At the End of Everything, page 13
My stomach drops. The annoyance makes way for nausea—and regret. I shouldn’t have done this. We’re good, still. We have food enough to make it through another week or so. We can cut our rations further. I could’ve waited. I could’ve gone out then. I should’ve asked Isaiah to find me the latest information on snare traps instead of relying on my memory. I did have him look up wild garlic bulbs to remind me how to forage those, but—
I don’t realize that I’ve growled until Sofia comes closer to me and takes my hand. I don’t realize how hungry I am for contact until her fingers touch mine and I don’t want to do anything but cling to her—and not let go.
I pull back as though she’s burned me. “We should be careful. We should keep our distance.”
“Do you want me to do it?” The worry in her eyes only makes my hesitation worse.
The raccoon is still struggling, fighting for its life, and bile rises in my throat. I can be violent when I’m angry, but this is different. The raccoon is defenseless. I want to take the easy way out and say Yes, please. Please kill this animal that I captured. Let me pretend I have nothing to do with this.
Instead I kneel down next to it, and I take my knife. If I can break bones, I can do this too.
The raccoon screeches. It frantically tries to get away from me. Maybe it knows what’s coming. Maybe it’s simply the instinct to survive.
This is survival too. It has to be.
I reverse my grip on the knife so I can use it as a blunt weapon. I want to close my eyes, but I understand what a terrible idea that would be. Instead, I breathe in, hold my breath and my hands steady, and the moment I spy an opening between the raccoon’s flailing claws, I let the knife come down. The impact resonates through my hand, and the raccoon goes limp.
Before I can stop to think, before I can stop to breathe even, I bludgeon it again, then I flip the knife over and stab it.
Behind me, Sofia gags.
I can’t. I have to make sure it’s dead. I have to make sure it’s not in any pain.
But once I have, once I’ve made sure it doesn’t breathe anymore, I drop the knife right next to the trap, stumble a few paces away, and vomit.
Necessity makes monsters of us all.
Another Kitchen Inventory List
Or: learning to appreciate what nature gives us
• 2 bags of rice (50 lb each)
• 1 1/2 bags of potatoes (50 lb each)
• 3 bags of beans (50 lb each)
• 4 bags of flour (25 lb each)
• 2 loaves of bread that look fairly edible
• 5 boxes of cereal (Which is definitely still edible even without milk.)
• 2 cans of tuna
• 5 cans of green beans
• 8 cans of chickpeas
• 2 cans of carrots
• 1 bag of lentils
• Vegetable stock powder
• Five packets of ramen
• 1/2 pot of instant coffee for special occasions
• Leftover instant soup
• Still an absolutely ridiculous amount of tea
• 2 bars of chocolate
• A tin of glazed pecans
• Still with those raisins
• 16 jars of peanut butter (I really didn’t expect I’d come to appreciate peanut butter this much.)
• 2 frozen tubs of butter
• 5 boxes of mac and cheese
• 20 fruit cups (Does no one here eat fruit?)
• Sugar, salt, spice, all things nice
• 1/2 raccoon
• 2 fish
• 5 fresh carrots
• 3 withered wild garlic plants (How do you count wild garlic? In bushels? Leaves?)
• 13 old and wizened blackberries
Phone call between Casey and his sister
ASHLEY: Hi, it’s Ashley! I can’t come to the phone right now, but leave a message after the beep. Beep!
CASEY: Ash, it’s me. I’ve tried to call you a few times, but you keep going to voicemail, so I thought I’d leave a message. I wanted to hear your voice. I hope things are okay where you are. Things are rough here. I don’t know if you know, I don’t know if you get any news about me, but—
CASEY: I’m scared, Ash. I’m no doctor or miracle worker. I’m just a boy trying to keep his friends safe when everyone is dying.
CASEY: Did you know, Ash? Did you know that you can learn what it looks like when someone is about to die? Do you know that some of them gasp for air and others hallucinate and still others just let go?
CASEY: Did you know that muscles can still twitch after death? That some people still groan? I nearly screamed the first time it happened. I nearly broke down.
CASEY: Ah, you probably don’t even know what I’m talking about. I’m sorry. I didn’t want to burden anyone else, but I don’t want to scare you either. Maybe I shouldn’t have—I’m sorry.
CASEY: For what it’s worth, despite everything…I’m good. As can be, in any case. I’m taking care of myself like you told me.
CASEY: I’m still here. And that matters.
This phone call has been disconnected.
Sixteen
Logan
I haven’t seen my sister in over two weeks, and her absence is a wound that will not close. We’ve never been away from each other for this long. Even when she fell from the roof one summer and the hospital kept her overnight for observation, it’s only ever been a day. Even when we were interrogated after the fire, we were together.
Every morning at breakfast, Casey tells me she’s alive. She’s alive, but she keeps having seizures. She’s alive, but she’s drifting in and out of consciousness. She’s awake, but she’s minimally responsive.
Casey thinks it may be a form of brain inflammation. Either because of the plague itself or because of how high her fever ran, but he doesn’t know much more.
