Page 116 of The End of the World As We Know It

It happened before anyone knew how bad things were going to get. One minute, neighbors were saying there was a bad flu working its way through the hollow, and the next, Maryellen’s mother had caught it.

Her mother had always been sickly. Asthmatic. Prone to aches and chills and spells. Still, it was as though she’d had a premonition that she’d come to the end.

She patted Maryellen’s hand as her daughter sat by the bedside. “How are the boys? Are they behaving themselves?”

Maryellen had three younger brothers: the twins, Mark and Matthew, and Peter, the youngest. “They’re good, Mama. They listen to me.”

“You’re practically those boys’ mother—you’ve taken care of them so much. I’ve never had to worry about you, not a day. You’ve always had a good head on your shoulders. You’re more mature than other kids your age.” She shifted under the covers and looked at Maryellen in a way that was a little bit frightening. “You’re gonna have to takecare of them a little longer. It’s going to feel like your life’s been taken away from you. But at some point, Maryellen, the boys will be able to take care of themselves and you’re going to have to make your own way in the world. You’re gonna have a chance to do what you want with your life. Trust in that.”

The next day, her mother was dead.

The family was sad, but not exactly surprised. But when their father followed a week later, Maryellen and the boys were shocked. Doc Spellman barely spent five minutes when he stopped by to look at the body. “Funeral home won’t be by to pick him up for at least a week, and that’s too long,” he advised as he trotted back to his car, bag in hand. “If anyone else gets sick, don’t bother going to the hospital. They’re turning people away. Can’t handle any more. Folks are dropping like flies, all up and down the valley. Never seen anything like it.”

After he’d left, Maryellen sat at the kitchen table to take stock. It was just her and her brothers. Like her mama said, she was in charge, at least until social services got in touch.Ifthey got in touch: she assumed they were just as busy as the hospital and funeral home.

She had her brothers dig a hole out beyond the barn while she wrapped their father in a tarp. Their closest neighbor, April Tanner, who lived on a big spread down the ridge, stopped by shortly after they’d smoothed dirt over the grave. “Doc Spellman told me what happened,” April had said, leaning through the window of her pickup truck. She gave no indication that she was going to get out of the truck and, given that two people had died on the property in little over a week, Maryellen didn’t blame her.

The old woman had always seemed unflappable, but today she was twitchy. “You haven’t been to town recently, so you don’t know. This flu—whatever it is—is killing people left and right.”

“That’s what Doc Spellman said.”

“Well, it’s an understatement. Oscar died shortly after your mama. Norm and Henry hardly had time to get him buried when they came down with it.” Oscar was Mrs. Tanner’s brother (her husband hadpassed years ago). Norm and Henry were hired hands who did most of the work around the farm. “They’re dead, too… Seems everyone who catches it dies.”

“What’re you going to do?” Maryellen couldn’t imagine elderly Mrs. Tanner managing on her own. She had nearly a hundred head of cattle.

“I don’t rightly know. What about you, girl? You and the boys want to come back to the farm with me? Until the authorities figure out what’s going on?”

Maryellen wasn’t sure if Mrs. Tanner had made the offer for their sake or her own. Maryellen shook her head. “I’m sorry. We got livestock to take care of. Can’t leave them.”

Mrs. Tanner started the engine, signaling she was ready to leave. “I’m in the same fix. Funny how some animals died, some aren’t bothered by the disease at all. I still got all my cattle, but my saddle horses are gone. It’s a blessing you still got Ruby. I heard all the other horses in the valley died. Dogs, too.”

There was nothing Maryellen could say to this, so she shrugged. Ruby was her first and only horse. She’d had her since she was five. Ruby was old now, most of her muscle gone. Her chestnut coat had dulled, her eyes were getting cloudy, her lower lip drooped. How Ruby had survived when younger, healthier horses had died, Maryellen couldn’t say. She was just grateful. She could not imagine life without her.

Maryellen’s brothers died not long after that: the twins passing within one day of each other, and the youngest not two weeks later. The boys had been depending on her and she was sorry to have let them down, but by then Maryellen knew what the swelling on their throats meant. It was beyond her power to keep them from dying. It was overwhelming to lose them all, naturally, but by that time Maryellen had learned from neighbors who’d stopped by to check on her thatthe valley had nearly been emptied and, as near as anyone knew, the same was true of the towns and cities.

Josiah Phelps dug the twins’ grave as his wife, Missy, helped Maryellen bundle the bodies in sheets. “You can’t live here all by yourself,” Missy had said. “You need protection.” But from whom? The only people Maryellen had seen were people she knew. No one from the outside world would have any reason to come to their hollow in eastern Tennessee: it was too remote. She felt no threat from her neighbors, though she supposed the possibility might arise if someone got too lonely. Her mother had told her stories of men losing their minds after living by themselves for too long. In her mother’s stories, it was always men who went crazy.

“The few who survived are leaving,” Missy added.

Leaving. Maryellen hadn’t thought about that. Living on this hardscrabble farm was all she knew. If her family had been inclined to pull up stakes and move to a city, they would’ve done that long before everyone was wiped out by a plague.

“But we got what we need here,” Maryellen said. A kitchen garden. Livestock. Wells for water.

“There’s a lot we need from the outside, too, and that’s gonna run out eventually,” Missy said. She meant stuff like medicine, dry goods, gasoline. The electric service had stopped, of course, but it had to be gone in the cities, too.

“We’re heading out in a couple days with Tyler Jones.” According to Missy, they and Tyler were the last people left on the mountain. Missy squeezed Maryellen’s hand. “We got fuel for a truck, supplies, maps. You’re welcome to come with us. You really can’t and shouldn’t stay here by yourself. I won’t be able to bear the thought of it.”

“I appreciate it. Let me think on it,” Maryellen said.

She didn’t want to let it on to Missy, but the notion of being the only living person for miles and miles spooked Maryellen. She tried to imagine what she’d do if something happened, if she broke a bone or was struck blind. But then she realized the risk would be,fundamentally, no different than it had been her entire life. The nearest hospital was over an hour away. Poor as they were, visits to doctors had been as rare as hen’s teeth. Sickness was usually tended at home.

The farm was all she’d ever known. And while she’d wondered before what it would be like to live someplace with more people and tall buildings, now the idea was frightening. Those had undoubtedly become lawless places.

But she would get lonely, and she wasn’t sure she was ready to give up on human companionship. She faced the very real likelihood that she might not see another person for years. And when someone finally did stumble on her farmhouse, it wouldn’t be a local: it would be someone who’d come this way on purpose, someone who needed food, water, or shelter.

And they would find her here, alone.

The real reason she hesitated to take the Phelps’s offer, however, was Ruby. Not the graves of her parents and her brothers, though she did stand at their gravesides daily to think of them, mourn them. Her parents would want her to go with their neighbors. They would not want their daughter to end up by herself. But they were gone, and Ruby was still here. Ruby needed her. Maryellen would not be able to take Ruby with her. They wouldn’t agree to hitch a horse trailer to Josiah Phelps’s truck, not when they were leaving their own livestock behind. Nor would Maryellen be able to keep up with them on horseback. It was simply impossible: if Maryellen left, she’d have to leave Ruby behind. And she could not bear to do that.