The Girl at the End of the World

by Richard Levesque

  Maybe she sensed my ambivalence.

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Need to see what’s left for me to do here first. I mean…if I really am cured, if that serum really worked, whoever’s left should know about it. Here, or in D.C. or Atlanta.”

  “There are still people there?”

  “Supposedly.”

  I let that sink in for a moment. “Well,” I finally said, “either way, we need to get you out of there.”

  “You already have the code, right?” she said.

  “I do,” I said, a little pride at my cleverness creeping into my voice.

  She just raised an eyebrow. “No other way you could’ve gotten this far.” She turned around and went to her cot. From under it, she pulled a little leather case, unsnapped the cover and took something out. Then she came back to the window and talked me through the menus on the control panel that would open the sealed box on her side of the glass. She held her military identification card up to the window and then placed it inside the box that the doctor would have used to access a patient’s samples.

  “Take it,” Muñoz said.

  I hesitated a second and then entered the code. The wall between us vibrated and hummed before the little drawer on my side of the window popped open and I had her identification card in my hand. “Patricia Muñoz,” it read next to a very serious looking, grainy picture of her.

  “Okay,” I said. “I’ll be back.”

  “You better be. Leave me in here and I’m gonna haunt you.”

  We nodded to each other like we would have in a high school hallway, and then I turned away. I checked on Kayla through the window and then passed through the door again.

  Getting back into the gray zone now was a snap. The card reader took her ID, and then I was inside a chamber identical to the one I’d found the oxygen in. Passing through was no big deal either; it didn’t matter that much if you went from sterile to contaminated as long as the doors were shut behind you. Going the other way was the more crucial operation. I left the oxygen behind and entered the gray zone on the other side of the airlock.

  I wanted to check on Kayla first, but went past her door to the entrance to Muñoz’s cell instead. Seconds later, the door popped open and we were face to face. For just a moment, I worried that I might have made a mistake in trusting her. Here she was in front of me, with no glass between us. If she’d been faking when I talked to her, if she was still loyal to the military and the ideas they’d drilled into her about germ warfare and national defense, then I was in trouble and could expect to be subdued and dragged inside the cell to wait for the rest of the soldiers and Sharma’s team.

  But she just smiled at me. “Thanks,” she said.

  I held out the ID card. “Do you need it back?”

  She thought about it for a second. “You might need it still. I can get another one.”

  I raised an eyebrow.

  “A lot of us died. There’s a lot of dead soldiers’ stuff in the barracks. Bound to be an ID or two in there.”

  “Okay. Thanks.”

  “Good luck.”

  “You, too.”

  And then she was gone, bolting down the hallway for the airlock and the white zone. I didn’t know what her plan was, or even what mine should be. It was only after the door had closed behind her that I thought to ask about the best way to get out of the compound. But the door had already closed, and I knew that once she’d started the decontamination process, it wouldn’t open again from this side until she had gone.

  I had figured this much out on my own, I told myself. I’d figure out the rest, too.

  Only one more door to open, and then I was in the baby’s cell. She lay there awake, just looking up at the ceiling. They had her dressed in one of the same little one-piece outfits that Dolores and I had gathered from the store the night she was born. It seemed like an awfully long time ago.

  “Hi baby,” I said.

  She blinked and made a little noise at me. I was surprised at how much bigger she seemed; we’d been held at the base for something like three weeks, and I felt like she had turned into a different baby somehow. She looked more alert, and her nose wasn’t so squished. During our time in Donovan’s bunker, all three of us had taken turns holding and feeding and changing, but here it had all been Dolores, and I felt like I was coming back to Kayla as a stranger. All the confidence I’d had in my ability to step into Dolores’ shoes just evaporated as I looked into the little face.

  “You remember me?” I asked and gave her my finger to play with. She grabbed it and squeezed, and that made me feel better right away. “Gonna go bye-bye,” I said and took my finger back to see what supplies I could take with me.

  The soldiers had transferred everything they’d brought from Donovan’s bunker to Dolores’ cell, and then they’d moved it here when they’d taken Kayla away. The supplies had run low, though. On the floor behind the crib were a single unopened pack of diapers, two canisters of formula, and a bag of baby clothes. The bottles and nipples were probably in the bathroom area, but I suddenly didn’t care about that or the question of where I was going to get more supplies when these ran out. My eyes had darted over the little pile of baby things, and sticking out from under them was what looked like my black backpack.

