Notes From the End of the World

by Donna Burgess

He moves closer and whispers, “Why don’t you come with me to the art room. We might be here for a while.”

  ***

  The art room is located in what is essentially the basement of the school. All of the fine art rooms are stuck in the dungeon. I guess that indicates what Palm Dale High School thinks of creativity. The football team has a brand new locker room and equipment. The levels of importance in the B.Z. (before zombies) years were jocks, academics and then creatives. Of course, there were levels within those categories, too. For example, the varsity football team ruled over all jocks, with baseball players next, and basketball players after that (depending on which team enjoyed a better previous season). Golf, tennis, and then soccer, followed by track. And, of course, female athletics were behind all of those. The brains also ranked in this order—mathetletes, the science nerds, then literary geniuses. Creatives were all tossed into the “we pretend to be impressed, but you’ll never get anywhere with that” category.

  The art room is as silent as a tomb (bad comparison, but sue me), every little sound echoing. Nick flips on the overhead fluorescents and the room seems to warm a little. The oily-chemical smell of paint and the sharp, acrid stink of mineral spirits hangs heavy in the air.

  “I’m thinking of quitting school until this is over,” he says. “I don’t think it matters now.”

  I don’t know why, but this hits me like a punch in the stomach. It’s bad enough not to see him outside of school, now that he and Audrey are through. But now he’s going to stop coming to school, too?

  “No, it doesn’t,” I say, making a pretty sad attempt at sounding nonchalant. “But don’t you want to maintain some sense of normalcy?”

  “Normalcy,” Nick whispers, laughing. “You sound like you’re in college already. Missing a few days while the worlds ends isn’t going to hurt you.”

  I shrug, more flattered than I probably should be.

  Nick goes over to the window. “We can see from here.” He shoves a narrow table closer to the outside wall, just below the long set of high windows that line the side of the room. I let him help me up although I’m perfectly capable of climbing onto a table. His fingers trail across my ass and I pretend not to notice, then he leaps up next to me. The view is decent, if looking at running feet is interesting.

  Muffled cries, some intermittent screaming, groans and enraged grunting. Pounding and scratching on the front entrance doors, just above and to the left of where we are watching. It’s a real symphony of horror, those sounds.

  “I wonder how long we’ll be here,” Nick says.

  “Maybe the police will come,” I answer. “I just hope those things can’t get inside.”

  “From what I’ve seen, they aren’t any stronger than they were when they were alive. It’s just when there’s so many…”

  “Like a swarm of bees,” I say.

  “Or a pack of wolves.”

  My phone buzzes inside my jacket pocket and I check it. A text from Audrey.

  ur not dead, r u?

  I reply: n

  Audrey: I am—almost. LOL.

  I close my eyes and sigh. It’s not funny and she knows it.

  “Audrey?” Nick asks.

  “Yeah. I’ll find her. It's not like she’s leaving without me.”

  Nick smiles, hops off the table, and then puts out his hand to help me down. “I’ve stored some of my painting here,” he tells me. “Want to see them?” He seems like he’s about to share a secret, excited and shy at the same time.

  “Sure.”

  I follow him to a far corner that’s enclosed by tall shelves loaded with paints, markers, all sorts of papers and art history books. Behind the wall of shelves are dozens of canvases in all sizes, leaning against the block wall. Nick sorts through them, until he finds the ones he’s looking for.

  Finally, he picks up three small, square canvases. The first one is a portrait of a forty-something man, smiling. He’s handsome behind a pair of wire-rimmed glasses. His hair not quite neat and his tie loose, but he looks genuinely happy. This could be a painting of Nick in twenty years, but he corrects me before I can say anything.

  “My dad.”

  “You look alike.”

  “Yeah,” Nick says. “He was always positive, you know? Up. He never looked at the dark side of things.” He laughs. “If we got stuck on the side of the road with a flat tire, he’d make a game out of it. ‘Look at that bird, Nicky.’ or ‘I wonder if we change this thing faster than Jeff Gordon’s pit crew.’ It was dumb sometimes…”

  “That’s not a dumb way to be, Nick.” I sigh, thinking of the bleakness we now live in. The only positive is living through another day.

