“Yes, fine, but this is different than a little two-seater going down. These were commercial airplanes all crashing at the same time. You smashed the TV, but it sounded like there were more planes, maybe even all the ones in the air, and crashing right after Leonard was killed.”
“You know, it’s only occurring to me now that that’s not true, either.”
“What’s not true?”
“The planes crashing after Leonard was killed. Think about the timeline here: the planes had to have crashed before Leonard died, probably at least twenty minutes or so before.”
“What are you talking about?”
“If the planes had crashed at the exact moment Leonard died, the news wouldn’t have had enough time to gather and air the footage we saw.”
“Video is practically instant now. Everyone has a camera.”
“They weren’t broadcasting phone videos, certainly not the fly-over footage of wreckage, that plane in the ocean especially. Those crashes had to have happened before Sabrina killed Leonard.”
“I guess so, maybe, but that’s not the point. I mean, are you quibbling over the timing?”
“The timing is pretty important, don’t you think?”
“Yes, of course, because everything Leonard said would happen did happen, and it happened each time after one of them was killed. You really think everything we’ve seen, everything we’ve been through has been a coincidence?”
Andrew says, “I do,” as more of an affirmation to himself. “They knew about the Alaskan earthquake before they came to the cabin and then, yes, that second quake and tsunami hit was coincidental. But then they knew the preprogrammed, scheduled bird flu show would be on the next morning and had it timed to the minute with their watches, and then—”
“And then all those planes just happened to crash when Leonard died.”
“They didn’t crash when—”
“Andrew!”
“Yes, fine, a coincidence, but not an outlandish one. Maybe the planes were a preplanned part of their narrative, too. It’s possible the others were aware of reports, government warnings about terrorists or—what did they say?—cyberattacks on planes and we didn’t hear anything because we were up here and hadn’t watched TV or been on the internet for days. Even if that isn’t the case, all they had to do was make us watch cable news where it’s bad news all the time. Turn it on and within minutes you’re bombarded with breaking news of wars, suicide bombings, mass shootings, trains-planes-and-automobiles crashes . . .”
“It doesn’t work that way. They can’t get that lucky with guesses and maybes and turn on the TV and hope for something random to fit. Not like this.”
“Think about the psychological stress and state they put us in. They break in, terrorize us, tie us up, and you seriously injure your head. Then they tell us pseudo-Christian-biblical-end-of-times vagaries knowing that at any moment they can turn on the news and in our fried and frazzled brains something will very likely stick.”
“So I believe them because I’m Catholic, right? That’s so unfair and—”
“No, Eric, no, I’m not saying that, not trying to make you feel bad, I’m trying—”
“And they aren’t vagaries—drowned cities, plague, sky falling into pieces. Those things happened. I know you want me to hear how preposterous it all sounds, but you should listen to yourself. You’re bending yourself into a pretzel rationalizing the impossibilities.”
“That’s just it. I’m telling you it’s not—” Andrew cuts himself off and starts over. “Eric, I’m going to ask you straight out: Do you think one of us has to be killed by the other to keep the world from ending?”
“Why would those four make it all up and make us go through this?”
“You didn’t answer my—”
“Answer mine.”
“Jesus, Eric, the fucking guy who hate-crimed me broke into our cabin. O’Bannon and the others came here with a plan to terrorize the queers. There’s your why.”
“If it was him.”
“Eric—”
“I know, I’m sorry, but I’m not as sure as you are that it’s the same guy. He—he looks different to me, but even if it is him, is that enough of a why? I mean, why go through everything else? If it was only about us, they wouldn’t have been killing each other, would they?”
“They’re cultists. That’s what they are. Homophobic, doomsday cultists. They take meaning, identity, and purpose from believing they know the end is coming. Not only that, these pious soldiers of their god believe they have the power to stop the apocalypse if they can manipulate the gays into hurting each other. If that fails, then they get to start the end of the world themselves. They’re broken and delusional and everything they’ve done and everything they do serves to keep their delusion intact, to keep it alive. Think about it, it’s a no-lose for them, as far as their delusion goes. If one of us kills the other and then the world doesn’t end—because it’s not ending, not right now, anyway—then they were right, yeah? And if they all kill themselves instead, it doesn’t matter that the apocalypse won’t then happen, because they won’t be around to see the world going on without them.”