  I went to the pile, and moved aside the bag of clothes. I hadn’t seen the soldiers with my backpack the night of our “rescue,” but they must have gathered it up with all the baby things; it had been with Dolores the whole time. Goosebumps ran up my arms as I pulled the zipper tab and found my things inside, including the photo of my family. I just looked at it for a moment, not tearing up the way you’d think I would. It felt strange looking at it. When I’d been twelve or thirteen, I’d gone through a box of books that had been stored in my closet, and at the bottom had discovered a Barbie doll that I’d lost when I was around eight. I remember wailing about that doll when it had first gone missing. Coming across it years later, there wasn’t any feeling of elation or relief; it was just a curiosity, like I’d found something in an antique shop that had belonged to me in another lifetime. It wasn’t mine anymore. I wasn’t the same person who had lost it, and I no longer felt connected to it. Looking at the photo didn’t feel quite that strange, but almost. Not only had I gotten used to the idea that I’d never see it again, but I had come so far now from the girl I’d been in that picture, and the faces in the frame seemed like people I’d only heard about or dreamed about and never really known. I still missed them all terribly, but my day-to-day life had become about so much more than missing them. I was glad to have it back, of course, and I touched a finger to each of the faces, even my own dimpled smile, before slipping the photo back inside. Then I zipped the backpack closed, knowing that if I lost it again, I’d be fine.

  I gathered bottles and nipples, formula and clothes, and about ten disposable diapers. Most of these I shoved into the backpack, discarding a couple of my own belongings from my days at the observatory to make room for Kayla’s things. I slipped my arms through the straps, turned and scooped the baby up, holding her against my shoulder. “Here we go,” I cooed, and then we were on our way.

  Back in the gray hallway, I went right for the airlock again, following the steps Muñoz had taken just minutes before. It was awkward to get a new oxygen canister out of the storage locker while holding the baby, but I managed. Testing the tank and checking that it was mostly full, I started the airflow and then tried holding the mask to Kayla’s mouth. It covered just about her whole face and made her start crying. There wasn’t anything else I could do, though, so I started the process on the touchscreen to get the chamber decontaminated.

  The noises and all the strange sensations must have been scary. Kayla cried a lot, especially when the air pressure changed, and I tried to comfort her, but short of holding her close and making happy sounds, there wasn’t much I could do. In the back of my mind had begun to grow the possibility that the soldiers might be back on this level any second, that the decontam
ination process in the white zone might have been completed and they’d be on their way to reclaim it from me—maybe led by Muñoz, maybe stepping over her body. Their guns weren’t something I could argue with, and I felt a chill at the thought of being put back into one of the cells.

  “Not gonna happen,” I said, more to myself than to Kayla. But she made a little gurgling sound back at me, and I gave her a nervous smile.

  When the lock clicked open, I stood there for just a second, steeling myself for what I might see on the other side. And then I pulled the door open.

  I was still alone in the long white corridor. Why the soldiers hadn’t put on their hazard suits and come to get Chad and me under control again was beyond me. My only thought was that they were in a panic, maybe trying to save Dr. Sharma and probably assuming that I was still locked safely away. The soldier who’d killed the old man had shut me inside our cellblock, and they probably had no reason to assume I wasn’t still in there, just waiting. Maybe they thought Chad and I would die like the old man, and probably Dolores, and so we were the least of their worries. I assumed there were cameras that had caught my actions, but maybe the base was so short-staffed that no one was monitoring them, especially with the breach in their precious white zone. At any rate, I was still on my own.

  Taking a deep breath from the mask, I held it as tightly to Kayla’s mouth as I could, one of the tank’s straps over my shoulder so the canister dangled off of me. I should have thought to strap the tank on completely and let the backpack hang instead, but it was too late now to rearrange. I moved as quickly as I could back to the door I’d first come out of, leading to the gray zone behind the old man’s cell.

  It seemed to take forever—between the awkwardness of the tank bouncing against my side, the baby crying and trying to squirm away from the oxygen mask, me holding my breath, and my need to look and listen for any sign of returning soldiers.

  But we made it, and once the door had closed and sealed behind me, I leaned against the wall and let the tank slide down my arm to rest on the floor. Kayla still cried, but now I didn’t care.

  “We’re gonna be okay,” I said, more to myself than her.

  I just breathed in the air, ignoring the crying and the grating sound of the alarm that still echoed through the hallways. Then I straightened up and moved into the gray zone.

  When I got to the door of Chad’s cell, I froze. I had left it open for him; now it was closed. Was he still inside? Had he shut the door himself to keep his illness contained? Or had someone else shut the door…Sharma, one of the soldiers, maybe even Muñoz? I hesitated only a moment, picturing myself setting the baby down in the old man’s cell and creeping through the broken window to check out the rest of the cells. But then I thought of seeing Chad through the glass, thought of having to watch him suffer or finding him dead already. It was more than I could take.

  53137. The door clicked, and I opened it, the baby held close to my chest.

  “Chad?” I called out tentatively.

  He didn’t answer, and I held my breath without meaning to as I entered the chamber.

  He sat on his cot, his back to me, his neck bent forward. He had his elbows on his knees and his forehead rested on his hands, like he was deep in thought. Or grieving.

  “I told you not to come in here,” he said.

  “I know.”

  “You’re so stubborn.”

  “It’s one of my better traits,” I said, hoping he’d laugh.

  I approached carefully, still not sure that he was all right.

  “Dolores is dead.”

  I looked at the windows. There was no blood on the glass, but that didn’t mean anything. Dolores could have died on the other side of her partition, banging on the door to get out. I had to look down again, couldn’t say anything for a few seconds.

