Until the End of the World (Book 1) (27 page)

“So don’t go. Come to my house and watch chick flicks,” I joked. “Why do you need to go?”

He knew I wouldn’t go anywhere near this social engagement and had quit asking me weeks ago. His eyelids were at half mast, and his head rested on the back of his couch.

“If you don’t make an appearance then they forget about you, Cassie,” he whispered. “You wouldn’t understand. I don’t want to be invisible.”

When he closed his eyes he looked so vulnerable. I reached out and ran my finger over the spiky shadows his eyelashes made on his cheeks. “Peter, you are not forgettable. They don’t make you visible. I see you.”

But he kept his eyes closed and his breathing became regular. I wasn’t sure if he had even heard. The next morning I sat crossed-legged on his couch with my cup of tea, while he sat in the big chair and looked out the floor-to-ceiling windows of his inherited pre-war apartment. I smiled at him, thinking maybe we had reached somewhere different the night before.

“I can’t remember a thing about last night. I must have passed out,” he said, and glanced away quickly. But I thought I saw the lie in his eyes, the fear that he had said too much and was afraid I knew.

“Oh, you fell asleep, and I got you into bed.” But I tried one more time. “Are you sure you have to go to that party tonight?”

His face was casual, but his eyes were sad, maybe. It was hard to tell in the sunlight. “Yes, I have to go.”

This Peter coming down the steps looks different but acts the same. Maybe it’s that there’s no one here to make him feel visible. Maybe that’s why he struggles against all of this. Maybe the reason he dislikes me so much is that I know that about him.

He blows past me and hops in the front of the SUV. He gets shotgun privileges now, too, since he’s such a good shot. I get in John’s pickup. All dime store psychoanalysis aside, Peter’s acting like a jerk. And to paraphrase what someone once said: When someone shows you who they really are, believe them. And those moments, the ones I thought were the real Peter, were too few and far between to count.

We’ve blown as much ammunition as is wise, even though between my dad and John’s stores it seems like we could take over a small country. John asks Ana for one more round before we finish up. He’s seen why some of her shots are going wild.

Ana puts her gun back in the hip holster and crosses her arms. “No, I’m tired and I don’t want to shoot anymore.”

“I know you must be tired, but we don’t get to do this often, Ana,” John says. “So it’s best to get it done now. Then we’ll get out of here.”

He puts out a hand for her pistol, but she has on the same pout as when she was ten and told it was time for bed. She throws up her hands and sits down on a rock. “No! I’m done.”

Penny kneels to talk to her, but Ana turns her head away. “I don’t want to hear it,” she says. “I don’t want to shoot anymore. I don’t want to do this anymore. I just want things to go back to the way they were. I’m not doing all of this anymore.”

This has got to stop. It’s one thing if she wants to be a baby about helping around the house. It’s quite another when she won’t learn to protect herself. That makes her dangerous to be around when she’s the one watching your back. I’m sick of everyone mollycoddling her. It’s time for Ana and Peter to grow the hell up.

“Ana, things aren’t the way they were. They’re not going to be,” I say, “at least for a long time.”

Peter speaks up. “Leave her alone. Not everyone is living out some Laura Ingalls fantasy.”

It stings partly because it’s true. And because he knows me and is using that knowledge to hurt me, and I hate that he knows me well enough to do that. But mostly it stings because if he really believes that, then what kind of person must he think I am?

“So I like gardening and sewing and canning, Peter. And that makes me happy to be living like this?”

His eyes are cruel, the eyes of a stranger, as he shrugs. I can see how much he dislikes me at this moment, and it hurts my feelings, more than I want to admit.

“I’m just saying that some of us want things to return to normal. That we’re hoping they will soon. That it’s not crazy to think they might. You’re just a bit too happy to be doing all of this, like you’ve been waiting for it.”

He’s such an asshole. And I want to scream that it
is
crazy to think things might return to normal soon. It’s batshit crazy. My face is hot and my hands tremble. “Oh, you’ve got me pegged, Peter. Except never once in my fantasy did I wish for two spoiled brats to be constantly snickering behind my back. Sorry that I don’t mope around and act like every little fucking thing I have to do is a terrible burden.”

