- - End of All Things, The
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Authors: Lissa Bryan
Contents
First published by The Writer’s Coffee Shop, 2013
Copyright © Lissa Bryan, 2013
The right of Lissa Bryan to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her under the
Copyright Amendment (Moral Rights) Act 2000
This work is copyrighted. All rights are reserved. Apart from any use as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced, copied, scanned, stored in a retrieval system, recorded or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher.
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
The Writer’s Coffee Shop
(Australia) PO Box 447 Cherrybrook NSW 2126
(USA) PO Box 2116 Waxahachie TX 75168
Paperback ISBN- 978-1-61213-141-2
E-book ISBN- 978-1-61213-142-9
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the US Congress Library.
Cover image by: Amanda L. Spitz, ©Depositphotos/Vukasin Ilic, ©Depositphotos/Kotenko
Cover design by: Jada D’Lee
www.thewriterscoffeeshop.com/lbryan
About the Author
Lissa Bryan is an astronaut, renowned Kabuki actress, Olympic pole vault gold medalist, Iron Chef champion, and scientist who recently discovered the cure for athlete’s foot
. . .
though only in her head.
Real life isn’t so interesting, which is why she spends most of her time writing.
Dedication
To my True Love, whose support has made all of this possible.
Acknowledgments
Endless gratitude to Kathie, who’s always there to cheer me on, soothe my nerves, and keep me on track. Thanks also to Verushka and Jen, whose input and talents made this a much better book. And to Amanda Spitz, for the lovely base cover image, and Jada D'Lee for making it all come together.
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Chapter One
“He’s still out there.”
Sam wagged his tail.
“What do you think he wants?” Carly asked Sam as she let the curtains fall closed. “Never mind. I’m not sure I want to know the answer to that question because it’s probably nothing good.”
It had been a week since the Biker Guy appeared and set up camp on the sidewalk across the street from her apartment building. He was the first healthy person she’d seen in weeks. At first she wasn’t sure. His behavior was odd enough to make her think he was one of the Infected. Why would he set up a tent across from her apartment building when there was a motel right down the street? It made no sense. He would wave at her and smile cheerfully whenever Carly peeked through the curtains. He would be reading, cleaning a gun, or cooking over the fire he had built on the sidewalk, but as soon as she looked out the window, his head would snap up and he would stare right at her, as if he had some sort of weird sixth sense about when she was looking.
He was trying to starve her out, waiting until she
had
to leave, and then he would . . . what? She wasn’t sure. She had a bad feeling she was going to find out very soon. She and Sam were out of food. Carly could have tolerated the hunger a while longer, but Sam had gone over to his bowl a few times today and batted at it with his paw, and she couldn’t stand the idea of the puppy being hungry.
Carly went to the closet and got out one of her dad’s golf clubs, the closest thing she had to a weapon. She’d taken it from the trunk of his car the first time she’d gone out. She slipped a steak knife in the back pocket of her jeans, though she wasn’t sure it would be effective if someone got close. Some of the Infected had seemed impervious to pain, and the little flimsy knife didn’t seem like it would inflict much damage. She thought about the long, wickedly-sharp knives her mother had hanging on the magnetic rack in her kitchen, but there was no way Carly could go back into her parents’ apartment.
Sam pranced by the door. He thought she was going to take him out. The apartment building was built in a square around a small, grassy courtyard where Carly walked him. Those blank windows staring like sightless eyes always made her nervous. There could still be Infected inside some of the apartments, which was why she tried to keep Sam’s visits outside to the early mornings and late evenings, when it was almost dark and less likely she’d be seen. He used a pan lined with newspaper the rest of the time, but the garbage hadn’t been picked up in months, and the newspaper machine in the building’s lobby was empty.
“I’ll be back soon, Sam,” Carly said. She knelt down and hugged him. He licked the underside of her chin as she stood. “Be good, okay?” She closed her apartment door after her and twisted the knob to make sure it had locked. At the end of the hall was a fire door that led to the stairs, and Carly took the three flights down to the ground level. She wished there was another way to get out, but her building only had one street-level exit, aside from the fire escape, and she wasn’t brave enough to try them. She had a pathological fear of heights that was so bad she would rather face the Biker Guy than try to climb down a rickety metal ladder.
She peeked out the window in the lobby.
Yep. Still there
. And currently staring right at her. She clutched the handle of the golf club like a baseball bat.
For a moment, Carly considered turning around, going back upstairs, and just hoping he’d leave before their situation became desperate, but she’d given the rest of the food to Sam yesterday and the little guy was growing. He needed to eat.
