“And?”
“That was the one they predicted, and Adriane said she saw it happening at the beach with the giant rock.”
“She didn’t see anything but The Goonies. That quake was triggered by the first one, the one they knew about, and they got lucky—why are we even talking about this, Eric?”
“Now this bird flu outbreak. And in Hong Kong, our special place, our city, Andrew. Remember when we were there and we called it our city?” The trip to China was Eric’s first time out of North America. Eric was so anxious and excited on the plane he couldn’t sleep and watched five in-flight movies in a row. During the four days spent in Hong Kong, they crammed in as much as they could see and do, a rapturous final fling of their old lives before the adventure of their new one with Wen began. “It means something that it’s there, that it’s happening there.”
“It doesn’t mean anything. I already told you; China has been dealing with this outbreak for months. I’m not going to argue about this with you. It’s what he wants. So let’s go. You and me and—and Wen.” His voice breaks and his indignation and anger evaporate. His eyes tear up. “If you’re ready, then let’s go. I can’t—we can’t stay here.”
Sabrina’s voice billows into the cabin from below. “Hey, it’s me, Sabrina. I’m coming up the basement stairs, now, okay? I’m not going to hurt anyone, so please don’t hurt me.”
No one answers her. Her footfalls echo on the wooden stairs, a slow, uneven dirge that changes in pitch and tone the closer she gets to the main cabin floor. She has her curled shovel blade–tipped weapon with her, but she does not hold it threateningly. She carries it more like a scarlet letter, a final judgment she cannot escape.
She says, “I’ve been down there for a while. Listening to you and the TV. So I know—so I know we didn’t stop it.” She looks at Andrew and Eric and sidesteps away from the basement stairs. Her face is streaked with dirt, her hair dark with sweat. Her off-white shirt is a crusted map of yesterday’s blood. “I don’t know what—I don’t know how it happened, but I’m truly sorry about Wen. I don’t know what to say.”
Andrew says, “Then fucking don’t say anything. And don’t come near us.”
“Yeah, okay.” Sabrina leans against the wall separating the bedroom doors and cranes her head toward the screen slider. “I’m sorry about Adriane, too. But she shouldn’t have been threatening you. That wasn’t supposed to happen.”
“Turn out your pockets,” Andrew says to Sabrina, and motions at her with the sledgehammer.
“Why?”
“Keys. Keys to your car that has to be parked somewhere near here.”
Sabrina pulls out her empty pockets. The white cloth sticks out from her hips like mocking tongues. She rotates and runs hands over her smooth back pockets.
The news report rattles on in the background with a narrated video of dead birds bulldozed into piles and incinerated.
Andrew says, “Eric, can you shut that off, please?”
Eric goes to the TV and with the vivid, flashing images close to his throbbing head he squints and looks away. He fumbles about the side control panel pressing buttons until he hears the commentator cut out while discussing the most recent administration’s ill-advised and crippling funding cuts to the Centers for Disease Control’s pandemic preparedness programs. Eric only mutes the audio, however, and the video continues to broadcast.
A spinning bout of vertigo strikes and Eric sinks into the couch, sitting next to Wen and with the flies. Eric knows they are eager to crawl on him, too. He lifts Wen’s body and slides her across his lap. She is rolled up like an ancient map to a lost place.
Andrew says, “Eric? Are you okay? We should go now, don’t you think?”
“I can’t—not yet.”
“Are you sure? I think we really should go.”
Eric says, “I don’t feel right—I need a few minutes. Just a few minutes. Then we’ll go. Together, I promise.” He prays he will be able to keep that promise.
The flies leave Wen’s body and disperse like released spores. Eric is relieved they are leaving Wen, but their forming an indoor storm cloud is an awful sight. They swirl and they land and they creep over the walls, tables, chairs, and they crawl on Sabrina and Leonard, on their hands and their mouths and over their eyes. Their unremitting buzzing sounds like it’s crackling through the muted television speakers, and theirs is an ancient message of immutable decay, rot, and of ultimate defeat.
