Until the End of the World Box Set

by Sarah Lyons Fleming

  James, who’s been slowly advancing and killing Lexers from behind, comes up and sinks his knife into its neck with a crunch. It slides off Nelly’s machete to the ground. When I step out of the salon, Ana races into my arms. We don’t hug so much as hold each other up.

  “Thank you,” she whispers.

  All the fear I’ve kept at bay hits, and I swallow hard. “No, thank you. All that horrible running paid off.”

  Ana barks out a laugh. We assess the damage. Lexers lie in the parking lot, but most are piled around us. We hop onto the barrels, not wanting to step on, or worse, in, the infected, and practically fly home.

  We’ve hosed ourselves off and taken showers. Our clothes and armor soak in a cocktail of cleaners no virus could possibly survive. Ana’s waited until last to shower, and when she finally enters the living room, running a hand through her damp hair, we stop dead. Where there used to be the long chestnut colored hair that Ana painstakingly hot-ironed, there’s now chin-length hair that gets even higher in the back. Nothing’s going to get a handful of this hair. She tries to look nonchalant, but she’s nervous.

  “I love it,” I say. “I really do.”

  It accentuates her cheekbones and her graceful neck. She looks older, more sophisticated. She smiles, but pulls at the ends like she’s trying to lengthen them as everyone murmurs agreement. Peter stares at her, and I catch his eye and tilt my chin up, telling him to say something.

  He swallows. “You look gorgeous.”

  Ana beams, and I realize it was his reaction she was most worried about. If his face is any indication, she’s got nothing to fear.

  Penny’s mouth hangs open. “I can’t believe you cut your hair off. Don’t get me wrong, you look amazing, but I just can’t believe you…” she trails off with a shake of her head.

  “I’d rather be alive than have nice hair,” Ana replies.

  “Who are you and what did you do with my sister?” Penny asks. She smiles and moves forward to touch her sister’s hair in wonder.

  97

  Bits picks basil leaves off the stems under Peter’s tutelage. He’s making some sort of pesto. Tomatoes, sprinkled with goat cheese, sit on a platter. His dinners are always fancy, and before he’s done we’re milling around the kitchen like begging dogs. I set the table and get out a bottle of wine we found. There isn’t much wine, but this dinner should have something special to go with it. And John’s got strawberry wine brewing in his basement.

  “Smells good in there,” Nelly says, as he sniffs through the back door screen. He’s been digging, and every inch of him is covered in dirt. “Pete, maybe you’ll teach me how to cook one day.”

  Peter leans toward the door and laughs. He doesn’t mind when Nelly calls him Pete now. “You’ll just slather it in barbeque sauce.”

  “Damn straight,” Nelly says. “I’m a Texan.”

  He leaves his mud-caked boots outside and heads for the bathroom. The table looks nice with the wine glasses, which starts me thinking.

  When everyone’s seated I jump up and clap a hand over my mouth. “John, we forgot to check the tomatoes in your garden today! They were ready to burst as of yesterday.”

  John looks at me calmly, obviously thinking I’m blowing this out of proportion. “Well, we’ll just leave it to tomorrow.”

  “What if tomorrow they’re too far gone? All that wasted food? What if it’s the difference between life and death?”

  I think I may have taken the melodrama too far, but no one looks suspicious. I move behind Nelly’s chair and surreptitiously hit him in the back.

  He chokes on his tomato. “I’ll help,” he says, and looks longingly at the pesto.

  “Pesto is great at room temperature,” I say. He mutters something and I grin. “Penny, James, John? There are lots of tomatoes.”

  “I don’t remember that many tomatoes,” John says, his brow creased.

  “I saw a lot,” says Bits, who thinks five tomatoes is a lot. But I’m not going to argue.

  “Okay.” John heaves himself up. “Food’ll still be here after dark, but we should get the tomatoes if you say so.”

  I wave at Ana and Peter to sit back down. Ana’s back was pretty badly wrenched, and we’ve been trying to make her rest.

