The Last Place on Earth

by Carol Snow

  I was about to say that I didn’t know where Martin’s room was, but the house, while vast, only had two floors. How hard could it be to find him?

  Pretty hard.

  “Martin? Hello?” I wandered down the hall, calling, but there was no answer.

  Then I wandered down the hall again, knocking on each door in turn. Still no answer. There was no way I was going to take the plate back down to Mrs. Dunkle. I made my way down the hall one last time, knocking on each door loudly and then opening it up a crack.

  “Hello…? Anybody here?”

  I opened the door to Henry’s room (I’d forgotten where it was), and then found his parents’ room, which was just as tidy as their space back home, if more sparsely furnished. Next came Gwendolyn’s room. She had decorated the walls with photos of herself with her drill squad, along with posters of butterflies and puppies. I would never have pegged Gwendolyn as a butterflies-and-puppies kind of girl, but people can surprise you.

  At last, I knocked on a door and got an answer. A tall, lanky guy sat on the rough floor, with papers, pens, highlighters, and books spread out around him. I’d seen him at school before. Gwendolyn’s brother, of course. His hair was darker than hers, his face longer, but they had the same suspicious look in their eyes.

  He frowned for a minute before pushing a button on his iPod and pulling buds out of his ears. “Who’re you?”

  “Daisy Cruz. Henry’s friend? I’ve got your dinner.” I looked around for someplace to put the plate and finally settled for a patch of floor without any papers on it. “I thought your family only ate MREs.”

  He snorted. “My parents and the Hawkings had a leadership conference about an hour ago. They never just talk. They have conferences. Whatever. The Hawkings made a big thing about how we all have to stick together as a community and all that bull, and my parents agreed to join them for the evening meal, at least for now. But one more hit of food poisoning, and it’s back to the MREs for good. Until they run out. And then, who knows.”

  I nodded, not knowing what to say.

  His expression suddenly softened. “I’ve seen you before. Are you Pete Clay’s sister?”

  “Yeah. You know Peter?”

  “We played basketball together last year. Wait—is Peter here?”

  I shook my head and swallowed hard. “He drove me up here and then left. I didn’t know.… If I’d known…”

  He ran a hand through his hair. “I hate—” And then he stopped and changed course. “SATs are this Saturday.”

  “You’re taking the SATs?”

  “Of course not. I mean, I took them already, last spring, but I bombed, so I spent the whole summer taking a prep course. And now I’m still studying for them because my mother keeps telling me I should, and besides—what else am I supposed to do? My whole life I’ve been getting ready for my future. Do well in high school. Get into a good college. Get a good job. Work hard and everything will fall into place. Like we can control our destiny. Like we can control anything.”

  He picked up a thick book: Ace the SAT! He opened it, squinted at a question, and scrawled something. He pushed so hard that his pencil snapped. He dropped the book on the floor.

  “They’ll be offered again,” I said. “In January, maybe?”

  He shrugged. “Unless everything’s changed.”

  I bit my lip. I didn’t want to think about that possibility.

  He said, “I just want things to be the way they were.”

  “Me, too.”

  He met my eyes. “The Dunkles act like this is fun. They’ve been preparing for doomsday forever, so now they get to feel all smug that they were right. They can’t wait for the Golden Horde to arrive so they can pick them off.”

  “The Golden Horde?”

  “That’s what they call the people who will flee the cities when things get really bad.”

  “Like my brother and mother,” I said.

  Martin said, “We’re supposed to protect our resources from them. To turn them away, or worse. What I don’t get is—what’s the point of surviving if you turn into that kind of person? Isn’t it better to die than to give up your soul?”

  Footsteps sounded in the hall, and Kirsten appeared in the doorway. “Mama said … never mind what she said. We need you to help us serve.”

  “Thanks for bringing me dinner,” Martin said. “Come visit me sometime. You know, when you want to have a few laughs.”

  That made me crack a smile. “I’ll do that.”