Sabrina and Leonard
“I don’t feel right—I need a few minutes. Just a few minutes. Then we’ll go. Together, I promise.”
“That’s okay, take some time, but we have to go as soon as you can. We can’t stay here.” Andrew puts a hand on Eric’s shoulder and rubs his back. Eric mumbles something they cannot hear and he leans into Andrew’s hip.
Leonard is battered, a diminished and broken King Kong after the swan dive off the Empire State Building. Sabrina is pressed against the wall as though standing on the crumbling ledge of a cliff face. They share a look. They wonder what the other is thinking, what the other believes, and what the other is going to do. They wonder if they’ve truly shared the same visions, the same commands. They wonder if the other is who they say they are. They wonder if the other is what they would consider to be a good person before they were called here. They share a protracted, probing look. They realize they do not know each other, not in the slightest. They realize in this darkest hour of the darkest day they are alone, fundamentally alone.
Sabrina says, “This should be over, Leonard.”
“But it isn’t.”
“I know, I know. But what happened should be enough. Why isn’t it enough?”
“She wasn’t a willing—”
“I don’t care. It’s not right. They’ve already lost too much. It’s so not right I can’t even say how not right it is.”
“I agree but it’s not up to us.”
Andrew halfheartedly tells them to be quiet.
Sabrina says, “I don’t care what you do, but I’m going to fight it. I fought it before—I did, I swear I did. But now—no more of this. I’m done. We should’ve—I don’t know—done something more to resist this. To reject it. There’s no way—”
“There will come a point when you won’t be able to. You know that.” He isn’t mocking or threatening. He’s being commiserative.
“Why us? Why are we being made to do this, Leonard? Why is this even happening at all? This is barbaric and vile and evil shit. And we’re a part of it, all of it.”
“I don’t know, Sabrina. I really don’t. I don’t understand and we’re not supposed to understand.”
“That’s such bullshit.”
“We’re trying to save billions of lives. The suffering of a few for—”
“It’s still not right. It’s all capricious and cruel. What kind of god or universe or whatever wants this, demands this?”
Leonard sighs and doesn’t answer. He stares at Sabrina and blinks.
“No, no. You have to answer. I know what my answer is. I need to know yours. I want to hear what Leonard—” She pauses and laughs. “I was gonna say your last name but I don’t know what it is. Isn’t that fucked?”
He says, “It’s—”
“I don’t care about your last name! I want your answer. Tell me. What kind of god is making all this happen?”
“The one we have.”
They share another look. Leonard is misshapen, grotesque, an unfinished monster. Sabrina stands at the disintegrating edge of a lava flow and the air she breathes is poisonous. They wonder if one or both or neither of them is crazy and they wonder if it even matters. They wonder if the other has always been as weak as they are now. They share another long look. This one is reserved for ill-fated observers in the moments before impending, inescapable calamity, whether it be natural disaster or the violent failure of humanity; a look of resigned melancholy and awe, unblinking in the face of a revealed, horrific, sacred truth. And they realize again,
in this darkest hour of the darkest day, they remain alone, fundamentally alone.
Sabrina nods and she drops her staff and it lies on the floor like a borderline. “I never believed in it. But this is fucking hell.”
Andrew
It’s clear Eric’s concussion has left him more compromised than Andrew originally thought. He can’t possibly give Eric the rest needed to recover enough for him to be able to walk any sort of distance, even if it’s only to the others’ car parked presumably somewhere nearby. Does he leave Eric here and go for help on his own? No, that is not an option. He will never leave Eric or Wen alone again.
