The Girl at the End of the World

by Richard Levesque

  Chapter Nine

  “Where are you taking us?” I finally asked.

  We’d come down the hill quickly as the sun set, and then I’d been able to watch through the windshield as Donovan navigated the bus along the path he’d already cleared on Los Feliz. Now it was fully dark out, and the bus’s bright lights cut eerily through the night. Ever since the power had gone out, I hadn’t been away from the observatory at night, and now it felt creepy to be down in the city with everything so dark, the headlights and those on top of the bus revealing new things in the distance that seemed to rise up out of the night without warning. Donovan drove slowly, but still it felt like we sped recklessly through the darkness.

  Donovan gave no answer, no indication that he’d heard me.

  I leaned forward, trying to get Dolores’ attention. “What about you? Do you know what he’s going to do with us?” I asked.

  In the dark interior of the bus, I could see that she shifted her body in the seat and then turned as far around as possible with her hands chained like mine. I think she smiled. “No se,” she said.

  Spanish, I thought.

  “You don’t speak English?”

  “Poquito.”

  Just a little, I thought. Great. I’d had one year of high school Spanish and had struggled with it. I might be able to ask her where the bathroom or the library was, or to be able to say that Pedro’s father is a doctor, but as far as anything practical…I had my doubts.

  “Okay,” I said. “Thanks. Gracias.”

  She nodded and turned to the front again.

  “What about you?” I said a bit more loudly so Chad could hear. I didn’t want to say his name, didn’t want him to think I’d forgiven him for helping Donovan. Honestly, I probably would have done the same now that I saw Dolores as a real person and not just an abstract idea I could write off in some survival-of-the-fittest fantasy. I could see how it would have been tough to run off into the wilds of Griffith Park and leave Dolores in Donovan’s hands when he’d promised to kill her if Chad hadn’t come back. Still…there must have been another way. He hadn’t needed to be so compliant, could have found a way to trick Donovan, to use me and get himself and Dolores freed in the bargain. But maybe he wasn’t that kind of hero. All he could really manage was to keep everyone alive. So far so good.

  “Do you know where he’s taking us?” I asked a bit louder when Chad didn’t turn or acknowledge my question at all.

  “East,” came Donovan’s muffled reply from the driver’s seat. “Riverside, if you have to know. Now shut up.”

  There were a few lights burning in the instrument panel in front of him, and from their glow I could see his face in the wide mirror mounted above his seat. He glanced up now, staring at me for a moment in the mirror before turning his gaze to the road again. It was hard to read that look, but I would have described it as hatred. Donovan hated me and Chad and Dolores, hated us for being the real survivors, the genetic winners, where he had managed to survive only through luck and forethought and technology. He knew his fate and he knew ours, and he was doing everything he could to reverse that order, to force himself into the winning camp.

  Too bad for you, I thought. Now all I needed to do was make sure I kept alive until he made a mistake. That had probably been Chad’s plan, too. But knowing that still didn’t mean I had to forgive him.

  The bus rolled along. Donovan seemed to know his way well, even in the dark and even with the obstacles that blocked the road. Every so often, we’d come to a spot where cars blocked our path, and I wondered how that could have been if Donovan had cleared the way already. It wasn’t like there were bunches of other survivors out, moving abandoned cars around to block the roads. I guessed that he was either taking a different route now than he’d taken on his way into the city, or that when he’d moved the cars the first time, they’d been left unstable and had fallen back onto the road, needing to be moved again. Either way, Donovan slowed the bus and used the plow attached to the front to push the cars out of the way, and before long we’d be back to the path he must have cleared before. It must have taken him days, I realized, to have made it this far into the city if he’d come from Riverside in the first place, a distance of maybe thirty or forty miles.