  “No, you guys stay,” I say. “We have enough people. Ana, you shouldn’t bend over! Peter, you cooked it, so you should enjoy it.”

  I see the light dawn in his eyes. I smile serenely and pour wine into their glasses. He glowers at me. I hum a little tune and consider lighting a candle, but it’s not dark, so that might be overkill. I wink at him before I slip out the door. He shakes his head and sighs, but there’s a smile playing on his face when he turns back to her. I’m counting it as their first date. We walk the path to John’s, and the memory of my and Adrian’s first kiss makes my insides bump.

  It happened on our third real date. We’d been out in a group, too, but Adrian hadn’t tried to kiss me, on a real date or otherwise. I’d begun to think I’d misread the signals. Nelly cornered me at the bar after our second date.

  “So?” he demanded, eyebrows raised.

  I sighed. “So, nothing. He hasn’t even tried to kiss me. He asked me to go hiking on Saturday, so I think we have a really good time together. Well, I do, anyway. But maybe we’re just friends.”

  Nelly looked skeptical. “No way he’s just friends, not with the way he looks at you.”

  “What do you mean?” I nudged Nelly’s arm.

  Nelly took a long swig while he thought. “It’s like he goes all soft. He smiles like you’re a little kitten or something.”

  “Most people don’t want to make out with kittens. Maybe I’m like one of those mangy old kittens you can’t help but feel sorry for. Who’s cute in a ratty sort of way, so you give them extra attention?”

  Nelly laughed. “You are blind, girl. Blind, I tell you. But okay, I’ll just go ask Adrian why—” He lifted his beer at Adrian, who sat at the bar and smiled at us while he talked to someone.

  I grabbed the back of his shirt and spun him around. “Don’t you dare!”

  He grinned. “I won’t. If he kisses you on Saturday. If not, we have to get to the bottom of this.”

  On Saturday, Adrian picked me up in his beat-up car. He opened the door for me and walked around. I reached over and unlocked the driver’s side door, just like my dad had taught me, since my dad thought he still lived in 1970, when no one had those little clicker thingies that unlock all the doors. But Adrian’s car had the knobs you pull up, and I smiled as I followed my dad’s date etiquette. Adrian apologized for the car’s general appearance, but since I had no car, I said his was still nicer than mine.

  “Plus,” I said, “I have one criterion for cars: they have to not break down, leaving you stranded on lonely dirt roads or desert highways. That’s it. A radio’s nice, too.” I rubbed the door like I was trying to make friends with it.

  “Well, this must be your dream car, then.” He smiled and shook his head.

  “What?” I asked.

  “You’re just different. In a good way.”

  I wondered if being different in a good way made me more desirable or more like that ratty kitten.

  We walked a few miles alongside a creek before we stopped to eat. There was frost on the ground every morning that late in the fall, but the sun had come out to warm up the day. My fingers and toes were cold, though, and I wanted some of the hot chocolate I’d packed. A flat boulder that jutted out over the creek made a good picnic spot. The water eddied and pooled around it, and the long-legged bugs that skate across the water were everywhere. There was a splash every time a fish came to the surface to gobble one up.

  Adrian reached into his pack. “I have salami and a turkey, too.”

  “I love salami,” I said.

  He held the neatly-wrapped sandwich in the air and smiled. “I know. You mentioned it once.”

  I tried to recall a conversation that would have demanded I list my favorite lunch meats, but I
knew there probably wasn’t one. Who knows why I had decided to share that little gem with Adrian. But it gave me hope. You wouldn’t remember someone’s favorite sandwich meat if you didn’t care. I think I saw it on a greeting card once.

  I vowed to keep my favorite dog breed and tampon brand to myself, at least for today, and smiled back. “Oh, thanks.”

  I watched the crimson and gold leaves drift into the creek for a farewell ride down the gentle rapids. It reminded me of something.

  “You know, I once read that there’s really no reason for trees to change their leaf color in the fall,” I said, as I set out the thermos and cups. “They use the sugars and nutrients in their leaves to put out all these colors, instead of bringing it into their trunks and using it. When I read that I wanted to go hug a tree. Or say thank you or something. I’m sure they don’t do it for us, but maybe they do it just because it’s beautiful.”

