Page 72 of The End of the World As We Know It

Derek and Alan looked at each other nervously. They had, but neither had mentioned it to the other. “Yeah,” they both said in unison.

“Like, I’ve been having this… weird dream. Night after night. A dark figure standing along the highway. Behind him, I see Las Vegas. He wants me to go with him. He says I don’t have to be alone anymore. Y’all have something like that?”

Derek and Alan shook their heads. They hadn’t.

“No,” said Derek. “I’ve actually just been dreaming about this nice old lady.” Alan looked at him, confused, as he’d had the same dream, but decided not to speak up. That sounded too weird to him.

“Yeah, yeah,” said Bill. “It’s the stress. Losing the girls and all. Just weird dreams.” He stood up, nodded a polite goodbye, and went home.

The next morning, Derek and Alan went about their morning rounds, first hitting up their ranch chores, feeding the cattle, collecting eggs, and making sure all the water troughs were full and clean. Then they went about their afternoon rounds, seeing that all was quiet and well in town.

As they made their rounds, they gave a wave to Bill, who was cutting up a cord of wood at the front of his property with a chain saw in both hands. He revved the beast and raised it high before giving a small pirouette like Leatherface at the end ofChain Saw. The two laughed at the little joke and rode on, not giving it a second thought.

One might think it strange how comfortable the three seemed living in a town populated mostly by the dead, but in truth, they had done so for so long that it seemed mostly normal. Working on the ranch, the boys could go a few days seeing no one at all but each other, so they fell rapidly into a groove of normalcy, despite the whole world having gone silent so quickly. They were sure the power would go outany day now, so they’d long since had the generators on standby, and with the truck stop gassed up to the gills, they imagined there would be some semblance of governmental return to civility before they ever ran out of juice. But if there wasn’t, they always had their batteries.

So, life was quaint, quiet, and uncomplicated.

Derek was the first to notice the shattered glass door of the Roosevelt Food Mart. They weren’t large enough of a town to have a proper grocery store, so they relied upon a glorified general store generously namedFood Mart. The boys had mostly left it alone at this point, relying upon their own sundries and what was a mostly self-sustaining ranch. But seeing the front door smashed in sent a chill down both of their spines as they worried that their backup plan might be a bust as a result of some highway thieves.

“Shit,” Alan pointedly swore.

“What?” asked Derek.

“We left the shotguns at home.”

“Folks are probably just hungry.”

“Yeah, but I don’t want to be too careful.”

“We got a tire iron in the back of the truck.”

Alan nodded. “I reckon that’ll have to do.”

He grabbed the iron from the bed of his old truck, and they crept carefully, quietly, toward the front door.

“Oh, thank God,” came a soft, enthusiastic voice from inside. “Men!”

The boys stopped in their tracks. From the dark of the Food Mart emerged a shape. A shapely shape. The shapely shape of a rather attractive woman. It had been weeks now since the boys had seen a live woman, and significantly longer since they’d seen one this pretty. She had blond hair spilling down over her shoulders, bright blue eyes that looked like pools of water on a travel brochure you’d find in a motel lobby, and a sprinkle of freckles across the bridge of her nose. Around her neck hung a simple gold cross—no Jesus, just the cross. A good Protestant girl.

“What?” called another soft voice from the dark behind her. Another woman, slightly taller, but thinner, with dark brown hair cascading down her back, wearing a black Judas Priest T-shirt, slipped up behind the first, bag of groceries in her hands. “Oh!” she exclaimed, pleasantly surprised.

“Ladies,” said Derek.

“Gentlemen,” said the blonde.

“Y’all ain’t from around here.”

“Riiiight,” said the brunette.

“Any reason y’all are busting up our Food Mart?”

“Oh shit,” said the brunette. “You own this place?”

“Nah,” said Alan. “We’s just looking after it for the owner.”

“Is he dead? You know, from the Trips?” asked the blonde.

“Presently,” said Derek, drawing a contemptuous look from Alan.