Page 16 of The End of the World As We Know It

Outside the terminal, Dani hailed a cab. It was waiting there in the blistering sunshine because who the hell wanted to gointoVegas now? The driver had black stripes beneath his watery eyes, but could steer. At the corner of Las Vegas Boulevard, he squeezed past an overturned school bus.SANTA BARBARA SCHOOL DISTRICTinside the windshield, a Volkswagen Beetle smashed beneath it. He dropped them at Mollie’s apartment building.

It was on fire.

“Like the plane,” Mollie said. She jerked a breath. “My books.”

Dani put an arm around the girl’s shouders. Calming-Dani was in charge, but Freaked-as-shit-Dani pulsed just beneath her skin. Airline, gone. Dad, MIA. Mom, fleeing to an unidentified beach in Baja.

Yeah, she herself had fled Seattle. But that was to ghost wheedling, needling Scott, an adult man, forty-eight hours ago when bonus pay for a SeaTac–Chicago–Las Vegas–San Francisco trip sounded infinitely easier than telling him,Dude, we’re over. She wouldn’t forsake this kid, with her heat-pink cheeks and coltish limbs and rock-solid misunderstanding that grown-ups were in charge.

No. She’d take her to a friend’s house.

Bad idea.

Then: a teacher’s house. Then Child Protective Services. The police. A church.

Snake eyes.

Near sunset, Dani found a motel three blocks off the Strip, its office unattended, room keys hanging on a pegboard. She scooped them up.

“Wait here,” she told Mollie.

She unlocked Room 1 and froze. A couple lay entwined on the bed surrounded by empty bottles of Stoli and Jim Beam. They’d died with their boots on and nothing else.

Dani had once seen a billboard:ENSLAVED TO LUST? JESUS HAS THE ANSWER. It seemed this couple had gone to ask him for it, mid-thrust. Guns in their hands, blood on the walls.

Mollie walked up behind her. Dani slammed the door.

She took a room across the parking lot, empty and clean. They showered, got vending machine Cokes and snacks.

The TV lasted through sixGreen Acresreruns before collapsing into a test pattern. The phone system died an hour later. Mollie’s dad had never answered.

Dani sat down beside the girl on the lumpy bed. This might sound brutal, but she had to ask. “Your mom—you think she’ll come back? If she can?”

“She’ll come. If. She’ll…” Tears shimmered in Mollie’s eyes. Then they spilled. Her shoulders heaved. She buried her face in her hands.

Dumbass.Dani pulled Mollie close and rocked her until the tears ebbed, then tucked her in. “Sleep, kid. We’ve had a day.”

But at midnight Dani lay awake, listening to Mollie’s exhausted breathing. The city outside was unnaturally silent. No laughter. No cars. No planes. No helicopters.

Somebody had to come, right? The National Guard. Wayne Newton. Siegfried and Roy. The Rat Pack would save her.

She pressed a hand over her mouth to stifle a sob.

What was she going to do with a sixth-grader at the end of the world?

Elvis Presley, pray for us.

The motel had no café. Restaurants were toast, the nearest grocery store a wasteland. Finally, the next evening, Mollie was the one who said, “We’ll go to the kitchen at the Desert Inn.”

Her mom worked there as a waitress. “Sometimes she brings dinner home. Leftover lasagna. Pie. Lobster once.”

The walk was eerie in the evening sunshine. Cars were wrecked along the Strip, beneath lights that glittered and danced, harlequin bright, enticing an empty city to come play. Distantly Dani saw one other person—a stooped man shuffling along the gutter, stabbing litter with a steel-tipped stick. She waved, but he carried on, engrossed, as if performing a ritual.

The Desert Inn hotel kitchen was derelict, but the walk-in fridge fully stocked. Dani fried up fat burgers, and nearly cried with joy atthe taste. She suppressed thoughts of the rooms stacked overhead, ripe with dead gamblers.

“Ice cream sundae?” she said.

Mollie beamed—and the lights went out.