The End Has Come (8 page)

“Okay, be strong and keep the faith. I’ll be back before you know it.”

A gust of biting wind hit her as she left the warmth of the van. She locked the door, then took off at a sprint, aware that her family was watching and that she had to look fast and strong, had to look like she could sprint the whole way to the next town like it was no big thing.

When the minivan was out of sight, she slowed. Her lungs were burning, her legs rubbery. She was not a runner; she was an indoor woman carrying an extra thirty pounds who felt at home behind a desk in a climate-controlled room. The opposite of Elijah, whose ADHD had kept him in perpetual motion before the nodding virus took his body away from him.

Teale spotted a sign a half-mile ahead. She tried to pick up her pace; the green sign crept closer, but she still couldn’t make it out. She slowed to a walk to steady her jarring vision, squinted at the sign, gasping for breath.

Gunnison 13

Teale stifled a sob. Thirteen miles? That would take hours. She pictured her family in the van, probably freezing cold already. She eyed the dark woods hugging the highway. Cut through the forest? But what if it was a thousand acres of wilderness?

There were no good options. Trying not to panic, she went back to jogging along the shoulder of the highway.

Within ten minutes she was feeling nauseous and had to slow to a walk again. Pressing her hand against the stitch in her side, she pressed on, images of her family sitting in that van, silent, plumes of white mist coming from their cold mouths. She imagined returning to find them frozen, dead, and —

Teale stopped walking. For the briefest instant she’d felt the most horrible emotion as she imagined returning to find her family dead.

Relief.

Relief that she wouldn’t have to change their diapers any more, or feed them, or carry them to bed. Relief that they would be free of bodies that had become prisons. And relief that she wouldn’t have to witness their deaths, yet hadn’t abandoned them like so many others had abandoned their loved ones.

A humming caught her attention. It took her a moment to identify the soft rumble of an engine rising in the distance. She stopped, spun.

An SUV appeared, barreling toward her.

Teale stepped into the road, waved her arms. “Hey. Hey,
help!”

The SUV slowed, stopped on the shoulder a hundred yards short of her.

Teale headed toward it.

When no one stepped out, she paused. Why weren’t they coming out? Were they waiting to make sure she was alone and unarmed?

She swung her pack off her shoulder, deliberately retrieved the handgun so whoever was in the vehicle could see it, then stuck it in the waistband of her jeans. Hopefully the signal was clear:
I can defend myself, but I mean you no harm.

As she approached the SUV, she prayed it was filled with women, or old people. Not men with thick beards and automatic rifles.

The driver’s door opened. A white guy in combat boots stepped out, slung a rifle over his shoulder.

Teale’s stomach lurched. She stopped walking, put her hand on the pistol grip. “Are you alone?”

“No.” Head down, the guy stepped toward her.

Teale backpedaled a few steps, drew her pistol. “Hang on. I don’t want you any closer.”

The guy stopped, spread his arms, palms up. “You waved me down. Do you need help, or not?”

“I do. I broke down a few miles back. My family’s still back there.”

He gestured toward his SUV. “Get in. We’ll pick them up. I can take you to the next town.”

Teale eyed the SUV. From this distance, with the truck’s tinted windows, she couldn’t see inside. “Who’s with you?”

“My wife and daughter.”

He opened the back door as she got close, then stepped away. Teale tensed as she leaned in, half-expecting someone to grab her.

There was a girl about Elijah’s age sitting frozen in the back, a woman motionless in the passenger seat.

“Climb in.”

She eyed the back of the SUV, packed tight with supplies. “How is my family going to fit? There are three of them.”

“I’ll leave some of this stuff behind.” He shrugged. “It’s not like there’s a shortage of food and supplies. At least not yet.”

Teale climbed into the seat beside the preteen girl. That was true. You could go into most any house — if you could stand the smell — and help yourself to canned food, tools, bedding, guns. Not to mention jewelry, home furnishings, DVDs, toilet paper. The whole house if you wanted it, and were willing to move the bodies.

“Where are you headed?” the man asked. “I’m Gill, by the way. This is Season,” he gestured at the woman in the passenger seat, “and our daughter Arial.”

