The End of All Things

by Lissa Bryan

  He took deep breaths and tried to slow his rapid heartbeat. A few minutes later, he felt subdued enough to return and experienced the same flame as soon as he saw her again. Carly’s hair was tumbled and tousled, and she had her arms hugged around her midriff. That worried wrinkle creased her forehead, and her lower lip trembled the way it did when she was struggling not to cry.

  Doomed.

  “I’m sorry, Carly,” Justin said. He rubbed the back of his neck. “Shit . . . I didn’t mean to . . .”

  “I’m sorry, too.” Carly hugged herself tighter. “I shouldn’t have . . . It won’t happen again. Please don’t be mad at me.”

  “Mad at you? Why would I be mad at you?”

  “Because I made you kiss me.” Carly released her grip on her ribs and wrung her hands, twisting her fingers in anxiety. “I’m sorry. I—” Her words died away as she hung her head.

  “Sweetheart, you didn’t make me do anything.” Fuck, he was going about this badly. Carly looked even more upset at this point than she had when he first walked back into camp.

  “Sit down, Carly,” he said. “We need to talk.”

  She took a seat in one of the folding canvas chairs they set up every evening, so close their arms were almost touching. Justin immediately regretted the proximity and wished he’d put his own chair on the other side of the campsite. She pulled her knees up, and her bright purple painted toenails gleamed in the light from the fire. She’d talked him into painting them for her. He remembered the warmth of her foot resting on his thigh, and the hunger returned.

  Justin rubbed the back of his neck again until the skin started feeling raw. “In these kind of survival situations people sometimes believe they have . . . feelings for the person who is helping them through it. Do you understand, Carly? It’s just the way the human mind works. Your feelings of gratitude get all mixed up in the body’s survival drive. It can make you think you have . . . certain feelings. And I . . . uh . . . I took advantage of that.”

  Carly was silent. She stared down at the ground in front of her chair. Red stained her cheekbones.

  “Please don’t be embarrassed,” Justin said. “There’s no need. It’s all perfectly normal, and it’s not your fault. I was wrong for what I did.”

  Carly leaned down and picked something up out of the grass. It looked like the tab from a soda can. She turned it in her fingers.

  “It’s natural,” Justin said lamely. “You’re a lovely girl, Carly, and well, in these kinds of situations, the human body has certain . . . drives. But I should have known better. I did know better. But I took advantage of you in a vulnerable moment, and I’m sorry.”

  The red had suffused her entire face.

  “Please don’t be embarrassed,” he repeated.

  Carly’s eyes flashed up to meet his, and he was shocked by the heat in them. “I’m not embarrassed. I’m pissed.”

  “What?”

  She jumped to her feet so fast, she knocked her chair over. “I don’t appreciate being told I don’t know what I’m feeling or my feelings aren’t real. The hell with you and your pop psychology bullshit!”

  And with that, Carly whirled, her hair fanning out in a rippled wave behind her, and marched into the tent. In a moment, his sleeping bag came flying out. “Find somewhere else to sleep!” she shouted.

  “Carly, wait, please—”

  “Piss off!” Carly zipped the tent with finality.

  Justin approached, his hands spread out in a silent plea. “Carly—”

  Sam, sitting in front of the tent like a Secret Service agent, growled at him. Justin blinked in surprise. He reached out a hand to the tent’s zipper and Sam’s growl became a snarl.

  “Great, now the wolf hates me, too,” Justin muttered, surprised to find how much that bothered him.

  Carly unzipped the tent and called for Sam. He gave Justin a last indignant look and went inside the tent with his human. She zipped the flap behind him, and he heard her huff as she flopped down on her sleeping bag.

  At a complete loss, Justin picked up his own bag and stumbled over beside the wagon. He spread it out, lay down on top of it, and stared up at the canopy of stars through the gaps between the trees. He had fucked up. And he had absolutely no idea how to go about fixing it.

  He put his hands over his face. Fucking doomed.

  Justin’s face was a mass of welts and bumps in the morning. Carly startled when she saw him.

