The Last Place on Earth

by Carol Snow

  “Head for the road,” Mr. Hawking instructed the other family. “We’ll get Henry and meet you at the evacuation zone. Dunkle should be there, too, if he follows protocol.” As an afterthought, he added, “Take Daisy.”

  Just beyond the fence, a treetop caught fire like a towering birthday candle with a ghastly wish. The fire spilled onto the next treetop and the next, until a clump burst into flame, lighting the forest with an eerie glow.

  The Hawkings’ SUV bumped over the gravel and out the front gate, their headlights almost unnecessary in the firelit night.

  “Daisy! Get in!” Mrs. Waxweiler yelled from inside the giant pickup truck.

  I hurried over. Gwendolyn was in the narrow backseat, strapping herself in. Next to us, Martin waited in his car, windows rolled down so he could hear the plans.

  “Who’s getting Peter?” I asked, still standing in the dirt.

  “The bunker is fireproof,” Mr. Waxweiler said. “He’ll be safe.”

  It took a moment for his words to register. “We are not leaving my brother.”

  “He could be contagious,” Mrs. Waxweiler said.

  “We are not leaving Peter!” I slammed the door and ran through the yard and out the front gate.

  Car lights flashed behind me. A horn sounded. The little blue car pulled up next to me.

  “Get in!” Martin yelled. “I’ll take you.”

  We barely made it out the gate before the Hawkings’ taillights stopped us. A figure stood next to the car. Henry. He’d come back from the lookout tower. When he saw us, he ran into the glare of Martin’s headlights.

  Ahead of us, his mother jumped out of the SUV. “Henry! Get back here!”

  Henry yanked open the door. I scooted forward, and he squeezed into the backseat. I shut the door before his mother reached us.

  “We getting Peter?” Henry asked.

  “Not leaving without him,” Martin said.

  Henry’s mother pounded on the car window. She was crying. I couldn’t look at her. The Waxweilers’ SUV came up behind us, its headlights flooding the inside of Martin’s car. Unless the Hawkings continued down the road, all three vehicles were stuck, and the fire was spreading. Mrs. Hawking gave Henry a final, pleading look and then ran back to her car.

  The black Expedition lurched forward, and we followed it, traveling as fast as the little car would allow. Its shocks protested with squeaks and groans. Martin stayed silent, his hands tight on the wheel, as his parents followed close behind, their headlights pouring through the rear window like a beacon. Or an accusation.

  “I saw him,” Henry said from the backseat.

  I twisted around. “Who?”

  “Kyle. Running through the woods. Toward the house. But I didn’t do anything, because I thought he was going to see you.”

  “When?”

  “I don’t know. Forty-five minutes ago? An hour?”

  Kyle. Of course. In my head, I could still hear him saying, “I burned down a house.”

  “Did you see him run past you a second time?” I asked.

  Henry shook his head. “I could have missed him. I was playing my guitar, so I didn’t hear anything, and he could have cut through a different way.”

  “Your guitar…” He had left it behind.

  “Doesn’t matter. It’s just a thing. But Kyle—I should have been paying attention. I could have stopped him. You all could have died.”

  I reached my hand back between the seats, and he took it. “But we didn’t.”

  At the clearing, Henry’s parents turned off the road, and Martin followed. The remaining Waxweilers continued their journey down the road, away from the flames. Henry’s parents were already out of the car. Behind us, toward the house, the night sky glowed a sickening orange.

  Mrs. Hawking called out, “They can get him, Henry! They don’t need you! Come here!”

  Henry didn’t answer, just ran over the rough terrain with Martin and me, the Hawkings close behind. A flashlight would have been helpful, but for all the time and money spent prepping, they had neglected to bring one along.

  The clearing seemed bigger in the dark. I tried to remember where exactly Peter had descended. If he’d had the lights on, little beams would shine through the solar tubes, but it was the middle of the night.

  If we’d had to rely on sight, we never would have found the opening. But Henry knew where it was in the way that Henry knew so many things. He darted to a seemingly random spot on the ground, fell to his knees, and pulled opened the hatch.