“I know but—that makes sense, and it sounds right. But it isn’t. Maybe all the stuff we saw and if Redmond is really O’Bannon, it’s all proof God is really testing—”
“Are you going to answer my question?”
“What question?”
“The one you haven’t answered. Do you think one of us has to kill the other in order to—?”
“Not yet.”
Andrew isn’t sure what Eric means by that two-word answer. Does the “not yet” mean he’s not ready to answer the question, or does it mean we do have to make the sacrifice, just not now, not yet?
We are finally on pause. Our manic, rapid-fire quid pro quo leaves us breathing heavily and as skittish as rabbits in an open field. Our minds replay everything we said and didn’t say. We don’t look at each other. Sabrina remains silent, a few paces ahead of us, plodding along with her head down. We keep our eyes on the road veined with ruts, pitted with sunken holes and loose stones, and flanked by a forest that will one day reclaim it. We can no longer imagine the road’s end. Our eyes float upward trying to escape.
Andrew sees darker, threatening storm clouds. He tastes and smells rain in the air. His ears pop with the decreasing atmospheric pressure and temperature. The low rumble of thunder announces itself in the distance.
Eric sees an alien sky gone more purple than black, like a bruise. Its color changes the longer he watches; the sky becomes more gray than purple, and then more black than gray, and another change to more purple than both colors, then a color he’s never seen before and could only describe as being more purple than purple. The sky is so low and looks like a painted ceiling. The thunder rolling into the valley isn’t thunder; it’s the sound of the avalanching sky. Eric’s head throbs, sending hot stinging waves to the backs of his believing eyes.
We walk and we watch and we wait for Sabrina to tell us we are where they hid the truck keys. Rain falls tentatively. We hear the light patter of raindrops on the leaves before we feel it on our skin.
Andrew clears his throat and says, “Eric.” He clears his throat again, more loudly and protracted. “What about Wen?” His voice cracks and spills open on the rocks of her name.
“What do you mean?”
“On top of everything else, they expect us to believe Wen’s death isn’t—”
Sabrina shouts, “No! No!” and dashes into a graceless sprint, her twisting torso a poor substitute for free-swinging arms.
Andrew yells at her to stop where she is. He pulls out the handgun from his back pocket with his left hand and holds it out in front of him, as far away from his body as he can reach. She doesn’t stop or slow down. He doesn’t shoot, and he limps after her.
Sabrina’s and Andrew’s shouts, grunts, and their grinding, leaden footfalls are an overture to the end, their spastic movements an asymmetric ball
et to the chaotic, atonal fuss. Eric doesn’t run or walk faster to keep up with them. He feels like a fool, a hopeless, helpless fool for ever believing we could survive this.
The rope tied around Sabrina’s hands and wrists does not unwind or unspool or turn slack and spaghettify and become an elongating white tail. Seemingly without effort on her part, as though the act of her running simply triggers release, the ball of rope slides off completely intact, keeping its shape and splatting onto the road like a wad of putty.
Sabrina alternates pumping her arms and covering her ears with her freed hands, yelling what might be, “I’m helping them!”
Andrew considers a warning shot in the air to keep her from growing the distance between them. Before he swaps hands with the gun and walking stick—he has never shot with his left—Sabrina veers into the woods. Only three or four steps away from the road, she drops to her knees in front of the broad knotted trunk of a pine tree. Grunting, she flips up a sizable flat stone and rotates it away to her left. She then roots around in the undergrowth with her hands.
Andrew staggers to the road’s edge. Eric is not far behind and quickly catches up. With Andrew on his left, Eric steps off the road and into the greenery. Sabrina, in profile, is crying and talking to herself. Eric is close enough to see her dirt-and-mud-smeared hands appearing and disappearing.
