Until the End of the World (Book 1) (46 page)

“It’s dinnertime,” he says. “Maybe we’ll find Nelly and Penny, finally.” We went by the tent earlier, but they were off exploring.

Nelly spots us as we walk in and pulls Penny’s sleeve. He rushes through the crowd and, upon seeing our intertwined hands, gives me his wholesome grin that manages to convey something naughty. He and Adrian hug and pound each other on the back.

Penny squeezes Adrian’s face in her hands and smooches him on the lips. “I never thought I’d see this beautiful face again!”

Adrian laughs and spins her around. We’re attracting all kinds of attention, but most people are smiling. Some look wistful. I think of how Maureen said we’ve all lost someone, and I feel a tiny bit guilty that we’ve been found.

The dining room is almost empty. A few people play cards or talk, but most have gone to their quarters for the night. We’ve pushed ourselves back from the table and sit in lantern light. Bits made a friend named Jasmine, and they sat under the table giggling until Jasmine’s bedtime. Now she’s on my lap, limp with sleep. We were up at dawn today, and she’s exhausted.

Nelly’s taken on the job of telling Adrian our story: Brooklyn, Jersey, the Washingtons and the campground, Neil’s gang and even Zeke, who Adrian knows. Zeke did get to Whitefield like we thought.

When he tells the story of Peter, his voice lowers, and he makes sure Bits is still asleep. Somehow he manages to include Peter without mentioning that we dated. I don’t plan on keeping it a secret, but it’s something I need to tell Adrian in private.

“He must have been a great guy,” Adrian says. He notices Ana’s wet cheeks and hands her a napkin with a sad smile. “I wish I could thank him.”

He touches my knee, and his eyes go to Bits. It must be a shock to have me arrive with a seven year-old who belongs to me, to all of us, but she’s already won him over. I saw him sneak her a precious pack of gum when he thought no one was looking.

When Nelly and Ana tell him about my insistence that we find medicine for Nelly, I stare at the floorboards. They’ve painted me as some avenging angel, and Nelly mimics my throwing things around.

I roll my eyes. “You were barely conscious. I wasn’t that bad,” I say to Adrian, although he looks impressed.

“Yes, she was,” Nelly says with a wink. He leans back and yawns.

John rubs his eyes. “I’m ready to hit the sack. It’s been a long day.”

He scoops Bits up and cradles her like a baby, and the rest of us rise.

Adrian takes hold of my hand. “Ready?”

I nod. We walk into the dark and say goodnight. It feels strange to be sleeping apart from the people I’ve spent every day and night with for months.

“Hold on,” I say to Adrian, and run to catch up with them.

“I wanted to say goodnight again,” I say. “I’ll miss you guys.”

I plant a kiss on a sleeping Bits. I hug them, saving Nelly for last. “I’m used to sleeping with you,” I whisper in his ear. “I’ll miss you.”

His laugh cuts through the night, and I can just make out his smirk in the dim solar lights that mark the path. “Darlin’, if you miss me? You’re doing it wrong.”

The interior of the house is lovely, with big windows and old-fashioned moldings. The stairs creak as we make our way up. Adrian points out the bathroom and opens a door at the end of the hall. “This is me,” he says.

Huge windows line two of the walls. It must have a beautiful view during the day. He flips a switch, and an electric light comes on. I walk to it in awe.

“Wow, a real, honest-to-goodness light,” I say. It seems so bright. I’ve gotten used to the dim circles of light lanterns throw off.

“Another perk. We’ll have them in the restaurant soon, running off the solar.”

There’s a queen-sized bed and a desk covered with organized piles of papers. A bookcase full of books. A wardrobe holds what I know are neatly-hung clothes behind its wooden doors. Adrian’s the neat one, while I’m the slob. A painting between the windows catches my eye, and I move closer.

It’s one I made for him, of the spot where we first kissed. I painted it how it looked just after. It all runs together, the way it would if your eyes were a little unfocused. The colors are brighter. The yellows and reds of autumn leaves and the gray of the rock mix with the foamy silver of the water.

“You hung it up,” I say, surprised he didn’t pack it at the bottom of a box somewhere. I think of the bin that only existed because of Eric, and it makes me feel terrible.

“Of course I did.” He comes behind me and puts his arms around my waist. I lean into him and close my eyes.