  “Well. Either way, I find myself wondering if Dad might’ve been the lucky one. He never had to see this…”

  “Don’t think like that,” I say. That was dumb—what am I going to back that up with? Don't think like that—we’ll all be fine tomorrow?

  Nick looks at me like he wants to hear reassurance that I cannot offer. He places the paintings back into the corner without offering to show the other two.

  I start to say something else, suddenly the snap of gunfire echoes from out front of the school, making both of us jump.

  “Shit,” Nick says. “The cops are here.”

  “It’s about time,” I respond, although I’m in no particular hurry to leave.

  He jumps back up onto the long table to get a better look out the window and turns, his hand outstretched. “Coming?”

  “I don’t need to see.”

  A man’s voice blasts through a bullhorn, mechanical and lifeless. “STAY INSIDE THE SCHOOL UNTIL THIS AREA IS CONTAINED. ANYONE LEAVING THE BUILDING WILL BE SHOT.”

  Nick cups his hands around his face to cut the glare from the window and I take him in—his shaggy hair and his perfect body in those jeans—his back pocket is ripped and hanging halfway off. He’s beautiful. Too beautiful to die a raving monster.

  Of course, so is Audrey.

  And in that case, so am I. And grandma, Mr. Carlton, the little boy we saw at the mall, and everyone else in Palm Dale.

  I used to think we were untouchable, but we’re just like everyone else. Always breathing what might be our last breaths.

  “Oh my God,” Nick whispers, his voice shaky with horror.

  “What?” I’m almost afraid to hear his answer.

  “I think they’re shooting everyone.”

  “What do you mean?” My throat wants to close up.

  “They’re shooting kids, Cindy. Kids who aren’t even sick. And teachers. They’re not stopping to check. They’re killing everyone who’s outside! They were serious.”

  I’m about to call Audrey when she crashes through the door to the art room.

  “Bitch! I’ve been looking for you everywhere!”

  ***

  Later, as Audrey drives home, I can't help noticing how her face isn’t exactly the right color anymore. Her skin flakes around the cheeks and the chin. Audrey was always the last person to have skin issues. Plus, she smells a little … funky, like gym shorts left in a locker too long. The medicine isn’t working. Dad’s used all of our money on a piece of shit vaccine that isn’t going to save Audrey, or any of us, in the end.

  I don’t say anything about it, and she doesn’t ask me why I was hanging out alone with Nick. Fair enough.

  “You know, when the National Guard showed up this afternoon, they shot Chloe Marshall in the back of the head. She wasn’t even infected. Only too stupid to get back inside.”

  She turns on the radio. Nothing but news, static, news and that scary-weird emergency signal. I look out the window and watch the community I once loved pass me by.

  ***

  Cindy

  Audrey weeps like her heart’s splitting in two, and I cannot sleep because it comes through the walls like water through a sponge. My sister, the tough one of us. The badass. The one who doesn’t give a shit. She’s dying and she knows she’s dying. Does she wonder what’s on the
other side?

  I know she’s afraid. Why can’t she just admit it?

  I climb out of bed, the floor cold under my feet. Do Dad and Mom not hear her, or do they pretend not to, just like they pretended not smell pot on her clothes, or notice her coming home an hour after curfew. Noticing doesn’t make them bad parents, I want to tell them sometimes. It just made them parents.

  I rap on her door, timid because she’s always blown up if I entered her room without asking.

  “Audrey? You okay?”

  There’s this small whimper—something that couldn’t possibly come from my sister.

  I open the door and pad into her room. Has she changed more? Will she leap on me and rip out my throat?

  The smell is rotten, cloying. My eyes water, and the darkness becomes runny in front of my eyes.

  “Audrey?” I whisper again.

  “I wish I had longer,” a small voice says from the shadows of the bed covers.

  I cannot see her.

  “I’m so cold,” she says.

  I climb into the bed next to her, afraid of her, yet afraid of what it’ll be like without her. She’s part of me. When she goes, it’ll prove I’m nothing special. I can go at any moment, as well.

