Page 216 of The End of the World As We Know It

There are tears in his eyes. I know he wasn’t attached to Maple. I know he’s feeling this for me. And somehow, that opens and breaks something inside me. I’m crying. I’m crying so loud. It’s like screaming.

He’s there. A witness. He doesn’t tell me to be quiet or to stop. And so I keep going. I cry for Maple and the missing. I cry for my people. I cry for my mom. I cry for misunderstood Ferris. I cry for myself.

What happens next isn’t an accident. Taking off our clothing and coming together, we choose it. I’ve never done it before, and neither has he. It’s a surprise, how much I enjoy it. I feel different afterward. I feel like there was something wrong, something undone and sorrowful, that is gone. It’s his nearness that drives it away.

The halfway house has a radio, and that morning, we let our people know what happened. They decide to take a risk. They send an envoy of two to meet us. This envoy hesitates as it passes through the threshold of the halfway house. We all do.

It’s terrifying and momentous and oh so quiet as they walk inside and breathe our air.

When Ferris and I decide where to sleep with our newcomers, we have the option of pretending there is nothing between us. These kinds of relations are frowned upon and impractical. I find myself afraid of losing him, and tether myself closer.

Quickly, our friends get sick. But like Ferris, two days later, they are healed. Immune.

Leaning on one another, learninglovewithout ever saying the word, Ferris and I make a kind of pilgrimage together. We spread our immunity to Montana and Texas. We spread it wherever it’s needed.

Nine months later, my child is born. The child is immune.

We consider packing our things and moving to any of the now-occupied territories. Taking over, murdering with a word. Undoing everything the Chosen have built. But we choose instead to remain the quiet ones.

Our numbers grow. Surge, even. We respect the new treaty, have stolen no lands. The difference is not on the outside, but within. We gather now. We know the feel of skin. We laugh, our voices no longer caged.

You Chosen ones now relegated to small territories, you Petty Gods who turned the lights no one wanted back on. You day walkers banished now, to night, hear a story: Once, you steered a ship. You broke the ship and unknowingly jettisoned us from it. You returned to the ship, learning nothing. Changing nothing. Seeing nothing new.

You did not understand that we were the new. God’s rejects were the change. We will remake the world into a thing you do not recognize. We will remake the world into a thing that works.

THE UNFORTUNATE CONVALESCENCE OF THE SUPERLAWYER

Nat Cassidy

His fever breaks and there are earthquakes.

When he comes to in the middle of the road, his face is resting against the hot asphalt. His head is fuzzy, his mouth is dry, the sun is cooking his clammy skin… but all things considered, he feels pretty dang good.

Such a beautiful dream.

He peels himself off the ground. Wipes flakes of black grit from his cheek. Tries to get his bearings.

A lonely strip of Highway 70. Damn lucky nobody ran him over.

But, of course, nobodywouldhave run him over. Because everyone is

—a beautiful dream—

dead. Dead or dying. That’s why he’d thrown supplies in his car and started driving north towards the badlands of Utah in the first place. No plan, other than fleeing Phoenix and getting to the least populated area he could think of. The first truly impulsive thing he’s done in his adult life.

He stands, legs wobbly as a newborn foal.

The world seems to be holding its breath. A breeze plays against his skin, but even that feels tentative. A slow pulse in a comatose body.

So remarkably different from the chaos he’d left behind. Sickness all around him. Panic in the streets, on the airwaves. In this isolated silence, all that feels impossible. More like, well, some fever dream.

The difference in his body is amazing, too.

At some point, probably around Prescott, he’d started to feel sick himself. Mucus pooling in every sinus. Insides heating up. Glands starting to swell.

Now he feels downright refreshed. He puts a hand to his throat and confirms the swelling has gone down. Fever’s gone, too—maybe the hot asphalt helped burn it out of him?

Or… maybe it had all been psychosomatic. No sickness could movethatfast, right? Not even the so-called “superflu” with that stupid nickname. He’s always been a little prone to nervous suggestion.