Grants Pass (26 page)

The end of the world was the best
thing that ever happened to me.

I decide to have a picnic along my
bridge of cars. Spam, twinkies, diet cherry Dr Pepper, some wild onions I found
in the bar ditch alongside the highway. Good eating. Getting everything spread
out, I see the Guy has left me another present, tucked under a pebbled paving
stone shaped like Texas.

I check it out.

A map of Oregon.

This confuses me. Like, he’s always
come by with practical stuff before. As if he cared. And the dynamite was a
real gift, from the heart. But Oregon’s thousands of miles away in Canada or
someplace. Nearly foreign.

I look the map over anyway, to see
if there’s something written on it. I used to know a kid who could read secret
messages in the way the freight trains ran. The order and color of the box cars
was a CIA way of telling things to spy satellites, secrets too powerful to be
put on the radio or Craigslist, even in special codes. It always sounded kind
of weird to me, but the messages he could read made
sense
. At least when
he read them.

So I scan for codes. What I find is
a pink highlight circle drawn around a town called Grants Pass.

Home of the hoax.

Which makes me wonder what the
Grants Pass hoax is, exactly.

I go to the Escalade and find the
green paper. It had been rained on a little, and was smeared with black ash,
but it isn’t ruined yet. I read all the tiny crazy person handwriting at the
bottom. Somehow I don’t think it was the Guy’s. He seemed like he was passing
it on, not preaching to me.

It’s all about some crazy girl and
her plan to rebuild civilization without warlords or taxes or whatever, in this
little town in Oregon with her friends with stupid names, and the scribbled
writing says how this is really a plot devised by Satan to trap anyone unlucky
enough to survive the plagues and destruction, which had swept this mortal
Earth free of the stain of sin blah blah blah.

I quit reading after I got to the
“stain of sin” part. I don’t believe in Satan anyway, he’s just a way the Bible
Belters have of pretending it’s not their fault when they fuck their kids in
the ass or rip off people too poor to go to the cops or hire a lawyer. And I’m
lucky
to survive the plagues, not unlucky.

The thing probably wasn’t a hoax, on
account of whoever wrote the little poster was so crazy I want to believe the
opposite just on principle. Even so, who wants to go to Oregon anyway? It’s
cold there, and full of moss and mold and bigfoots and shit.

I tuck the green paper back in the
Escalade, along with the map, and weigh them both down with the Texas-shaped
stone so the wind won’t take them away in case I want them again. Then I go
back to my feast.

Oregon.

Why?

Who cares?

Plenty of cars here in Texas,
anyway.

DAY ZERO PLUS SIX

Stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid
stupid stupid.

Cunt cunt cunt cunt cunt cunt cunt.

Dr. Macushla says I’m not supposed
to say that word. Not about myself. But sometimes I deserve it. I have stubbed
some lit matches on the inside of my forearm to punish myself, but I deserve
worse. Far, far worse.

I scored a 2010 Bentley Arnage
today. A sweet, sweet ride, I’m telling you. It went 140 like it was in the
driveway. Quietest car I ever drove. No one dead inside, as clean as the 750il
had been. I got it up my ramp finally, set it in place to burn, filled it with
crumpled Christmas paper from Walgreen’s, all soaked in lamp oil.

When the Bentley went up, this kid
finally comes bailing out of the trunk. I never knew she was in there. Hell, I
never knew she was around at all. You don’t see a lot of people these days. Her
hair is smoldering, and she is screaming
, and she surprises me so bad that I
stomp her like I’d stomped the white dog.

I let her go. There’s some things
you don’t do. You don’t even think about
having done
doing them.

Stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid
stupid stupid.

I can’t do nothing else, so I give
her a Chinese funeral, and push her body into the flames. That’s a kind of
letting go, isn’t it? The sick, sweet, crispy pork smell is so familiar it
makes me cry and puke, and I stumble to the edge of the bridge and throw up
over the rail.

Then I see the Guy watching me. He’s
got a funny look on him, like he thinks I’m crazy.

