Page 96 of The End of the World As We Know It

JULY 4

After much deliberation, I decided not to peek inside the tent. There was no reason to, really. I already knew what I would find.

At first, I was bothered by what the man had done. Leaving the woman unburied in the middle of a strange town not only felt heartless but also a little bit chickenshit. Even if the two of them hadn’t known each other all that well—which I had no way of actually knowing, of course—it still felt like the woman deserved better.

But then as the day went on, I began to look at things differently.

After all, who was I to say how many others the Harley man had already buried?

I don’t have even the slightest clue what burdens he carried along with him, so who am I to judge?

Maybe that’s how the man survived on the road as long as hehad… by never looking back and always looking forward… by always moving forward.

Hell, I might only be fifteen, but that’s something I could learn a thing or two about myself. Moving forward.

I’ve decided I’m going to leave Bennington and look for other survivors. I’ve decided I no longer want to be alone. I want to live. Or at the very least, die trying.

Tommy closed the leather-bound journal his sister gave him for Christmas last year and tucked it away inside his knapsack.I’ll think about you, sis, every time I write in it.

He took one final look around at the town in which he’d been born. It was dusk and difficult to make out details, but that didn’t matter. He knew these streets and buildings like the back of his hand. He stared at where he knew his house was, nothing more now than a dark blob lost among many other dark blobs.It’s okay, he thought.Home is wherever I find myself at the end of each new day. And I will always take you with me. Mom. Dad. Jenn. I love you and miss you so much.

With tears in his eyes, he slung his backpack over one shoulder and the rifle over the other. He reached for the metal railing at the top of the ladder and began to turn around to make his final descent—

—when far off to the east, a burst of fireworks lit up the night sky. A red, white, and blue spray with squiggles and spirals and whirly-whirls, all of them sputtering in unison and transforming into a gentle shower of glowing embers, like pixie dust in a storybook.

That’swhere I’m headed, he thought, looking toward the east. He started climbing.That’s where I’ll find others.

And smiling in the dark, a hundred feet off the ground, he began singing:

“Baby, can you dig your man? He’s a righteous man. Tell me baby, can you dig your man?”

LA MALA HORA

Alex Segura

I felt his tiny hand tighten in mine.

His small, thin fingers tensing up—the chipped, almost flimsy nails digging into my skin.

I looked down at my son, Danny. He’d just turned eight—just had a birthday. I say it that way because we don’t celebrate birthdays anymore. There’s nothing to be happy about. There’s no hope. There’s just darkness.

But I can’t tell him this, no matter how badly I want to. No matter how much I’ll wish I had.

Two months ago, things were different. We were making plans—like people foolishly do before fate slams a wrench into their midsection. I can picture it, too—that last calm feeling, right before it all went to hell. Looking out the large bay windows of our house, tucked in the suburbs of southwest Miami. I could see Danny playing in the front yard as I talked to my mom. I was asking her about how many cupcakes to make, what kind of goody bags we should have. The mundane stuff that feels so much more powerful in the rearview. These things thatfade with every thought—become less tangible, like a puff of smoke being swept away by the wind.

My name is Desi Calderon, and I’m not sure how much time I have left.

How much timewehave left.

This thought sits with me for hours. Perhaps days. As we make our way, slowly, north from Miami. First in my mom’s banged-up Mazda 626. Then in anything else we find that works and, by some miracle, has gas. I hesitated at first—taking keys from the dead. Fumbling through their pockets and purses, like some panicked thief, their bodies spread out and around the street, like something out of a Romero movie—detritus, but not always. They were people once.

We were, too.

The irony—if there is such a thing—is that Danny and I left before, well, everything. Before “Captain Trips.” Before the darkness. Before everything collapsed. Dead bodies everywhere, no light, no air-conditioning, nothing. In what felt like an instant, the world went dark—but we were already making our way out of town.

Even before the virus, I feared for my life. For my son’s life.

I feel the soft thud of my worn-out sneakers on the asphalt. I feel a soft, tropical breeze slap my face and I almost smile—the gust slicing through the heat like those paper airplanes I’d toss in class when I was a kid. It felt so good. Nothing felt good anymore.I want to feel this breeze forever, I thought.