Ana narrows her eyes at this, but I don’t care anymore; it’s the truth, and it’s time someone said it.

“Have you ever stopped to think that I’m worried sick about Eric? That my brother is somewhere out there?” My voice rises. I look at Ana. “And Maria? Do you really think that I would want them in harm’s way?”

The traitorous tears well up in my eyes. No one takes a crying mad person seriously, and it’s so frustrating that my anger is linked to my tear ducts. I think of something mean to say and, instead of holding back the way I normally would, I say it. That’s what Peter does. “Maybe you do think that. Maybe you can’t remember what it’s like to have people you love. People who love
you
.”

I’m glad when he flinches. I want to hurt him. I may as well treat him like the person he’s accusing me of being.

He recovers from my dig and his eyes go dark. “Well, at least I’m not pining after someone who doesn’t love me anymore.”

I’m confused for a second, until I realize he means Adrian. Penny’s mouth drops open. I step forward with my hand raised.

Nelly puts an arm around me. “Okay. That’s enough. Peter, you need to stop. Now.”

Nelly’s face is expressionless, except for his eyes, which are icy. Peter looks triumphant until he catches sight of Nelly’s other hand, tightened into a fist. He takes a step back.

“You two.” I point at them with a shaking finger. “You may not
want
to believe things are different. But they are. They are, and if you act like they’re not, we’re all going to end up dead.”

John has timed our target practice for a day when he’s supposed to check in with Farmer Franklin. I’m glad when he insists Nelly and I come. I don’t want to go back to the house and live in those cold freezes and awkward silences you have when you’re fighting with people, when you’ve said too much.

I already feel bad about what I said to Peter, about no one loving him. It was an awful thing to say, and I deserved what I got back. I sit in the backseat ruffling Laddie’s fur, and I replay what Peter said. He’s probably right. After all, it’s been two years, enough time for Adrian to have moved on.

“He’s not right, you know,” Nelly says over the crunch of the tires on the dirt road.

We’re heading down to where the valley opens up and farms are tucked away in the thick stands of trees. When I don’t answer, he turns back to watch me. I shrug and give a weak smile.

“He knew exactly what to say, what would hurt you the most. So he said it,” he says.

“So did I. But that doesn’t mean he’s wrong.”

“Look at me.” I tear my eyes away from Laddie and look into his earnest face. “He’s wrong.”

I want to believe him, but he can’t know that for sure. I shrug again. The day, which had seemed so bright, now feels like I’m looking at it through a gray haze. My stomach feels heavy.

Peter’s right about me living in a fantasy world, but he had the fantasy wrong. Like a little girl who believes in fairies and unicorns, I’d been thinking that Adrian and I would live happily ever after. That belief had given me a tiny bit of hope that this could end well, if we survive long enough. But now I see how foolish I’ve been. I have to focus on the here and now, not on someone who’s probably thinking of me as someone he once loved. If he’s even thinking of me at all.

John turns down a long driveway. “This is the place. Richard, that’s Farmer Franklin to you, said he’d have some more hay and feed for the goats. That’s funny, the gate’s open.”

We head through the gate to a yellow farmhouse with a porch out front and a wreath on the door. A terracotta planter has tumbled over and spilled dirt down the steps. The wood frame behind the screen door is splintered. Broken glass sparkles in the grass. There’s a barn and yard for the animals to graze, but it’s empty and that gate is open, too.

“This doesn’t look good,” John says. He drives around the house over the bumpy grass, but it’s empty except for the Franklins’ cars. “I’ve got to check it out.”

“You’re not going in by yourself,” Nelly says.

“Okay, we go in slow. I’ll take the main hallway down the house to the kitchen. Nelly, you’ll cover the left, that’s the family room. Cassie, you’ve got the right. Dining room with separate entrance into the kitchen at the back.”

We nod and open our doors. Laddie stops at the bottom of the steps and whines deep in his throat. John puts a hand on his head. “Heel, boy. Stay.”

Laddie watches us mount the steps with worried eyes. John uses his back to hold open the screen and motions us behind him. The smell of decomposition, all too familiar now, wafts out. I hear the distant cluck of the Franklin’s chickens, but the house is completely silent.