Every evening after dinner, Emerson waits outside the kitchen and confirms it too. They keep their distance, but they keep me updated.
Every day I ask them if I can go see her. I’ve passed by the outside window at least a dozen times, but it only makes it harder to see her so close but so out of reach.
Every night, in our room, I talk to her. I lie down on my bed, next to hers. I stare up at the ceiling. If I don’t turn my head, and I don’t listen too hard for her breathing, I can pretend she’s lying in the bed next to me.
I tell her safe things. Gentle pictures, like Nia calls them. The way we try to make normal life go like it’s supposed to, even if there’s nothing normal about anything here anymore.
Like, “We took inventory in the kitchen and the pantry. I counted the bags of rice and weighed the bags of flour. We haven’t had a food delivery since the start of this, and you can tell. Did you know they barely accommodated anyone’s diets? We can’t do anything but the minimum either, and it makes me feel bad.”
And, “I taught Nia to sign. Hello and how are you and a few other words. She was the first to ask. She sketched me cutting my thumb on a can opener.”
Or, “Isaiah is looking up recipes for raccoon. Granddad would be proud.”
I don’t tell Leah about the things that scare me.
Like how Isaiah hasn’t been able to go online for the past three days, because we’ve been having power outages and the phone lines are down.
Like how seven of us have died, and three others are still in the infirmary with her.
No one has recovered yet. Xavier and Isabella ran as high a fever as Leah’s, and they’re holding on like she is. Jeremy is slowly fading away.
It’s only a matter of time before we all catch it, because despite all our precautions, we can’t simply avoid each other. And maybe I want that. To be close to her. To be with her. Is that terrible?
I can draw out the plague’s progression in everyone else. Someone starts to cough. It’s so innocuous at first. Someone starts to cough, and sooner rather than later, they’re coughing up blood. They collapse. They lose consciousness. And within a handful of days, they’re gone.
I don’t tell Leah about any of that though. What’s the point of it, when she needs to focus on recovering?
What’s the point, when she can’t hear or see me anyway?
I talk to her every night, and in the morning, I wake before dawn to go to the kitchen. Familiarity is the only safety I have. I get there before Nia arrives. Because I’m the first, I’m the one who turns on the lights. I go through the kitchen to make sure everything is clean and nothing is weird, and clean our counters again. I collect the food we need for the day and mark on Nia’s sheets what we are missing. What we will miss, in a day, a week, a month.
By the time Nia gets there, I’ve gone through all my motions. I am less overwhelmed and ready to share our work.
Then Elias comes in to prepare breakfast.
Or came in, anyway.
He started coughing three days ago. He died last night.
* * *
Today is different. I wake and get dressed and brush my teeth. I wonder how much longer we will have toothpaste.
Then I slip through the door, through the quiet east wing, through the dark. The sun isn’t quite up yet, but the night lights are off. I don’t know if it’s another outage, but I keep my head down and keep walking.
I open the door to the kitchen, and the lights are already on.
Rather, one of them is. The other lamp to the back of the kitchen is flickering aimlessly, more off than on. The uneven rhythm bothers me. It leaves me feeling off-balance.
This is wrong. This is not what the kitchen should look like.
I breathe in, and against every instinct in me screaming to step back, I step forward.
Spoons cover the floor. Shards of a broken plate. A dusting of flour and bread crumbs. We baked massive loaves of bread two days ago, to go with the raccoon stew Elias taught us how to make. We saved the rest for breakfast and lunch, but the loaves we left out on the counter are gone, and the remainders are torn to pieces.
My heart crawls up to my throat and hammers loudly.
Wrong. Wrong.
Danger.
“Is anyone there?” Like they’d reply to my signs if they could.
Another step back mentally, a step forward physically.
Toward the pantry.
I reach for the door that stands slightly open. When I do, the door swings outward and slams into my face. Hot, overwhelming pain shoots up through my nose and everything goes red. It feels like my brain snags. A siren. A warning.
Danger. Danger.
Danger.
A figure shoots out of the pantry, arms full of food. A bag of rice tumbles in her wake, spraying the floor with grains. The food we need. The food we counted, bag by can by grain by bite.
Danger. Danger.
No.
I growl. I wipe at my face, and my hands come back red with blood. I’m not sure what is up or down right now, but I can see the figure—the girl—standing in front of me, her eyes wide.
Josie Watson. Who stabbed a girl. Who left with Hunter and his crew.
A shadow passes across her eyes when she sees me, and I grow cold inside.
“Leah? Or Logan? I’m here to—you have to let me—” She snarls in frustration or anger, I don’t know. “Get out of the way. I don’t want anyone to get hurt.” Her voice is as ragged as her clothes. She’s not wearing a mask, and I’ve grown so used to every one of us wearing one that it looks strange. Her chestnut hair is matted around her face, and she clings to the bags she’s carrying.
I shake my head, and my head pounds.
“Step away. Let me pass.” Josie’s voice sounds like she hasn’t spoken in days. “I—I didn’t take everything. Just enough. Look away. All you have to do is look away.”
No.