  “You watched her suffer,” I finally managed.

  “She saved me,” he said. “When I was sick…before Donovan.”

  “You couldn’t have done anything for her,” I said, hoping it sounded helpful. “No one could have.”

  “I tried.”

  He stood up then and turned toward me. I gasped at the sight of all the blood on his shirt. No! I wanted to scream, thinking it was his. But his face was clean, his nose too.

  Then I understood. “You went to her,” I said, my voice quavering as I pictured him running along the same corridor where Sharma had led me and Dolores on our first night here.

  “All I could do was hold her while she died. I couldn’t even understand what she was saying.”

  He had tears in his eyes, and I wanted to hug him, would have even with the baby in my arms and the blood on his shirt, but as I stepped toward him, he took a step back.

  “I don’t want to watch you go through the same thing,” he said. “Especially not because of me.”

  The cot was between us. When I took another step toward it, he didn’t retreat any farther, so I kept going, clearing the corner of the cot to stand right in front of him. If he really was infected, this put me in a vulnerable position, but if he was losing his mind, I still believed there was enough of Chad in there to keep him from attacking me with the baby in my arms.

  “I don’t think anything like that’s going to happen,” I said, my voice soft, reassuring. “I don’t think you’re sick. I think you and me got the same dose. I think we’re going to be okay.”

  He looked up, his eyes just passing by Kayla, barely seeming to recognize her.

  “You don’t know that,” he said.

  “You don’t know either. You don’t know when you’re sick.” I shifted Kayla to the crook of my left arm and lifted my right hand to touch his cheek just above the downy growth of beard.

  “You should go.”

  He sounded so sad. I leaned forward.

  “I can’t,” I said, my voice just above a whisper. “I’m here now. If you’re sick, then I’m sick, too, now. And you know what?”

  “What?”

  “I wouldn’t want it any other way.”

  I leaned forward, my hand slipping down to his neck. Then I leaned in and kissed him, just lightly.

  “I can’t go on alone,” I said, tears in my eyes. “I can’t go back to living like I was before you came. If it means we die, then we die.”

  And I kissed him again, longer this time, deeper. And he was kissing me back, his arms around me. It almost made me forget where we were, what we still had to do. All my worries about his loyalty, about how he might have felt about Muñoz…all of it just dropped away, and it was just he and I together, connected.

  I don’t know how long it lasted, but it couldn’t have been more than a few seconds, not with Kayla starting to squirm in my arms as I held her between us. I broke away and smiled at him as I wiped away my tears.

  “You okay?” he asked.

  I nodded. “Yeah.” Then a nervous little laugh escaped me. To say that I was “okay” was a ridiculous understatement. I still didn’t know what was going to happen, didn’t know if one of us might still get sick, didn’t know how we’d get out of here alive. But now I knew we’d be going together, and that was really all that mattered. It was the only thing that had mattered for a long time now; I just hadn’t been ready to admit it to myself.

  He shook his head, kind of in disbelief. “I’ve wanted to do that for a long time.”

  “Well why didn’t you?”

  “I could never get you alone.”

  I almost laughed again at that, at the absurdity of it. In a world with almost no one left alive, he’d still had a tough time finding some privacy with me.

  “Come on,” I said. “Enough worrying about who’s got what disease. I think we can get out of here now.”

  He stood up with me. “You don’t think they’ll try and stop us?”

  “They might. They haven’t yet, though. I don’t think there’s many soldiers left here. Muñoz said that Sharma was the only doctor.”

  “Muñoz? You talked to her?”

&nbs
p; I gave him a quick rundown of what had happened since I’d left him before.

  “You really think she’s got immunity now?”

  “That, or she always had it to begin with.”

  We had shoved the remaining food rations into the backpack while I talked, and now we each took a bottle of water as we prepared to leave his cell. I looked away for a second when he peeled off his bloody shirt and took another one from the supply closet along the back wall.

  “You want me to take her?” he asked once he popped his head through the clean shirt, and I handed Kayla over before slipping on the backpack. She only weighed maybe ten pounds, but I was glad to pass her off to Chad. Then we went into the hallway, only getting a few steps from the doorway before we stopped and exchanged a worried glance, each of us practically frozen mid-step.

  “You smell it, too?” I asked. He nodded, and we both looked up.

  I couldn’t see it at first against the gray paint, but when I’d looked at the ceiling long enough, I began to make out thin tendrils of smoke coming through the vents.

  “They trying to gas us?” Chad asked.

  I thought about it for a second and then shook my head. “The place is on fire,” I said.

  “How?”

  “Who knows? The fungus maybe…people going nuts already. Maybe something else. We better go.”

  We moved faster then and made it to the elevator doors. I punched the call button.

  “You sure it’s safe?” Chad asked.

  “No.”

  I thought about all the times I’d ever been in elevators and how every single one of them had a sign outside warning you not to use it during a fire. There was always a little stick figure drawing of a person taking the stairs instead.