  * * *

  When I finally managed to sit down to dinner, the hunters in the group were just finishing up their daily dead squirrel reports. Not surprisingly, Killer led the pack with four hits, which meant he’d get an extra helping of meat loaf. Little Kelli-Lynn, age seven, was right behind with three dead squirrels. And to think that when I was seven, I wasted my afternoons on things like double-digit subtraction.

  Gwendolyn’s mother waited until I had mouth my full of (runny) mashed potatoes before she said, “Daisy, have I ever met your parents? I’ve attended so many booster club and PTA meetings over the years, I lose track.”

  I washed down the potatoes with lukewarm tap water. “Probably not. My mom works in Norwalk, plus she teaches art classes at night. So she doesn’t have much time to volunteer.”

  “And your father?”

  “He lives in North Carolina. He’s not very … I don’t see him much. But we keep in touch.”

  To my father, keeping in touch mostly meant posting pictures of cats with captions on my Facebook page. When I was younger, he’d fly out to California every July for a visit, but it was always awkward, and I’d feel kind of relieved when he left. He and his new wife had a baby a couple of years ago, though, so it’s been hard for him to get away.

  Still. I’ve always known that he cares about me. He’s kept up on his child support payments, at any rate, which is how we have managed to maintain our luxurious lifestyle.

  “That’s too bad,” Mr. Waxweiler said in his disturbingly high voice. “About the divorce, I mean.”

  I kept my face neutral. “It’s not that big a deal. There was no big drama or anything. They split up when I was three, so as far I can remember, it’s always just been my mom, my brother, and me.”

  “That’s tough on your brother, though,” Mr. Waxweiler pressed. “Having his dad on the other side of the country. A boy needs a role model.”

  Before the censor in my brain could tell my mouth to stay closed, I blurted out, “Oh no—Peter’s got a different father. We’re not even sure who he is.”

  Everyone stared at me.

  “What I mean is … it’s not like my mother … my mother has an idea who it might be. She’s just not a hundred percent sure. She was young and irresponsible back then—she’s not like that anymore.” I forced a laugh. “Someday we are going to invite all the guys who might be Peter’s father to a Greek island for a sing-along, and we’ll sort it out once and for all!”

  Jaws (many of them square) dropped. Nobody ever gets my jokes.

  “It’s a reference to Mama Mia!” Henry explained. (I’d made him watch the movie.) “You know—the Abba musical.”

  Still nobody laughed.

  “What’d you say your last name was?” Mr. Dunkle peered at me from the far end of the table.

  “I didn’t. But it’s Cruz.”

  “What are you? Mexican?”

  “Uh … on my dad’s side, yeah.”

  Mr. Dunkle narrowed his eyes at me. “Oughta go back to his own country.”

  I blinked at him. Did he really just say that? Sensing tension, the blond Dunklings were uncharacteristically still around the table.

  I said, “My father was born in San Diego.”

  Mr. Dunkle pointed at me with his grimy fork. “Right over the border. That’s what they do. Sneak over here and take our jobs. Oughta send ’em all back.”

  “My father is an engineer.” I couldn’t believe I was having this conversation.

  “Fancy job.
Probably took it from an American.”

  I began to shake. “My brother—you know, the illegitimate one?” My voice was rising. “He has blue eyes. Also, he sunburns really easily. So we’re pretty sure he’s all white.”

  “Stop it!” Mr. Hawking slammed his cup on the table. (It being plastic, the effect wasn’t as dramatic as it could have been.)

  I jumped a little, thinking he was talking to me. Instead he stood up and glared at the square-jawed man at the other end of the table. “You will join me in headquarters. Now.”

  Nobody moved. Then Mr. Dunkle forked a piece of meat loaf into his mouth and chewed. Slowly. Finally, he spoke. “Sure thing, boss. Soon’s I finish my supper.”

  As one, the Dunklings returned to eating.

  A hot ball of tension settled in the pit of my stomach. I couldn’t eat. I pictured Peter’s sleepy blue eyes, his unshaven face. I remembered the way my mom had looked in her flowing dress on the day she left for the cruise. I thought of the photos my father had texted of the half sister I had never even met.

