Page 117 of The End of the World As We Know It

The Phelpses drove out on the last day. When Maryellen told them she was staying, Missy started crying. “You can let her loose in the woods,” Missy said. “That’s what we did with our cattle.” Maryellen had thought of this, but knew it would be a death sentence for Ruby. With no other horses on the farm, the old mare had bonded with Maryellen completely. She would remain in the pasture waiting for her human companion until she died of starvation.

Josiah pressed a box of shotgun cartridges into her hand. “I knowyour dad has the same shotgun as me.” A whole box of shells. Maryellen knew the Phelpses would need these themselves and she appreciated their generosity. Maryellen then watched the red pickup truck disappear into the woods.

As Maryellen got Ruby bedded down for the night, she thought again how it didn’t make sense that the old horse was still alive. There had to be a reason for it, something Ruby was meant to do, and it would be a grave sin for Maryellen to leave before that happened.

And it was not just Ruby, of course. Maryellen herself had been spared by this merciless disease when everyone else in her family had been taken. If Ruby had a special purpose, then surely Maryellen did, too.

To quiet her nerves, Maryellen took a little more of the special tea she drank every night to help her sleep. A few years back, when Maryellen started to wake regularly in the middle of the night, her mother dipped into her collection of herbal medicines to concoct this tea, which never failed to put Maryellen into a deep and dreamless sleep. Maryellen knew the recipe, though she worried that her meager supply of dried passionflower, gingko, and valerian root oil wouldn’t last much longer.

She kept busy. There was a lot to do, and only her now to see to it. She rode Ruby to her neighbors’ empty houses for things she could use. She carried canned food in her backpack, but drove back later in her daddy’s truck for sacks of feed and bales of hay. Her neighbors had let their livestock loose, but most of the animals simply returned, waiting for humans that would never come. She rounded up some of the chickens for the eggs, but left the sheep and pigs, knowing that she would not have it in her to slaughter them after she’d taken care of them for a while.

Maryellen had been on her own for about two months—maybe more, but probably less—when she saw the man.

She had been riding Ruby through the woods, looking for game. The idea of winter loomed in Maryellen’s mind. Game would soon be sparse then. It was his shape that she spotted first, a dark figure moving upright through the trees. She knew it was a stranger: she’d recognize her neighbors’ familiar forms if one of them had, by some chance, returned home.

This was a stranger walking on her mountain.

She thought about following him, but he was sure to spot her if she moved. She lifted the rifle, more for reassurance than because she thought she needed it. The figure looked to be alone. If she had to guess, she’d say it was a lanky young man. A little too tall for a girl. She couldn’t get a good look at him due to the distance and wished she had a pair of binoculars. She watched the figure slowly disappear over the horizon. He was heading toward her house, though there were trails that could lead off in other directions. Part of her wished this person would turn around and see her. But mostly, she wanted him to keep on walking.

She’d put Ruby in her stall and was locking the windows and doors in the house when she saw the figure again, this time trudging up the long driveway. She could tell now that it was a man, though he looked quite young, maybe only a little older than she. He wore a dark blue hoodie and jeans and carried a backpack. He looked like he was out on a camping trip.

He was headed directly toward the house.

Maryellen stood behind the screen door with her shotgun level. She didn’t like pointing a weapon at him, but knew she had no alternative. The stranger was about fifty feet away when he saw her weapon, but he kept walking.

When he was about twenty feet away, she announced, “You can stop right there.”

He obeyed, trying to keep his expression calm and open. “You’re the first person I’ve seen in two weeks.”

“What’re you doing out this way? You’re not from around here.”

He squirmed slightly under the burden of his pack. “No, I’m not. I’m a student—I mean, Iwasa student—at the university in Morristown.” That was over forty miles away. “They couldn’t keep up after everybody started getting sick, and they told us all to go home… Only, nobody answered the phone when I called for them to come get me, so I just started walking.” He scratched his head. “I got off the highway at one point—it was jammed with cars, full of, y’know, dead people—and I must’ve got lost.”

“Where is your family?”

“Paducah. In Kentucky.” Maryellen didn’t know exactly how far away that was—easily over a hundred miles. Maybe two hundred. “Is it okay if I put my pack down? It’s awfully heavy.” When Maryellen nodded, he slipped it off his shoulders and let it drop by his feet.

She knew what she should tell him, what her parents would want her to tell him. “I think you ought to move on.”

His face fell, but he didn’t get upset. “Okay… I can understand that. Only… would it be okay to spend the night? My feet are killing me, and it’s been hard to get a good night’s sleep in the woods. It would be nice to spend the night someplacesafe.”

A spike of panic rose in her chest. “You can’t sleep in the house.”

“No, no. Of course not. But maybe in the barn?” He nodded in its direction.

She appreciated that he hadn’t asked if she was alone. He probably figured it would freak her out, make her more defensive. “Uh, okay. But you can’t bother the livestock.”

“Of course.”

She then watched him head to the barn, wondering if she was doing the right thing. He seemed nice enough. If the television shows Maryellen had seen before—before the airwaves went dead—were to be believed, however, young women were killed all the time: in their dorm rooms, in their parents’ homes, in their cars broken down on the side of the road. The killers were always described as nice, likethe boy who’d be sleeping in her barn. Stories like that made it hard to be kind to strangers.

Dinner was canned soup. She was tired of it, but she’d stockpiled a lot and didn’t care much for cooking. She took the leftovers out to the barn, her rifle crooked under her arm.

“Here. I thought you might like this,” she said as she pushed the door open. He was sitting on a sleeping bag in the aisle, staring through the slats of Ruby’s stall at the chestnut mare. He looked startled to see Maryellen.

She set the bowl on the floor just outside his reach and stepped back. He picked it up and sat back on his sleeping bag. He drew the spoon back and forth through the soup, cooling it off. “Is it okay if I ask your name?”

“It’s Maryellen.”