The Last Place on Earth (22 page)

For the first time, I noticed a yellow sheet of paper taped to the front door of the nearest bungalow. The house across the street had one as well.

“When does the quarantine end?”

“If no one shows any symptoms after a week, they can leave the house. Not that they'll want to.”

“Can I call my mother?”

The phone rang four times and went to voice mail. I tried Peter: no answer. Then I tried my mother one more time before giving up. I gave the phone back to Martin.

“Sorry.”

I nodded. If I tried to speak, I'd probably cry.

“As long as we're down here, let's go for a ride,” Martin said.

We got on the 101 freeway and drove up the coast, the Pacific Ocean on our left, the Santa Ynez Mountains on our right. Soon, the city of Santa Barbara, with its white stucco buildings, red roofs, and palm trees, rose above us like a misplaced Mediterranean dream. It looked like the kind of place where everybody was happy all the time, where nothing could ever go wrong.

Martin took an exit into the city, and we drove through quiet streets lined with pretty pastel houses landscaped with roses and bougainvillea, birds-of-paradise, and palms. About every fifth house had a yellow quarantine notice on the front door.

When we spied an
H
street sign, Martin followed it to a hospital. We couldn't get close to the building because so many cars were double-parked on the street. In the parking lot, tents had been set up to treat the overflow of patients. And still there wasn't enough room for the stricken: A long line snaked around the rows of cars. Medical workers in hazmat suits wound their way around the crowd with water and blankets, clipboards and blood pressure cuffs.

“They didn't run away,” I said.

“Who?”

“The hospital workers.”

Henry shook his head. “They'll wish they had.”

“Not necessarily,” Martin said. “At least they won't have to live with the guilt.”

Before I knew it, I was crying. And I hate to cry. Henry leaned over the front seat to rub my shoulder. “It's okay. Everything is going to be okay.”

I shook my head: Nothing would ever be okay again. I took deep breaths until I managed to control myself, because really, I had no right to feel bad when all these people were suffering and I was safe. My mother and Peter would go to Henry's house. They would get through this. We all would. Anything else was unthinkable.

Soon, we were back on the 101. I thought I saw seals in the waves, but no: They were surfers, still going about the business of living, refusing to give in to panic and fear.

At a town called Summerland, Martin took the exit. Right off the highway, an empty parking lot overlooked a deserted beach. Steep wooden steps led to coarse sand below. It was breezy down there. The air felt so pure—cool and clean. The roar of crashing waves soothed me. Miles out, oil rigs stood against the horizon like alien spaceships. I remembered Peter joking about alien abductions. An alien abduction was starting to sound like a good thing.

I pulled off my sneakers and walked to the water's edge. Icy water slid up over my feet and then sloshed back into the sea. Parallel to the shore, a dolphin arced above the surface and dove back down in a single, fluid motion. Another followed, and another. Dolphins traveled in pods. If one member of the pod got ill, would the others desert it?

Henry came up beside me. We stood there silently, squinting at the brilliant water, letting the waves run over our feet and soak the bottom of his jeans. He rolled up his sleeves. There were no dogs on the beach, no risk of flea bites.

I said, “Are you going to run into the water like you did at the pond?”

Out where the dolphins had been, a pelican soared a few feet above the water, looking for fish, seeing nothing.

“I will if you will,” he said.

I shook my head. “There's no point.”

In front of us, the ocean breathed in and out, maintaining the rhythm it had established long before humanity even existed. The ocean would always be here, even when we were not. That was something.

Henry reached out his hand. I took it and held on for dear life.

 

Thirty

THEY WERE WAITING
for us when we got back. The Waxweiler and Hawking parents stood guard on the front steps, between the ridiculous columns. Martin took his time parking the bright blue car in its usual spot next to the front of the house. He even let the song on his iPod finish before turning off the ignition.

Henry got out first and moved his seat forward so I could squeeze out of the backseat. The three of us walked to the house together, stopping a few paces before the steps.

Mrs. Waxweiler spoke first, her voice quavering with anxiety and going up at the end, as if she were asking a question. “You need to tell us when you are going to take off like that, Martin?”

Head down, Martin stomped up the steps. He was navigating his way around the adults when his father grabbed his arm. Martin was tall, but his father was huge.