Now, on top of everything else, I’m
scaring off my boyfriend.

“
Hey,” I
say, and start toward him, but his face gets real twisted and he runs off. I
turn around, and my boot prints are bloody dark.

I got to go call Dr. Macushla, real
bad.

Stupid stupid stupid stupid stupid
stupid stupid.

DAY ZERO PLUS SIX AGAIN

Down at the Circle K off Mesa Hills
Drive, I talk to the clickie-click on the phone behind the clerk’s counter. I’m
not crazy, I know Dr. Macushla’s been dead long as everybody else, but it is
her phone and her phone number. It’s almost like talking to her. And it helps
me. So shut up, if you’re reading this.

She’s real sad with me. Says my
heart is black as night. Says she’s tired of me, and can’t work with me no
more. Says I’ve used up my welcome here in Austin, that I’m a danger to myself
and others.

Or maybe it was the judge who said
that. When I’m real stressed out I don’t remember so good.

Maybe the end of the world isn’t as
hot as I like to think it is. Maybe I made some mistakes. Maybe I’m not as good
at all this as I like to pretend.

I whisper to her how sorry I am. I
tell her I’m going to make amends. The social workers always like those written
apologies. I can use my journal, make this entire thing an apology.

Maybe everybody’s dead and nobody
cares what I do. Maybe I’m crazy. Except I can’t be, because I still remember
everyone and everything.

It’s coming on a storm outside. The
sky is the color of an old bruise, swollen and leaky. The wind has that crackle
smell like it was lightning’s cousin. I put down the phone and go outside and
apologize to the raindrops.

Rain.

It rains in Oregon, I realize. Like,
all the time. As if God meant the place to be the world’s drain.

My heart might be black as night,
but that can be washed away in water. That’s what the Bible Belters say with
their
baptisums
baptisms. And water is the opposite of fire, right?

Right?

I make a big space in my journal,
and use really giant letters:

WATER IS THE OPPOSITE OF FIRE

For the first time since the nurses
got sick on the psych ward, back when this all started, I feel hope.

DAY ZERO PLUS TEN

I’m ready now.

I found a nice little 1985 Geo
Metro. Old, so I might be able to fix it if it breaks. Here’s what I got in the
car:

My journal

My dictionary

A box of ball-point pens

A 24-pack of sanitary napkins in
case this takes weeks

Forty gallons of siphoned gas in the
back seat in five gallon plastic containers

A full tank

My stupid battery stand in case the
Geo dies and I need to start another car.

Cables to charge the batteries every
night when I stop

A toolbox I got from a Midas Muffler
shop

The green sheet and the map of
Oregon from the Escalade

A trucker’s atlas of the United
States from the Circle K

More Hostess snowballs and twinkies
than I can keep track of

Four cases of Slim Jims

Ten gallons of water

A blanket

A dozen white sheets in case of
Chinese funerals

Matches, lots of matches

There’s just enough room for the Guy
in the front seat, if he don’t mind all the food stuck under where his legs
will go. If I don’t find him, I’ll just burn cars along the way so he can
follow my pillars of fire and smoke through the wilderness. My heart might be
black, but I’ll cover it in white mourning until I get to Grants Pass. That
girl Kayley will take me in.

And if she doesn’t, well, fire is
the devil’s only friend.

There’s a lot of miles between here
and there. Lot of cars to burn.

Last thing I do before I go cruising
for the Guy is drive up to my bridge of cars and say good-bye to the kid I
killed
didn’t kill.

“
I didn’t
mean to be stupid,” I tell her charred bones all quiet like, where she lies
under the Bentley’s back bumper. “And I’ll make it up to you by being a better
person.”

That’s what I have to tell the
world, I guess, and all of everyone in it that’s died and rotted away.

I’m leaving this journal with her.
I’ll start another one on the road. I won’t need an Austin phone book on the
way to Oregon anyway.

