The End of All Things

by Lissa Bryan

  Carly didn’t speak again until they stopped at noon and that was to ask Justin if he wished for her to gather kindling for a fire.

  They treated one another with cool, distant politeness—like two strangers on a train forced to interact. That evening, when they set up the tent, Carly didn’t ask him to find other accommodations, but she turned her back on him as soon as he entered and didn’t respond to his “good night.”

  And so it went for the next week. Justin kept trying to find ways to break the ice, and just as he had decided on something, he was reminded it was probably for the best, as much as it hurt. He missed Carly’s smiles. He missed the sound of her sweet soprano singing Monty Python songs. He missed her responding with movie quotes, her little jokes, her gentle coaxing when he fell into one of his dark moods. He smiled as he thought of the last prank she’d pulled on him—stuffing a rubber frog into his sleeping bag, but his smile died when he realized she might not ever do something like that again with him.

  It was the longest damned week of his life.

  One afternoon, they turned a corner in the road and came upon a man and woman walking down the center line. The man was pushing a wheelbarrow heaped with goods under a tarp, and he turned to face them when he heard the clip-clop of Shadowfax’s hooves. They stopped, waiting until Carly and Justin had caught up with them. Justin had his hand on his pistol, the other hovering near his knife, but the man raised both hands as a sign of harmlessness, and the woman stood there, staring dumbly at them, her thin white face half-concealed behind her lank black hair.

  “Hey there,” the man said with gregarious cheer. He was in his mid-forties or so, dressed in an ill-fitting black suit with a stained plaid tie. He looked like a stereotypical used car dealer or a shady lawyer.

  Sam inched up to stand in front of Carly. A patch of hair between his shoulder blades stood on end, and every muscle was tense, but he didn’t growl. He glanced up at Justin, and Justin gave him a nod. “Hello,” Justin replied.

  “Lookin’ to trade?”

  “Depends on what you have.”

  “Oh, a bit of this and that. Name’s Jeremiah. This here is Marcy. Say hello, Marcy.”

  The woman just stared. Jeremiah picked up her hand and flopped it in a little wave. “Her name ain’t really Marcy,” he said with a wink, as though he were certain Justin would find it as amusing as he did. “I don’t know what her real name is ‘cause she don’t talk. Marcy was my ex-wife’s name. It’s a lot easier not having to remember a new one.”

  “I see.” Justin kept his face carefully blank though disgust and horror roiled in his gut. His hand fell away from his gun. Jeremiah wasn’t dangerous, though he made Justin’s skin crawl. “What do you want to trade?”

  Carly put her bike’s kickstand down and went over to take Marcy by the hand. “Why don’t we go over and sit down and have a nice chat while the men are trading?” She pulled the woman across the road to a grassy bank, and they sat down together. Carly took a comb out of her pocket and began to work on Marcy’s tangled hair.

  “You got any birth control pills?” Jeremiah asked. “I don’t know if she was a retard before the Crisis or not, so I’d rather she not get knocked up.”

  Justin cringed at his terminology and thought it would be a mercy for the woman as well. “I do. What are you offering?”

  “I got whiskey. Good shit, too. Bushmills.”

  “A bottle per pack?”

  Jeremiah whistled. “That seems pretty steep.”

  “A kid will cost you more.” Justin wasn’t inclined to be generous. Sam trotted over to sit down beside Carly as though he had come to the same conclusion about Jeremiah that Justin had: smarmy, not dangerous.

  “True, that,” Jeremiah said, after a moment’s consideration. “All right.”

  Justin checked the cap of each bottle to make sure it hadn’t been opened. They exchanged six bottles for six packets of pills. “She prob’ly won’t last longer than that,” Jeremiah said with an indifferent shrug when Justin questioned the number. “It’s a fuckin’ chore to get her to eat, and half the time, she pukes it up.” Jeremiah stashed his pills away into a bag. “What do you want for the woman?”

  Justin brightened at the thought. Yes, a present for Carly. That would be nice. “She might like some chocolate. Or a book, if you have one.”

