Page 80 of The End of the World As We Know It

“They never liked freedom,” the stranger goes on. “Real freedom. This country was a mean joke, made up by the true clowns. But me? I’m an Angel of Liberty. I believe in freedom.”

“They locked you up for that?” Silvia asks. “Nothing worse?”

“Less the belief, more the action.” The Angel of Liberty turns reverent. “You can do plenty of nasty business sticking to your guns. But what the hell’s a belief in God-given freedom without action? That’s why I’m headed away from here. Out west. What’s out there won’t be a joke. It’ll be real.”

Angel breaks into laughter. It’s a full, hearty outburst, the first laugh Silvia’s heard in a long time, and she hates that she kind of likes it.

“Been a while since you chatted with anyone, huh?” Angel asks. “Always chasing them off, I bet. So, clown—do you believe in God?”

Silvia lets her eyes close and soaks in the presence she knows to be there, but not by the name Angel has given. The truth behind it, having given up the notion of a loving Almighty. Silvia used to instead imagine a vengeful thumb squishing friends, family, that boy who mopped the deli floor, the bodies plummeting into the Atlantic Ocean. Helena. All of them seemingly pilfered by some great crook in the sky.

Nowadays she’s given up the notion of God altogether and accepted the captain. His ships are legion, crawling across the planet Earth like enormous prodding spiders, devouring love and connection while society writhes dying in his web. Captain Trips has more vessels than God could have saints. He is everything, everywhere. That roaring storm. That hungry virus.

Sun, time, death—the universe forms in carnivores.

Shadows deepen throughout the gas station. When Silvia glances from behind the counter again, only the nearest two aisles of shelving stand out from the black depths. No sign of Angel.

Except her voice in Silvia’s ears.

“Who’d you lose?” Angel asks, another likely carnivore. “I mean, everyone lost people, but who was your big one? Mine was my mother. Agony, but also a blessing. When the bug stole her mind, it also stole her out of time. She thought she was at my confirmation, then mywedding. Time eats us, but she snatched crumbs from its teeth, like those birds that clean gator mouths. My mother, a time traveler. Only the bug can do that.”

Silvia’s reply comes haltingly. “He’s a. Deadly captain. Not a blessing. There was somebody I loved. Who I took care of. Who died for me. Let me cheat death, for a little while.”

She’s choosy about her words without meaning to be. It’s been second nature for her to hide that Helena was another woman. Old habits die harder than the human race, and Silvia’s language hasn’t caught up yet with a decimated world too sparsely populated to give a damn.

Cloth slides against the floor somewhere beyond the counter. Angel might only be shifting in place, getting comfortable, but Silvia has to check.

There’s little to see. Darkness has eaten most of the gas station, now leaving only one aisle of shelving visible. Something shuffles again, as if Angel has shed her tank top and camo pants to dress herself in relentless night, an approaching fiend pretending to be nothing but the absence of light.

“The sickness is a liberator, like me,” Angel says. Is her voice louder? Closer? “Freeing the dead of this world. Freeing the living of doubt.”

Lightning forks beyond the glass-paneled door, illuminating the shelves and casting their shadows across the floor in stretches of black teeth. An uncertain form moves between them, almost a pacing animal.

And then it disappears along with the lightning.

“You got it wrong,” Silvia snaps. “He’s hunting me.”

“Who is?” Angel asks. “Somebody from your past? I swear, this bug has the sickest sense of humor in who to spare.”

“Him.” Silvia takes a harsh breath. “Captain Trips.”

“That’s just a name.” Angel pauses, then scoffs. “Is that the problem? You think I’ll get you sick? Do I look like the superflu?”

No, she looks like an engulfing shadow. Silvia watches the darkness seep nearer, black silk coating a tile floor.

“A captain has his crew,” Silvia says. “I’ve seen him coming. Out here, and in my dreams.”

“In your dreams?” Angel laughs again, sharper now, and Silvia likes the sound less this time. “Honey, that’s not Captain Trips. That’s just—well, he’s the Man. And he’s notjustanything. Those dreams are a beacon.”

Silvia could scream in aggravation. She knows what she’s seen and felt. Captain Trips, taking human form. Taking any form.

“Guess that’s why you’re skittish,” Angel says, gentler now. “Let me put your mind at ease. Anyone still alive right now is immune to the bug, dear clown. Captain Trips is yesterday’s news. The Man? In your dreams? He’s tomorrow.”

“Maybe for you, and everybody else left, but not me,” Silvia says. “I know better. Like how a gazelle knows something isn’t right that day on the savanna, before the cats close in. Prey instinct.”

She wonders if gazelles are among the captain’s victims, or if they still roam African grasslands, hunted by cheetahs. Were they spared, too? He’s likely given the carnivores a pardon, respect passing from predator to predator. Lions and tigers and bears, oh—

—Captain, my Captain, our fearful trip is done.