“You only know one joke, Cassie,” Bits says.
“Well, we’ll have plenty of time on the road for Hank to teach me more.”
Everyone wears a smile now. They range from Rohan’s fully-toothed grin to a tiny crease at the corner of Peter’s lips. Maureen winks at me. She knows I know they’ve all heard my one joke a thousand times.
A tiny meow comes from the VW’s interior. I scramble behind me for the box I stowed in the back and forgot, but Bits beats me to it with a cry of pure joy. She holds Sparky under her chin and looks at me with glowing eyes. “You really did get her! I didn’t think you would. It was three bursts.”
I nod noncommittally. I wouldn’t have done it had Bits been at the VW, not with what was coming. I can’t take any credit for Sparky’s survival.
Peter scratches a finger under Sparky’s chin. “Of course she did. We couldn’t leave Sparkle behind.” His raised eyebrows order me to agree. “Right?”
“Absolutely,” I lie.
“Anyone hungry?” Maureen asks. “I was planning to pack up—”
The rumble of a motorcycle drowns out her next words. Zeke pulls into the lot and stops, followed by a camper and a truck. There’s no way all of Whitefield is in those two vehicles, and my only prayer is Nelly.
Zeke takes off his helmet and hollers, “Y’all are a sight for sore eyes, let me tell you.”
He steps over his bike and moves to Penny and Peter. I hear him say Ana’s name and then turn to Maureen. Jamie and Shawn must have given them the news at the gate. Tony and Margaret leave the pickup, followed by Kyle, who swings Nicole to the ground. The camper door opens and a woman named Marissa emerges with her two children, along with five more adults I don’t know well. I take a steadying breath that escapes in a rush when Adam steps out, followed by a flash of blond hair and familiar broad shoulders. I’m through the assembled people before Nelly’s shoes hit the dirt. He picks me up in a bone-crushing embrace and sets me back down.
“Jamie told us. I don’t….” Nelly runs a hand through his hair. “Are you…”
“We’re okay.” My lips tremble, and I take a deep breath. “Better, now that you’re here. They’re okay, for now.”
“I didn’t think we were going to make it.” I start to ask why, but he squeezes my hand. “I’ll tell you later. I need to—” He points his chin in the direction of the others. I watch him walk away, and I turn to Adam.
“Hey, you,” I say. “Come here.”
“Hey, yourself.” Adam steps into my hug. “Nel was so worried.”
“What happened? Where’s everyone else?”
“We don’t know.” His voice cracks. Unlike Nelly, Adam wears his heart on his sleeve. “We had almost no warning. The fence went down before everyone could get to their spots. We got split up. No one answered the radio. We called the whole way here.”
I look around our group of twenty-odd people. It’s such a sorry number. It makes me despondent, until I see Nelly raise Bits in the air and draw a smile out of Hank. It may be a sorry number, I tell myself, but maybe quality, not quantity, is just as important.
81
The sun is rising over the flat expanse of Who Knows Where, Canada. I’ve spent the night alternately staring at the road while driving or staring at where Penny and the kids sleep on the pullout bed. The outskirts of Montreal were nerve-wracking, but the last couple of hundred miles have been fairly easy since it was barely populated before. James spent the night driving or poring over our maps. He finally passed out with his face mashed against the sink.
We’ve managed to eke out some gas from cars. We’ll need a lot more of it to get to Alaska, though, even with the tank in the truck bed. Tony and Margaret began fumbling with rubber hoses in the dark, until we showed them John’s end-of-the-world siphoning method—a screwdriver into the gas tank with a container underneath. He would’ve been proud.
I rest my feet on the dashboard and watch the pickup and RV ahead. Besides Nelly and Adam, only Tony, Margaret, Zeke, Kyle and Nicole came west from the Whitefield group. It almost killed Zeke to leave his motorcycle in Quebec. He was afraid its roar would attract Lexers from miles away. I know it’s only a bike, but I understood. Another thing left behind.
Peter’s at the wheel. He glances behind us to make sure everyone’s asleep and then speaks. “I shouldn’t have done that to Oliver. I told him he was a murderer. I could see how sorry he was.”