  Jeremiah chuckled. “That’s not what I meant. I meant I want to buy her from you. How much?”

  Justin had joked about it with Carly, and truthfully, it was something he expected in this new world, but it still came as a small shock to hear it. Women’s liberation had died during the Infection. In this new world, power and strength determined status.

  Justin’s gorge rose a little as he thought of this creep so much as leering in Carly’s direction. “She’s not for sale.” Justin said this through clenched teeth and his hand drifted, seemingly of its own accord, toward the gun on his hip.

  Jeremiah didn’t seem to notice how close Justin was to murder. “You sure? I’d be willing to make it worth your while.”

  Justin didn’t trust himself to respond.

  “What about for an hour of her time?” Jeremiah licked his lips, and his eyes flicked over to where Carly sat, holding a one-sided conversation as she combed the woman’s hair. Marcy stared ahead, her eyes as blank and empty as a doll’s. Justin thought it was a small mercy, given her situation.

  “Absolutely not.”

  “Two cases.”

  “I said no,” Justin snapped. He was a fraction of an inch from losing his temper. He wondered for a moment how Carly would take it if he decided to shoot Jeremiah on general principles. He called to her, “Come on, we’re leaving.”

  Jeremiah muttered under his breath and went over to pull Marcy from the ground. He gave her a shove to get her walking, and the two of them started off down the road.

  Carly put her comb back in her pack. Her eyes were troubled. “Justin, we can’t leave that poor woman with that man.”

  “What do you want me to do, Carly?” Justin tried to keep the tension from his voice but was only somewhat successful. “Do you want to keep her and take care of her ourselves? Of course, I’ll have to kill him to get her away from him.” Not that he’d mind, but he thought Carly might.

  Carly winced. He could see the struggle in her eyes as her old morality continued to war with her new understanding of this brutal world. Just like the child who had peeked through the curtains as his father tried to bargain with useless metal, they couldn’t save everyone they encountered. They couldn’t feed everyone. They couldn’t protect everyone.

  Carly looked down and nodded. They mounted their bikes and set off again, quickly passing Marcy and Jeremiah. Carly didn’t look at either of them as they passed. She pedaled hard until they were far ahead, and each time he glanced her way, Justin could see her eyes were damp.

  Shadowfax and Sam both had to trot to catch up to them. She took one hand off the handlebars to dash the back of it across her eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” Justin said. His primary responsibility was to Carly and he couldn’t apologize for making a decision that would help keep her alive in this brutal new world. Perhaps he was apologizing for how hard decisions like that were on her, on her soft heart. But that was Carly, and he wouldn’t want her to change for anything.

  That night, he heard her sniffle softly on her side of the tent, and he longed to pull her into his arms and comfort her, but he couldn’t. He stared up at the top of the tent and listened to her cry herself to sleep.

  They couldn’t go on like this. Justin rolled over and gazed at Carly’s sleeping face. She was frowning slightly, as though she couldn’t escape her sadness, even in the realm of dreams.

  Justin was self-aware enough to recognize his avoidance of relationships stemmed from the fact that everyone he’d ever loved had abandoned him. That was bound to leave scars. And while he didn’t think Carly was a fickle woman, there was little doubt in his mind he wasn’t good enough for her and
she’d probably rethink a relationship with him once she had other options. Someone her own age, someone less scarred both physically and mentally, someone who could be emotionally available to her.

  But if he was already hurting Carly by his refusal, did it make sense to refuse the happiness from being with her? Carter’s words about life being too short to turn down chances at happiness floated through his mind.

  Maybe it had been inevitable from the beginning. That was the thought which kept him up late into the night.

  Chapter Six

  Carly walked with her hands fluttering in front of her, her feet carefully shuffling over the ground. Justin’s blindfold blocked out every shred of light, and despite his steadying hands on her shoulders, she was afraid she’d trip or run into something.