“Richard?” John yells. We stand and wait, but nothing greets us.

There’s a small foyer with a shoe bench, but most people around here reserve the messy entries for the mudroom, usually off the kitchen. That’s where you’ll find the rubber boots and jackets with hay still stuck to them. I move into the dining room. The painted wood floors creak under my feet as I pass the dining table and chairs.

There are a few empty liquor bottles on the kitchen counters, along with plates of congealed and moldy food. A sun porch runs along the back of the house, but a peek out the door tells me it’s empty.

“Cassie.” John comes into the kitchen from the hall entrance. “We’ve found them. Some of them, at least.”

I follow him into the living room. The two rooms on this side are furnished with couches, an area rug, and a computer desk. A television hangs on the wall, alongside photos and paintings. It’s just the kind of comfortable place where you can put up your feet and get into a movie.

Or it was, because now the colorful throw pillows are scattered and Mom and Dad Franklin sit in two kitchen chairs, dead for many days. The ropes that held them fast while they were alive have sunk into their bloated tissue, but I can see where they come out of flesh and tie underneath. What appears to have been a teenage boy is face-down and splayed on the oak floor, like he was running when he died. The bodies look as if they’re being eaten from the inside out, and in places the skin has sloughed off in sheets.

It strikes me that every time I think I’ve seen something truly awful, I come upon a new horror, something I never even considered. I hold the bandanna I’ve taken to carrying to my face and breathe. They’re so putrefied that it’s impossible to see how they were murdered, but it’s obvious they were.

“They have two girls. Let’s check upstairs,” John says.

The upstairs is empty, except where someone rooted through the drawers and didn’t replace the contents. On the way down I notice the staircase is lined with photographs, starting with a pudgy blond baby and ending with a family photo, taken at Disneyworld and foil embossed with last year’s date. I stare at it until I’m sure.

“Those girls, the ones in Wal-Mart?” I ask. John and Nelly stand at the base of the steps and nod. “One of them was her.”

I point at the daughter with long blond hair and straight white teeth. The whole family stands, arms around each other, having the time of their lives.

“How about the other one?” John asks.

I’m usually good with faces, but she had been strangled and her face was too blotchy to see clearly in the dim light. In the picture she’s laughing and looking up at her dad, who has on mouse ears and looks so incredibly goofy you really can’t blame her.

“She had curly hair, just like her. But I can’t say for sure.”

John’s face is stormy; I don’t know that I’ve ever seen him look like this. His brows meet over his eyes and a muscle flickers in his jaw.

“Let’s go,” he says. “Obviously someone around here is very dangerous. They don’t know about us, and I want it kept that way.”

Outside, John opens the chicken coop. We don’t spare the time to figure out a way to bring them home, but maybe they’ll survive free-range for a while. We kick up dust as we head back down the long driveway, and when it clears I see them pecking around in the grass, enjoying their freedom.

Nelly leans back on the couch with his beer. “This is nice.” He takes a swig and makes a face.

“You must mean the company, not the beer,” Penny says.

Ana and Peter are sleeping at John’s house tonight. He promised them a movie during his few generator hours. I’m sure they’re as happy to be there as I am to have them there. After we listened to the nightly radio update, the four of us left. The radio said the same things, but when they mentioned Kingdom Come Farm, I didn’t feel that sense of well-being. It just reminded me of how idiotic I am.

Penny holds out her bottle. James, Nelly and I clink our bottles on hers and sip. I shiver when the bitter brew goes down, but it’s better than nothing.

“Is it supposed to taste like this?” I ask.

Nelly shakes his head ruefully. “Definitely not. I think I know what we did wrong for next time, though.”

I upend the bottle and gulp. I’ll never get shitfaced if I don’t get serious about drinking. And I’m serious about it tonight. I want this day to be over, and getting drunk and passing out seems like the only way I’ll fall asleep. The last drop of beer swallowed, I unscrunch my eyes to find the three of them staring at me.

“That sure cleanses the palate,” I say. I wipe my mouth with the back of my hand and reach for another.

“More like destroys the palate,” James says. He takes a few gulps. “You know, though, the more you drink, the better it gets.”