His face is tight. I knew he’d feel guilty and don’t want him to, so I swing a fist in the air. “If you didn’t punch him, I would’ve.”
“I might have sent him to die up there.”
“He was going north with the others, anyway,” I say. “Maybe we should have gone, too.”
“To nothing? Not enough food, no fences? Lexers coming straight for us?”
“What if we can’t find more gas? Or the roads are blocked? Or—”
“Or we run into a pod,” Peter says. “Or crazy people. Or there’s a tornado. Or a flash flood. Or the bus breaks down. There—now we’ve named everything that could happen.”
“Nope,” I say, and caress the VW’s dash, “Miss Vera won’t break down. Will you, Miss Vera? You know how much I love you, don’t you?”
“Miss Vera? You named the bus Miss Vera?”
“Vera the VW. Miss Vera Winifred Bus, get it?”
“You are a very weird person,” Peter says. But he laughs his first laugh since yesterday, which is what I was going for. “We know where we’re going and that they’ll take us in.”
“We know where we’re going, but we might not get there.”
The orange of the sun makes even this lonely stretch of highway look like something special, so I reach into my jacket and pull out the phone. I take a picture of the road stretched out before us and then snap a picture of Peter’s hands glowing orange on the wheel, the knuckles on his right slightly swollen and scabbed.
“What are you doing?” he asks.
“A pictorial essay of our trip. That way they’ll know our story when they find the bodies.” I lean over and take a picture of myself with Peter.
Peter shifts the gears with more force than necessary. “Cassandra, stop being so pessimistic.”
If the past day has shown us anything, it’s that the worst is always a possibility. A probability, actually. I don’t want to be pessimistic, but you won’t get hurt as badly if you expect and prepare for the worst. That’s what I’m hoping, anyway.
“I think the word you want is realistic,” I say.
Peter sighs. I know I’m being argumentative, but if we’re going to get to Alaska we need to be practical. We don’t have room for fairy tales and blind faith. I can’t believe this will end well, not when all the signs point to the truth that it won’t.
The truck’s blinker flashes and we slow to the side of the road. Nelly stretches his arms above his head before strolling to our window. Barnaby follows, but not before eating something disgusting off the road and then coughing it back up.
“Pit stop?” Nelly asks.
“I have those terrible coffee packets,” I say. “Want me to make some?”
“Oh, God, yes.”
The others wake at the sound of Nelly’s voice. Sparky roams around the bus with plaintive meows. “Sparky needs to pee,” Bits calls. “And maybe poop.”
“How are we going to do that?” Peter asks me. There are no fences here, and we can’t waste time searching for a scared cat if she runs off.
I sigh. “We’ve got to deal with a half-grown cat and the world’s dumbest dog, and you’re telling me to be optimistic?”
“Pete, don’t bother,” Nelly says with a chuckle. “She’s too stubborn.”
I make a face at him and tell Bits to find the twine in my bag. Bits hands it to me and asks, “Are we making a leash?”
“No way. Have you ever tried to walk a cat? If I can give you one solid piece of advice in your life, it’s this: Never tie something around a cat’s neck and try to take it for a w
alk. I speak from experience.”
I kiss her cheek when she giggles. Sparky attacks the string as I try to fasten it around her, but in the end I fashion a rudimentary harness. “I’m sure she still won’t like it, but at least she won’t strangle herself.”
“I love you,” Bits says, and throws her arms around me. It’s so unexpected and genuine that my eyes fill. I’ll get her to Alaska, to safety, if it’s the very last thing I ever do in this miserable world.
“I love you,” I say, and try not to choke on the words. “More than all the stars in the sky.”
Bits takes Sparky from my lap and smiles at Peter. “That’s infinity, you know.”
She and Hank set the cat down in the grass and stand guard. Sparky makes a run for it, only to be yanked back by the harness. I can’t help but laugh; I knew it would happen.
“I like that,” Peter says. “More than all the stars in the sky.”
“Me, too.”