Andrew tucks the walking stick under his armpit and points the gun at Sabrina’s back. “What the fuck was that? You should’ve told us we’re here. You didn’t need”—he glances back at the plop of rope in the road—“you could’ve just shown us where the keys are. What are you doing? Are you digging? You didn’t say anything about digging. I want you to stand up and show me your hands.”
Sabrina stands and turns to face us. In her right hand she dangles car keys on a red keychain. She underhand-tosses them. The keys fly a brief arcing trajectory, passing between us, and they land with a muted jingle in the middle of the road. Her left arm up to the elbow has disappeared inside a dark blue vinyl drawstring bag.
Andrew shouts, “What’s that?” He raises the gun, but he hasn’t been able to bring himself to slide his finger over the trigger. He doesn’t want to feel it, doesn’t want to remember how it felt when it was last pulled. His finger is instead curled over the front of the guard. “Drop it, Sabrina. Hey, you said you were going to help us. Remember? This isn’t helping . . .”
She says, “The truck is only another mile or so down the road. Take the keys. You can make it.” Her rhythm and inflection is off, like she’s reading a statement presented to her without punctuation or proper form.
Eric wishes Sabrina would look at him instead of Andrew, though she’s not really looking at Andrew, either; her eyes are unfocused, somewhere beyond us. Eric needs to see the terrible light’s reflection in her eyes, and then he’ll be sure of what he has to do.
Sabrina pulls the bag away and drops it to the ground, revealing a handgun bigger than Andrew’s. The black brick of polymer filling her left hand appears to be a semiautomatic Glock. She says, “I didn’t know Redmond left this here. I swear to you both. It had to have been Redmond. Oh my God . . .”
“Come on, Sabrina. Open your hand and let it fall,” Andrew says.
“How did I not see him leave this here? I watched him hide the keys under the rock and that’s where they were and now this bag is here, too, buried underneath. I never saw the bag and I never saw the gun—”
“Put the gun down, now, Sabrina.”
“I would’ve seen Redmond carrying the bag here. I walked next to him the whole time down the road. Unless it was Leonard. Maybe Leonard buried it here first, before we got here. When we parked the truck, Leonard took off, running ahead of us so he could be the first one at the cabin. Like he was supposed to, right? Like he was supposed to . . .”
The gun being here makes perfect sense to Andrew. If everything went wrong at the cabin, the others would still have this hidden weapon, their trump card. Andrew slides his finger through the guard and over the trigger of his gun. He doesn’t know if he can do this. Any of this.
Sabrina finding the gun makes perfect sense to Eric, too. As she is the last of the four, this gun is her chance to make the final sacrifice if we don’t choose.
Sabrina’s gun is down by her hip, pointed at the ground. She reaches into her back pocket and pulls out a white mesh mask. She roughly pulls it over the top of her head with one hand. It goes on askew, tilted, and it only covers the top half of her head and face. An unfinished concession to ritual, her mouth and the tip of her nose remain uncovered.
The rain is falling heavier now, turning the red clay of the road to dark brown. The blood on Sabrina’s shirt runs, becoming pink.
She says, “You have the keys. You should go, please. Just go. Drive, away from here, and then you’ll—” She pauses to allow herself to cry, openmouthed and silent. She presses the back of her hand over her mouth and then says, “I’m so sorry. I wanted to help you. I tried to help you, help you more than this.”
Andrew says, “Put down the gun and you can still help by coming with us to the police and telling them everything that happened. We need you to do that for us.”
Sabrina shakes her half-obscured head. “I want to, believe me. But I can’t. I won’t be allowed to.”
Eric bends and reverently lays Wen’s body on a bed of fernlike plants. He kneels next to her, and fat raindrops darken her shroud. The bandage on the back of his head finally gives way and slides off.
Sabrina swings the gun up in a smooth and precise motion. Her left arm is animatronic. The arm moves like it is not of her. She presses the muzzle against her temple. Her right arm waves and flutters, a confused mash-up of go away and please help me gestures. She is still crying with her mouth open, now wide enough to fit a scream.