  I caught up with him just as he began his descent and followed him into the darkness. Just a few more moments and we’d have Peter in Martin’s car, and we’d all be on our way home.

  Was Peter even asleep? He had always been nocturnal. Maybe he was sprawled out on the couch, in the darkness, playing some stupid zombie game on the Nintendo. He wouldn’t even know about the fire raging above.

  Henry grunted, trying to turn the round latch that opened up to the chamber. “I can’t…”

  Above us, his parents and Martin stood next to the open hatch, ready to help get us back out.

  “Is it locked? Is there a key?”

  “No, you just turn it to the right and—there!”

  He pulled the door open.

  “Peter?”

  It was pitch-black inside the bunker. Henry fumbled for the light switch. When he flicked it on, the brightness was so intense, I had to shield my eyes.

  The first thing I noticed was the smell. With no laundry facilities down here, I might have expected the aroma of dirty socks mixed with cereal dust. Instead, the bunker reeked of sickness and sweat and fear.

  Peter was curled in a fetal position on one of the built-in beds at the far end of the bunker, his face pale and slicked with sweat, his eyes open but unfocused.

  I ran to him. I didn’t make the decision to expose myself to the plague; it was just what my body did. Family first, family second, family third.

  His forehead was hot and damp, his breathing shallow.

  “Come on, Peter! We have to go!”

  He coughed weakly but didn’t move. I slipped my hands around his trunk and tried to lift him, but he was too heavy.

  And then Henry was there. Next to me. “I’ll grab him under the arms, you get his legs.”

  Together, we hauled my brother through the bunker and out into the decontamination chamber, but there was no way to get him up the ladder.

  “Henry?” It was his mother, peering over the edge of the hole. “Is there something wrong with him? Oh my God! NO!”

  “He’s too heavy for the two of us. We need help.”

  “I’m coming.” Martin was already halfway down the ladder.

  “Henry! You need to get out! Quickly! Before…” Mrs. Hawking didn’t finish the sentence. It was too late to protect her son.

  “Put him on my back,” Martin instructed. “Henry, you follow behind me, keep a hand on him, make sure he doesn’t fall off.”

  By the time we made it back up to the field, the air was thick with smoke. A few paces away, Mr. Hawking stood frozen, like a statue. Next to him, Mrs. Hawking buried her face in her hands.

  Martin said, “We can’t carry him any farther, and my car doesn’t have four-wheel drive. Can yours make it back here?”

  “I think so,” Mr. Hawking said, from a distance.

  Martin and Henry eased Peter to the ground. I knelt next to him. His breathing came in coughs and gasps.

  I stroked his damp hair. “Everything is going to be okay.” My words sounded absurd, even to myself.

  Martin pulled out the car keys and made his way across the clearing. He stopped several paces away from the Hawkings and chucked them in their direction. They landed at Mr. Hawking’s feet. “Now give me yours. I’ve already been exposed. You haven’t.”

  There was a long pause. Finally, Mr. Hawking took a tissue out of his pocket and used it to pick up the keys. From his other pocket, he retrieved his own set of keys and tossed them to Martin, who
immediately took off to get the larger vehicle.

  “Come on,” Mr. Hawking urged his wife.

  But she stayed rooted in place. “Henry, come with us. Please?”

  “Get out of here. Call nine-one-one.”

  Did 911 even exist anymore? Was there anyone to help us other than ourselves?

  “I can’t leave you,” his mother said.

  “You have to.”

  “I can’t.” She ran across the field, stumbling slightly, and threw her arms around her son. They were the same height, and their dark hair was a perfect match.

  Henry whispered something in his mother’s ear. Her shoulders shook with what almost looked like laughter. She nodded, wiped her face, and followed her husband into the trees, toward the car.

  I stroked Peter’s sweaty forehead. He moaned.

  “What did you say to her?” I asked Henry.

  “That the next time I wanted to get out of school, I was going to pretend to have Mad Plague.”