  I snuggle against my sister’s back, her body icy through Dad’s silly oversized college t-shirt.

  I stoke her hair and try not to notice how brittle it’s become.

  “I’m not ready to turn,” Audrey says, her words drowning against her pillow.

  “I’m not ready for you to turn,” I say. “You gotta hang on. We’ll get through this. Keep taking the shots and keep fighting.”

  “Tired of fighting,” she whispers.

  I have nothing else to say. We lie there, silent for a while. Finally, I notice her breathing has become heavy and deep, and I leave her alone. When I get back to my own bed, I cannot sleep for the rest of the night.

  Chapter 15

  December 18

  Cindy

  Seeing Audrey looking like she does makes me sick to my stomach and to my heart. Since the end of school Friday, things have gotten much worse. She’s sick and still trying to hide it. Dad’s still jabbing her full of Phalanx, but I know he can see it's not working. Still, like Mom, he’s pretending we’re all going to live happily ever after.

  Half the time, I just want to puke.

  Aside from seeing Nick in the hallway, my only other bright spot is Mr. Carlton’s class. But even he’s lost something—the thing that made me squirm in my seat the first part of the school year. His “spark,” as Mom calls it. He hasn't shaved in at least three days and bruises have set in beneath his eyes.

  “Why do you think we're still coming to school?” he asks once the few of us who are still bothering to show up get settled.

  There’s a long, uncomfortable silence. Nobody wants to answer—saying it makes it real, just like I’ve said before. But finally, I answer because Mr. Carlton looks so used up that I don’t want him to have to say it.

  “It's because we are all living in denial, Mr. Carlton.”

  “Okay, Cindy. I think you’re right. But why?”

  I bite my lip, trying to think of the right words, but from the back, Darius Williams beat me to it. “Because it’s a defense mechanism. If we don’t tell ourselves everything is going to be fine, we’er all going to go crazy.”

  “What’s left of us, you mean,” Bree Anders whispers.

  “My mom says it’s the part of the five stages of dying,” Darius continues. His mother is the psychologist at Palm Dale Middle. “Denial, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance.”

  Mr. Carlton nods. “I think you guys are right. Do you think we are coping with the N-Virus as society as a whole or separately?”

  “I believe each person deals with it differently,” I offer. “I mean some families haven’t been hit as hard as others. Most of us are still in denial, just like Darius said.”

  “Exactly,” Darius agrees. “And there are others who have lost nearly everything. Those people are probably experiencing anger.”

  “Just say it, D-Dog. They’re damned pissed,” Cole Jagger chimes in from the seat just behind me. “My dad’s sick, and wandering around in The Pastures like one of the Walking Dead, and that makes me pissed.”

  I turn and glance at him. I don’t think any of us knew. He’s always been a quite tough-guy, a little more mature than the rest of us.

  “I’m sorry,” I whisper, knowing it does nothing to help. If my dad was in The Pastures, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t be sitting in this stupid, nearly-empty classroom.

  Cole nods. “Thanks. It’s not like I’m the only one, but still…”

  Does he mean Audrey?

  “Either way, I’ve decided this is a free day,” Mr. Carlton says. “You can do what you want to. Choose to read whatever you want, take out your iPads and watch a movie. Or we can just talk for the hour.”

  Avery Adams says, “I’m going to watch Dawn of the Dead on Netflix. We can learn more from that than we can from Shakespeare.” He’s such a horror and sci-fi geek, I just assumed he already knew what to do in the event of a zombie uprising.

  There's a rumble of hardy agreement. I spend most of the hour looking out the window, to the empty courtyard. It’s drizzling, cold, and overall pretty shitty outside, but better than trying to read something that doesn’t matter or talk about things that we can’t control. Or worse, talk about stupid things that no longer matter.

  At the end of the class, Mr. Carlton hands out a week’s worth of reading and discussion assignments. “I don’t know why you continue to come here—it’s dangerous. Shit, (I’ve never heard a teacher swear before, but extraordinary circumstances and all that…) you people blow off school for snow flurries around here, but show up during the zombie apocalypse. We’ll meet on Scype on Tuesdays and Thursdays. 1:00. I assume everyone can get Scype, correct?”