  There was silence. I looked up, already regretting having said something so weird. He was watching me, and now I did see what Nelly meant about that look. It was gentle, but it was also curious, and I squirmed a little under its intensity.

  “Hey,” he said softly, “I really like you, Cassie.”

  “I like you, too,” I whispered.

  Everything inside crashed and whizzed when I said it. Until Adrian I had a strict policy of keeping feelings to myself in a relationship, especially since mine always fell short of what the other person had for me.

  “I was hoping you did.” He cupped the side of my face and his dimple creased. “Tree hugger.”

  My laugh rang out. Before I could say anything he was close, then closer, and then his mouth was softer than I thought it would be. My stomach dropped the way it does on that first big roller coaster dip. His hand rested on my collarbone and I put my palm on his chest. When I felt his heart beating as fast as mine, I grabbed a fistful of shirt and pulled him closer. I didn’t recognize myself. This girl who grabbed shirts and nipped softly and would have done absolutely anything on that rock right then was new to me.

  When we parted I could feel two spots of pink burning on my cheeks. My breathing was shallow. I was embarrassed that my desire was so apparent until I saw it on his face and in his unfocused eyes.

  “Your hair is such a pretty color,” he said breathlessly. He rubbed a lock between his thumb and forefinger.

  I shrugged. “It’s brown.”

  He tilted his head to the trees. “No, it’s the color of oak leaves once they’ve fallen. They’re brown, but that red still lurks underneath. Russet.”

  “Oh.” I liked having russet hair instead of brown.

  Adrian poured cocoa. I leaned back and watched him. I wanted to kiss him again.

  He looked up. “What are you thinking?”

  “I wasn’t sure you’d ever kiss me,” I said, surprised I’d said it out loud.

  “I wanted to, but I meant what I said before. I like you, and I don’t want to mess it up.”

  He looked shy suddenly, but when his eyes met mine they were direct. I wondered how he could say what he felt without being terrified. Or, maybe he was but didn’t let it stop him. Maybe I could learn to do that too. He handed me a cup, and I blew on it to have something to do while I thought of something to say back. I remembered that he’d asked me what I was thinking.

  “You won’t mess it up,” I said, with what felt like all the air in my lungs. “Not if you kiss me again.”

  So he did.

  Bits points at the two small buckets of tomatoes. “See? Lots of tomatoes!”

  I laugh at the confused look on John’s face and come clean. “Peter was yapping about not being able to take Ana out to dinner, so I thought I could make it a romantic dinner without it being weird. The opportunity presented itself and was too good to pass up.”

  “I had a feeling you guys were up to something,” Penny says, and looks at Nelly.

  Bits’s smile gets wider as we talk. I’ve got at least one ally.

  Nelly raises his hands. “Don’t look at me. I would’ve been much smoother.”

  I may have no finesse, but it’s nice to think about somebody else’s love life besides my own.

  “How about I make you all some P.B. and J at John’s?” I ask. “Just to tide you over until we go back.” Everyone groans at the thought of the meal at the cabin, which is as gourmet as it gets out here. “Oh, come on, it’s for love! You’ll still get your yummy dinner.”

  Bits spins and sings the song from Sleeping Beauty. Nelly picks her up and waltzes her around. They follow me into the house grumbling, but love is in the air and the peanut butter sandwiches go down a lot easier than they expected.

  98

  It’s a good thing I love the garden, because it feels like I should pitch a tent out here sometimes. If we’re not weeding, we’re watering or picking or mulching or drying or processing what we’ve picked. The tomato plants are pushing five feet tall and are laden with red and green globes. The melon patch smells sweet, and we’ve already had a few watermelons ripen. Nelly taught Bits how to spit the seeds, and she takes great pride in holding the world record. Cracking into the thick skin of the first watermelon was like a religious rite. Fresh fruit used to be something you grabbed at the store. Now it’s something you eat when it ripens and savor as best you can until next year.

