Page 229 of The End of the World As We Know It

“It’s never fair!” Bobmadil proclaims. “Oh, Discordia! To which Discordia replies, ‘No great loss!’?”

The garish multicolor of the sky is as bright as fireworks, affording Ezra the ability to watch as Tom’s skin glistens and inflates. His neck loses definition under a glottal bulge. Purulent sores erupt and leak white, curdling spray. No, not spray. Maggots. Squirming out of his wounds, squeezing out of his eyes and wriggling down his cheeks. He smiles widely and more maggots spill out over his teeth like wormy porridge.

The fly’s wings drill into the air—joining the cacophony of the earth collapsing below, the sounds coming from the moon.

“No great loss! The clock is red! This is nine! Nine! All of your friends are dead!”

He’s not the real Tom Bombadil, Ezra realizes. It feels like his own skin is on fire.Tom was kind. Ambivalent, but kind. This is some mad demon tormenting a dying world. He won’t help me.

Not-Tom’s flesh continues to slough and liquify. Maggots, centipedes, thick and greedy leeches pour out of widening fistulas.

“Oh, Discordia! The clock is red!”

All I’ve got is myself. Myself and… and SuperLawyer!

Ezra begins to laugh dementedly.Yes! We can litigate anything! Even the end of the world!

Tom joins him in the mad laughter. “Ezra’s enso is donezo! There’s been a rewrite! The King is in his counting house! He found enough glue, but not for you!”

“I’m not going to be erased,” Ezra manages. Even though his voice is barely audible under all the other thundering noises. “I’m going to live!”

“Say hellogoodbye to the Beast!” Tom shrieks. “He got the write-out, too! You say why and I say I don’t know, oh no!”

Ezra throws himself onto the ground and, in the mud and dirt, draws a door with his finger. It’s been a long time since he’s drawn anything and the world is bucking and shivering, so it’s not the best-looking door, but it gets the job done. It tells the story.

“I have a door now, okay?! Let me out of here!”

Tears streaking down his cheeks, he finally steals a look at the moon. It’s a bright light. Like the kind that hangs over a surgery table. A gigantic faceless figure leans into the light, observing him. Electronic beeping and wheezing drown the world. The light swells, like his throat.

No time!

The world crumbles all around him. Swallowed into the Nothingness eating through the base of his granite safehold. He closes his eyes and tries to grip the door handle he sketched in the ground. Perhaps it’s the final wish of a doomed man, but he swears he feelssomethingin his hand. He twists… pulls…

It won’t open. The door won’t open!

Then he remembers his father’s voice.

A second chance.

He kneels down, pulls the folded drawing from his jacket pocket, and, refusing to let the earth shake him loose, writes the numbers from his dream onto the door.

978-1-66805-7551

“IOBJECTTO THIS MADNESS!” he screams in triumph once he’s finished. “YOU HEAR ME?! IOBJECT! I WILL LIVE!” He grabs hold of the knob once more. “I AM LIFE ITSELF AND I OBJ—”

With an all-too-familiar wet rattle, the patient on the gurney spasmed and stilled.

Dr. Alvin Carhart barely noticed the deaths by this point. There were so many, happening so quickly, even in this small hospital in Green River, Utah. And yet, for some reason, this one caught his attention. This patient really had seemed to rally for a moment there.

Under the harsh fluorescent lights, Dr. Carhart stared down at the swollen, mucus-encrusted body and wondered:What goes through the mind as it dies?

This was followed by a much more unpleasant thought:Probably find out myself soon enough.

Dr. Carhart folded that thought and tucked it away with a professional’s economy.

There were ten other bodies, hacking and gasping, in this room alone. Ventilators (for the few who’d had time to be hooked up) wheezing. Heart monitors beeping erratically. They all needed tending to. Even if it felt like trying to fight a forest fire with a squirt gun.

Still, he stood and regarded the just-expired patient for a moment longer. Due to the constant stream of bodies—and he felt horrible reprimanding that ambulance driver for stopping to pick this hopeless case off the side of the highway—they’d taken to writing the patients’ initials on the backs of their hands for ease of identification. Dr. Carhart noticed with a grimace that the patient had the same initials as his own.