Page 18 of The End of the World As We Know It

The day after, more people appeared. Healthy. Stunned. Blinking like baby birds. Numb. Or giddy and broken. A woman shambled past the motel in a red business suit and pearls, her Afro dusty.

“Wait here,” Dani told Mollie. “Don’t open the door unless it’s me.”

Her name was Sharon. She’d come to Vegas for a realtors’convention. Her vacant expression suggested that her psyche had taken repeated shots from a Taser.

“Incredible inventory available now,” she said, and laughed, and began to weep.

Dani made comforting sounds, Calming-Dani sounds. The sun beat down. Then Sharon looked around. Weirdly. Expectantly.

She leaned in and lowered her voice. “It’s coming.”

“What is?” Rescue? A plague of frogs? Cher?

“It’ll be soon. Can’t you feel it?”

Dinnertime, Dani and Mollie found a mini-mart. The food in the fridge/freezer section was still chilled. Dani was grabbing cold cuts when, with an electricwhoosh, a mobility scooter turned into the aisle.

It was the gambler—the woman from the slot machine at the airport. Cat-eye sunglasses, cigarette in her mouth. She stopped, and her glare convinced Dani she had a .22 in her purse.

Then, taking in Dani’s airline uniform, she softened. “Not the layover you had planned, is it?” She looked at Mollie. “Summer vacation, either.”

“I live here,” Mollie said.

“Same.” She stuck out her hand. “Eleanor.”

She was a court clerk. She had planned to fly to Louisville to ride out the superflu at her sister’s. But here she was.

Dani said, “You hear the cars last night?”

“Saw ’em.” Eleanor grabbed beef jerky from a rack, tore open the package, and wrestled a strip loose with her teeth. “Nasty business.”

“You’re calm,” Dani said.

“You too.”

“Calm and perky. I’ve trained for it.”

Eleanor shrugged. “Necessity’s a mother. TV’s fried, my soap’s off the air. I’ll never know which twin is carrying the archbishop’s secret baby.” Her shoulders dropped. “My poker group is dead.”

She looked away, then rallied and grabbed a second pack of jerky. “I’m pacing myself.”

“This store won’t last too long.”

Her face was in shadow. “Looters up and died, honey. It’s just us now.” She squinted out the door. “Us andthem.”

“You mean that young woman in the BMW? She listens to static. Like it’s calling to her.”

“Sounds about right.”

“What does she want? Everything you could desire is suddenly, freely, available.”

Eleanor’s expression sharpened. “?‘He who dies with the most toys wins.’ Well, keeping score with toys ain’t fun anymore. Makes her angry.” She pursed her lips. “The world burned, but she didn’t light the match, and that makes her angry, too. She don’t create—sheinflicts. That’s what she wants.”

Dani stilled. “Sounds like you know who she is.”

“I’m a juvenile court clerk. She made multiple appearances.”

Dani urged Mollie to go find comic books and paperbacks. She edged closer to Eleanor. “Theft? Prostitution?”