At the End of Everything, page 8
It’s here already, my treacherous brain says. It doesn’t matter.
“Grace.” Casey takes my hand and slowly pries open my fingers. He looks at me with mind-numbing sadness in his eyes. “If that plague is as terrifying as you said it was, then the kindest thing we can do is take care of each other.”
He nods in Logan’s direction and follows her out the door, leaving me standing there, staring at the hallway. And it’s all I can do not to shout after them.
That first night, when he waited for me after my initiation, he held me when I cried, and he told me all of us here only have one job. “We survive. Whatever we do, we survive.”
I wanted to tell him I didn’t know how, but something of the truth slipped out. “I don’t know if I can.”
“You have to believe it.” His intense desperation took my breath away. He held on to my arms so hard, I thought they’d bruise. Bruise upon bruise. “You have to,” he said. “Repeat what I told you.”
“We survive. Whatever we do, we survive.”
I’m only trying to survive now, Case, like I promised you.
I take a step back and swipe at the plastic cup with my toothbrush that stands on the edge of the metal sink. It goes clattering across the floor. It doesn’t make me feel better at all.
With the lights on and the doors open, it’s clear I’m not the only one awake. Several girls are mulling about, walking through the hallway aimlessly. We have no movement line. No set hour for breakfast. No one to prepare us breakfast either.
I hate the lot of them—Warden Davis, the guards, the soldiers. Hunter, for telling me I’m responsible for everyone. That’s what gets me going. I want to be better than them.
I wouldn’t be, if I didn’t help Leah and Logan.
Saoirse stops me before I make it three steps out of my room. I shake her hand off me immediately.
“She’s sick, isn’t she?” She’s as intense as she’s ever been. “One of the twins? I saw her.”
And I can’t lie, not about this. “The other twin. Her sister.”
She pales, making her freckles stand out even more on her already-light skin. She pulls at an imaginary thread on her sleeve, like she doesn’t want to look at me when she asks the question. “Is it that disease you talked about? The plague?”
I shrug. “I don’t know.”
“We have to get out of here.” Her head snaps up, and she has steel in her eyes. “Hunter was right. We have to go as soon as possible.”
“Then go,” I growl, angrier at myself than I am at her. “If any one of us has been infected already, it doesn’t matter. I’m going over there to help.”
She backs away. “You’re out of your mind!”
“I guess I am.” I turn. “Good luck, Saoirse. I hope you and the rest of the crew get out of here safely. I really do.”
Getting to the east wing is no easy task. Every few steps or so, someone stops me, like I have all the answers to their questions. I sigh and run my hand through my hair. It’s all tangled because I haven’t had a chance to brush it yet. I have morning breath because I haven’t brushed my teeth either. The day has only just begun, and I’m already tired.
Mei Fujita and Serenity Jones are in the midst of some kind of fight when I pass them, and Serenity snatches my arm and pulls me in. She’s a head taller than I am, and she glares at me, her light skin flushed red with anger. She doesn’t live up to her name at all.
“Is it true they’re leaving us here to die?”
After taking the lead with Hunter, everyone looks to me, but I barely know what I’m doing beyond finding a way to survive. “I don’t know.”
“You were there, you heard what those soldiers said.”
I wince. “They didn’t know either. They’re here to enforce lockdown.”
“But we’ll need food and—” She waves her hand, encompassing the whole building, and I don’t know exactly what she means, but I also don’t want to stick around to find out.
I pull my arm from her grasp. “We told them.”
“They’ll figure something out,” Mei says, and I think she wants it to be true more than she actually believes it, but that counts for something. “Right, Grace?”
“Right. I hope so. I have to go. Get some breakfast, if you can.”
The Professor stops me when I cross the open space between wings. Isaiah is eating an apple and pacing back and forth. He looks up but not at me when I walk through. I’ve never seen him make eye contact with anyone, no matter how much the guards tried to force him.
“I can help with the computers,” he says, an exact repetition of his words last night. “Where would you like me to start?”
Why is that my call? I bite my lip and force myself not to snap at him. Instead, I try to decide what makes sense. “The warden’s computer, if you can.”
“Of course.” He nods, takes another bite.
“Find everything you can about the disease. It should be all over the news. Find out what it looks like. How it spreads. What we can do.” It’s disconcerting that he doesn’t look at me, but he hears me. And this is more comfortable for him, so whatever. “Find out how we can keep each other safe.”
“Yes. Anything else?”
So much more, but nothing that’s pressing right now. “Find out if we can expect help? But keep that quiet for now.” I hate asking that, but if it spreads… “Let me know. No one else.”
Isaiah doesn’t seem fazed. If there’s one person here who sees all the possible options, all the possible complications, it’s him. He spends way too much time in his own head, but he seems to like it there, so who are we to tell him otherwise? It’s not like the real world is necessarily a better place to be.
By the time I make it halfway into the east wing, Logan and Casey are already carrying Leah out. My heart squeezes when I see them, when I see how pale and unresponsive Leah is. When I see Casey touch her. When I see the stains of her blood on her pajama shirt.
