Page 118 of The End of the World As We Know It

“Wayne.” He ducked his head. “I feel bad that I didn’t introduce myself earlier. My apologies.”

“That’s okay.” She leaned against the barn door. There was something about the way he carried himself that made her think, again, that she didn’t have to worry about him. Though she also knew she’d be a fool to trust a stranger. “So… you’re still headed home?”

“Yeah, though I’m not sure why. I haven’t heard anything from my family since it all started. I don’t know if any of them are alive or if they tried to get to one of the government centers…”

Maryellen’s ears perked up. “The government set up centers?”

He looked sorry he’d said anything. “It was just something I heard at school… It might’ve been wishful thinking. You’d think if there had been something like that, they would’ve been taking people there instead of…” He trailed off.

“Instead of—what?”

He jerked his head up. “I mean, just letting us die. Letting us fend for ourselves.”

Hopelessness started to rise in her chest. From what he said, itseemed that it was no different in the city than it had been in the country: the disease had come on so fast and strong that nothing was able to stand up to it, not even the government.

“It’s getting dark,” she said. “I’ll get you a lantern.”

She told herself that Wayne would leave the next morning, but when he asked if it would be all right if he stayed another day, she said yes. One day became three, and he then offered to help with chores, and Maryellen started to let her guard down, get comfortable with the idea of him staying. He was good company, especially in the evenings when there was little to do. They told each other about their lives over card games. Childhood injuries and illnesses. Places they’d gone on vacation—though Wayne had been places Maryellen had only heard about. The Grand Ole Opry, Lake of the Ozarks. Parents, siblings, all gone or presumed gone. It was as though they were interviewing each other. When she thought about it later, she supposed they had been.

After a week, Maryellen let him move into a room on the first floor. There were empty bedrooms upstairs, but she wanted to keep some distance between them.

Despite the sudden companionship, he took getting used to. Wayne had not grown up on a farm and was nervous around large animals, like Ruby, and said he didn’t know how to fire a gun. He turned down her offer to teach him to ride, but he let her show him how to use the rifle.

It seemed inevitable that they would go to bed together. They eased into it over a matter of days, starting with a tentative kiss good night, then progressing to long, slow sessions kissing and exploring each other on the sofa in the parlor. Then one night, Maryellen led him upstairs, and they slid into her bed, practically the only bed she had ever slept in. When it was over and Maryellen laid tucked underhis arm, he told her that it felt like they were the last two people on earth and, if that were true, it was their duty to end up together. She felt the truth of it.

Everything went along well between them until the day they went into town together to get supplies. It was fall and a sudden nip had come on, so he was wearing her brother Mark’s parka. She supposed later that might have been the reason for the trouble. Too, he seemed a bit too comfortable behind the wheel when she let him drive her father’s pickup truck.

They were pulling up in front of the hardware store when she saw them. Two men and two women. They were young and old, mixed, but they didn’t seem to be a family. From their clothes, she guessed that they had come from a city and she couldn’t imagine what they were doing out there, so far from anything.

After a few wary minutes staring at each other, the older woman asked if they were from around here. They didn’t look dangerous to Maryellen. There was no gun or rifle, as far as she could see, and they had a flighty, nervous look about them, like rabbits. Eventually, Maryellen and Wayne stepped out of the truck and the six of them stood in a circle, talking.

It turned out that the four of them had come from Morristown. They hadn’t known each other before the plague but, as they stumbled across each other, alone and scavenging, had decided to join up. “There’s safety in numbers,” the younger woman said, and Wayne nodded sagely at Maryellen. It made her think Wayne wanted to go with them.

They were headed west. “It’s because of the dreams,” the younger woman said in a way that made Maryellen think she should know what she was talking about. Listening to each of them, she came to understand that they each had dreamt about the same person, anelderly Black woman who lived in a cabin out west. In their dreams, the old woman told them to join her.

Maryellen didn’t understand what they were getting at. “It’s the power of suggestion,” she said. “One of you had a dream with this woman and gave the idea to the rest of you.”

But the others denied this was the case. “That’s what she does. She comes toyou,” the younger man insisted. “She’s trying to gather the survivors together, don’t you see? Giving humanity a way forward.” The others nodded at his words, but Maryellen wasn’t sure.

It wasn’t until that evening, after Maryellen and Wayne had made love, that Wayne admitted he had heard of the old woman. “As things were getting bad, people started talking about the dreams.”

“Oh? Why didn’t you say something earlier?”

He shrugged, and it made him seem younger than he was, like she was shaming him into confessing. “It’s more than the old woman… People dreamt about someone else, too. A man. Those dreams weren’t so pleasant.” He drew a strand of her hair through his fingers dreamily. He’d told her that he loved her hair because it was so silky. “They call him the Walkin Dude. It was like he was calling people to mayhem. To chaos.”

She knew she had to ask the next question even though she wasn’t sure she wanted to know the answer. “And—did you ever have one of these dreams?”

He paused a moment before he shook his head. “No. Never.”

Not long after this, Wayne began bringing up moving on. “Maybe we should’ve joined them,” he’d say casually. “We can’t stay here by ourselves forever. Eventually we’ll start running out of food or medicine.” Or, “One of us could get seriously hurt.” He was afraid of all these things more than she was. They could grow food. Working on a farm, she was used to all kinds of scrapes. As for injury, well, she’d seen horses and cattle break legs; her own uncle had broken his backfalling out of the hay loft, but he was gone by the time they got him to the hospital. Sometimes there was nothing you could do. Sometimes people died.

Several times a day, Maryellen would find herself looking at Wayne and wondering if they would’ve gotten together if it wasn’t for the plague. Aside from the fact that he had been a college student and she had still been a high school senior, or the happenstance of where they lived. Her question was more fundamental: Would she have been even attracted to someone like Wayne? He was so unlike the boys out here that it was hard for her to know. He seemed easygoing—as much as anyone could be given the circumstances—and considerate of her wishes. But she was also acutely aware that she honestly didn’t know him very well, and she was afraid that she might wake up one day far from home and realize that she didn’t know him at all.

It was at these times that she wished her mother were still with her. She missed her mother’s advice.

It had only been a couple of months, the middle of October, but Maryellen could see that they were starting to fall in together. She felt his assumptions weigh heavily on her, namely that they would inevitably leave this farm before long and head west. He was already starting to assert himself, expecting her to follow his lead. He tried to do so around the farm, although there was still a lot he didn’t know. Maybe that was why he wanted to leave, so he could be somewhere that felt more familiar. Where he wasn’t dependent on her—indeed, where their roles would be reversed.

She would not feel as uncertain if she thought that, if it hadn’t been for the plague, he would have been drawn to her, but she was pretty sure she was too young and simple. But here he was, making himself a fixture in her life. There was the real chance that she might get pregnant and that would change everything.