  “That’s not funny.”

  “I know. But my family is kind of strange.”

  Forty-One

  MARTIN DROVE THE SUV as if it were a tank, diving into potholes and bouncing back out again. Low-hanging branches clawed the windows. The smell of smoke permeated the air.

  The Hawkings had stashed a case of water in the back. I opened a bottle and tried to get Peter to drink, but it just dribbled down the side of his face. We were in the vast backseat, Peter sprawled out with his head on my lap. His T-shirt was drenched.

  When we turned onto the state road, our view opened up enough to see flames engulfing the mountainside.

  Kyle did that. All because he was mad at me. And Mr. Hawking. And the whole world.

  A fire truck, lights blazing, roared past us, and another followed. The significance took a moment to register. If there were fire trucks, civilization had not collapsed, at least not yet. At last, we made it out of the forest and to Casitas Lake. There was a smaller fire truck parked in a lot, along with a paramedic van, and Martin’s little blue car.

  Martin pulled the big SUV over. A firefighter in full gear strode over to the window. Martin opened it just a crack. “We have someone sick here. Really sick. You don’t want to be exposed.”

  The firefighter shook his head. “I’m good. Let’s get him out of there, onto an IV. Medevac is on its way.”

  “You don’t understand,” Martin said. “It’s the Madagascar plague.”

  “I know it is.” He yanked open my door and helped me out, and then another firefighter helped him ease Peter out of the car and onto a stretcher.

  “Aren’t you scared?” Martin asked, bewildered.

  “For myself?” The man shot a glance up at the burning mountain. “No.”

  As a female paramedic ran a line into Peter’s arm, the Hawkings stumbled over.

  “They’ve found a cure,” Mr. Hawking said. “Aspirin, of all things. On its own it doesn’t work, but if it’s taken early in combination with two different antibiotics, it stops this thing before the infection damages any organs. Aspirin.”

  “So Peter is going to be okay?” I almost collapsed with relief.

  Mr. Hawking hesitated. “They’re going to take your brother to a hospital. They’ll take good care of him there. And we’ll go, too, all of us. Because we’ve been exposed. So they will give us the medication as a preventive measure.”

  Peter’s IV line was in, and the paramedic was giving him oxygen. She looked exhausted.

  I pointed to the IV bag. “Is that the antibiotic?”

  She shook her head. “Just saline to keep his blood pressure up. They’ll start the medication as soon as he gets to the hospital.”

  “So he’s going to be okay?” I pleaded.

  She hesitated. “We are going to do everything we can. A helicopter is on its way. They’ll get him to the hospital faster than we can. You can either go down with your friends, or you can stay with your brother. Your choice.”

  “I’m not leaving him.”

  Henry came over. “They told us to get out of here before the fire gets any worse.”

  “I’m staying with Peter.”

  “The Dunkles … they haven’t found them.”

  In my mind, there was a sudden vision of Sassy, lost among the burning trees. Would Kyle save her this time? Would someone save Kirsten with her purple-edged hair? Or Karessa, who wanted to be a teacher?

  I looked at Peter. The oxygen had helped. There was a little more color in his cheeks, though not much.

  “I’ll see you at the hospital,” I told Henry.

  Forty-Two

  I EXPECTED THE hospital to be overflowing with plague patients, but almost two days had passed since the cure had been identified. As a night nurse explained, “Either they get better fast or they die fast. If they start the treatment early enough, they’re out of here in twenty-four hours.”

  “Is this early enough for my brother?”

  She looked at Peter, ashen-faced and coughing. “Ask me in twenty-four hours.”

  “You’re going to be okay,” I murmured over and over and over again as I waited in a chair next to Peter’s hospital bed. After all, he had been perfectly fine earlier in the day. He had been sick less than twenty-four hours before beginning treatment. He was going to be okay.

  The hospital staff let me stay in the room because I had already been exposed and treated. If my mother came, she wouldn’t even be allowed into this wing of the hospital, so I decided not to call her, not yet.

