Page 33 of The End of the World As We Know It

They walked another dozen feet before he tried again. “Seriously, Kristen, please just go back. I’m sorry I’ve upset you. Sorry I disappointed you.”

He wasn’t sorry at all, but figured appeasement might be his best bet.

Turned out he was wrong about that.

She slammed the heel of a hand between his shoulder blades, causing him to stumble forward a few feet. He resumed moving up the street after regaining his balance, but half turned toward her long enough to say, “Knock it off.”

She sneered, but didn’t say anything until he’d turned away from her again.

Then she said, “I hate you.”

“You don’t even know me.”

She thumped him between the shoulder blades again. “I hope you get Captain Trips. Angie hates you, too. That’s why she left. She couldn’t stand to be around you anymore. Your stupid ugly face gave her nightmares.”

“You’re lying.”

She laughed. “Am not. She said her nightmares about you were worse than her nightmares about the dark man.”

What happened next was unthinking impulse, a result of her finally pulling at the loose strands of his frayed nerves a little too hard. She was so close he could feel her beer-stinking breath on his neck. He felt crowded, uncomfortable. All he knew was he wanted her away from him, and he wanted itnow.

He whirled about and slammed the heels of both hands into her chest. Her eyes went wide with alarm as she stumbled away from him. The heel of one of her shoes bumped against the ridged edge of a sloppily patched pothole, eliminating any chance she had of regaining her balance or breaking her fall. She fell straight backward, the crown of her skull smacking hard against the asphalt. For Corey, the impact sound immediately conjured memories of his stepmom cracking an egg open for breakfast.

He felt sick.

A pool of blood was already spreading around her head. Her body had gone terribly still. Her mouth was open and her eyelids were motionless. He couldn’t hear her breathing. A pitiful, shrill whine rose up from somewhere, and it took him a moment to realize the sound was issuing from his own mouth.

She looked dead.

Only seconds had passed, and she looked fucking dead.

How was that possible?

It had happened with such shocking suddenness, with no true malicious intent on his part. He hadn’t wanted to hurt her.Allhe’d wanted was for her to stop harassing him and go away, but now she was dead.

I’m a killer, he thought.A fucking killer. Oh, Jesus.

Tears filled his eyes and his whole body trembled as he approached her unmoving form. As he drew close to her body, he came perilously close to stumbling over the same ridge of dark and gooey asphalt patch. Then he was on his knees at her side, lifting a limp arm to check her wrist for a pulse, but there was none to detect.

He sat down on his butt, folding his arms tight over his belly as he rocked back and forth and sobbed. “I’m sorry,” he wailed, his vision blurring. “So fucking sorry. I didn’t mean to. I really didn’t. You have to believe me, God.” He looked toward the sky as tears rolled sideways down his cheeks. “You have to take it back. This is a mistake. A terrible mistake. You have to fucking take it back!”

Corey was close to screaming by the time his voice hoarsened too severely to continue. Even after the wailing subsided, he stayed where he was, still clinging tight to Kristen’s arm. He felt bereft and adrift, shaken to his core. Too late, he felt a greater level of empathy for her. She’d only been seeking companionship and comfort, had been desperate for it, and he’d rejected her on a whim.

What a fool I am.

He wept and vocally reiterated his sorrow countless times. A part of him expected someone to eventually come along and take care of things in an adult way. Surely the police would be called soon. He’d be arrested and hauled away to spend the first of many nights in jail.

Only, those were the ways of the old world, the world that was ending.

This new world was no place of order and decorum.

All that was left was chaos and death. So much death.

He might have stayed right where he was for hours to come, until long after nightfall. That was how broken he felt. The dog hadstopped barking a while ago, at least several minutes prior to the moment when he’d turned toward Kristen and given her that fateful shove. Even the hope the dog’s barking had bestowed had drained away. He wished he had a gun.

Wished he had the guts to stick that gun in his mouth.

This is what he was thinking when he heard the sound that finally roused him from the worst depths of misery and self-pity. Not the resumption of barking he might have hoped for, but another sound, one that stirred instant unease and prickled the hairs at the back of his neck. Boot heels clocking on asphalt. Not too close yet, but not far away, either. And there was another sound, that of someone—a man—humming a vaguely recognizable tune, a pop song that had been popular in recent weeks, prior to the onset of the plague. Corey didn’t like the song and he didn’t like the steady, inexorable clocking sound of those boot heels. A sound like the heels of a prison guard walking a condemned man to the electric chair.