  “Mosquitoes,” he murmured.

  “Didn’t you explain to them why they really didn’t want to bite you?” Carly asked in a deceptively sweet tone.

  He closed his eyes. “I’m sorry. I know I upset you, and I didn’t mean to—”

  Carly said nothing. She sat down in her chair and glared at the fire.

  “Breakfast will be ready in a few minutes,” Justin said.

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “You need to eat anyway. We’ve got a long day ahead of us.”

  “I’m getting really sick of you telling me what I need and what I feel.”

  Justin winced. “There isn’t anything I can say to make this better, is there?”

  “No.”

  Justin nodded. Perhaps it was better she be hurt sooner than later, when she might have let those feelings grow.

  The silence was painful.

  Justin glanced over at Carly. She stared straight ahead over the handlebars of her bike, her face set in a cold, stony expression that was somehow worse than tears. On her necklace, the soda can tab glimmered dully in the pallid light that strained through the gathering storm clouds.

  They’d have to stop soon, before the storm began. He opened his mouth to tell her, but closed it again, unsure of how to proceed. But he had to say something. The tension was driving him crazy. “Carly, can I at least apologize to you?”

  “Sure.” She nodded. “But it doesn’t change anything.”

  Justin inwardly winced, but she was right. It didn’t change anything. “We’d better stop before it starts to—”

  Before he could finish the sentence, the sky opened up and rain came down in dreary sheets. Within moments, they were soaked, chilled, and miserable.

  “Let’s stop and put up the tent,” Justin said. Thunder rumbled overhead. “It’s not a good idea to ride in this kind of weather.”

  “You said last night we’d reach Toad River today. I want to keep going.” She didn’t look in his direction as she spoke, and her voice was flat, without inflection.

  Justin hesitated for a moment before he agreed. The idea of sitting side by side in the tent, silent and grim, was unappealing, to say the least. He told himself they’d stop if he saw any lightning and went back to pedaling in silence, trying to think of something he could say to restore their easy camaraderie.

  Poor Sam seemed as miserable as the humans. He paused every so often to give his fur a vigorous shake. Shadowfax was the sole member of their group who didn’t seem to mind the rain. She followed along at a leisurely pace, pausing now and then to take a bite of a tasty plant.

  They ate a cold lunch, holding one of the tarps over their heads with one hand. Justin cursed himself a dozen times that day for forgetting to get them rain gear. Carly looked miserable. Her hair hung down her back in wet ropes, and her hands trembled with cold, but she insisted she didn’t want to stop.

  Late that afternoon, they saw a faux-log building beside the highway, and both let out simultaneous sighs of relief. It was something they once would have laughed at, but Carly looked away and pedaled faster toward the building. Justin accelerated as well and managed to catch hold of her arm before she opened the door. “Let me check it out first,” he said. After a moment, she nodded and stepped aside for him to pass through the door.

  Like many service stops in Canada, it offered multiple amenities. There was a store with a restaurant, and a post office was located on one side of the building with a separate entrance. Behind the main building, there were motel rooms and small cabins.

  Carl
y walked down to the post office doorway, and she and Sam huddled under its shelter to wait.

  The door to the store was locked, and Justin was too impatient to pick it. He selected a rock from the handy ornamental pile in front of the door and used it to smash the glass panel on the door before reaching inside to unlock it.

  The store was silent. Justin waited for a moment until his eyes adjusted to the darkness and then crept silently through the building. His senses and instincts told him there was no one inside—no one living, anyway— but he was cautious just the same.

  The store was small and charming, paneled in yellow pine and filled with a large variety of souvenirs. There was a little dining area with soda refrigerators and a cappuccino machine, and he wished he could find a way to turn it on for on for Carly, who’d spoken longingly of cappuccinos one morning.