  The past few weeks had been very difficult on her. She was depressed for the first time in her life. Justin’s polite, impersonal treatment made her chest ache with loneliness. She missed the man who had teased and laughed with her. She missed playing poker with Justin by the fire and belting out 80s love songs at the top of their voices as they biked down these deserted roads. She missed his pranks. He had once sworn with wide and innocent eyes he had no idea how that rubber frog she put into his sleeping bag had ended up in her oatmeal bowl. She missed his stories of his foul-mouthed commanding officer and the hijinks he and his fellow soldiers had gotten into during The Unit’s training. She missed their easy camaraderie most of all.

  She lost her appetite and could only pick at her food. By the time they reached Edmonton, Carly needed a new wardrobe because everything she owned was hanging off her thin frame. Even her snug sports bras had to be replaced, and Carly didn’t take as much care to select comfortable undergarments this time. She just grabbed things from the rack of the store they stopped at, barely looking at them other than to confirm the size. She would later regret that when she was poked by underwires and scratched by clasps.

  Carly knew Justin was worried about her, but that was a distant concern on the horizon of her mind and made little impression. He wanted to give her medication. She caught him once, speculatively eyeing a bottle of Prozac, but she was pretty sure there wasn’t a pharmaceutical cure for situational depression. Her circumstances were the problem, not a chemical imbalance.

  They were entering the more populated areas of Canada, and little towns dotted the road. There were also more traffic jams, some that stretched for miles, and accidents that blocked the roads, sometimes with the victims still inside. Carly knew better than to look into the interior of any car, but sometimes she caught an accidental glimpse, and she would see those bodies in her dreams.

  Except for quick forays to scavenge and replace supplies, Justin kept them out of towns and cities as much as possible. They saw more people as they neared the border and though they hadn’t had another violent incident, Justin was wary. Most of the travelers wanted to trade. To trade goods, to trade news, to trade advice.

  Sam took his cues from Justin and growled if anyone got too close. People were afraid of him, but Carly still saw him as a puppy. After all, Sam had just lost the last of his milk teeth. At the rate he was growing, though, he was going to be massive when he was mature. He no longer seemed to like Justin, as if he somehow knew his human was acting so strangely because of him. When Justin threw the tennis ball for him one day, Sam had gone to retrieve it and then walked around Justin to drop it in the bed of the wagon.

  Carly plodded along. Her days fell into a bland sameness. She woke when he told her, ate mechanically, rode her bike in silence, stopped when he told her, went to bed when he erected the tent, and slept like the dead. She wished she could spend more time asleep, more time away from this dreary world. In her dreams sometimes, she replayed the memories of their fun times together, and she would wake with tears on her cheeks.

  “I have a surprise for you,” Justin had said that afternoon.

  Carly had looked up without much interest. They had stopped on the outskirts of a small town, and Justin had disappeared for an hour or so after setting up their camp. Justin returned to move around some of their supplies in the wagon to create a small space for Carly to sit, and then he took out a long black piece of cloth and tied it around her eyes. She didn’t object; she felt only a mild curiosity as to what he was doing.

  Justin biked them into town, and she heard him open a door and pull the bike and wagon inside. He drew her to her feet and led her forward. Carly took a deep breath and smelled . . . it couldn’t be . . .

  Carly heard Justin tell Sam to stay with the wagon. She could just imagine the look on Sam’s face. A little haughty, a little hostile. A look that said, “I’ll do it, but only because my human hasn’t kicked you out of the pack.”

  Justin removed Carly’s blindfold, and she saw they were in a library. A small one, just a single floor, but there were hundreds of books around her. Carly took another deep breath of the scent of books and sighed. She’d missed this smell.

  On the floor, Justin had laid out a blanket with a picnic basket. A bottle of wine and two glasses stood by it. A battery-operated CD player sat beside it, and pillows taken from the couches and chairs were scattered around it. And in the center, there was a vase with a single wildflower sticking out from the top.

  Justin reached down and turned the CD player on, and Leonard Cohen began to croon. When had she mentioned how much she liked Leonard Cohen? She must have for Justin to know, but she couldn’t remember.

