunched over his bowl and speared a chunk of gristly meat.

  I said, “Is that…”

  “What?” Henry asked.

  “The sheep from the backyard?”

  Henry shook his head. “No, we’re keeping her for her wool. This is from Costco.”

  “Phew.”

  “What does it matter? It’s a dead sheep either way. At least if it came from the backyard, you’d know it’d had a nice life.”

  “In that stinky backyard? I don’t think so.” As soon as it was out of my mouth, I realized that Henry’s parents were listening to our conversation. Of course they were. These were people who installed video cameras in their kitchen.

  Eager to change the subject, I asked, “Where’s Gwendolyn? And the rest of her family?” As many people as there were in the room, several seats remained open at the plywood table.

  The Dunkle boy with the screechy voice said, “Them’s too good to eat with us.”

  “The Waxweilers are, um…” Henry faltered.

  His mother answered for him. “The Waxweilers have expressed some concerns about food safety. As have we.” She turned her attention to Mrs. Dunkle. “Barb, I trust you rinsed the garden vegetables in the bleach solution we discussed.”

  Mrs. Dunkle chewed one … two … three times. “Of course, Mrs. Hawking.”

  Mr. Hawking put down his spoon and crossed his arms over his chest. Despite his stubble, he really did look like Mr. Clean. To Mr. Dunkle he said, “Kurt, as we’ve discussed before, the unsanitary state of the backyard troubles us. We’d like you to prioritize a cleanup effort.”

  “What are the Waxweilers having for lunch?” I asked Henry.

  “MREs—meals ready to eat, like you had in the bunker.”

  My mouth watered at the memory of the stroganoff and lasagna, both tastily reconstituted with a splash of iodine-sterilized water.