  My family wasn’t perfect, but it was mine.

  Twenty-Four

  IT WAS MY first night sleeping—or trying to sleep—in the Bus to Nowhere. Though the outside temperature had dropped, the air inside the bus was stifling. Heat rises, of course, and there was only about a foot and a half between my sweaty face and the curved metal roof. It was around ten o’clock, maybe a little later. With no clock or working phone, all I could do was guess. It was way too early to sleep, even if I’d been comfortable.

  For the past hour or so, I’d lain sprawled on my thin, lumpy mattress listening to one Dunkle girl hum, one snore, and two others whisper.

  When the tapping sounds came, I assumed they were from the wind or a goat or maybe the sheep. (Here I was being optimistic. I hadn’t seen the sheep since trying to eat that greasy stew.) But when taps turned to smacks, Kirsten, below me, whispered, “Henry’s outside. He wants to talk to you.”

  I sat up so fast I whacked my head on the ceiling and said a bad word.

  Across from me, Kadence said, “That’s a bad word.”

  “Of course it is. That’s the whole point.”

  Henry moved along the side of the bus like a thief, barely casting a shadow in the moonlight. “Come to the lookout with me.” He took off toward the back fence without waiting for a response.

  We made our way out the back gate and followed the fence around the perimeter. It was okay if anyone saw Henry; he was scheduled for lookout duty. But I was a different story. I held my hands out to protect against spiderwebs, but they laced my face anyway.

  Once we got to the front of the compound, we followed a rough, weedy road through some trees, around a bend, down one hill, and up another. Shrill birdsong made me think of the smoke alarm that used to go off every time something burned in our oven at home. Eventually, we removed the batteries.

  At last, Henry and I turned a corner and came to a little clearing. A brown wooden shed perched on rickety stilts. It looked like a kids’ playhouse or a prison tower.

  Henry scrambled up the ladder. I followed. The structure was sturdier than it looked.

  “Are you the only one on duty?” I asked when we reached the top.

  “Kyle’s supposed to be here, but he’d rather smoke in the woods. I’d rather be alone anyway.”

  “But you’re not alone. You’re with me.”

  “I’d rather be alone with you than alone with myself.”

  I was glad of the dark because he couldn’t see me smile.

  A narrow platform, like scaffolding, ran around the structure. We ducked through a low door into a dark, musty space slightly larger than it looked from the outside. The wood walls were unfinished, the floor covered in the kind of outdoor carpet that is supposed to look like grass but just looks like spiky green plastic.

  “Nice tree house,” I said.

  “I thought you’d like it.”

  Furniture consisted of two beat-up armchairs and a chunky wood side table. Henry’s guitar leaned against a corner.

  “What are you looking out for, exactly? Expecting an invasion?”

  He shrugged. “I’m out here most nights, and all I’ve seen so far are a couple of bears.”

  “Seriously?” And I’d thought lemurs were the only animals I had to worry about.

  “A few coyotes, too. Maybe a mountain lion, though I couldn’t be sure. This property is surrounded by national forest land, but almost no one drives out this far.”

  One of the armchairs had been pulled up to the big window, which was just a big, open cutout. Henry nudged the second chair next to the first. I sat down and gazed at the tapestry of the night sky.

  “The stars are so bright out here.”

  This mountain sky looked nothing like the murky purple I was used to at home. The stars twinkled and pulsed like something alive. Behind them, black velvet spread deep and dark and endless—beautiful but also frightening. The sky was so big, and I was so small. I’d never felt my insignificance quite so profoundly.

  “Do you remember that time?” I said, knowing we were thinking the same thing.

  “Yeah,” he said.

  One night last summer, we spread a blanket on the overgrown grass in my backyard, then we lay down and stared at the sky, determined to spot shooting stars, each of us stockpiling secret wishes. But the sky was too bright, the stars too dim. We counted eight airplanes and then went inside.

  “Are there more stars in the sky or grains of sand on the beaches?” I mused.