If you’re reading this, good-bye.
And if you’re not reading this, good-bye anyway. Watch for the fires. You’ll
recognize me because I’ll be the only living person wrapped in a white sheet.

I’ll make it up to all of you by
being a better person.

Biography

Jay Lake

Jay Lake lives in Portland, Oregon,
where he works on numerous writing and editing projects. His 2008 novels are
Escapement
from Tor Books and
Madness of Flowers
from Night Shade Books, while his
short fiction appears regularly in literary and genre markets worldwide. Jay is
a winner of the John W. Campbell Award for Best New Writer, and a multiple
nominee for the Hugo and World Fantasy Awards.

Afterword

I lived in Austin for 18 years,
from the time I moved there to go to college until I left to move to Oregon,
not terribly far from Grants Pass, at least as seen from Texas. When I heard
about this anthology, I really wanted to write about the story of my
relocation, through the lens of this concept. I’ve written a couple of my old
cars into it, and a former workplace of mine, so you could say the piece is
autobiographical. Except for all the parts which aren’t, of course.
Differentiating the two is left as an exercise for the reader. Hint: I am male,
and have never killed anything more neurologically complex than a cockroach. I
have, however, messed up a few cars in my day.

By the Sea

Shannon Page

Elizabeth Barnett stood on the
veranda, lifting a wiry hand to shade her eyes as she watched Christos sail
away. The sun gleaming off the Mediterranean assaulted her, but the light was
beautiful all the same. Sometimes the loveliness here made it hard to remember
how thoroughly everything had gone wrong.

Or maybe she was just being an old
fool. Sunlight, kilometers of pale beaches thrust against bright blue water,
hills covered with scrubby brush, khaki-colored rocks, and the occasional dark
green cypress tree — it was not enough to hide the fact that she was very
likely the last person left on the island. The last living person, anyway.

She snorted and turned away from the
sea before Christos, in his little white sailboat, had moved out of sight. No
point in watching him go. He wouldn’t be back. She’d seen to that — they’d
fought for weeks like rabid dogs. Or plague—infested weasels, more like. In the
end, she’d set her teeth and scratched his lovely face with her long
fingernails until the blood touched his chin. And still he stood, pleading.

“
Beth, come
to Grants Pass, I know it’s real.”

“
It’s a lie,
and you’re never going to get there on that damn fool thing anyway.”

“
This is our
only chance.”

“
We have no
chance.”

He’d simply stood there, looking at
her.

“
I
have no chance,” she’d finally added, her voice bitter and dry.
“I’m seventy-eight years old, and you know my health. I’ll die out on the
water.”

“
You’ll die
here.” He’d leaned forward, almost touching her, but holding back.

That was when she’d scratched him,
digging in with every last shred of strength she had. It was either that or
touch him in a different way, and she’d held on to at least that much dignity,
through it all.

Now she would not watch him go. The
world had died; what difference would one more person make?

****

“
Kayley’s
journal,” Beth said out loud as she heated a slab of halloumi over a wood fire
she’d built in the stove. Bitter as it still was, at least her voice had lost
its edge of testy near-panic, she thought. Three days Christos had been gone,
and although she was growing accustomed to the terrible silence, she still felt
the need to speak to the air from time to time.

She’d made this batch of the cheese
herself, and she was proud of it, even if it didn’t have the tenacity of the
stuff she’d been able to find at the market when she’d first bought this
property, fifteen years ago. Or even the weaker but still salty-sweet cheese
that Christos had come up with, using the thin milk they’d managed to glean
from the last goat.

“
Bunch of
adolescent fantasies.”

She might as well talk aloud. There
was no one to hear, no one to judge. No one to answer.

...No one to brush her thinning grey
hair, to stroke her hard and ropy shoulder muscles, to clear the weeds from her
front walk. No one to argue back to her. To bring her a drink when the sun went
down. To glance up from his work in what passed for her garden, his dark eyes
smoldering at her as he...