Holding the bags close to her chest like a treasure, Josie brushes past me.
A feral growl escapes me. I stumble. I push myself forward in her direction—and we collide. I don’t know what else to do but stop her. I was scared of her once, but I have to stop her. We counted all the food. We know exactly how much we have. She can’t take it away from us. We need it.
The bags drop to the floor. I can hear something tear, and I want to look down to see how much more food we’re spilling, but then Josie’s hands are on my face.
I’m holding on to her shirt to stop her from stealing our food. She’s clawing at my eyes to stop me from holding her.
I don’t want her to touch me. I cannot let her go.
“You can’t—you can’t stop me. We have a right to the food too.”
But she didn’t ask for it. She could’ve come here and asked for it. Instead she tried to steal it. This isn’t hers. It doesn’t belong to her.
The tiny part of my brain that sounds like Leah tells me to figure out what’s going on. To be careful of more danger. Is she here alone? What does she want? Is she sick?
Is she sick?
Let go. Let me go. Let go. I can’t.
“I need it,” Josie says. “She needs it.”
We need it too.
I cling to her dirty shirt with one hand and raise my other to try to push her clawing fingers away. I can hear myself moan and keen. I don’t mean to do it, but it happens. The sound is primal and desperate and full of rage.
My brain trips over the same messages over and over again. Let me go. I can’t let go. We need the food. Let me go.
Josie lets me drag one of her hands down, and the moment I release it, she reaches up and smacks my arms away. She stumbles forward and something crunches underneath her feet. In one fluid arc, she brings her arm up to my throat and slams it against my windpipe, her forearm under my chin. She pushes me against the counter.
The edges of my vision grow dark. I claw at her. I keep clawing.
“You need to stop fighting it,” she says. Her eyes are haunted, Granddad would’ve said. Angry. Hurt. Dangerous. “It’ll be easier if you stop fighting it. I promise I don’t want to hurt you, but I can’t have you stop me. This’ll be fine. You’ll sleep, nothing more. And I’ll be long gone from here by the time you wake. It’s the best solution for both of us.”
Another tear trickles down my face, but this time, it doesn’t come from me.
I stop clawing at her arm. I stop trying to push her off me.
I don’t want to sleep. I can’t sleep.
Leah needs me. One of us has to be awake. Always.
I spread my arms on either side of me and bend across the kitchen counter. I do the only thing I can. I reach as far as possible, until my fingers find the edge of the bowls Nia and I used for bread dough.
Josie leans in, and my field of vision narrows. Everything grows dark.
I whimper.
I let the last bit of breath escape from my lungs, overextend my reach, and shove the bowls off the counter so they go clattering onto the floor.
I close my eyes.
Leah.
Seventeen
Emerson
My stomach churns. It’s far too early for anyone but the kitchen crew—and probably Casey—to be awake yet, but my room increasingly feels like a cell again.
When I started digging graves, everyone else in Hope found excuses to avoid me. I don’t know if it’s because they’re worried I carry the plague with me or because they’re uncomfortable at the notion of death. Maybe it’s a bit of both. But the work needs to be done, and we need someone to do it. I want to be the one to do it.
It’s far easier to be amid the dead than amid the living. I don’t have to worry about trusting them not to let me fall. So I’ll make myself useful—I’ll grab my portion of food and spend the whole day outside preparing for more.
But when I walk toward the kitchen, the sounds of a struggle echo from within. I freeze. What is going on?
Someone grunts. Something metal goes clattering to the floor, sounding like an off-key cymbal. It sounds like someone is in trouble, and I can’t just stand here.
I pick up my pace and slam the door open. There’s food strewn out all over the floor. Torn bags and busted bowls rolling around. And one of the girls who left with Hunter is fighting with Logan. Or rather, overwhelming Logan—she isn’t fighting back. Her hands are twitching, but she isn’t struggling.
She’s suffocating.
I do the only thing I can. I move.
I don’t even stop to shout or to warn them. I have to stop what’s happening. I put my head down and rush the girl to get her off Logan. When we collide, it’s a tangle of limbs. Shoulder into shoulder. Equal parts tumbling and diving, my arms around her, and we’re falling. Our impact with the ground rattles my bones.
Somewhere in my periphery, Logan gasps and coughs.
The girl I’m fighting is strong. I’m stronger. I’ve been building up muscle digging holes in the earth.
But she’s desperate, and I don’t know what I’m doing.
She snarls and sputters and thrusts to push me off, but I cling to her. We roll across the ground, across the sheen of rice grains that dig into my skull and my arms, then we twist and turn again.
When I lean over her, she brings a knee up to her chest and kicks out hard, wildly. Her eyes are frantic. Her foot connects with my abdomen and groin and pure, aching nausea surges through me.
“Get out,” I shout to Logan.
The girl escapes from under me when I double over, but I push myself up again and cling to her. “No. Stop. Stay.”
“Let me go!”
She kicks out at me again, and I struggle to hold on. I try to grasp at her hair, and she all but drags me toward the counter. Logan is nowhere to be seen. Good. Smart girl.