  Baseball caps covered the entire ceiling, some with signatures on the bills. A dry erase board over a doorway announced they had over seven thousand of them. Justin wondered about the reason behind it as he headed to the counter to look for keys to the motel rooms and cabins behind the store. He supposed it was like the Sign Post Forest, travelers leaving their mark there, and he was surprised at the sadness the thought brought with it. He shook his head with a rueful smile as he walked back to the front door. Carly was having a greater influence on him than he’d thought.

  She was sitting with her back against the door, Sam lying beside her. They looked up at him with identical expressions of cool indifference, and Justin inwardly winced. “It’s fine. There are some dry clothes in there. Why don’t you go in and change while I check out the rooms?”

  “Get two,” Carly said. Her voice was short, and she didn’t look at him as she brushed by and headed toward the back of the store.

  “I won’t crowd you, Carly, but I don’t want to leave you alone, either. We’re getting closer to more populated areas and—”

  “Fine.” She didn’t pause in her stride. Sam followed right at her heels, but not before giving Justin a glare that said he knew just who to blame for his human’s bad mood.

  He was glad Carly had relented since there was only one cabin that wasn’t occupied by victims of the Infection. Justin wondered what had happened to their cars since the parking lot was empty. He wheeled his bicycle and the wagon around to the back of their cabin, where it would be hidden from the road.

  He went back into the store and heard Carly’s voice from the back of the room, where clothing hung from the walls on sloping pegs. Sam gave a soft whine. He was sniffing at a group of wolf pelts hanging from a hook. Carly grimaced.

  “Sorry, Sam,” she said. “I understand if you’re creeped out by it. I’d freak if I saw a bunch of human pelts on the wall, too.”

  Carly found an umbrella on the coat rack in the restaurant and opened it over her head as they stepped out of the gift shop and crossed the parking lot. She politely offered Justin shelter beneath it, but he waved it away. He led her to a small, wood-sided cabin behind a high privacy fence.

  “There’s plenty of room,” Justin said. “I won’t crowd you, Carly.”

  “I guess it doesn’t matter.” Carly pushed the door open. The walls were paneled in glossy pine with thick, dark gray carpet on the floor. There were two double beds, both covered with dark blue comforters.

  Justin went into the bathroom to change and turned on the tap. Nothing came out. He cursed under his breath. He’d hoped to be able to tell Carly she could take a shower, and then maybe she would smile at him again.

  He braced his arms on the counter for a moment and hung his head. He’d intended to spare her pain, but in the end, he’d hurt her just as badly as he feared he might if she became emotionally attached to him. Had he left it too late, he wondered. If he’d had that post-kiss conversation with her earlier, would it have prevented this strife?

  He met his eyes in the mirror and sighed. He had totally misjudged the situation and had ended up making it worse. Carly was very sensitive to any implication he thought she was naïve, and his clumsy explanation had hit all of the wrong buttons for her. He’d ended up hurting her—the very thing he’d hoped to prevent.

  He headed back into the bedroom and found her sitting on one of the beds, petting Sam absently. “The water’s off.”

  “I’ll go down to the lake for a bucket of water, then.”

  “I’ll take care of it.” Justin sat down on his bed and rubbed the back of his neck. “Can . . . Can I talk to you, Carly?”

  “All right.”

  “I truly am sorry. I didn’t mean to diminish or invalidate any of your feelings. You would certainly understand them better than I would, and I didn’t mean to imply that you wouldn’t. I was offering an explanation if those feelings seemed . . . inexplicable to you.”

  Carly took a deep breath. “I liked you, Justin. You’re smart. You’re funny. You’re kind and considerate. What I’m trying to say is that if I had any feelings for you, they weren’t just based on some survival instinct.”

  “ ‘Liked’? As in past tense?” He tried to keep his face expressionless, but she wasn’t looking at him anyway.

  “I don’t like you very much right now,” Carly said. She touched the small bump the necklace made beneath the collar of her T-shirt. “That may change again, but you hurt me, Justin. You hurt me badly. Give me credit for at least the amount of self-awareness necessary to parse out my own feelings.”