  I tried sinking farther into the seat, slumping down and wishing I could shrink into nothing and just be gone, just have it over with. Since that wasn’t possible, I told myself I should just go to sleep and maybe dream that I was somewhere else. But the seat was old and lumpy, and the springs poked at my butt and back, so there was no point in pretending I could sleep as the bus rolled along. Besides, new obstacles got in the way often enough to pull me out of any sleep I might get, the bus shuddering as it pushed a car or van out of the way.

  Maybe two hours after dark, it began to rain. I looked up front to see the windshield wipers going. It was coming down hard, drops bouncing up in the road ahead of us as they splashed into puddles. Donovan had slowed down with the rain, and I could see him leaning forward over the steering wheel, peering into the night and the storm to watch for hidden obstacles.

  He should stop, I told myself. This isn’t safe.

  As though he’d read my mind, Donovan slowed the bus even more, just creeping along the street. I had no idea where we were now; he’d found a pretty steady east-west route to make his way into the city, and followed it back out, cutting through industrial areas, then business districts, then neighborhoods and back to businesses. All I knew for sure was this was a part of the city I wasn’t familiar with. If I could get away here, I could find my way back to the observatory easily enough, but what would be the point? Donovan would just come looking for me again. I’d be better prepared next time, though.

  Next time.

  A ridiculous thought.

  I wasn’t getting away from Donovan. Not tonight. And most likely not alone. If I could swallow my anger long enough to have a conversation with Chad, and if we could even find the opportunity to have such a conversation, then all we’d need to do would be to find some way to get away from Donovan, to subdue him, maybe even kill him, and with a little luck manage to get Dolores away in the bargain.

  All long shots, I thought. More than long shots.

  And then the bus stopped with a quick jerk and a squeak of brakes.

  I looked ahead, past Donovan as he peered into the rain soaked street and saw the same thing he looked at, dumbfounded and doubting my own eyes. Chad appeared to be looking at the same thing, sitting up and leaning forward in his seat. Dolores, who hadn’t seemed to move for the last several miles, also sat up straight now and craned her neck as though the extra inches would give her a better look out the wet windshield.

  Standing twenty feet in front of the bus, her hands waving in the air in a signal for us to stop, was a woman, a very wet and very pregnant woman. The rain had plastered her brown hair to the sides of her head, and her shirt and pants already looked saturated. She stood there, rainwater dripping off her face, and when she lowered her hands—satisfied, I suppose, that we really were stopping—I could see that she was crying, maybe in fear, maybe in desperation.

  Donovan set the bus’s parking brake and reached for the radio, snatching the mouthpiece from its cradle and flipping a switch. He held the mouthpiece up to his mask and said, “Who’s with you?” I could hear his tinny words echoing out into the night through the bus’s P.A. system.

  The woman looked even more desperate at being interrogated. She shook her head and arched her eyebrows, begging to be believed. I watched her mouth the words No one. Then she looked to her left and right, as if to show us that she really was alone, that there could be no one else here—in the dark, in the rain. She was alone and had been alone and probably thought she would have to have her baby alone. I couldn’t begin to guess what she’d been going through, how much harder it had been than my existence. And here we were in this bus to show her how wrong she’d been.

  You don’t know what you’re getting yourself into, I thou
ght. You were better off five minutes ago, alone. You think we’re here to save you. You’re so wrong, so wrong.

  Of course, I kept my mouth shut.

  Donovan flipped another switch, turning on the banks of lights mounted on top of the bus. All I could see, though, was that more light came in from the driver’s side window and the other windows in the accordion door. Donovan turned in his seat to look long and hard out his window; then he got up and went to the door to peer further into the night.

  “Turn around slowly,” he said through the P.A.

  The pregnant woman hesitated a moment and then did as she was told. When she had her back to the bus, Donovan said, “Stop. Now get on your knees.”

  Again she hesitated but followed his instructions a few seconds later.

  Donovan killed the engine and then walked up the aisle to Chad. With a rattle of chains and a click from the locks, he soon had Chad freed. “Same drill as before,” he said. “Bring her back. You run, and I hurt the ladies. You think I won’t?”