Andrew looks at Wen’s sheet-covered body and he can still feel Leonard squeezing his hands, his finger folding in, collapsing on the trigger, and the hitch and the click, and the gun kicking back. He didn’t know where the bullet went and then Eric screamed and scrambled on all fours to Wen. She was lying on her back with her knees and legs bent under her. Andrew saw her shattered face and he dropped to the floor next to Eric. His eyes flooded with tears he did not wipe or blink away so his view would remain distorted, refracted as though looking up from the bottom of a well. A blur of seconds later Eric was passed out against the door and Andrew stood alone in front of a tied-up Leonard, his gun empty of bullets but his finger pulling the trigger. Eventually he stuffed the gun in his back pocket and then checked Leonard’s empty ones for keys. He checked Adriane’s pockets, too. He dragged her body to the deck because he didn’t know what else to do. He was going to check O’Bannon’s pockets, but he didn’t want to leave Eric alone inside the cabin while he was unconscious and he didn’t want to leave Wen lying on the floor. He went into their bedroom and gathered the flannel sheets. As he carefully wrapped her body, everything was under water again, and he said her name. He lifted her off the floor and sat with her on the couch, and he said her name. He didn’t know what else he could possibly say. He rested his forehead against hers, gently kissed the tip of her nose through the sheet, and he whispered he was sorry. He wanted to tell her the gun going off was an accident, wasn’t his fault, but he couldn’t. Instead, he said her name again and again. He said her name like he was afraid she would never hear anyone say it again. He said her name like it was a solemn oath to take her away from this place and bring her home.
Sabrina drops her staff. The twisted shovel blade clangs at contact with the floor, knocking Andrew out of his paralyzing fugue. She says, “I never believed in it. But this is fucking hell.”
Leonard says, “There’s still a chance. They still have a choice. They can choose to save everyone.”
Sabrina says, “Everyone else, you mean.”
Andrew imagines hitting Leonard with the sledgehammer until his head is the lumpy, spent wax of a used candle. The gaping pit of grief and rage demands to be filled with this act. Sabrina is now unarmed and if she attempts to intervene on Leonard’s behalf, he can chop her down, too.
Leonard says, “Sabrina?”
“What?”
“Will you put the white mask on me, after? I don’t think I’m getting out of this chair alive.”
Andrew imagines bludgeoning both Leonard and Sabrina and then sitting on the couch with Eric and Wen. He and Eric will cradle her on their laps and they will wait in peace for as long as Eric needs, until he is ready to go.
Sabrina ignores Leonard’s question, slowly walks across the room, and stops in front of Andrew. She says, “You never asked why we killed Redmond.”
Andrew takes his hand off Eric’s back and regrips the weapon.
Eric says, “Don’t, Andrew.”
Andrew says to Sabrina, “You mean your pal O’Bannon? That the guy you mean?”
“He was never my pal. I never trusted him but—but I still came here with him, I know. I’ll never be able to explain it, or even believe it myself . . .”
Andrew says, “I’m pretty sure I can.”
Sabrina nods. “We didn’t come out and tell you about what our part in this is. I mean, besides presenting you with the choice. Have you figured that out yet?”
“Back away now or I start swinging. And find yourself a chair to sit in, too.” Andrew has taught apocalyptic literature for years, calling his course This Is How the World Ends. The course has occasionally included a literary analysis of the Bible’s Book of Revelation and the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse riding their red, black, white, and pale horses. Over the years the course syllabus has evolved, but one of the main arguments/discussions he has with his students remains a constant. No matter how bleak or dire, end-of-the-world scenarios appeal to us because we take meaning from the end. Aside from the obvious and well-discussed idea that our narcissism is served when imagining we, out of all the billions who perish, might survive, Andrew has argued there’s also undeniable allure to witnessing the beginning of the end and perishing along with everyone and everything else. He has impishly said to a classroom, to the scowl of more than a few students, “Within the kernel of end-times awe and ecstasy is the seed of all organized religions.” Of course Andrew has figured out the four strangers’ quasi-Christian endgame, but he doesn’t want Sabrina explaining it and making biblical connections in front of Eric—his Catholic faith is as confounding and mysterious to Andrew as it is endearing—while he’s in this addled, vulnerable mental state.
Sabrina doesn’t move. “I will sit and do whatever you ask, just let me explain, let me tell you this first.”
