Page 154 of The End of the World As We Know It

Lord help her, maybe this boy was a pirate already. Marie glared at him to shut him up.

“Let me do the talking,” she said. She never understood why Edmund obeyed her, but he usually did. She’d only needed to kick his ass once for his fealty, despite his guns.

Together, she and Edmund walked toward the man at the border of the sea.

From the start, the Boat Man didn’t look right.

He sat on the platform, leaning against the concrete buoy towering over him while he smoked a cigarette that appeared hand-rolled and smelled like the absent partiers on Duval Street. He nestled a crumpled paper bag in his lap like a pet. His jeans and Van Halen T-shirt looked fresh, so he was grooming himself much better than Edmund despite a salt-and-pepper beard growing wild, but his forehead’s grooves made him look full of rage already.

The bigger problem was his shadow.

From a distance, that was all Marie had seen of him—and now that they were closer, she wonderedhowhis shadow had been large enough to see from so far away. It didn’t look right, that shadow—his giant twin lolling against the buoy, but at an angle that didn’t match the shadows from the railing right behind him, above the inscription in red and blue paint:AMERICA BEGINS HERE.(Someone had crossed outBEGINSand spray-paintedEndsinstead.)

As if the Boat Man’s shadow didn’t need the sun. When Marie blinked, his shadow snapped into alignment, so sudden it made her dizzy.

Or maybe she was swooning from the smell floating from him. The sea air couldn’t wash away the familiar rot she knew too well from houses, cars, and shops, which had driven most survivors to the marinas. Marie had thought about leaving her house too, but she’d been forced to haul away only three neighbors’ bodies to improve the general state of her street—thankfully, the Pettigrews had been away when the bridge shut down. The chore had passed in a blur like the days after Granpè Jean died, and she had washed her skin and her sore muscles in the ocean afterward, hair and all, to be free from the Smell.ThatSmell.

And the Smell was here with the Boat Man, at the point that felt like the tip of the world.

Marie tried to think of what to say to him when the Boat Man grinned brown teeth that looked worse than his scowl. He yelled at Edmund, “Who the fuck areyousupposed to be?!”

Theclickcame as quick as a heartbeat, and Marie knew before she turned around that Edmund had his unwieldy .45 in his hand, pointed at the Boat Man. And cocked, no less. Edmund’s hand was shaking. “It’s Michael’s jacket from ‘Beat It’! Anybody knows that!”

“Fuck Michael Jackson!”

Marie gasped, bracing for Edmund’s crazed gunfire to rip into her, gone wild. He was barely big enough to grip such a big gun, much less aim.

“No, fuckyou! Eddie Van Halen played the guitar solo on ‘Beat It,’ stupid!”

It was so surreal, the two of them carrying on, that Marie wondered if she were only dreaming. But anotherclickturned Marie’s head the other way, and this time her blood thickened, clogging her throat: the Boat Man’s own shiny gun was now visible from its hiding place in the paper bag, pointed straight at her.

“No guns!” Marie blurted.

The Boat Man’s eyes were hidden in his shadow, but she thought she saw a flicker of amusement. “Says the bitch with a machete.”

Marie dropped her machete with a clatter at her feet. “No guns—we only want to make you a partner!” She turned back to Edmund. “No guns, Edmund.”

“He called you a bitch!”

The first and last time Edmund called her a bitch, she had wrestled him to the ground and twisted his arm until he cried. “It’s okay this one time,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady.

“Only if he puts his down first!” Edmund said.

“Youfirst, you scared little shit,” the Boat Man said. “You’ll shoot me on accident.”

Byaccident, Marie couldn’t help thinking, a silent correction. Or maybe she said it aloud.

“I’m not scared!” Edmund said, and Marie knew he wasn’t lying. His hand was no doubt shaking from excitement, not fear. He only slid his gun back into his shorts because of the pleading look on Marie’s face, not because of anything the Boat Man said.

Marie sucked in three breaths before she could stop imagining gunfire.

A turn of the breeze sharpened the Smell so much that Marie looked down toward the water and saw someone who looked like she was three hundred pounds bursting against the seams of a flower-patterned dress, like the Incredible Hulk. Her blond hair splayed out in the water like jellyfish tentacles framing her head as she bobbedface down, arms spread as if she were hugging the salt water. The body looked fairly fresh despite its decomposition bloat and missing chunks from sea life. She probably had jumped in. Maybe that was why people came here. Of course, the Smell wasn’t coming fromhim. But why was he sitting so close to its stink?

The Boat Man ignored her eyes on the body. “I’m not gonna be nobody’s daddy.”

Edmund snorted, or maybe both of them did.Damn right.

“You two brats have ten seconds to tell me what you want.”