Page 220 of The End of the World As We Know It

I don’t like this. Ireallydon’t like this. I object.

The knocking intensifies. Not just in his head. Someone is standing by the car, rapping gently on the side of the door to get his attention.

“Hey!” a voice outside says. “You alive in there or what?”

Her name is Susie and she’s quick to assure him she’s not crazy.

“I just haven’t seen anyone in a while and I… I don’t know. Got impulsive.”

The distaste with which she gives that word makes him relax a little. “I know the feeling.”

He folds the defaced drawing and stashes it into his breast pocket with a strange, muted shame. Gets out of the Plymouth to meet this new stranger.

She’s young. A teenager, really. Still baby fat on her cheeks. Dressed in retro fashion, a peasant blouse and cranberry bell-bottoms. Awkward, but, he’s almost immediately positive, harmless.

He tells her that his car has died—“Too many miles, probably”—and that he’s thinking of walking to the nearby gas station to look for a new one. She asks if she can go with him, and he says yes. They both do a poor job of hiding their relief at no longer being alone.

He’d also packed a couple of duffel bags in the trunk, so they divvy up his supplies to carry with them. He opts to carry the heavier bag, full of cans, and gives her the one with clothes. She seems inordinately touched by the consideration. She must not be used to such things.

“Shame about your car, though,” she says as they close the emptied trunk. “It’s pretty bitchin’.”

He gives the rear bumper a light kick. “It’s a piece of crap. Always hated it. And I was never good with manual transmissions.”

Still, he shoots a final look at the car as they head down Highway 70. So long, SL. So long, Dad’s albatross.

The car stays here.Again, that mysterious commandment in his mind. Not his father’s voice, though; somehow more elemental than that. Lower. Deeper. Wider.Great. The voice of God or something?He chuckles to himself.Yeah, sure. Why not?

Either way, he doesn’t bother arguing with it. Another thing every good lawyer knows: some arguments just aren’t worth your time.

As they walk down Highway 70, they do what all people who’ve been through a cataclysm do: swap horror stories.

He tells her about Phoenix. How the bodies started piling up. The smell of decay in the hot, dry air. The litany of lies and evasions on the TV and the radio. She nods along to the familiar tune.

She’d been living up in Maine. Then, everybody sing along: the bodies started piling up. And the smell of decay in the hot, humid air. And the litany of lies and evasions on the TV and the radio. She andher boyfriend, Bernie—along with their friends Joan, Kelly, Corey, and the rather unpleasantly named Needles—kicked around aimlessly for a while, stirring up shit, listening to Corey’s oversized radio/tape player, enjoying a certain kind of freedom… until they started to die off, too.

One fleeting detail strikes him as curious when she refers to the flu as “A6.” It’s not a designation he’s familiar with, and he almost asks her about it—but then he realizes it’s just yet another nickname for the disease that’s turned the world on its head. No more or less incomprehensible than “Captain Trips,” he supposes. No more or less useful, either.

He shakes his head with pity as she finishes her story.

“Wow. Experiencing all this as a kid. I just can’t imagine. I’m so sorry.”

“I’m not a kid,” she says defiantly, the way a kid would.

“Maine’s a long ways away,” he says, impressed and a little appalled. “Have you just been walking the whole time?”

She gives an uncommitted, unreadable shrug. Before he can ask her a follow-up, she points her chin at the folder he’s holding close to his chest “What’s with that thing? You’re carrying it like we had to carry my dog when she got too old to walk.”

Once again, he’s surprised himself. He hadn’t realized he was still holding on to his notebook.

“Oh, uh. This is nothing, just… Well, I’ve actually never shown it to anyone before, but… What the hell.”

Cheeks flushing, he hands it over to her.

The drawings are impressive enough to stop her in her tracks.

“Whoa,” she says. “You did all these?” He nods. “These aregood. Like, seriously good.” She steps off onto the shoulder to continue flipping through. He joins her. “I recognize some of these guys! That’s wild. Is this what you did before the world ended? Drew comics and stuff?”

“Yup.” Then, after a guilty beat: “No. I did corporate finance law. The most boring, useless crap in the world. I don’t know why I just lied.”