Notes From the End of the World (15 page)

Chapter 22

March 7

Cindy

Mom is gone.

I don’t know what else to say about it. She was gone when I woke. Dad had already left by the time I noticed, hiding behind helping the handful of people who are clinging to something that’s not quite life, but not death, either.

The gun from Dad’s desk drawer is gone also.

I can’t say I’m surprised by this. The fact is, I really don’t know how I feel about it. I don’t know if I feel anything at all.

I don’t mean to come across as cold, but it’s like I’m just numb. Numb, blind, and stumbling around inside some terrible dream from which I cannot wake.

Nick and I search the neighborhood, but there’s no sign of Mom. She left us on foot, with only the clothes she had on. She didn’t take her heavy coat, although the temperature’s not climbing above fifty most days. The weather in March has always sucked—a tease of spring one day, sleet the next. The nights are frigid and miserable and Mom’s cold-natured like me.

Dad doesn’t know. The cell connection is shaky, but it doesn’t matter. I haven’t tried to call him. Not yet.

Nick and I walk the empty streets of Sawgrass Flats, no longer very concerned over the military flyovers. Ground patrols are infrequent, at least around here. Maybe Nick’s idea of marking the houses as “cleared” worked to keep the soldiers out.

The sun beats down, a kiss of warmth on the tops of our heads, balancing the chilly breath of late winter that numbs our cheeks, noses, and chins.

The stink of rot and death has either diminished, or else I’ve become so used to it that I no longer notice.

Nick carries a baseball bat, and I’m just looking around at the dead houses, the dead lawns. A little dog barks. It sounds close, but the animal has become too shy to come out and be seen.

“Do you think she went out for supplies?” Nick asks. He knows better than that, but he’s trying to shield me from more pain. I appreciate it, but it’s not realistic or helpful. It’s just pretend.

I shrug. “She’s never lifted a finger to help. Not since Audrey got sick.” I sound angrier than I intend, but I am angry. Nothing’s mattered to Mom since Audrey was bitten. Dad and I always played second fiddle to Audrey.

Sure, it’s the same way with Dad and me, but he didn’t show it. He didn’t rub it in their faces and make them feel excluded from some sort of fabulous, secret club like Mom and Audrey did.

I’m a bitter bitch, okay?

I want to believe Mom selected one of these empty houses. She went inside and just finished things off.

I could see that being her way. She’d know that we wouldn’t search every house, every closet, or attic. She’d make the choice of going where we wouldn’t find her. What she went to do was a private thing. Secret, and she would find a secret place to do it. Plus, she’s too goddamned vain to leave herself where we might find her—looking less that perfect.

Frankly, it sucks that she’s taken our gun to use it for her own selfish purposes.

Nick takes my hand, and I let him although I don’t really feel like holding his hand or talking. I want to blow up, and be pissed off at the world for being so shitty. I want to be pissed off at Mom for leaving, and at Dad for not being able to save us like I always imagined he could. I’m pissed at Audrey for first being a bitch and then a Shambler.

I’m pissed at myself for being pissed.

Worse than anything else, I’m pissed at myself for crying, which is what I’m suddenly doing. It breaks like a stupid floodgate and I just sink to the pavement, nearly pulling Nick down with me.

“Cindy!” Nick cries, dropping to his knees next to me. “Are you okay?”

He means physically, I know that, but I can’t help but snap at him.

“No, I’m not fucking okay! My Mom’s gone! My sister’s a zombie and my Dad’s losing it, I’m pretty sure.”

Nick take my face in his hands, the palms of his fingerless gloves warm and soft, the pads of his fingers brushing my cheeks, rough as sandpaper. He makes me look at him although I don’t want to. I don’t want him to see me blubbering like one of those girls at school who always cried at the drop of a hat.

“Don’t look at me,” I whisper, my lips and eyes feeling too hot and swollen.

“Don’t hide your tears from me,” Nick says. He smudges them away with his thumb, smiling, his own eyes shining with tears.

“Please. It’s stupid.”

“It’s
not
stupid. It’s not! Do you think I don’t cry? Shit, I cry over nearly every night, Cindy. On the sofa of your living room, lying in the dark. Sometimes, I scream into the sofa cushions. I get it out. It’s the only way I get through the days sometime.”

“You do?” I’m not sure I believe him. He’s never shown any signs of being nothing less than perfect. Strong, level-headed. Awesome.

He smiles. “Of course. What? Do you think I’m some kind of tough-ass?”

“Sort of,” I whisper, blushing.

“Well, I’m not. And neither are you. Face it.” It stands and pulls me to my feet. “Come on.”

Slowly, we begin moving down the street again. I lean into his side, loving his warmth. But I still feel helpless.

“We’re not going to find her, you know. At least, not alive.”

“I know. But it’s only right to pretend we might, isn’t it?”