  Chad gave no indication he’d heard the question.

  Donovan shoved his shoulder, jerking Chad’s body sideways in his seat.

  “You think I won’t?” he repeated, louder.

  “No,” Chad said, his voice bitter and just above a whisper.

  He hates him, I thought, hates what he’s making him do. It was the first time since Chad had tackled me at the top of the stairs that I got to see another real side of him, not the Chad who was scared of Donovan and did everything he was told. It was still hard to get past the way he’d lied to me so easily at the observatory, but the anger I could hear in his voice now made me start to feel a little better about him.

  “Damn straight,” said Donovan.

  He must have had a case or duffel bag on the seat in front of Chad. He reached in and handed Chad something. “Tie her like you did the girl,” he said, and I knew he’d given Chad more zip ties.

  “She’s pregnant,” Chad said.

  “You think pregnant girls can’t fight? Tie her.”

  Chad said nothing, just took the ties and stood up.

  “Nothing stupid,” Donovan said, stepping aside to let Chad pass.

  I watched as Donovan went back to his seat and pulled the chrome handle to open the door. His posture in the seat as Chad passed him told me he had his gun out and aimed at Chad as he went down the steps and out the door. Would he really turn the gun on Dolores and me if Chad decided he didn’t want to repeat the adventure he’d had with me? Chad could easily decide to run, could easily decide against his plan of waiting to save himself along with Donovan’s other captives and opt to save just himself instead. And where would that leave me and Dolores?

  I didn’t think about it at the time, but I wonder now what I would have done if Donovan had chosen me to go out and bring the pregnant woman back. Would I have cooperated? Or run off into the night to get back the freedom I’d lost only a few hours before? I want to say I would have complied, wouldn’t have risked others’ lives by calling Donovan’s bluff—if bluff it was. But I don’t know. I really don’t. I might very well have lit off on my own, hoping for the best and gritting my teeth in anticipation of gunshots, of bullets whizzing past my head, of the terrible realization that they weren’t whizzing past me and must have gone somewhere else instead. What would I have done if I’d known the bullets were thudding into Chad or Dolores as a direct result of my actions? I’m sure I would have run faster.

  But of course, Donovan hadn’t chosen me. He didn’t know me well enough to know I wouldn’t run, leaving people I didn’t know or care about to face his wrath. He’d chosen Chad, the boy who still clung to the old world’s idea of heroism and manliness, the boy who’d come back to chains rather than let the women get hurt.

  Out he went into the rain and was soaked by the time he got to the pregnant woman. I saw him bend to speak to her and then try to grab one of her wrists, probably having told her to be still and let him bind her, that it would be for the best.

  But she jerked her hand away from him and turned her head. She spoke, and it looked like she was shouting at him, then pleading with him. Chad took a step backward, the fear on his face looking like it might tear him in two.

  I wondered what the woman could have told him, wondered if she was sick with the fungus, somehow having managed to avoid infection until now. But that wasn’t it.

  Chad hesitated a second and then ran through the rain back to the bus, only putting his head and shoulders inside the door.

  “She won’t come,” he said. And before Donovan could protest or scold or shout, he added, “She says her water broke. She’s in labor.”

  Donovan swore. For several seconds he just sat there, his head turning from Chad to the woman kneeling in the rain.

  “There’s a drugstore right over there,” Chad said, hooking his thumb in the air to indicate a spot somewhere behind him. “She was going to try and have the baby in there when she heard the bus coming.” He just looked at Donovan then. Our captor said nothing.

  I couldn’t believe what I was hearing or seeing, didn’t know what to feel or think.

  “What do we do?” Chad asked. He didn’t mean just himself, or Donovan. He meant all of us, the woman in the rain included, and for a second seemed to have forgotten that one man among has had all the power over the rest.

  “Sit down,” Donovan said, waving his gun toward the aisle.

  “We can’t leave her,” Chad said, and I wanted to say the same thing.