  “Dunno. When we get back to the house, I’ll Google it.”

  I smiled in the darkness.

  We were quiet for a few moments, and then Henry said, “If you had to spend the rest of your life in a space station or an undersea colony, which would you choose?”

  “Neither. I’d go home.”

  Right now, it was nice out here, I had to admit. The air had cooled, and the smells of pine and eucalyptus drifted through the air. Beyond us, night birds trilled their sad songs, while crickets played their violins.

  I broke the silence. “I’m still mad at you.”

  “I know.”

  We stared at the stars and listened to the birds.

  “Undersea colony,” I said.

  “Me, too.”

  “I keep thinking about that project we did freshman year in geography, you remember?”

  “Of course I remember. That’s when we met.”

  He picked up his guitar and ran his fingers gently over the keys. The notes danced around us like ghost sounds. “Thanks for bringing my guitar. My parents wouldn’t let me. Said we only had room for essentials.”

  “But for you, music is essential.”

  He played a few more notes. “You’re the only one who understands that about me. Actually, you’re the only one who understands me at all.” He slipped his hand in his front pocket and pulled out a plastic guitar pick. “I brought a bunch of these along. I don’t even know why.”

  “Because you knew I’d come for you. And bring your guitar.”

  He smiled—the first real smile I’d seen out of him since I’d gotten here. This was Henry. This was my friend.

  “What are you waiting for?” I asked. “Play.”

  He shifted in his chair and got into position, his right arm bent over the body of the guitar, his narrow left fingers poised. And then he closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and began to play. It was a new song, something I’d never heard before. It was sadder than the songs he usually played, but also richer.

  When the final notes drifted out into the darkness, I said, “That was beautiful. Who wrote it?”

  “I did.”

  “When?”

  “Over the last couple of weeks. In my head. I’d close my eyes and pretend I was playing my guitar. And I’d think of you.”

  “Henry…”

  “Your mom and Peter. I know. I’ll figure something out.”

  A beam of light darted through the window. Henry
said, “Don’t worry, it’s just Gwendolyn. She’s on patrol.”

  “But I thought the patrol people walked around the perimeter of the fence.”

  “They do. Until they get bored.”

  The walls shuddered as Gwendolyn climbed the ladder. When she saw me she said, “Oh.”

  “Good to see you, too.”

  She shoved her hands in her pockets and leaned against a wall, which could probably give her splinters, but whatever.

  “So, what happened at school after I left?”

  I thought about it. “A few people were out sick—I thought it was just the flu, but nobody was panicking or anything.”

  “No, I mean what was happening. Did we win against Buena Park?”

  “Win … what?”

  “Football.” She gave me a duh look.

  “Oh—right! Um … I have no idea.”

  She looked exasperated. Or maybe just disappointed.

  I said, “I talked to a couple of your drill teammates when you disappeared.”

  She perked up. “Which ones?”

  “Some girl named Bethany Bratt? She’s in my math class. A couple others, too, but I don’t know their names.”

  She nodded. “Did they say anything about replacing me? Or tryouts?” It seemed like a weird thing to be worrying about under the circumstances.

  “No. Why would they replace you?”

  “If a drill team member has more than two unexcused absences, she is off the squad. No exceptions.” Her voice cracked.

  “The end of the world seems like it should be a decent exception.”

  “This is not the end of the world!”

  “Then why are we here?”

  Gwendolyn leaned against the wall. “Removing ourselves from society is the only absolute way to prevent infection. My parents say we have to wait here until people are done dying or until someone discovers a cure, whichever comes first.”

  “Until people are done dying,” I repeated, suddenly feeling nauseous.

  “My dad keeps talking about our money and what’s going to happen to our house. And my mom says we should look on the bright side, that with a smaller population, we’ll have more opportunities.” Gwendolyn’s voice turned shrill. “But what if this is a false alarm and we go back and everything’s the same? I won’t have my spot on the drill squad anymore! And I’ll have failed all my classes, and nobody will like me because I ran away.”