“I guess so,” I agree. Maybe it is right to pretend. It’s the only way we can retain some facade of humanity when so much of it is already gone.

***

I find the note before Dad gets home. Mom left it on the fridge, stuck there on the door between photos of me and Audrey—some recent, and others when we were quite small. It’s secured by a little magnetic heart that bears the legend, “World’s Best Mom.”

I don’t like what it says, and decide quickly that Dad doesn’t need to know what Mom thought of him. It’s best to let her go. It help him let her go.

I’m afraid of how he’s going to take it. At what point will he finally break? Or is he already broken and just going through the motions of surviving, like most of the ones who remain?

***

***

Cindy

I wonder how many how things Dad can hold inside before he bursts. Just like his reaction when Nick and I tell him about Mom.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes,” is all I answer. I don’t mention the note. I just can’t. Maybe Mom wasn’t deliberately being hurtful, but still it is. Even if much of what she wrote is true.

“Did you look for her?” Dad asks.

“We looked,” Nick tells him. “Every house on the street, Mr. Scott.”

“We couldn’t decide how long she’d been gone,” I say.

Dad nods. He sinks down onto the kitchen stool, slumps over the counter, and buries his face into his shaking hands.

He sobs, a loud, harsh noise.

It takes me a moment before I realize he’s actually crying. My dad. Crying. I’m so shocked, I don’t know how to react. I touch his shoulder, timid, as if he’s suddenly so fragile that a simple caress might break him.

“I’m sorry, Dad. I’m sorry I didn’t notice she was gone!”

Now, I’m crying, too. Again.

He gropes blindly at me, and roughly snatches me into his arms. I bury my face against his stubbly jaw, smelling the faint scent of his aftershave or soap—the same comforting scent I remember from days when I had scraped knees and bumps on my noggin. It has always been Dad for those things, never Mom. Mom was for buying the right shoes for the Sadie Hawkins dance and teaching me which fork to use (even when we’re having pizza).

“It’s okay,” he whispers against my hair. “It’s going to be all right.”

“It’s not!” I cry. “Things are going to shit and we can’t stop it.” My eyes find Nick standing awkwardly across the kitchen, chewing his bottom lip.

The panic I felt when I collapsed on the road earlier returns, threefold. Things were never supposed to be like this. When the news reports first started, I never thought our little family would be touched by this thing. Things like this happened to other families, in other cities. Big cities. Not silly little communities of only a few thousand people.

Once upon a time, I believed we were immune to tragedy.

Chapter 23

March 13

Cindy

The focus has become getting away from Palm Dale. Dad grieves over Mom just like he grieved over Audrey. Silently. Shielded himself from Nick and me. I’ve gotten very good at things I never thought I’d be good at. Breaking into locked houses. Syphoning gasoline from the abandoned cars left in the driveways and garages all along the avenue.

We’ll need at least five good canisters of gasoline, Dad says, for travel, and then for the generator once we get into the mountains. We have eight. And food and water? We have dried pasta, bouillon, canned tuna, powdered milk. You name it. We’re not exactly eating like royalty, but we’re not starving. Plus, Dad says we’ll be able to hunt once we get to Dr. Jacob’s cabin.

Dad looks for Mom every morning and every evening. He says he taking a walk, but I know he’s searching for her body. More for closure than anything else.

We all could use some sense of closure. Nick feels his own mother is dead, too. I’m not sure what’s worse—knowing your parent took her own life out of weakness, or knowing some slimeball posing as a savior decided your parent was just another causality of war.

Dad’s printed out a calendar and taped to the microwave door. We’re out of here in a week. On it he’s created a sort of “to-do” list—the important things we need to be sure to tackle in the remaining seven days here in Palm Dale.

I feel a little sad to leave, but there’s too much hurt around here. It awaits me in every corner and at every turn. It sucks because so many wonderful things happened on the same floors where my feet are now planted, but those things are shut off from me now.

It’s like watching a movie that you never want to end.

***

March 14

Dad makes his famous (or is it infamous, by now) tuna casserole for dinner. With it, he opens the last bottle of Mom’s burgundy.

“Red doesn’t go well with fish,” he says, swirling the dark liquid around in our best crystal, raising his eyebrows in a faux-snooty manner that’s not like him at all. “But what the hell?”

He then pours up two more glasses for me and Nick. “We’re not driving tonight, are we?”

“No, sir. Not tonight,” Nick says, taking his glass from the counter. Candles flicker around the room. The electricity is faulty this evening—something that’s happening more and more frequently. It’ll be on for an hour and off for three. Of course, we have the generator, but the weather’s not especially cold tonight, so the gasoline will be saved for later. Besides, it’s already packed into the back of the SUV, along with the fuel canisters, boxes of food and blankets, and other necessities. That’s actually
day-four
on Dad’s list, buy the way, but it’s done. In fact, everything is done.

Almost.