  “Shut up and sit down.”

  Chad looked out into the rain for a moment and then complied. A minute later, he was locked in place again, and I expected we’d be on our way. Whatever plan Donovan had for the survivors he’d captured, three must have been enough; he could do without the headaches of a pregnant woman and the baby she’d be saddled with before long.

  But instead of turning back toward his seat, Donovan approached Dolores and me.

  “You two are gonna help her,” he said, bending to free Dolores before me.

  “How are we supposed to do that?” I asked. Other than my step-mom, I’d never really even been around a pregnant woman before, and when my brothers had been born I hadn’t been in on any of the details.

  “Figure it out,” he said. “Can’t be too hard. People did for thousands of years before hospitals. No more hospitals now.” He moved farther along the aisle so Dolores and I could exit in front of him. “Hope your Spanish is good,” he added.

  I didn’t reply, just got up after a moment’s waiting. It wasn’t that I weighed the possibility of defying him. I just didn’t want him to see me get up as soon as he commanded me to.

  Dolores went first, and when we got to the door, Donovan said, “You do anything stupid, and I’m gonna shoot your boyfriend here. You got it?”

  I turned, looking from his face to Chad’s. For just a second, Chad met my gaze; then he dropped his eyes to the floor. Can’t handle having your life in my hands? I wanted to ask. I didn’t need to. I knew it was true.

  “It might take a long time,” I said at the bottom of the steps. Dolores was already out in the rain, heading toward the pregnant woman.

  “You got a watch on? Come back in two hours and check in. Don’t forget.”

  Then I was out in the rain, too, hurrying toward Dolores, no thought at all in mind about running away. Not then, anyway. Everything I’d said to Chad before I ended up on the bus, all the posturing about not caring if Dolores died…I had meant it, kind of. But now there was a pregnant woman out in the rain. Leaving her there on her own just wasn’t an option.

  We got to the woman, and right away we helped her off the ground. Rainwater streaked across her face, but I could tell there were tears as well. She looked to be about ten years older than me.

  “Please help me,” she begged.

  “Okay,” I said. “Just…come on.”

  I didn’t know what else to say. Dolores and I each took an arm and walked with her to the curb. I was tha
nkful for the lights from the bus, could see the drugstore across a narrow parking lot. It was a chain store and looked no different than the one near our house where I’d gone countless times before with my mom and sister.

  “Who are you people?” the woman asked as we crossed the parking lot. She sounded astounded that we’d found her.

  “I’m Scarlett,” I said. “This is Dolores. We’re…”

  I didn’t want to tell her we were captives, that we were helping her because the guy who’d first come out of the bus was being held at gunpoint now, his safety contingent on our return. She could hear the ugly truth later. She had enough to worry about right now.

  “We’re traveling. Donovan…he’s the driver. He had this bus before…the sickness. He found us one at a time.” Then I added, “He saved us.”

  I counted on Dolores not understanding any of what I said, or if she did understand, that she’d play along and know my intentions as I lied to the poor woman.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Alex. Alexandra. I can’t believe you’re here. I’ve been alone all this time, and now…”

  “It’s okay. We’ll help you.”

  I didn’t know what I was saying and certainly didn’t believe it. How could I help a woman deliver a baby? I had no idea what Dolores could do, if she’d had kids before, if she knew anything about what to do or how to do it. But, ignorant and scared as I was, I knew Alex was more scared, more lost. What the last weeks must have been like for her, I couldn’t imagine.

  “Thank you,” Alex said. “Thank you. Oh God.”

  A contraction must have hit, as she stopped moving and half bent at the waist, letting go of my arm to grab at her stomach. We were maybe ten feet from the store’s glass doors, and I could see now that one of them had been smashed to bits, a thousand tiny crystals of glass on the ground around and inside the entrance. The electric opener hadn’t worked anymore, and Alex had needed to get inside. I’d have done the same thing, though I couldn’t see what she’d used to smash the glass.