I think it’s time to retire Until the end of the world and after. The world has been over for a while, and we live in the after. It’s become completely attainable.
Peter gazes out the windshield at the orange-streaked sky. “Are they really infinite?”
I picture Dan on the ambulance roof. Maybe he was telling me to keep watching, or that he’d be up there, or maybe even that he loved me. I wish I knew because they were his last words, and somebody should have heard them. I ignore the rock in my stomach and say, “No one knows for sure, but we’ve decided they are.”
Peter nods and continues his watch of the clouds. I imagine he’s thinking about Ana, and I touch his shoulder before I leave to set up the stove.
“Coffee?” I ask Penny.
Penny looks longingly at the coffee packets. She slept last night but doesn’t look as if she has. “I’m not supp—”
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
Penny offers to finish the coffee in her enthusiasm for a cup. I brush my teeth, visit the Ladies’ Bush, and then stretch out in the grass. Everything aches. I’m exhausted and weighted down. I look around at the faces we have with us, but all I see are the ones who aren’t here. The holes they’ve left. The emptiness.
I know we all won’t make it to Alaska. Some of us will, maybe, but not all of us. Not by a long shot. There will be more holes, more empty spaces. The thought is so disheartening that I want to stay in this spot and let the grass grow over me. My forced determination evaporates, leaving only the belief that we’re going to die, one by one. I wish Ana were here—she’d screech at me to buck up and then make me run a mile, for fun. And John might have been able to get us all to Alaska or at least give me faith that it was possible.
Peter walks over and nudges me with a foot. “Coffee’s done. Ready to go?”
He follows my line of vision, and I can tell by the way he slumps that he also sees those empty spaces. But then he straightens his shoulders and extends a hand. I don’t know how he manages to conjure up a smile. Years of living with ghosts, perhaps.
“Everything’ll be all right,” Peter says.
I can see that he believes it, as crazy as that may be. And that he needs me to believe. Maybe it’s something you can choose to believe. You make it all right, no matter what gets thrown at you. Maybe happiness is something you can decide on. It has to be better than the alternative. I don’t think pessimism suits me. He pulls me to my feet, and I hold tight on our way to the bus.
Bits laughs at something Hank whispers in her ear, maybe one of his jokes. He blinks like an owl, and I feel my fierce protectiveness for Bits expand to include this smart, funny little boy. He may act older than his ten years, but he still needs a mother.
I look down the westward road. It’s so barren, so lonely-looking, so filled with the unknown. It looks like it stretches on forever. It certainly feels like it does. I don’t see how it can possibly be all right.
But then I see Nelly and Adam share a kiss before they climb into the pickup. I watch Jamie put her arm around Ashley’s shoulders and guide her to the camper. Kyle flashes me one of his rare grins when I smile at Nicole, who plays the drums on her father’s head from her seat on his shoulders.
There’s still so much love in the world. So much to hope for. And so much to lose. But if I concentrate on the former hard enough, I can almost believe it, too. I’ve had my chance to break down, to fall apart, to be overcome by helplessness and hopelessness. But not anymore—I’m never going to let this world get the best of me again.
“Yeah,” I say, and squeeze Peter’s hand before I let go. “It’ll be all right.”
THE END
Read on for the final book in the Until the End of the World series: All the Stars in the Sky.
All the Stars in the Sky
Until the End of the World, Book Three
For Jamie, my first and most favorite fangirl. And my own personal juker.
And for my parents (again). Because y’all deserve more than a novella.
1
It isn’t easy to be optimistic when you have thousands of unknown miles ahead of you and an army of zombies at your heels. Especially when the road you’ve been traveling for hours is barren of all life—except the undead, of course. If I hadn’t promised to believe everything will be all right, I might consider jerking the steering wheel out of Peter’s hands and sending us all into a tree. It may be unlikely we’ll get to Alaska, but I won’t be the one to say it.
“Want me to drive?” I ask.
Peter takes his puffy eyes off the road. I’ve begged him to sleep, but he refuses. I couldn’t sleep after Adrian died. “Maybe in a little while.”