“
Stop it,
you stroppy old cow,” she muttered to herself. She finished toasting the cheese
and then stood over the stove, eating it with callused fingers that hardly felt
the heat of it.

Then she stood, staring unseeing out
the window as she remembered.

****

Elizabeth Barnett, international
best-selling author of
The
Caged Sword
series of dark and
twisted romantic fantasy novels. Elizabeth Barnett, the toast of London, New
York, and Prague literary circles — at least, those circles civilized enough to
consider the genre of romantic fantasy. Elizabeth Barnett, who shocked the
world by retiring at the height of her fame and purchasing a
three-million-pound estate in the hills outside Larnaka, Cyprus, with her third
husband, James — seventeen years her junior and famous in his own right as the
developer of those ridiculous computer games that children played, instead of
reading decent fantasy novels.

“
The writing
was on the wall,” she said to the window. The sea shimmered far below her, and
Christos was not coming back.

****

James had been one of the first
to die. Maybe he had even brought the plague back with him, on his last trip to
France...but if he hadn’t, someone else would have. The plane had been full of
people, and there had been ten more flights after that, before all air traffic
had stopped. Beth had sat with him in the Apollonion Hospital on the Greek side
of Nicosiap — even then, with the wall down, the city was still deeply divided
between Turk and Greek — holding his hand as he coughed blood, sobbed, and
finally choked out his last breath. The sad-eyed doctors had searched their
stub of what remained of the Internet, pumped him full of expired antibiotics,
anti-inflammatories, and steroids, and mopped up the effluent that had poured
from her beautiful husband. He had died all the same.

“
You filthy
bastards! You swine, you cowards, you Mediterranean cretins!” she had shrieked
at them, wailing and beating at the chest of the infuriatingly calm chief
resident. He’d stood and listened to her, blinking his large dark eyes, waiting
for her to wind down.

It was those Greek eyes that had
prompted her to move here in the first place, when she could finally afford it.
Not this doctor’s eyes per se, of course; but dark Greek eyes in general,
remembered from some long-ago junket she’d taken with her editor and her agent.
Three middle-aged British women on holiday, slumming in a sea of sweet Greek
manflesh. Beth had always remembered that trip, long after she’d married reedy
blond James. She’d always intended to end her life here.

Just not like this.

Beth shook her head, still standing
at the window, the fire gone cold in the stove, the uneaten bits of halloumi
sticking to her fingers, cloying. She felt sick to her stomach, and wondered
for the thousandth time if the plague had finally found her as well.

“
No, nothing
can kill you, old loon,” she said aloud, half-affectionately. She turned away
from the window, taking the greasy pan from the stove. She set it in the sink
without rinsing it. There wasn’t much water left in the bucket anyway; she’d
have to go to the stinking well for more.

Instead she went to the basement, or
what passed for one. It was a low space half-dug into the rocky hillside,
intended for a wine cellar. But Cypriot wine was harsh and sour, and her English
palate had never adapted.

She stood blinking in the dim space,
waiting for her old eyes to adjust, and pulled down a fresh bottle of Bombay
gin. She stocked the large bottles — 1.75 liters — even though they were hard
to maneuver above her glass, especially as the evening progressed. Before
leaving the cellar, Beth counted the bottles. There were eighteen, not
including the one she had in her hand.

“
That’s all
you’ve got,” she said. “After that, it’s all over.” Her words were swallowed by
the earthen walls.

****

Seven weeks after Christos sailed
away, Elizabeth Barnett sat in a leather chair with one of her own books in her
lap — book seven of
The Caged Sword
series, and her personal favorite:
Man
and His Weaknesses.
She could hardly stand to read books written by anyone
else. They were never written as she would have done; they were over too soon,
or too late; the relationship between the hero and heroine never rang true; and
the endings were always contrived, seemingly invented merely for the purpose of
making a good story.

Well, of course they were, she knew
that. But other people’s imaginations, to Beth, just seemed...inferior.