  There’s a murmur of agreement.

  “The numbers and information is on the assignment packet.”

  “Can I be naked?” someone from the back of the room asks. A male voice—typical.

  “Try to be fully clothed,” Mr. Carlson answers, “at least from the waist up.

  ***

  Things hit the fan out in the hallway just after lit class, when Audrey sort of lumbers passed, looking more than a little out of it—she’s especially tired today, she mentioned in the car on the way to school. She insisted on driving, but I’m thinking it’s not such a great idea to ride with an almost-zombie. I don’t mean to sound cold, but sometimes, I feel that being cold is the only way a person can adapt and survive this.

  She’s doesn’t say anything, which is definitely not like her. Audrey is the center of attention, no matter whether she’s in the hall, the class, the mall, or on the sidelines. As I mentioned, her bitch-posses is down to only two, and those two seem to be backups—clone cheerleaders who were cast to understudy roles from the beginning, and eager for an opening in the main, bird-brained clique.

  “Look at her. She’s turning in into one of them, and yet she’s still here.” Tommy says, when she’s just out of earshot. Still, it’s loud enough for everyone else to hear,

  Everyone else includes Nick, who pushes me aside before I can stop him, and maybe I wasn’t going to stop him, anyway. Before I know it, he and Tommy are on the floor rolling around like maniacs, fists flying, sneakers kicking up.

  The crowd tightens around and I push forward. Nick is straddling Tommy’s chest, but I need to stop him before he gets hurt—Tommy outweighs him by at least twenty pounds, so in a moment, the momentum will change. I’m just amazed Tommy’s asshole clone entourage (similar to Audrey’s bitch-posse) hasn’t tried to intervene. Funny how a little thing like an epidemic changes peoples’ behavior.

  “Don’t, Nick. He’s not worth this. He’s not worth anything!” I shout.

  I tug at his arm, but he shrugs me away. I could’ve been a baby, for all I was doing to stop him. His fist connects with Tom
my’s mouth, and blood comes slow and thick.

  “Stop it now, you two idiots!” Mr. Carlton snatches Nick off of Tommy, and then pulls Tommy to his feet by the front of his shirt.

  “Look at you!” he snarls, planting himself between them. “You have no idea how stupid this is.”

  “You as good as killed her, you shit!” Nick says, glaring at Tommy.

  Tommy lunges at Nick, but Mr. Carlton shoves him back, although he barely comes up to Tommy’s chin. “Enough.” He turns to Nick. “Both of you.”

  Tommy smiles, revealing a mouthful of bloody teeth, and the little hairs on my arms prickle. For a moment, he looks just like he’s infected. I shiver, and then touch Nick’s shoulder. “It’s doesn’t matter, Nick. Not anymore.”

  Nick turns to me, the rage still evident on his face. “But it does…”

  “No. It doesn’t,” I whisper, taking his hand. I lead him away from the stupid, staring Palm Dale High School leftovers.

  ***

  Ten minutes later, I realize I’ve left my phone on my desk in Mr. Carlton’s classroom. I never do that—forget things, but my mind’s been going in circles since we learned we’re no longer required to show for class. Another nail in the coffin of normalcy, I suppose.

  The shit’s gettin’ real. Someone said that once, trying to be funny. Looking back, it’s not funny at all. Besides, the shit’s been real for months. It was real the day that first infected rolled into the E.R., whether we wanted to believe it or not.

  Mr. Carlton is bent over his desk with his face in his hands. He jerks his head up, startled when I enter, and drags his palms across his eyes.

  “I’m…I’m sorry, Mr. Carlson. I forgot my phone.” I feel awkward, having caught him crying like that.

  “No. It’s fine, Cindy.”

  I hurry to my desk and snatch up the phone, dropping and spilling my bag in the process. “Shit,” I mutter, bending to scoop up everything. Then I add, “sorry,” my face growing hot. What the hell? At the end of the world, I’m going to worry about swearing in front of my teacher?