Teale smiled and nodded at Arial. “Teale. We’re looking for a town to settle in for a while. We’re coming from Denver.”

“Too many bodies in Denver?”

“You got it. Maybe I could deal with it once they’re just bones, but right now it’s too much.”

“Plus there’s disease to think about. Same story with us.” He had a gravelly voice; his sleeves were pulled up to the elbow, revealing tattoos of eyes shedding teardrops.

They exchanged snippets of information they’d picked up on the radio, or from other survivors they’d met in the months since the fall. The President still made radio addresses, but nearly everyone was convinced it was an impersonator. The voice just wasn’t quite right.

“You think the world will ever look anything like it did before?” Teale asked.

Gill slowed as Teale’s minivan appeared around a curve. “Sure. Sooner or later things will get back to normal.”

It seemed a wildly optimistic assessment. Teale wondered if Gill had said it because his family was listening. That’s what Teale would have done if her family was in the car.

It felt strange, leaving food on the side of the road to rot. Then again, there was food spoiling everywhere. All the fresh food rotted in the weeks after the outbreak. Now all the boxes of cereal and bags of chips were going stale. In a few years there’d only be canned food left. There would be plenty of that, though. They had time to get their act together and learn how to plant crops, to corral all the livestock running free.

Teale reached over and patted Chantilly’s knee. She touched her family a lot now, much more than before.

“So what did you used to do, Teale?”

“I was a lobbyist for the Marijuana Policy Project. It was a group working to legalize marijuana nationwide.”

Gill burst out laughing. “Well, it looks like you succeeded. People are free to smoke as much weed as they want.”

It had seemed important work back when things were normal. She’d believed in it. Now it seemed meaningless, like so many other aspects of pre-plague life. When ninety-seven percent of the population was dead or in a catatonic state, a lot of things that had once been important became meaningless.

“How about you? What did you do?”

“Most recently I was a stay-at-home dad. Before that I was a high school substitute teacher and girl’s tennis coach, and before that I worked for a cable company. I’ve had a lot of jobs.”

The sign welcoming them to Gunnison, Colorado proclaimed it the home of Western State College, which must have been a tiny college given the size of the town. As they cruised down Main Street, which would have been quaint if not for all the broken windows and the nodding virus victims in white body bags stacked along the curb, Teale stopped scanning for a replacement vehicle, and instead studied the town itself. It was the epitome of small-town USA. Maybe this was far enough from Denver.

An old woman in a blue tracksuit walking along the sidewalk paused to watch them pass. Teale waved; the woman raised her hand before turning to continue.

She spotted a Holiday Inn up ahead, on the left. “You know what, Gill? Why don’t you drop us at that Holiday Inn? I can find a new car later.” Gill, who’d been cruising slowly while taking in the town, put on his turn signal.

“You letting the squirrels know you’re turning left?” Teale asked.

Gill chuckled. “Habit.” He pulled up to the front doors of the hotel and twisted to look at Teale. “I’m wondering if you’re thinking the same thing as me, that this would be a good place to settle down for a while.”

“Great minds think alike, I guess.”

“Cool. It would be nice to know at least one of my neighbors.”

“One of your four neighbors, probably,” Teale joked as she climbed out of the SUV.

The door into the lobby was unlocked. Teale looked around in the dark lobby until she spotted a luggage cart.

“You going to find a place and move in right away?” Teale asked as Gill helped her load Wilson onto the luggage cart. She would have to wheel her family to a room one at a time.

“We’ll probably do the same as you: crash somewhere for the night, and scout for a permanent location tomorrow.”

“Why don’t you stay here, then?”

“You sure?” Gill said. “If you guys want some space, there are plenty of other hotels.” He gestured down the street.

“I’m guessing my family likes seeing new faces for a change.” And so did Teale. Especially a face that could talk back to her. Sometimes her family’s silence left her feeling more lonely than if she’d actually been alone.

• • • •

Teale held the cup steady while Wilson drained the heavily-spiked eggnog in a half-dozen pulls on his straw, as Nat King Cole crooned
White Christmas
on the stereo.

Her throat was one big knot. Her glands hurt from holding back tears. The flood of memories from past Christmases kept tumbling out, leaving her raw.