Peter’s the main reason for my optimism. He says we’ll make it, and I think that belief is what’s holding him together. That and Bits, who sits in the back with Hank, both staring out the window as we follow the RV and pickup through Quebec. Or maybe we’re in Ontario now.
I unscrew the cap of my water bottle and offer it to Peter. His dark hair is limp, hanging to his cheekbones, and he pushes it back with a sigh. I want to say something, but there’s not much to say to someone when they’ve just watched the person they love become a zombie. I know this from experience.
The sun bleaches the brown grass to beige and flickers through the trees like a strobe light. I’m too tired to find my sunglasses, so I close my eyes to escape its brightness. A moment later I start awake, heart racing and damp with sweat. I saw Ana, face slack and neck bloody, right before I sent a bullet into her brain. John under a pile of Lexers. Henry’s struggle before he fell into the bus. Dan watching us leave from the ambulance’s roof.
Dan’s dead by now. If he lost the nerve to do it himself, even bolstered by the flask he always carried, enough time has passed that he’s one of them. Dead, even if he’s walking. I know he didn’t lose his nerve, though. I may not have known him as well as I could have, but he wasn’t the kind of guy who’d sit around and wait to become a zombie.
I haven’t slept in over a day, but I won’t sleep until Peter does. He needs the company and, truthfully, so do I. I’m afraid to go to sleep. To dream. Because no matter how optimistic you are when awake, sleep gives your brain free rein to fuck with you. My eyelids threaten to lower and I sit up straight, legs crossed under me. Criss-cross applesauce, Bits calls it.
“Lie down,” Peter says.
“I’m fine.”
“Cassandra, please.”
“You need to rest, too,” I say. “I’ll keep you company until then.”
He doesn’t argue, even though I know he wants to by the way he grips the steering wheel. Penny sticks her head between us from the back. “Let me and James take over for a while.”
Penny doesn’t look much better than Peter, but she uses her teacher voice that leaves no room for argument. She hasn’t asked me for more specifics about how I killed her sister. That’s a conversation I hope never to have. Peter pulls to the side of the road. The other vehicles stop and Nelly leans out of the pickup’s window. When he sees we’r
e switching, he sits with the engine idling until we resume driving. Our last pit stop wasn’t too long ago.
There isn’t much room for passengers when the VW’s bed is open, but Bits and Hank are small kids and they fit on the two seats that are left. I smile at them and even Hank, who lost his dad yesterday, smiles back.
“You guys tired?” I ask. They both shake their heads. “Hungry?” Two more shakes.
I finish working off my boots and dig my fingers into my heel. It may be smarter to sleep with my boots on, but my feet need out. Peter kicks off his boots, places his holster by his side and flops back with an arm over his eyes.
“Are you okay if I sleep?” I ask the kids. “Do you need anything?”
Hank fingers Adrian’s knife on his belt, which I officially gave to him last night. I had my Ka-Bar in my bag, and Adrian would have liked for Hank to have it.
“We’ve got it,” he says.
It would almost be funny because he’s a skinny ten year-old with big glasses and burgeoning dreadlocks that look more like a clear-cut forest than hair, but his dad is evident in Hank’s serious expression. I hope there is such a thing as Heaven, and that Henry’s with Corrine and Dottie now. I hope everyone we’ve lost is up there, having a kick-ass dinner or something. John believed they would be, and if it’s true, he’s up there.
I kiss the kids’ foreheads, then lie down and steel myself for more images: The splatter that flew out the back of Ana’s head, hitting the Lexers behind her. The way her hands twitched on the dirt road before going still. But when I close my eyes, it’s only blackness. Even my brain is too tired for games right now.
2
I wake in the late afternoon when Peter kicks me in his sleep. His eyes open. I can see he’s remembering Ana by the way he swallows and stares into space. That first wakeup is the worst. They all suck, but the first one—the one where you remember someone is dead—takes the cake. Every once in a while, even months later, you get one that’s almost as bad, but you’re somewhat used to the letdown by then. You’ve grown a thicker skin, even if it only feels like a millionth of a millimeter.
Until the End of the World Box Set Page 77