Dad’s iPod is docked in a cheap-assed “boombox,” as he calls it. It looks like something straight out of the 1980s, with a handle and big, thumping speakers. I don’t ask where he found this monstrosity, but it works well enough—despite Dad’s taste in music.

He’s on a Fleetwood Mac kick tonight. My only knowledge of Fleetwood Mac is Stevie Nicks’ white witch on a couple of episodes of
American Horror Story.

But Nick digs it big time. “My dad loved this,” he says, his face brightening in the dim light. He takes me hand and spins me around the kitchen, oddly jubilant to the haunted strains of “Rhiannon.”

“You don’t have to try so hard to get on his good side,” I tease, cutting my eyes to Dad. “You’re already in.”

Nick laughs. “I’m not trying to get on anyone’s
good side
.”

“Seriously.”

“Seriously,” he says, spinning me once again.

I stumble against a kitchen stool, and Dad grabs my shoulder to steady me. “Careful.”

We sit down to dinner at the counter. It seems too strange to use the table now that there are two empty spaces there.

“This isn’t going to be as good as usual. The chips were stale so I substituted saltines,” Dad says, helping a big serving onto a plate. He passes it to me.

My appetite has been nonexistent lately, but roars back once the smell of the casserole hits me. My stomach rumbles and I take a greedy bite without waiting on Nick or Dad. Frankly, tonight, Emily Post can kiss my ass.

Once we’re all served, Dad then refills our wine glasses. I’m still surprised by this, but just enjoy it and say nothing. I love the way it makes me feel—so unlike the Jaeger and the rum, which went straight to my head too quickly. The wine is a slow and easy warmth that spreads through my chest and then my brain. It’s rather lovely, I decide, and wish we had another bottle to share.

“I don’t think we’ll have a lot of trouble getting out of town,” Dad comments between bites.

“I haven’t heard the choppers in a few days,” Nick says. “Maybe they’ve written Palm Dale off.”

“Either that or nearly everyone is dead,” I suggest.

“Maybe,” Dad says. “I’m not sure which is more troubling.”

“To hell with the military,” Nick snarls. “I hope they’re all dead.”

Dad pushes his noodles back and forth across his plate, thoughtful.

“Well, considering how things were going, it wouldn’t be an altogether bad thing. I just never imagined it would be acceptable to murder Americans,” I says.

“It’s not acceptable,” Dad says quietly. “But the nation we knew is gone. For all we know, there’s no longer a government. There’s just some scared, crazy people out there fighting to survive.”

“We’re fighting to survive, Dad. But we haven’t killed anyone to do it,” I say.

“But it doesn’t mean we won’t have to,” Nick whispers. He takes a long sip of his wine, his eyes meeting Dad’s over the edge of his glass.

“You’re exactly right, Nick. It’s scary, but it’s something we must be prepared to do.”

My head’s swirling gently, and I’m enjoying the growing buzz I’m getting, so I really wish we’d move on to a more positive subject. “Well, that’s the reason for getting out of town, isn’t it? To be away from the dangers of not only the Shamblers, but also the dangers of the living.

“Exactly,” Dad agrees. “So after I make one more visit to the hospital in the morning, we’ll go. You two make sure you take everything you want to take with you. And don’t forget to gather your textbooks. We’re not going on vacation.”

“Do you really have to go back to the hospital?” I ask.

“Cindy. We’ve talked about this.”

“But what are you going to do? With the ones who are left, I mean?” I ask, hating the whining tone my voice is now taking.

“I’m going to allow them to make their own choices. Plus, Jolee and Sylvia are staying. Along with Dr. Marcus and Dr. Edwards.”

“Why would they choose to do that?” I ask. The interest I once had in sticking my own neck out to help others is long gone. Now, all I’m concerned with is making the three of us stay alive.

“None of them have family. It’s their choice to remain there.”

My stomach does a strange, slow roll. Jolee had a young daughter, I remember. A little doll-faced redhead. A mini version of her mom. “Oh,” is all I say.

We finish our meal without any more discussion, Stevie Nicks’ sweet, raspy voice filling our lifeless, shadowy kitchen.

***

When we move to the living room, Nick stokes the fire to get it going again, and the room quickly becomes toasty. The wine has won out over my wakefulness, and I’m extremely drowsy and goofy-headed.

The three of us sleep in there together for the warmth, Dad on the sofa, Nick and I nestled into sleeping bags on the floor on either side of the room. Dad’s pretty liberal-minded but there’s an old-fashioned streak in him that’s a mile wide, and Nick doesn’t dare place his bag near mind. After a quick peck on the lips, we bed down.

Groggy, I stare up at the ceiling, the dancing flames from fireplace painting the world a soft, warm orange, and fight back another bout of tears. This the only home I’ve ever known, but tomorrow, once we pile into the SUV and pull away, I know I’ll never see it again.