  “You took it to mean that I thought you were stupid. I never meant that. Never.” Justin raked a hand through his hair. He’d known it was how she felt, but hearing her say it was like a knife twisting in his guts. “It’s important you understand that. I know you’re not stupid. God, I’d never want to you to think I meant that. It’s just . . . Well, an attraction between us is natural given our situation, but we don’t make sense, Carly. In our old lives, you never would have looked at me twice.”

  “I’ve had time to get to know you.”

  “That’s just it, Carly. You don’t know me.” Justin took a deep breath. “You know my favorite music and where I grew up, but there’s a lot to me you don’t know. Things I don’t want to tell you. Things I’ve never told anyone. Things that . . . Things that might change your mind about me.”

  “I know who you are now. That’s all that matters.”

  She didn’t understand, but how could she? It wasn’t possible, unless he told her his ugly secrets, and he never wanted to do that. Even as he was trying to get her to understand why they could not be together, he couldn’t tell her. “I can never have anything but a physical relationship with you. I’m simply not capable of more.”

  “I don’t believe that.”

  He let out a humorless laugh. “Now who’s being dismissive?”

  Carly titled her head and regarded him silently for a moment. “Are you my friend, Justin?”

  It wasn’t a question he was prepared for. “I . . . Yes. Yes, I’m your friend.”

  “Then you are capable of something beyond the physical.”

  “That’s different.”

  Carly shook her head. “No, it’s not. My mom and dad always said the most important thing in any relationship was friendship. Infatuation may fade and passion may mellow, but friendship lasts forever. My mom was my dad’s very best friend, and he was hers. That’s what got them through the hard times.”

  Justin rose and walked over to gaze sightlessly out the window. “I wish I had known your father better. He sounds like a very interesting man.”

  “I think he would have liked you.”

  Justin gave a harsh laugh. “Are you kidding? He would have shot me for even glancing in your direction. And he would have been right to do it. I’m no good for you, Carly.” He returned to sit on the edge of his bed, leaning forward with his forearms braced on his knees. He stared at her until she finally met his eyes, though she broke her gaze away quickly.

  “Shouldn’t I be allowed to decide for myself?”

  “Yes, of course, but—” H
e stopped and dropped his head into his hands. “I’d just prefer it if you didn’t make this any harder than it has to be.”

  “Are you saying you would never want to have a relationship with me?” She lifted her hand to her necklace and caressed the soda can tab.

  Justin nodded. It was important she understand it, even though it hurt to say the words. “That’s what I’m saying. There won’t be that sort of relationship between us.”

  “Okay.” Carly stood and walked toward the door. She scooped her umbrella off the floor, and Sam hopped down to stand at her side.

  “Where are you going?”

  “Outside to check on Shadowfax.”

  Justin hated for her to go out there alone, but that was the point. She would need some time, some privacy, to collect her thoughts. “Please, don’t go far.”

  “I won’t.” She shut the door behind her, but not before he saw the moisture on her cheeks that hadn’t come from the rain.

  Justin had to do it, he reminded himself in the morning. Had to. He couldn’t let Carly set her hopes on something that could never be. He hadn’t lied when he said he couldn’t give her a relationship because a good relationship was based on honesty, openness, and trust—things he could never give her.

  But Carly stopped laughing. She stopped smiling. And some of the sunshine went out of his world as a result.

  In the morning, Carly was pale and subdued. They’d gathered up their gear and repacked the wagon in the light drizzle. He’d found two disposable plastic rain ponchos for them. “Better than nothing,” he’d said. Though not by much.

  They found Shadowfax grazing with a small herd of horses near the lake. Carly gave a soft, inarticulate cry at the sight and stepped forward as if to go fetch her horse back from its own kind.

  “Her choice, Carly.” Even as he said the words, he saw such hurt on her face he vowed to lasso the horse and drag her back if he had to.

  But Carly merely nodded and called, “Shadowfax, we’re leaving.” The horse looked up from her grazing and watched them wheel their bikes to the road. Carly mounted hers and didn’t look back, but her shoulders visibly sagged with relief when she heard the familiar sound of clopping hooves behind them.