Had it been just last year that Chantilly and Elijah tried to stay up all night on Christmas Eve, only to fall asleep at four or five and sleep until noon on Christmas Day? And five years ago today, Wilson donned a Santa outfit and ran across the snowy backyard, into the woods, while the kids watched from the upstairs window, shrieking with excitement at glimpsing Santa Claus?

The song ended. “Whose turn is it to pick the music?” Teale asked in a strained-cheery voice.

“Arial’s, I think.” Gill sprung up, exuding good cheer and energy, his smile terribly stiff. He put on some boy-band’s Christmas CD. As he stood facing the stereo for much too long, Teale noticed his shoulders bobbing slightly, and realized he was crying.

He slipped into the kitchen without turning around.

“You want some more eggnog, hon?” Teale lifted the empty cup from the coffee table and headed into the kitchen.

She found Gill on the floor, clutching his stomach, sobbing silently. When she put a comforting hand on his shoulder he looked up, his face wet, eyelids ringed red.

“I miss them. I grieve for them, but I feel
guilty
for grieving, because they’re still here.”

“I know. I know.” She sank down beside him, her back braced against the cabinets.

Gill pulled on a towel draped over the handle of the stove, wiped his cheeks and eyes, his breath still ragged. “Sometimes I wonder if I’m doing the right thing. I’m terrified that if Season could speak to me one last time, she’d say, ‘I’m in hell, let me go.’”

Teale didn’t answer. She’d wondered the same thing many times, but she didn’t want to think about it.

“I can’t, though,” Gill said. “How could I, without knowing it’s what they want?”

The tears she’d been holding back for the past three hours started to flow. “Have I told you Elijah has ADHD?”

Gill shook his head.

“Before the virus he couldn’t sit still for a minute. It must be absolute torture for him, to be like this.” The pain of knowing her kids might never move again hit her, fresh and new. “I can’t stand seeing them like this. It hurts so much.”

“But you don’t want them to see you hurting,” Gill said.

“That’s right.” She was having trouble taking a breath; it felt as if there was an anvil sitting on her chest. She wanted that damned boy-band to stop singing. “I also don’t want them to see how much I hate them sometimes.”

Teale’s own words startled her. She covered her mouth with one hand, turned and pressed her forehead into Gill’s collar, sobbing.

He rested a hand on her head, whispered, “Yeah. That too.”

It had been lurking down in the darker places of her mind, the resentment, the revulsion she felt at their helplessness. It wasn’t fair that she felt it — it wasn’t their fault — but she felt it, and hated herself for feeling it.

“I wish we’d ignored Christmas and pretended this was just another day,” Teale said into Gill’s neck.

“I’m sorry. If I hadn’t kept track of the days, we wouldn’t have known.”

“It was my idea to celebrate Christmas. We could have ignored it.”

Teale raised her head, intending to sit up. When Gill’s face brushed close to hers, she leaned in and kissed him.

She felt a rush of warmth, of comfort, as she kissed this near-stranger. It was the first time in forever she’d felt something other than pain and fear.

When their lips parted, Teale rested her head on his chest. They stayed that way as
Ding Dong Merrily on High
gave way to
Jingle Bell Rock.

“We’d better get back in there.” Gill’s voice was tight.

“Okay.”

Gill hung back a moment, as if not wanting the others to see them go in together.

• • • •

After she’d put the food away and put everyone to bed, Teale went for a walk to clear her head, to think about what had happened in the kitchen. She felt sick about it, guilty as hell, but also alive in a way she hadn’t felt in a long time. Kissing Gill had been the last thing on her mind until the moment she’d done it; it had been like lunging for a life preserver as she was going down for the final time.

Were you depressed if you felt hopeless and sad but had good reason to feel that way? Teale didn’t know. It probably didn’t matter what she called how she felt. Call it “depressed,” or “sad,” or “the new normal.”

“Hey.” Gill was leaning on his SUV, one foot on the bumper. A thrill went through Teale. She tried to tamp it down, wondering if Gill had come outside hoping she would, too, or whether it was just coincidence.

She joined him by the SUV.

“You want to talk about, you know, the kitchen? Or just forget it happened, or —” Gill trailed off.