“Back the fuck up now.”
Eric interjects, “If Andrew and I didn’t choose to make a sacrifice, then you four had to make one.”
“Don’t talk like that.” Andrew crouches so he can look Eric in the eye. His right knee gives out on the way down. The looseness, the detachment of his swollen knee from the rest of his leg makes his head go dizzy and hot. He wonders if he’ll be able to complete any sort of hike on this knee. What if they can’t get car keys from Sabrina or Leonard? Do he and Eric risk walking down the road, finding their car, and hoping they hid a key somewhere? Andrew’s dad used to hide a spare to his truck in the driver’s-side wheel well. Maybe they go up the road in the opposite direction, deeper into the woods, and to the closest cabin that’s a few miles away, break in, and hope the cabin has a phone.
Everything in Andrew screams to get out of this place of death and madness and figure it all out after. He leans on the staff and says, “Eric,” until Eric looks at him. “Listen to me. I love you, and we have to go now. All right? I know you can do it.”
“I love you, too. But I don’t—”
“We can take breaks and rests when we’re on the road, as many as we need. We’ll make it.” Andrew stands, slides an arm under Eric’s, and tugs him up.
Eric doesn’t stand and stays sitting with Wen. “Not yet. One more minute, please.”
Sabrina says, “He’s right, Andrew. When you didn’t choose, we were forced to kill Redmond.”
“I don’t want to fucking hear any of this!” Andrew shouts.
Sabrina holds up four fingers. “After he died, the earthquake and tsunami hit.” She folds down her pinky, making the number three. “Adriane dies, then the bird flu spreads.” She curls another finger into her palm. Two fingers held up, a mocking peace sign. “There’s only two of us left. If you don’t choose to make a sacrifice, then Leonard and I will be the sacrifices. Each time one of us dies”—she folds down another finger—“another calamity—”
“The skies will fall and crash to pieces like glass,” Eric says, like he’s participating in a call-and-response prayer.
Sabrina continues, “—and the apocalypse is another step closer. And if you don’t choose and the last of our four dies—” Her fist swallows up the last finger.
Eric says, “The final darkness. That’s what Leonard said.”
“—then it’ll be the end of everything. When the last of us are dead, there are no more chances for you to stop the apocalypse.”
Andrew wobbles across the room toward Sabrina. “I said stop talking.”
<
br /> “Before we got here, Leonard and I wanted to spell it all out for you, tell you everything we knew as soon as we walked into the cabin. Redmond and Adriane talked us out of it. We knew we had an impossible sell and, look, we’re not stupid or crazy—I wish we were crazy . . .”
Leonard says, “You’re not crazy.”
“I think it’s both now,” she says without explaining what she means. “Andrew, you weren’t going to believe us, believe why we were here, believe in the choice and the consequences, especially when we first presented it to you, and maybe not ever. So we couldn’t risk telling you we would kill each other off one by one if you chose to never make a sacrifice. We were afraid you’d wait us out, watch us kill each other, and then the world would end.”
“Get a chair, put it against the front wall, and sit down,” Andrew says.
“Maybe the world should end if any small part of it was made to be like this.” Sabrina nods as though she’s made a decision or a pact. She faces Leonard and points at the television. “Did you know this bird flu show was going to be on?”
Leonard is surprised by her sudden pivot. “Huh? Y-yeah. Well, no. I mean, I didn’t know there would be a show like this, or what kind of, um, plague, there’d be, or even where, but I knew there’d be some kind of deadly illness.”
“How’d you know?”
“Sabrina, why are you—?”
“Before we came up here, you told us the plague would happen around nine o’clock if they didn’t make a choice in the early morning of the second day. Adriane and I had a vague sense of a plaguelike calamity happening after the tsunami but not the precise time. You gave us a time.”
“I don’t know what to tell you. I just knew the time it would happen, like it was always there in my head, waiting for me to find it.”
The Cabin at the End of the World_A Novel Page 20