Page 131 of The End of the World As We Know It

Woodrow walked past the corncrib and peered down the lane.

Three figures were approaching. Two of the figures were slight and had the loping walk of small but strong women. The third figure was a man. Not as tall or as wide as Woodrow, but a solidly built man all the same. They had backpacks and old tan boots. The women were Black and the man was Hispanic. The three of them had their hands up and were smiling. The closer they got, the higher they raised their hands and the wider their smiles got.

“Excuse me, sir, we don’t mean you no harm. We’re just passing through, but we were wondering if you could maybe spare some water or some food or if you were feeling really generous a bit of both? I’m Jorge and this here is Janice, and this lady to my right is Tina,” Jorge said. They’d stopped about fifty feet from Woodrow.

Woodrow had sat with his own madness for months since Mae had passed. It was an old friend who didn’t know he wasn’t welcomed. He saw him in the mirror in the morning and behind his eyelids at night. There was madness in this man’s smile. It was in all of their smiles. Shining bright and deadly like quicksilver.

But….

Weren’t they all a little mad these days? Weren’t they all walking across the surface of a barely frozen lake that was their sanity? Everyone he’d ever known or loved was dead. Except for Joshua. Please, God, not Joshua.

If you weren’t a little crazy, were you even still alive?

“I got some water. Ain’t too much food, though. Just some taters and greens and some snap beans. Got a little deer jerky, but it’s a bit salty,” Woodrow said. He didn’t mention the ton of canned foods he had in the cellar or the shotgun he had in the closet.

“Well, sir, we would sure appreciate it. Thank you so much,” Jorge said.

Woodrow noticed something else about his smile and that of his two companions.

It never seemed to reach their eyes.

Later, they sat around Woodrow’s kitchen table. He had boiled potatoes and snap beans and made them some tea with the last bit of sugar he had left. They ate ravenously. Not as ravenously as the pigs, but pretty close. Then they told him they had come up from Newport News. Walked along Interstate 64 until they decided to take Interstate 81 and head west.

“We the last people left standing from Red Hill County,” Jorge said between bites of the potatoes.

“So, we heading west,” Tina said. Her voice was husky like she’d been smoking since her fifth birthday.

“Go west, young man,” Janice said.

She was staring at Woodrow the way he figured a spider looked at a fly. There was a frankness in her gaze that made him uncomfortable in ways that weren’t exactly unpleasant.

“You’re welcome to stay the night,” Woodrow said. The words were out of his mouth before he realized he was saying them. Janice licked her lips. Actually, licked them like a lion staring at a gazelle. Woodrow shivered on the inside.

“Well, that’s mighty kind of you. Thank you so much. It’ll be nice not to wake up with beetles in my hair,” Jorge said, and laughed. The laugh sounded like he hadn’t used it in a long, long time.

That night Woodrow slept in his bed with the shotgun on the floor under him and his knife on the nightstand beside him. It took two hours after they had all laid down, after he’d blown out all the oil lamps and washed the dishes, before Janice came to his room. She slipped through the door like a shadow made flesh. Woodrow watchedher approach his bed, naked and slick like a phantom cut from the very night itself.

She slipped into his bed.

“You’ve been alone a long time haven’t you, Woodrow?” she whispered.

He didn’t answer.

She took his hand and guided it between her legs. When he felt what she had there, felt his fingertips brush against her wetness, he let out a moan.

“You don’t have to be alone anymore. Come west with us. Come with us and meet the Man. The Ageless Stranger. The Walkin Dude,” she whispered as she guided his fingers inside her.

Woodrow tried to move his hand away, but Janice pushed his fingers in deeper. He didn’t know who the Man was or the Ageless Stranger. Or the Walkin Dude. All he knew was his hand was wet and Janice looked enough like Mae that he could lock his guilt away in a place where it couldn’t greet him in the dark.

He was dreaming.

He was standing near the pen. It was dark, but the pigs were milling about. He started into the shadows and saw that their snouts were stained red.

“It’s blood,” his dream self said.

The boar stomped to the door of the pen. His flat muddy brown eyes appraised him hungrily. His fat pink tongue slipped out like a fat greasy worm and licked at the blood on his snout.

“Woodrow Teller. You liked to fuck your wife in the ass. She did it because it’s what you wanted, but she hated it. Hated it every time. You fucked Janice in the ass tonight and she didn’t mind. Not one bit. Come to Vegas, Woodrow. You can get all the buggering you want there. Women or men. Hell, boys or girls if you want it. Just drop to your knees and promise me. Say the words. Say, ‘Your life for me.’ Say it and you can forget all about your rotting wife and your dead children,” the boar said, but Woodrow’s dream self knewit wasn’t the boar. It was him. It was his voice that came forth from the gullet of the big pink pig.