  Carly turned to him, blinking in confusion.

  “Please, sit down.” Justin gestured to the cushions and Carly plopped down on one of them and put another on her lap. Justin sat down beside her and took one of her hands into his. “I can’t stand seeing you like this, Carly. It tears at my heart. You’ve been so unhappy lately, and I know I’m the direct cause of it.”

  He reached out and stroked a hand over her hair. Carly froze. She barely breathed. That simple touch meant so much, and she was afraid to do anything which might cause him to draw away.

  His eyes were so warm that Carly’s heart skipped a beat. “I brought you here to try to show you how sorry I am that I hurt you. I’ll make it up to you, Carly. I swear I will. I thought distancing myself was the right thing to do—for your sake. I thought I would end up making you unhappy. But cutting myself off from you was worse. I never wanted to hurt you, honey. I hope you know that.”

  Carly nodded. She’d known all along. In his mind, Justin was saving her, trying to spare her from wanting something that, in his mind, could never be.

  He looked down and a hint of a flush appeared on his cheekbones. He looked a little nervous—a little uncertain—a way Carly had never seen him before. It made her ache to throw her arms around him and tell him that everything would be all right. “I care for you, Carly. Deeply. I—I like you. I’ve liked you from the moment we met. And if that’s the foundation of a good relationship, like you say, then we have a solid foundation indeed.”

  “What do you want from me, Justin?” Hope was growing in her heart, like a seedling pushing from soil warmed by the spring sunshine, but she needed him to be clear with her. She didn’t think her heart could take being crushed again.

  Justin’s hand fell away, and she felt cold where his hand had been. “I . . . I want things to go back to the way they were. I want to be your friend again. I want to laugh and sing with you, and I want to hold you when you cry.”

  It was so hard to say the words. It took courage she didn’t even know she had, but she asked, “Is that all?”

  “I don’t think I can stop there,” he said, and the flush that stained his cheekbones deepened, but he held her eyes steadily. She knew this had to be difficult for him, to bare the heart he had hidden so carefully behind protective walls.

  Her heart skipped a beat, and she tried to push back the rising hope. “But you would, if you could.”

  “I meant it when I said I’m not right for you, Carly. You should have someone your own age, someone who doesn’t
have the shadows I do. Someone normal.”

  “Someone ‘normal’ would probably be dead by now. You asked me once if I believed in God. Do you remember?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you believe?”

  Justin hesitated. “I’m really not sure.”

  “But you’ll at least admit the possibility?”

  He nodded.

  “What if God led you to me? What if there was a reason you were supposed to save me? What if there was a reason you came to Alaska this summer? Were you at your house in Chicago before that?” It was something she’d been mulling over. Of all of the places in the world Justin could have ended up, how had he managed to be in exactly the right place at the right time to see her scurry from her apartment to the store on one of the few instances she had ventured out? It didn’t seem possible to have happened by chance alone.

  Justin shook his head. “I was back in Omaha. I felt this . . . compulsion to see it again, though I can’t explain why. Afterward, I decided to do the Deadhorse Rally on a whim. I arrived earlier than expected and had some time to kill, so I came to visit some of the places I’d never been.”

  “My point is . . .” Carly took a deep breath. “What if we were meant to be together?”

  “Meant to be together in what way?” That uncertainty was back, and Carly realized that Justin needed her to bare her heart, just like she needed the same from him. There could be no misunderstanding, no words left unspoken.

  “In whatever way seems natural to us, I suppose. If we weren’t meant to . . . have a relationship, would we want to? I mean, you’d think if we weren’t supposed to have anything to do with one another, these sorts of feelings would never have developed. If we really weren’t suited for each other, wouldn’t it just be . . . you know . . . physical?” Carly could feel her cheeks heat up a little from her last words.

  “I can’t imagine God would want a guy like me with a girl like you.” Justin shook his head. “I’m too old, too damaged. I wish I could be good enough for you, Carly. I really do.”