  All of us girls are in the garden picking beans. Bees crawl over every flower, enjoying the sunshine and getting ready for winter, just like us. The boys, as I think of them, have gone to find propane for the stove. I wanted to go, but then I wondered why I wanted to assist in picking up a two-hundred pound tank. I worry about them as I search among the tangled vines. I haven’t forgotten our last trip. That’s the real reason I wanted to go. I feel like if I’m there I can control things and make them come out all right, even though I know it’s an absolute fallacy.

  I try to let my worry go. I’ve gotten better at letting things go in the past few weeks. I can’t make Adrian still love me, I can’t change the course of this virus, I can’t protect everyone I love, I can’t walk around with my nails digging into my palms from the stress of it all. But I can annoy Ana and Peter until they finally get together.

  “So, Ana,” I say. “What’s going on with you and Peter?”

  She goes very still. “Nothing.” She pulls back and looks at me, wide eyed. “I swear, Cassie.”

  She thinks I’ll be mad. I’ve been going about this all wrong.

  I put out a hand to stop her stammering. “Ana. Ana, it’s fine. I know you’ve had a crush on him for forever. And he likes you back, you know.”

  He face relaxes and she bites her lip. “Oh. Do you think so?”

  “I know so. I asked him.”

  She dips her head, and her hair hides her face while she smiles. “You did? I thought maybe, a couple of times, that he might. Although, look at me.”

  She points to her stained tank top and self-consciously runs a hand through her short hair. Her arms are covered in dirt and scratches, and she doesn’t have on a lick of makeup. She’s gorgeous.

  “Ana, you know you’re beautiful. Your skin is a burnished gold and your hair is shiny.” She looks more upbeat as I continue. “Your hands are graceful and your bottom plump. You smell always of roses and—” She throws a bean at me, laughing. “No, but seriously, you don’t need any of that. He likes you and you like him.”

  “And you’re okay with it?”

  When it’s come to boys, Ana’s never cared who or what she goes through to get them.

  “I insist. You two are driving me crazy. All those long looks and lingering touches. Ugh.” I pretend to puke and get hit by ten beans.

  Bits comes tearing around the house. “They’re back and they have a surprise for everyone!” she yells, then turns and races back again.

  The back of the pickup is full. There are two propane tanks strapped in the bed and a tangle of metal that I realize are bicycles and a rack. Bits squeals when she sees the purple one that’s hers. She hops o
n and rides around in circles.

  “We got one for everyone,” John says. “There was a guy who fixed up bikes and sold them down in town. We’ll attach the rack to the van roof and keep a couple up there. This one here is yours, Cassie.”

  He holds out a red bike. Penny looks from John to my face and bursts out laughing.

  When everyone looks to see what’s so funny, she says, “Cassie can’t ride a bike.”

  Six faces turn to me in disbelief. My face must be crimson. “I fall off bikes. I can get going, but then suddenly it all gets crazy and I go out of control.”

  “Crazy?” Nelly smirks. I’m so glad my inadequacies are amusing to him. “Why am I not surprised?”

  Bits makes another circuit. “It’s easy, Cassie,” she says. “Maybe you need training wheels until you get the hang of it, like I did.”

  This comment elicits so much laughter that I find myself laughing too. I’ve always longed to hop on a bike and go breezing off somewhere, but I end up crashing. I don’t know what happens. One minute I’m fine; then the next I’m headed for the curb or a tree and I freak out.

  “I can help you,” she continues. “I remember how.”

  “Thanks, Bits,” I say, and struggle to keep a straight face. “I’m going to need all the help I can get.”

  My first bike lesson on the dirt road ends in the usual tragedy. I put my feet on the pedals and balance, but the front wheel strikes a rock, which makes the fork wobble, and I close my eyes and run into a ditch.

  “Why are you afraid of the bike?” Peter calls out from the driveway as I lumber up.

  I wonder how long he’s been watching. Bits stands next to him, my own personal cheerleader.

  “Because it wants me dead,” I reply.