She’s barely conscious. Occasionally, her head lolls back and she coughs. Her breath sounds rasping and…wrong. I have no other word for it. It sounds like she’s trying to breathe but isn’t.
The few people who wander this hallway stay far away from the three of them, but their whispered worries echo against the concrete walls. Some of them physically back away.
A respiratory disease. Highly contagious.
Is this it? Is it starting?
I rub my eyes and try to get my thoughts in order. “You should bring her to the infirmary. I don’t know what medical equipment we have, but Isaiah is looking into what we can do.” If anything. “And we can quarantine her there.”
Logan snarls at those words, but Casey nods. “Stay back, Grace.”
I do. I push myself against the wall as they pass me, like those few feet will make a difference when we all spent time together last night.
Leah coughs again. I flinch.
I follow Casey and Leah to the commons and try to ignore the whispering behind us, around us, in front of us. The shocked looks. The panicked retreats. What is happening?
I’m not entirely sure either.
Casey notices the reactions and gently steers the long way around. Past the cafeteria, instead of through. Past the classroom and tiny little library with beat-up books and pages bound together without covers. He throws me a look over his shoulder. “Word will spread soon. You should talk to the others.”
I shake my head. “Why me? I have no idea what to say.”
He’s honest enough not to deny that. “You did last night, and you made people listen to you. We need someone to keep the calm, and you can do it.”
“I…” I’m not calm. I don’t know how. I don’t know where to start.
“Please, Grace. Trust me.”
I do. I always do.
But there’s a difference between pulling a ridiculous stunt because your best friend asks you—like that time in middle school when Amy, my best friend at the time, and I cut each other’s hair and dyed parts of it black with her aunt’s leftover hair color—and navigating the end of the world because you didn’t know when to keep your mouth shut.
Once Casey and the twins reach the infirmary, I don’t stick around to see if they need my help; I turn around and make my way to the cafeteria. It feels wrong, to be able to wander.
But the cafeteria looks like it did yesterday and the day before and every day since I came here. Bright fluorescent lights. Tables with attached seats in drab gray. Late-autumn skies filtering in through the windows. Not everyone is here, but people have drifted in to eat. They stuck to their assigned places, mostly. We have food on the tables.
Raided rations of cereals, like we’ve never had cereal before. Fruit enough for all of us. The smell of scrambled—and slightly burned—eggs wafts in from the kitchen.
The biggest difference between today and any other day is that people are talking to each other. They’re worried and anxious but talking. Some of them are laughing. Word hasn’t spread here yet.
I don’t want to be the one to tell them.
I clear my throat. No one looks at me.
I clap my hands. At the first table, two people turn around, glance at me, and go back to their food.
“Can I get everyone’s—”
The door on the other side of the room slams open, and Hunter stalks in. He’s dressed in his work uniform, and he has a bag slung over his shoulder. The rest of his crew lingers near the door. “We’re going,” he announces. “One last chance for those who want to come!”
He spots me, and a cruel smile spreads across his face. “Or you can remain here, with her, and your very own plague victims.”
He does what I couldn’t. The entire room is silent. Someone places their cup on their tray, and several people at once hush them.
“What do you mean?”
“Did someone get sick?”
One of the other boys stands up, but the girl next to him drags him down. She looks to me. “Grace? Is it true?”
“Everyone, listen up.” I grab a tray and slam it against the metal counter. “Leah—one of the twins—fell ill. We don’t know if what she has is the new disease. Her sister and Casey helped her to the infirmary. We’re trying to figure out what we can do.”
I wait for crude and fearful suggestions, but the deep silence is somehow worse. The worry and fear when they all look to me. It drains me and leaves me scrambling for the right words.
“She didn’t look good. We’ll try to take care of her,” I say. “I don’t know what will come of us. I honestly don’t. But we’re trying to figure out when help will come, and until then we have a roof over our head, food on our plates.” I gesture at the tables.
Hunter scoffs, and something like ice and rage and failure settles in my stomach. Maybe he’s right. I said last night we’d stay here, but maybe it’s better to leave and find our fortune somewhere else. Maybe all of this is my fear speaking. Maybe I’m not just scared of the plague but of losing the little bit of world I understand.
But fuck it, is that so bad?
“We have resources, we have beds, we have an infirmary in case others are infected too. We have each other. We can take care of each other. We don’t know how to protect ourselves from the disease yet, but we can protect ourselves from hunger and cold and needless violence.” I feel as cruel as Hunter right then, and when he laughs and rolls his eyes, the cruelty slips away from me. “I won’t promise you you’re safe here. But Hunter can’t promise you that either. Because if we were exposed to the disease last night, so was he. So were all of them.”
Hunter’s eyes flash, and the fear around me is suffocating. The murmurs. The terrified expressions.
Hunter spits on the ground and pushes past me, into the kitchen. “We take what we can carry,” he calls out over his shoulders to the rest of the crew. “And then we leave. The rest of them can rot, for all I care.”