“I didn’t want to give up on you.” His arms tighten. “I came down to New York last spring to see you. I wanted to know if you’d changed your mind. I thought if you had you might not want to…”

“Admit it? Apologize?” I say. I want to kick myself.

“Kind of. I thought maybe you’d punish yourself by thinking I wouldn’t want you anyway.”

I nod. He knows me so well.

“But when I came, it was a Friday, and I saw you getting into someone’s car. Some guy’s car. He kissed you on the top of your head, and you smiled. I thought you might be happy again, and I didn’t want to mess that up.”

Nelly said Adrian stopped emailing him about a year ago. It must have been then. He tenses and his voice gets tight. “That’s not true. I was angry at you. For moving on when I didn’t want to, and I didn’t think you would either, not really. So I decided to believe what you told me. I hoped that you and the dark-haired guy with the nice car were happy, when I wasn’t fuming.”

The dark-haired guy with the nice car.
“That was Peter.” I’m not aware I’ve said it aloud until his arms retract and he moves away. But I want him to know. I don’t want to lie. I don’t even want to omit.

“That was Peter? The Peter who—?” he asks.

His face is completely blank except for his eyes, which are burning. I know what he must think of me at this moment. That since I lost my new boyfriend I came to find my old one, who just happens to be somewhere safe. Adrian may be trusting, but he’s only human, and I haven’t shown myself to be trustworthy.

I turn to face him. “We dated for a while. But it was over before we left New York.”

He won’t look at me. His expression is similar to the night I last saw him and, once again, it’s my fault. The day feels like it’s collapsed in on itself.

“It’s true,” I plead. “He and Ana were sort of together. We were just really good friends.”

I reach for his hand, but his arms are folded tight, and he doesn’t release them.

“Adrian, I’ve never—” I was going to say that I’ve never lied to him, but that’s not true. I used to never lie to him, but then I did, and it was a huge one. “I’ve only ever lied to you once.”

“Oh yeah?” His voice is flat. “And when was that, Cassie?”

I hate the way he says my name, like it’s a curse. I want him to look at me. I pull his arm, and he turns reluctantly. I don’t know how to make him believe me, so I just tell him the truth.

“It was when I said I didn’t love you.”

I pray that it shows in my face as I wait for him to tell me to go. But it must because the hardness leaves his eyes, and he crushes me to him. We kiss, and this time there’s no one to interrupt.

My stomach swoops down to my feet, just like it did that first time. The colors of my painting swirl behind my eyelids. His body quivers when I pull off his shirt. My clothes dissolve under his rough hands. We make our way to the bed, and my last conscious thought is to wonder how in a million years I could have ever willingly given this up.

And Nelly was right: I don’t miss him at all.

***

I wake at dawn and creep to the bathroom. My eyes shine, and my lips are swollen from Adrian’s scruff. When I get back to the room, he’s still asleep, one arm thrown above his head. I crawl under the covers and rest my head on his chest.

“I love you,” I whisper, not wanting to wake him.

His arm strokes my back. “Say that again,” he says, his voice sleepy.

“I love you.”

“Again.”

I hear the smile in his voice and raise my head. He looks at me with luminous eyes, and his mouth is curved.

“I love you,” I say.

“One more time.”

I sit up. The view out the windows is just what I thought it would be. I trace the curve of his cheek with my finger. “I love you. Until the end of the world.”

His smile widens. “And after?”

I turn to the windows and think of what lies beyond the relative safety of that beautiful ring of mountains. Then I turn back and smile at him even as something cold climbs up my spine. “And definitely after.”

I’m in the kitchen, blanching and peeling tomatoes for canning. It’s a huge crop, and if we want to have enough to last the winter, we’ll be working for the next week straight. The autumn air has the chill of winter in it, but it’s not unwelcome this year. We hope that the cold will freeze the infected and give us the opportunity to finish them off. And we hope the ones we miss will end up like frozen meat, their muscles useless in the spring thaw.

It’s repetitive work but comforting. The thought of this food sustaining us in the dark hours of February does make it less arduous, like my mom always joked. I can almost feel her here with me, canning tomatoes like we did every fall. It doesn’t escape me that I’m living the life I wanted, with Adrian, and my heart gives a little hiccup. I know my parents would be glad to see it, too, barring the fact that there are hordes of undead roaming the world.

