Page 100 of The End of the World As We Know It

I heard the creaking of the door—it was opening, it wasopening—and I spun around. I watched the door hit the chair and stop, the top of the chair locked under the handle, preventing it from opening any wider. I heard that scratching sound again, against the door—and I started to get a better sense of what it was. Nails on wood. Scraping. Clawing. Desperate to get inside. Then I heard something else. Something I would never forget.

Breathing. Dank. Heavy. Labored. Like a dying animal crawling into the woods, eager to find a quiet, cool place to die.

I stood up and shoved Danny behind me, my hands raised, wrapped around the gun, which I was pointing toward the door. No. It wasn’t him. Couldn’t be him. Erik. That prick. He was dead. Like everyone else.

“I’m coming…”

The voice, like a boot stepping on shattered glass—sharp and jagged, highs and lows blended together to make a monstrous sound. But a voice, nonetheless. A man’s voice.

“I’m coming for…” it said, the door jostling now. I could see the chair shaking, slowly being dislodged from its place. The last bit of defense between us and whoever was on the other side. “I’m coming for him…”

I’m coming for him.

No.

Itcouldn’tbe.

Before I could give it another moment’s thought, the door finally slammed inward, the chair flipping back and away from the entrance. It all happened so quickly. The shape charged in—human, big, certainly a man, something flapping around him like a cloak or a cape.His heavy, strained panting cut through the silence and seemed to fill my eardrums.

“I’m coming for him!” the shape shrieked as it ran toward us. I fired then. Fired again.

I fired as the shape landed atop me and we rolled around. Fired again as I felt sharp nails scratching at my face, stabbing my midsection. I felt blood—my own, I thought. I felt pain across my back and side and face. Fired as I was slammed against the far wall. I heard Danny yelp in surprise. I felt myself being thrashed around, like on a roller coaster—except I didn’t see where the tracks were going.

Another shot. Another scream. Then silence.

Then black.

I didn’t know how long I was out.

It couldn’t have been more than a few seconds. I read somewhere that people were rarely unconscious for longer than that. It wasn’t like a comic book or movie. But it could have been a lifetime. The room was quiet. The thrashing was over, and every inch of me hurt. I couldn’t get up—I felt my midsection and my hand came back wet and sticky with blood. My head was pounding, like the worst hangover I’d ever had, multiplied a hundred times over.

I lifted my head slightly and noticed the shape at my feet. Large, bundled in dark clothes. Not moving. The monster. The creature that had stormed in—it’d just been a man. The man I thought I’d seen move when we first came inside.

Notla mala hora. Not Erik. Just a stranger—a barely alive man desperate for something.

I lingered on him for less than a second. I pushed myself up to my elbows and screamed from the pain. I knew I had some slashes in my midsection. Probably a concussion, too. But I needed to move. I needed to find—

Danny.

No.

Please God.

No.

I saw it on the peach carpet, even in the moonlit darkness, I could make it out. The streak was thick and red and heavy. Danny’s blood.

I saw his leg next. His foot, bare and untouched by his space-blue pajamas, sticking out from under the bed. Not moving.

I got up, ignoring the pain down my back, the blurring of my vision, the trickle of blood that seemed to burst from my face as I moved, and pushed myself toward the bed. My fingers wrapped over a side of the metal frame and I lifted, finding strength I never knew I had.

There he was. His tiny figure lit by the moon, his tiny foot jutting out, the rest of him curled up as if he were asleep. But he wasn’t. The streak of blood ended with him.

No.

I fought the urge to look for the gun. To see if there was another bullet in the chamber. One, saving grace, to pull me out of this hell—this endless, festering nightmare.

I couldn’t bring myself to look at him again, to look at my baby. This poor, innocent creature that I’d brought into this world—a world that had been fucked up long before Captain Trips. Long before the virus decimated us. A world full of corruption, lacking empathy, hope, and sincerity. The kind of darkness we wouldn’t wish upon our worst enemy. Danny had been my hope—that his innocence and kindness could help stem the tide. But how can you stem a tide of hate and anger and desperation that feels insurmountable? Everyone was dead and dying. And now Danny—