Andrew points the gun at her left shoulder and cocks the hammer back. “Put it down, Sabrina! Don’t do this!”
Eric stands up too rapidly, and his vision fills with stars that turn into oozing inkblots of light. He closes his eyes and takes three deep breaths. When he opens them again, Sabrina is turned toward him and whispering, in an almost comically open manner. “You still have time to save everyone. Eric. You still have a chance. Even after. But you have to do it quick.” Sabrina shakes her head no, disagreeing with what she just said. Then she says, “You are—” and her gun goes off. The bullet plows through her head and exits with a ribbon of blood. Her body collapses against the fir tree and lands with her torso partially propped up. Her head lolls to her right, conveniently allowing its contents to empty through the exit wound.
Andrew shouts, “Fuck!” and spins away. He screams the curse repeatedly and bends over, his hands on his knees. Rain beats down on his head and back. He delicately uncocks the hammer of his gun.
Eric walks through the brush to Sabrina’s body, and he takes the gun from her hand, which is open. The gun is lighter than he anticipated. The forest darkens; there’s no end to how dark it can get. Flies swarm Sabrina’s body, crawling over her mask and in and out of her uncovered and open mouth. Their buzzing adds an undercurrent to the thunder, which he realizes isn’t thunder, not anymore. He’s hearing ancient gears grinding and clicking into place, and perhaps irrevocably turning.
Andrew remains bent over and facing away from Eric. Should Eric do it before Andrew turns around? It would be easier that way. He prays silently, fills his broad chest with air, and says, “She said I could still save everyone.”
Andrew straightens and finds Eric in the woods and standing in front of Sabrina’s body. He has her gun in his right hand and his arm is angled across his chest.
“Eric . . .”
“She said I have to do it quick.”
Andrew asks, “Where is Wen?”
“She’s right there. Close by. I wouldn’t leave her. I didn’t want to put her down, but I had to.”
Seeing her on the ground alone is like seeing her on the cabin floor all over again. “Maybe I should carry her now.”<
br />
“I think you might have to. Sabrina said the truck isn’t far.”
Andrew doesn’t move. He’s afraid to move. “Hey, I didn’t get to finish what I was going to say about Wen because Sabrina took off running and then—” He stops talking and points at Sabrina’s body.
“What were you going to say about Wen?” Eric understands what the others were experiencing when they kept telling us that time was running out. It’s a physical sensation; he can feel it splashing in his blood.
Andrew says, “Forget O’Bannon, Redmond, and all the coincidences and the rules and everything else. Focus on this: they expect us to believe that Wen’s death isn’t a good-enough sacrifice for their god. So you know what? Fuck them and their god. Fuck them all.” He says it all in one breath and then gives in to full-on sobbing. Tears and rain mix and wash down his face, blurring Eric and the forest.
Before today, Eric has only seen Andrew cry once. It was when Andrew returned to their apartment after the two-day hospital stay, post–bar attack. Eric sat next to Andrew on the edge of the bed and wrapped his arms around him. No one spoke. Andrew cried and he cried, and when it was over he said, “That’s enough of that.”
Eric says, “You’re right. You are. And I know you can give a reason for everything that happened, that’s happening, but—” He waits and gives Andrew a chance to say the right thing, the impossible right thing that would make this all go away and take us and Wen back home safe.
Andrew doesn’t know what it is Eric needs him to say, so he’ll just keep talking until he lands on it. “I’m really sorry about the Christian crack earlier.” He sputters a half cry, half laugh and Eric only blinks at him. “But you—”
“I saw something in the cabin you didn’t see, Andrew. I think I was supposed to see it. And I felt it, too. I experienced it. It was real and it was made of light and it was there when they killed Redmond, when they were pushed to kill him. And then it was—it was all light the next time and I closed the door to keep it out.”
The Cabin at the End of the World_A Novel Page 24