“Wait a minute, young man!” Mr. Waxweiler said. “You owe us an explanation.”

Martin tilted his chin up and narrowed his eyes. “I went to get gas. Before all the pumps run out.”

“You were gone for hours.”

“We had to go into town,” Martin lied. “Everything else was closed.”

Fear replaced panic on Mr. Waxweiler's wide face. “Did you…”

“I left the money outside the attendant's station. Like you taught me. And I used a paper towel to pick up the pump.” He had done neither of those things.

“Did you talk to anyone?” Mr. Waxweiler asked.

“No.”

“Did you see anything?”

“We just got the gas and came back. I'll be in my room.”

Mr. and Mrs. Waxweiler hesitated for a moment, and then they followed their son inside, leaving a dangerous stillness in their wake.

Hands clenched at his sides, Mr. Hawking glared at Henry, while his wife trained her evil eyes on me.

“You. Can't. Do. That,” Mr. Hawking said. “
Ever
.”

“Was this Daisy's idea?” Mrs. Hawking asked. “Because we have only allowed her to remain here because she assured us that—”

“Why do you blame everything on Daisy?” Henry said.

“People are dying!” I said. “Don't you understand that?” These people didn't scare me anymore.

“Of course I understand!” Mrs. Hawking's face contorted. “You think you're the only one who has family out there? My cousin and her kids … I begged them to come with us, but…” She shook her head.

“Are they okay?” Henry asked.

“I don't know,” she whispered.

“We must focus on the present!” Mr. Hawking boomed. “On the tasks at hand. That is the only way we will get through this. And we
will
get through it, make no mistake. Henry, you were assigned to beekeeping duty this morning. You're late.”

He turned and walked into the house. His wife, her eyes shiny from tears she refused to spill, gave me a final murderous look before following him.

“You should have left me on the beach,” I told Henry.

“I'll never leave you.”

 

Thirty-One

“MOVE OUT! MOVE
out! Move out! Move out!”

It was the middle of the murky, moonless night, and a man was yelling. I sat up and whacked my head on the roof.

“Ow!”

“Watch your head,” Kirsten said.

“What's going on?”

“Bugout drill.” She had twisty pink curlers in her hair. She pulled a sweatshirt over her pajamas, careful not to mess up her handiwork.

“But haven't we already bugged out? Isn't this compound the bugout location?”

“Yeah, but we need to practice in case we ever have to BO from the BOL.”

My eyelids were heavy, and sheer exhaustion was pinning me to the thin mattress. “Would anyone notice if I just didn't show up?”

Kirsten reached under her bunk and pulled out a green backpack. “Oh, they'd notice. Believe me.”

I was the last one off the bus. The kids, illuminated by a cluster of LED lanterns, stood in line right in front of the putrid animal spa.

Mr. Waxweiler loomed over the kids, stopwatch in hand. When I took my place at the end of the line, next to one of the little kids, he pressed the watch and said, “Seven minutes. Too slow!”

“Daisy held us up,” said Kadence, who seemed to grow more weaselly every day.

Mr. Waxweiler strode down the line. “We are each of us, in the community, only as strong as our weakest member.”

Wow, in just a couple of weeks, I had gone from being an interloper to the weakest link. That was what I called progress.

I leaned forward and checked the others. I was not the last to show up, after all. Martin had stayed in bed, and his parents were pretending not to notice. Martin was my new role model.

“BOB inspection. Gwennie, you take the lead.”

Mr. Dunkle emerged from the shadows. “It's Kyle's turn to be squad leader.”

Gwendolyn's father held himself up even taller. “Kyle will lead the next evacuation drill; Gwennie's in charge of inspections. We talked about this.”

“You talked. I didn't agree.”

Without answering, Mr. Waxweiler turned his back to the other man and faced his daughter. “Begin, Gwennie.”

Mr. Dunkle squeezed his hands into fists. Meanwhile, Gwendolyn took two steps forward, turned in perfect drill formation, and strode to the end of the line—otherwise known as me.

“Where's your BOB?” she demanded.

“I don't have a Bob.”

“Bug. Out. Bag.”