  Shielded by curtains, Peter’s roommate coughed so violently that I didn’t think I could fall asleep, but I managed to doze for a few hours, waking up only when an orderly arrived with Peter’s breakfast. Sunshine streamed into the room. The dividing curtain had been pushed back. The other bed was empty.

  Peter wasn’t looking any better, but he wasn’t looking worse, either. IV lines snaked from his arms, but he was breathing without help. That was good.

  On a metal table next to Peter’s bed, the orderly set down the tray of food: scrambled eggs, toast, yogurt, orange juice.

  “Doesn’t look like he’s up to eating,” he said. “You can have his breakfast if you want.” The orderly was young, with glossy black hair and brown forearms laced with muscle.

  I shook my head. “He might want it later.”

  “Well, the cafeteria’s open if you’re hungry. First day since this all began.”

  “Have you been here at the hospital?” I asked. “Through the epidemic?”

  He nodded. His eyes seemed older than the rest of him.

  “And you didn’t get sick?”

  “Nope.”

  “What’s your secret?”

  His mouth went up on one side in a sad half smile. “Prayer and Purell.”

  “I can’t believe you weren’t scared.”

  His eyebrows shot up. “I’ve been terrified. Every minute of every day. But you gotta do what you gotta do.”

  After the orderly left, I got up and stretched, trying (and failing) to get a crick out of my neck. Then I went out to hunt for the cafeteria. I wasn’t hungry, but I needed something to drink, preferably something with caffeine.

  Just around the corner, Henry sat slumped in a chair. Dark circles shadowed his eyes. When he saw me, he perked up. “Hey!”

  I said, “I figured you would have gone home with your parents.”

  “They’re here, too—sleeping in a waiting room, I think. The Waxweilers have left, though. How’s Peter doing?”

  “Alive.”

  “Doing better?”

  “Yes. No. I don’t know. I’m scared, Henry.”

  “I know.”

  “Any news about the Dunkles?”

  He shook his head.

  “So they’re…”

  “They might have escaped. They could have packed up and had everything waiting on a back road. They might have left right after Kyle set the fire.”

  “Is the fire out?”

  He hesitated. “Not yet. But
they say it’s under control. Whatever that means.”

  “Kyle saved Peter’s life,” I said. “Not on purpose. But if he hadn’t set the fire, we would have left Peter down there for a week. And when we went to let him out…”

  “I know. I thought of that, too.”

  I rubbed my face. I was so worn out with sadness and fear and sheer physical stress. “Okay. Well, I’m going to go grab a soda or something.”

  “You want me to come with you?”

  I was about to say yes, but the truth popped out. “I need to be alone right now. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay.”

  “You can leave, if you want. I’ll call my mom as soon as Peter is cleared to leave.” Surely Peter would get well. I wouldn’t allow my mind to consider any other option.

  “I’m not leaving you,” he said.

  “Okay.”

  * * *

  It happened later that afternoon. I’d dozed off—my body had no idea what time it was—only to be awakened when a new patient moved into the bed next to Peter’s. Someone pulled the curtain shut, and I opened my eyes.

  “You so owe me hot Cheetos.”

  Peter wasn’t just alive, he was awake and sitting up with a remote control in his hand. A violent movie played on the wall-mounted television.

  He grinned at me.

  I burst into tears.

  “You know I hate it when you do that.”

  I sobbed some more. When I could finally speak, I said, “I was so worried about you.”

  “Yeah, I was a little worried myself. But I figured the universe would look out for me.”

  “Everything happens for a reason.” I tried to smile, but I burst out in fresh tears instead.

  Peter shook his head. “You have really got to stop doing that.”

  Forty-Three

  THE NEXT MORNING, Peter was well enough to be discharged. We piled into the Hawkings’ Expedition.

  “Does Mom know what happened?” he asked. “That I got sick?”

  “No. We can tell her later. She thinks you stayed with me at nature camp and we’re just now coming down from the mountain.”

  “She’s not going to be happy about her car.”

  “Wait. You mean…”