So she read her own work. And
certainly there was plenty of it. When twilight fell, she lit a fire in the
hearth and a small candle by her chair, refilled the glass of gin, and picked
up the book again, chuckling to herself as Larion prepared to storm the Fair
Castle Rhuligel and save Marleena. Naturally, Marleena would refuse to be
saved; that was when the fireworks would start. “Oh, you minx, you little
vixen,” she murmured.

That was when she heard the crash
from the back yard.

Beth froze, holding the heavy
hardcover on her lap. What was it? Definitely something large. Another goat?

She heard another noise, not a crash
this time, more like a bump. It was closer to the house.

She slowly got to her feet, leaving
the book on the chair. A goat would be good news: it would mean milk, or at
least meat. She walked over to the doorway and peered down the hall, craning to
see the back of the house, but it was too dark inside. A small window was set
high on the back wall of the living room for cross-ventilation.

She sidled over to the window and
stood on tiptoes, but could not reach to see out.

She could hear, though. She heard
footsteps.

“
Who’s
there?” she called, making her voice strong, projecting to the rear of the
audience as she had done for years.

The footsteps stopped.

A goat would have kept on, ignoring
her in its desperate search for food. What other animal could it be? The dogs were
all long dead, eaten mostly by one another, and then by the remaining people.

And the people were long dead as
well. Most of them, anyway. If one in ten thousand humans had survived the
plagues, that would have left Cyprus with a population of eighty. Not counting
tourists, of course...but the tourist trade had slowed greatly before the final
plagues. The last ten flights in had been matched by as many flights out before
the planes were grounded for good.

Moving quietly, Beth left the living
room and went into the hallway that led to the back door. It was darker here,
and there was still a little light outside. She made her way to the window in
the door, staying back a bit so as not to be seen.

A man stood in her back yard. He was
staring at the house, the roof. The chimney. He must have smelled the smoke
from her fire.

Ignoring the clutch of fear in her
chest, Beth studied the man. He looked terrible; he was clearly starving, and
filthy. But he didn’t seem plague-bit. He was about fifty, maybe, though it was
hard to tell in his condition — no, she corrected herself. It was impossible to
tell. He could be thirty or seventy, who knew?

Anyway, he appeared weak. Frail as
Beth was, he was likely not a significant threat.

By the looks of him, he was not
Greek or Turk or Armenian or any of the other more customary inhabitants of the
island. He could be at least as English as she was.

What were the odds?

As she watched, the man suddenly
became animated. She sucked in her breath and pulled back farther from the window.
He took a step toward the house, then stumbled and pitched forward.

“
Oh,” Beth
said, as the man landed on his face on her cobblestones.

****

He lay on a narrow bed in the
guest room, still unconscious. Beth cleaned and bandaged his bloody forehead, and
had brought in some more halloumi — the last she had, it would be canned food
after this unless she found more milk — in case he woke up. He was breathing,
but unsteadily; his temperature seemed high, but she was no doctor. Beth had
never been a mother either, had never wiped a fevered brow as people did in her
novels. Maybe he was plague-bit. But no, there were no buboes, there was no
swelling. And the only blood was from his cut.

She sat in a hard chair beside him,
biting her lip. It had taken much of her strength to drag him here, and lift
him up onto the bed. She wouldn’t have been able to do it at all if he hadn’t
been so emaciated.

The man’s eyelids flickered and he
gave a small moan.

Beth leaned forward, peering into
his face. “Are you awake?”

“
Ah...” One
eye fluttered open, then shut. He gave a long, sour exhale.

Beth touched his shoulder, giving
him a light shake, and touched his forehead again, next to the bandage. “Wake
up.”

He was silent a moment, then both
eyes opened. “Wh...mou...uh...”

“
Do you
speak English?” she asked.

Now his eyes opened wider. “Yes.”

“
That’s
good.” Beth stared into his face before looking away. “But then of course you
do, everyone does.”

The man blinked, staring at her. He
asked, “Where...where is everyone?” His accent was flat, broad — American,
perhaps.

“
What do you
mean?”