Phone call between Xavier and his brother
FRANCISCO: Xavi? You okay? I didn’t expect to hear from you until the weekend.
XAVIER: Is it true?
FRANCISCO: What?
XAVIER: The plague. Those outbreaks, right? Is it as bad as they say it is?
FRANCISCO: Ah, shit. I hoped you’d be spared from that over there, what with that whole wilderness location and such.
XAVIER: We’re in the Ozarks. We’re not on Mars.
FRANCISCO: I don’t know what they’re saying, but the answer is probably yes. It’s as bad as they say it is.
XAVIER: Oh.
FRANCISCO: Our hospital is filling up. It’s only a matter of time before we need to turn people away. It’s everywhere. It spreads so rapidly, it’s like a tidal wave, and no one is prepared.
XAVIER: What about you? Are you prepared? Will you be safe?
FRANCISCO: I don’t know.
FRANCISCO: We have good protective gear, so we’re fine for now. But I worry there won’t be enough. Not for us. Not for the nurses. And the board isn’t offering anything beyond gloves to the cleaners.
XAVIER: I hate that.
FRANCISCO: You and me both, bro.
XAVIER: Can’t you do something about it?
FRANCISCO: I’m trying. But it’s not like hospital boards frequently listen to interns. They say it’s not currently a priority.
FRANCISCO: I can’t imagine what it’ll be like here when the staff gets infected. When we have to start turning people away. I swore an oath when I started med school.
XAVIER: Are you at work now?
FRANCISCO: I’m on break, but yes. It’s resident hours for the interns too, so we can have as many beds available as possible.
XAVIER: Well, we’ll have beds available here soon enough.
[silence]
FRANCISCO: Xavi? What do you mean?
XAVIER: The guards left when everything locked down. So some of the others are planning on leaving too.
FRANCISCO: Left you? As in, they left you unattended? That’s wildly irresponsible.
XAVIER: Looks like we’re not currently a priority either.
FRANCISCO: [muffled] …be right there. Give me a minute.
FRANCISCO: Fuck, one of the attendings needs me. I’ve got to go, but I’ll look into it during my next break, I promise. Be safe out there, please? I need to know that you’re safe. I love you.
This phone call has been disconnected.
Phone call between Elias and his uncle
MR. THOMPSON: What do you want?
ELIAS: We…um, we heard about that plague thing here. It’s—I wanted to know how you are—how are you all doing? You and Aunt Vera and Hazel.
MR. THOMPSON: Hmph. Buying into that nonsense that we’re all doomed, are you? I thought they taught you there better than to believe in ghost stories. If it isn’t big pharma wanting to profit off us, it’s the government trying to keep us fearful and docile. It won’t work on me.
ELIAS: The news we’re getting—
MR. THOMPSON: Overblown, all of it. It’s a bad flu season, nothing more. Everyone gets sick in winter, right?
ELIAS: But—
MR. THOMPSON: What a time for you to start caring about family anyway. Couldn’t have thought about that before you got yourself in this mess? Could’ve taken care of your mother when she was ill. Could’ve gotten a real job. Could’ve been at the funeral like a caring son.
ELIAS: Uncle—
This phone call has been disconnected.
ELIAS: I just wanted to know you’re all right.
Eleven
Emerson
This is what the plague looks like.
It’s not illness, at first. It’s fear. The type of fear that nags at the back of your thoughts, that crawls like a parasite under your skin. It’s like every bruise that brushes against my clothes.
This is the fear I felt after my parents kicked me out. The difference between living in a well-lit home with food on the table, pictures to remind you of where you belong, and caring words—and the coldness of night, where every shadowed corner may be dangerous. The fear of not knowing how to survive.
It’s the type of fear that claws at your chest and makes it hard to breathe.
Is this how it starts? Or is it simply anxiety? Are my hands trembling because I’m infected, or am I tired? Does my head hurt, my stomach hurt, my throat hurt because I’m scared, or is this how I’ll die? How can I die when I don’t know what it means to live?
Maybe I should leave with Hunter and his friends. The very thought of it terrifies me. I don’t trust them not to hurt me. I don’t trust them to protect me. But how can I trust the people in here?
Maybe I should go home. I bite my lip. Like my parents would accept a fugitive from the Hope Juvenile Treatment Center. The very thought of it. I don’t want to imagine what would happen if I showed up at their doorstep now.
Except.
My chest aches at the thought of home. I miss it. I miss my room with its soft bed covered with cushions, the shelf full of sheet music, and the musty, sea-green curtains. I miss the songs from the record player drifting from the living room to every corner in the house. I miss the smell of the lasagna my mom cooks.
I miss the home I thought I knew back when I was who my parents thought I was. It was the only place where I’ve ever felt completely protected from the evils of the world. And I want to feel safe again. I want to curl up against my father on our faded leather sofa and hear his voice rumble in his chest when he tells me it’ll all be okay, that God has a grand plan for me.
“Even in the darkest times,” he told me, “if you follow God’s light, He will be with you. If you’re overwhelmed and scared, pray, and He will give you purpose and peace.”