Bits stands next to me and helps to peel. Maybe I’m creating those same comforting memories for her, even in the midst of the end of the world. She has many mothers now, and we all love her fiercely. She’s our hope for the future, the reason we want to create a future. I smile at her, and her face lights up. Maybe all the horror she’s seen hasn’t completely destroyed her childhood. I hope it hasn’t.

A radio sits on a window ledge next to one of the cook stoves. We have them everywhere in case there’s an emergency and we have to head to the fences. The crackly voices on the radio announce things that need fixing, requests for help and even the occasional wisecrack. I find it amazing that humor has survived and that everyone here works to get along. I have a huge family now.

Almost every day there’s a radio call that people are at the gate, people who heard the broadcasts and made it here. But so many fewer than we’d hoped. We get one and two at a time. Last week there was a whole family, kids and all, and we rejoiced that they were alive, one intact family among millions of broken ones. I thought of the Washingtons and desperately hoped they were another exception to the rule.

The reports say it’s gotten worse out there, and people won’t be able to make it here in the winter. That means many will be dead by winter’s end from cold, hunger or infection. My thoughts are so loud that I miss the last radio call over the clanging of pots and jars.

“What did they say?” I ask. “I think I heard my name.”

“It sounded like it could have been. I think there’s someone at the gate, but I’m not sure,” says Mikayla, a bubbly caramel-skinned girl, who was here studying organic farming practices when Bornavirus hit.

Mike, down at the first gate, continues on the radio, “He’s headed up to the second gate now. Looks like Rambo, but Shelby says his jeans used to cost four hundred bucks.” He laughs good-naturedly. “Nice guy, needs a bath and a nap.”

My heart races. I think about stopping to call back on the radio. To clarify. But I don’t want to. I don’t want to be told I’m wrong. I want to believe for one minute more.

I grab Bits’s hand and turn to everyone. “I think it’s someone I know.”

“Go!” they shout, smiling.

Everyone dreams of the day when the someone at the gate may be for them. I grab our sweaters and look for my shoes in the pile by the door. I can’t find them, so I give up. Bits looks at me like I’ve lost my mind as I drag her out the door and run across the gravel driveway. I know that Ana and the others may not have heard the radio just yet. I don’t want to raise their hopes, but I can’t stop myself.

I turn to Bits. “Go get Ana. Tell her to come to the gate.”

She nods, her eyes wide, and takes off for the garden. I continue down the driveway, where the trees are dropping their leaves; shades of orange, yellow and red litter the road. My feet slap the ground, and I can hear my breath. I haven’t run like this since before we got here. I was running for my life then, but now I’m running with hope.

I race past the second gate and wave to Maureen. I come around a bend, and there he is. He walks with Dan, who’s probably telling him about the farm. I stop, panting, as he looks up. His shirt is dirty and creased, his hair flops in his eyes and his jeans are more brown than blue. A pistol sits on his hip, a rifle on his shoulder and a machete hangs from the other hip. Rambo, indeed.

“Peter!” I yell, and run to him.

His teeth are white against his smudged face when he smiles. I don’t know that I’ve ever seen him so happy. That’s not true, I do: In those pictures of him as a kid. He’s a dead ringer for that kid now, minus the freckles.

I almost knock him down when I reach him. His pack thuds to the ground as he hugs me. I can’t believe it’s him. It’s Peter, who was dead; we all knew he was. I remember his face when we pulled away, how for an instant he’d looked happy, and I hug him tighter. I don’t realize I’m crying until I try to speak. “How?” I croak, but I can’t say any more than that.

“There were people in the building. Upstairs. They dropped down one of those ladders you hook to the window.”

That curtain in the window. It wasn’t just the breeze. I shake my head at his luck, our luck, and cry harder.

Peter’s eyes gleam. “When’d you turn into such a crybaby? Last time I saw you—crying. Here we are again—crying.”

I can’t stop my tears, but there’s no way I can let him get away with that. “Must’ve been the same time you found a sense of humor.”

He laughs. “That’s my girl.”

Then, finally, the tears stop, and I beam at him. “Not anymore. Your girl is up in the gardens, on her way down. We’re all here. We all made it because of you.”