“I know what it stands for. But I don't have one.”

Gwendolyn was mad at us for leaving her behind when we'd gone down the mountain. Now, she frowned. I thought she would yell. Instead, she said, “Weakest link!” and moved on to seven-year-old Kelli-Lynn, who was wearing Cinderella jammies with pink hiking boots.

“Kelli-Lynn!”

“Yes sir! Ma'am!”

“Squad leader.”

“Yes, squaw leader!”

“Open your BOB!”

“Yes, squaw leader!”

Kelli-Lynn squatted down and unzipped her Spider-Man backpack, probably a hand-me-down from one of her brothers. Or maybe it had been her choice. For a kid who had been exposed to very little television, she showed a showed a remarkable affinity for kiddie pop culture.

Kelli-Lynn lined up her survival items on the dusty ground. There were three ready-to-eat meals, a Hello Kitty aluminum water bottle, a plastic bag filled with iodine tablets. There was a thin
Frozen
blanket, a big black trash bag that could be used as a tarp, tent, or poncho. Or even a trash bag. There were ziplock bags, twine, aluminum foil, a tiny screwdriver, bandages, antibiotic cream, some tape, and thumbtacks.

The contents of Kelli-Lynn's bugout bag bore a remarkable resemblance to our kitchen junk drawer at home.

“Okay—assessment,” Gwendolyn barked. “Henry?”

“Um … looks good to me.” He was in the middle of the line, wearing drawstring pants and a white T-shirt. His hair stuck up at funny angles, and he was blinking with fatigue.

He looks cute
, I thought involuntarily. Right away another part of my brain jumped in with,
This is no time to start thinking that way.
And then I turned my attention back on the BOB checks because the argument in my head was almost as annoying as Gwendolyn.

“Keanu!” she barked. “What is missing from Kelli-Lynn's BOB bag?”

“Fire starter!” Keanu squealed. Keanu had one of those nails-on-chalkboard voices that would have been annoying coming from an eleven-year-old girl in glitter jeans, but from a boy of the same age in camo fatigues, it was downright unsettling.

“Yes!” Gwendolyn said.

“And a knife!” Keanu screeched.

“Yes again!”

“But she's seven,” I said, because somebody had to.

“I'll be eight in April.” Kelli-Lynn clutched her
Frozen
blankie for emphasis.

“Which means that right now you're seven.” I get points for not adding,
And in ten years you'll be seventeen, and in twenty-five years you'll be thirty-two. And then you can be trusted with sharp objects and pyrotechnics, but right now you should stick to fairy wands.

Gwendolyn spun around to face Kelli-Lynn's father, clasping her hands behind her as a sign of respect or maybe as a way to keep her hands warm. “Mr. Dunkle, has Kelli-Lynn received fire and knife safety training?”

“Yeah. Course. All my kids is trained from when they're little.”

Gwendolyn spun again to face the formation. Gwendolyn needed to get back to her drill squad, almost as much as she needed her dog.

At the thought of all the abandoned dogs we had seen, sadness pierced through my exhaustion. When I didn't think about what was happening outside this weird little village, it felt like we were playing a game. Soldiers or scouts or something. But this was real. Very, very real.

Gwendolyn advised little Kelli-Lynn to fill her Spider-Man bag with matches and a Swiss army knife. Then she took inventory of Killer's bag—all good except she told him he was “maybe a little heavy on the weapons.” Because, really, does a thirteen-year-old need a hunting knife, a Swiss army knife,
and
a bow and arrow?

Mr. Dunkle chuckled. “What he really wants in his BOB is an AK-47.”

It was more of the same for the next couple of bugout bags. Henry's BOB, presumably packed before he left home, included a photo of us on the Hermosa Beach pier. He didn't say anything about the picture, just put it on the dirt between his power bars and matches.

Gwendolyn nodded at Henry's stash, and he stuffed everything back inside. The inspections were almost complete. Maybe I'd get some sleep, after all.

And then Gwendolyn reached Kirsten. Kirsten was old enough and smart enough to have all the basics: the MREs, the water-filtration system, first-aid kit, soap, blanket, matches, knife, etc. But the fun came when she pulled out the last items from her raggedy black backpack and placed them on the dirt: