Page 41 of The End of the World As We Know It

Dick sighted through his rifle’s scope. “Hold your fire. No point wasting ammunition until they’re within range.”

From the stranger’s point of view, it might have looked like a welcoming party had assembled to greet him, but that was the furthest thing from reality, as he was about to find out.

“It’s a woman,” Nancy said, handing the binoculars to Dottie. “I think it’s Sarah Mitchell.”

“Don’t matter who it is,” Harry said. “Man, woman, or child. They ain’t welcome here.” He ratcheted a round into the chamber, shouldered his rifle, took aim, and fired. The sound was loud and jarring. No one could tell where his bullet went, but the woman in the boat didn’t miss a stroke.

“What are you doing?” Alice Williams shrieked.

“What needs to be done,” Harry said.

Dick fired next. Through the binoculars, Dottie saw a splash a few feet to one side of the approaching vessel. This time, the woman wielding the oars paused, allowing the boat to glide forward of its own momentum. She waved and appeared to yell something, but the sound didn’t reach the shore. Her dark hair blew about her head in mad disarray, reminding Dottie of a painting of one of the Furies. If she remembered her mythology correctly, they were all about retribution. Wasn’t there a goddess of pestilence, too?

The men with the rifles fired a few more times, while Alice and Margaret yelled at them to stop. Their protests were ignored. As the boat drew closer to shore, a kind of madness overtook them. Bloodlust. Even Mildred Turner got off a couple of shots. They were fighting for their lives. Dottie had never fired a gun before, but she felt compelled to protect Seacliff. According to her dream, she was supposedly immune, but no one else on the island was.

Most shots missed their target—the boat was being cast about by the rough waves—but a few found their mark. A hole materialized in the prow, well above the waterline. Another bullet took out the windshield. Dottie thought that one might have also grazed Sarah, who was crouched as low as possible, but still exposed.

Later, no one would claim responsibility for the kill shot, but Dottie was reasonably sure which rifle delivered the fatal bullet. A second after a cloud of red blossomed around the woman’s head, Dottie heard Dick grunt with satisfaction. Sarah was thrown backward, no longer visible except for one arm that dangled over the starboard gunwale.

Still, the boat drew closer, carried by the waves.

“We gotta burn ’er,” Harry said. “We can’t let her reach the island.” He went up the gravel road to his house, moving as quickly as his sixty-five-year-old legs would take him. A couple of minutes later, he was back with several glass bottles and a wad of rags. Charles took two bottles to the supply tank and filled them with gasoline. Then he handed one to Harry, who stuffed a rag into the openings to make a wick. By then, the boat was only a dozen or so yards away and they could all see Sarah Mitchell’s body reclining in it, arms splayed, head disfigured. There was no sign of her husband.

Harry held up his improvised gasoline bomb. Wally lit the fuse. The flames reflected in his eyes, reminding Dottie of the crow from her dream. Harry reached back, then lobbed the bomb high into the air. It tumbled as it flew, but his aim was true. The bottle landed in the middle of Bob’s boat and exploded.

Sarah’s clothes caught fire. A moment later, the boat was engulfed in flames. They watched in dumbstruck awe as a black cloud formed over the boat and it started to fall apart. The engine tumbled from the back, and the craft began to take on water. The seawater extinguished most of the flames, but by then the boat was half submerged and it came no closer to shore. Sarah’s smouldering body lingered on the surface for a while before it, too, sank into the depths of the Gulf of Maine.

No one said anything for a long time. They stared at the remains of the boat and the vast body of water beyond. Each person contemplated his or her part in the scene that had just transpired. Some were proud they had defended the island. Others were ashamed they’d killed a defenseless young woman.

Except for Wally, who said he’d finish out his shift, everyone migrated back to the hall, where they picked over the remaining food with little interest and drank coffee. The television stations had all gone completely dark, and the radio still produced nothing but static.

“They musta made it to the mainland,” Harry said. “She was probably full of that there virus.”

“Probably couldn’t start the motor,” Bob said. “It was always tough to get going.”

“We did what we had to do,” Helen said. “Didn’t we?”

There were nods of agreement, but no one said anything more, and a few people looked like they weren’t sure they agreed. After a while, the residents of Seacliff Island returned home and tried to push all thoughts of this horrible Sunday morning from their minds, concentrating on making sure their crops were tended to and their pantries were free of pests.

That night, Wally was visited again in his dreams by the cool dude who called himself Randy. “Come on down to Las Vegas, Walter, my pal,” he said. “You’ll fit in here just fine and the house never wins. Not anymore.” Wally rolled over, but in his dreaming mind he was making plans to stock up on provisions and head over to the mainland, maybe as soon as the next day. If Evelyn didn’t want to go with him, that was okay. He’d have more fun in Vegas without her.

Dottie Phillips didn’t dream at all.

IN A PIG’S EYE

Joe R. Lansdale

The night air smelled of excited hog. But the sounds were human.

Ricky knew they were in the trees below him. The pines and sweet gums ran along the bottom of the hill for miles and there were pines and oaks on the top of the hill, which was where he was. He threaded between the trees, watching his step, thinking maybe that Boy Scout merit badge he earned so many years back in Wilderness Survival might now be taken from him. He had lost a lot of his stealth since then, but compared to those below who were trying to be quiet, he was Chingachgook.

And as for taking his merit badge from him, who was left to do it and who was left to care?

The hunters below were stepping on sticks and dried pine needles and sweet gum leaves, crackly and stiff as un-milked cornflakes. They might as well be beating drums and farting the national anthem.

But they were dangerous, none the less. They were hunters, and there were quite a few of them, and they were desperate.

The bad stuff, the cough and snort and the world gone wild, started some time back when Ricky was at work in the video store, slipping movies out of their boxes and putting the boxes behind the counter so they could be checked out. If left in the boxes, there was always some light-fingered Louie ready to pluck and stash and quickly dash.