She had to do it. She had no choice. But she couldn’t force herself to open the door. Biker Guy got up from his seat on an overturned bucket and walked straight toward her. The guy was
huge.
Carly swallowed a gasp and backed up until her heels bumped against the stairs.
He was even scarier up close. Her dad had been six feet tall and this guy was even taller, built like a linebacker with heavily muscled, broad shoulders. He had tattoos on his arms and a scruffy beard on his jaw, which matched the dark, tousled hair on his head. His eyes were so dark, they seemed black. “Hello,” he said through the glass door.
Carly scrambled up the stairs to the landing and backed into the corner.
Nope.
No way was she going out there. She trotted back up the stairs to her floor, listening carefully for any sounds that might indicate he was forcing his way in, but she heard nothing beyond her own raspy breathing.
She took out her key ring, pausing when she saw the key next to her own. She bit her lip and looked across the hall at the door the key unlocked. The apartment belonged to Mrs. Lincoln, a retired elementary teacher. Carly had been in her class when she was in the second grade, and there had been a mutual affection between them ever since. Carly had a key because she ran occasional errands for Mrs. Lincoln and watered her plants whenever she was out of town.
She hadn’t seen Mrs. Lincoln since the start of the Crisis due to the quarantine, and she hadn’t answered her phone when Carly tried to call. Carly fervently hoped the elderly widow had gotten away before the Infection reached Juneau. There were supposed to be some areas in Canada that weren’t affected. Maybe she and her son had holed up in his fishing cabin in Vancouver.
She knew if she asked Mrs. Lincoln, she would
encourage
Carly to get what she needed from her cupboards, but it still made Carly very uncomfortable. It felt like . . . looting. It felt
wrong.
But she had a hungry puppy to feed and no choice unless she wanted to face Biker Guy. Carly gritted her teeth and used the key.
With her next breath, she knew Mrs. Lincoln hadn’t made it to Canada. Choking, gagging, Carly held her arm over her nose to try to block the stench. She held her breath as she darted inside to the little kitchen and opened the cupboards. Only a few cans remained inside. Carly felt tears gather, and she wasn’t sure if it was because of poor Mrs. Lincoln or her disappointment in the lack of food.
She took what was there. It would tide them over for a couple of days. She dashed back out into the hall and shut the door. An explosion of breath left her, a ragged sob which sounded horribly loud in the silent hallway.
Carly unlocked her own door and slipped inside. Sam bounced joyfully, as though she’d been gone for weeks, his tail wagging so hard he was hitting his flanks with it. She smiled at him and gave his ears a rub. He looked at her quizzically. “I’m okay,” she reassured him. “I’m okay.”
She didn’t have a choice but to be okay.
Sam wasn’t fooled. He leaned against her leg and looked up at her with a soft whine.
She felt tears sting her eyes. “You never met Mrs. Lincoln, but she was very nice. I just wish . . . I just wish she could have been with her son if she had to . . .” Carly couldn’t say the last word.
She turned away and began to sort the cans she’d found. There were kidney beans, beef stew, corn, and green beans. She fished her can opener out of the drawer and before long was pouring the can of beef stew into Sam’s bowl. He dug in with relish. Carly opened the kidney beans for herself and ate them right out of the can. She’d never been much of a cook before the Crisis, but since the electricity was gone, she couldn’t even warm up her dinner. At least the beans were filling, she thought. Pretty tasty, too. Her mother had always said,
Hunger is the best seasoning.
Carly cut off that line of thought abruptly.
She threw the empty cans into the trash and went over to sit down on the sofa. She stared at the blank screen of the television in front of her. Her watch no longer worked but she had learned to tell the approximate time by the shadows on the wall.
Troy Cramer’s
News Hour
would be on right about now,
she thought. During the Crisis, he had been the nation’s most trusted source of news. He had seemed indefatigable, staying on the air for inhumanly long stretches, especially toward the end, when he had been the last man standing. And there had been no one left to turn off the camera when he began raving in delirium. She was almost glad the power had gone off before she saw the inevitable conclusion. She would have felt compelled to watch, to be with him in his final moments, even in this remote fashion.
Sam hopped up on the sofa beside her and laid his head on her thigh with a contented sigh. He had a full belly, and Carly petted him as he drifted off to sleep. All was right in his world. Carly envied him.
His fur had been darker when she first spotted him on the sidewalk in front of her building, and his eyes had been blue. He was a lonely little puppy trying to tear open a trash bag, looking for something to eat. He must have remembered humans since he’d run right to Carly when she dashed outside to scoop him up. She had to take him in. She knew what would happen to him if she didn’t.