The Girl at the End of the World (5 page)

“My God,” I said. “What is it?”

“They don’t know. They’re still calling it a fungus, but no one really knows anything. There’s all these rumors and…”

“And what?”

“And stories about how it’s already spread to other cities. There are videos on YouTube showing people dying and they say they’re in San Francisco and Phoenix and one even says it’s in New York. I think they’re hoaxes, but…what if they’re not?”

“It doesn’t make any sense.”

“What?”

“If all this is happening, why am I not dead?”

Silence for a few seconds and then, “Maybe you’re the cockroach who the pesticide doesn’t kill.”

“Like in Biology?”

“Maybe.”

“That’s ridiculous,” I said. “There’s got to be a better explanation. These people can’t all be dying. The news has got it wrong.”

“I don’t think so. You should watch for a minute and look online. It’s crazy, Scarlett. It’s…”

“What?”

Then she was crying again. “I’m so scared, Scarlett. I don’t want to die. I’m just fifteen. I don’t want to die. I don’t want my mom and dad to…”

I let her sob. There was nothing I could do. Across the street, the neighbor had dropped to his knees and had his arms over his head, looking up at the sky like he was asking God or something else to save him. And then he fell forward onto his face.

I turned away from the window.

It was unreal.

Your neighbor who you didn’t really even know just collapses across the street, and your response is to turn around and not watch because you know he’s about to die and there’s nothing you can do for him.

That wasn’t the world I lived in.

At least that’s what I was telling myself.

Well, it hadn’t been the world I lived in. Not the day before.

But that had been a world where I had parents and a sister and step-brothers, a world where the police or fire department came when you called them, a world where the Dodgers played the Giants and the only thing people said about the game the next day was whether it had been any good or not.

It wasn’t a world where people’s faces burst open from parasitic fungus that grew so fast you didn’t even have the chance to say goodbye, didn’t even have the chance to know you were sick.

But the old world was gone now, and a new one had swooped in to take its place. And here it wasn’t just the fire department or the police who wouldn’t be able to help you. It was also your parents and your friends and your neighbors.

I was on my own.

Not even Jen could help me.

She couldn’t help herself.

But maybe I don’t need the help
, I thought.
Maybe I
am
the cockroach who survives the bug spray.

“Jen?”

She was still sobbing.

“Jen, you need to pull yourself together, okay?”

She tried, taking deep breaths. The sobbing grew a bit less intense.

“Do you think you’ve been exposed?” I asked.

“How can you tell?”

“I don’t know. But you haven’t been outside since it started?”

“No. On the news they said to seal the houses, so my dad tried.”

“How?”

“They said to put plastic and duct tape on all the windows and doors. He used trash bags. Everything looks so dark. I just want to see outside.”

“You probably don’t,” I said.

“What do you mean?”

“It’s horrible outside.” I turned back to the window, my eyes drawn to the man face down on his lawn across the street. “People are dying. People are running away. Things are…”

Mr. Jenkins’ or Jennings’ house was now on fire. The house behind his was completely engulfed, and I could feel the heat coming through my window even though I was at least three feet away from it. The palm tree across the street had begun to smolder, and several bushes in front of other houses were burning as well. I could also see now that another house on the street beyond had begun to burn, and more neighbors had come out with hoses. Several wore masks—flimsy painters’ masks most of them, but some had more heavy duty ones with filters that made them look like aliens from some bad movie.

“What is it?” Jen asked, a new level of panic in her voice.

“Things are on fire,” I said quietly, incredulously.

Glowing embers were touching down in my own yard now, and when I went closer to the window to get a better look, I backed away again immediately. I felt like the window would burn me if I got too close, even if I just looked through it.

“What’s on fire?”

“Houses. Trees. Everything. Jen?”

“Yeah?”

“I think I’d better go.”

“Don’t! Scarlett? Please!”

“I’ll call you back. I have to go.”

I clicked off and looked around my room, telling myself not to panic. For all I knew, the roof of my house was already smoldering from embers that the breeze had blown across the street, or just from the heat of the other fire. I was scared to look left or right outside my window for fear that our palm trees had already turned into torches with black smoke trailing into the sky and blazing chunks falling down onto our driveway and lawn.

I didn’t know what to grab. I hadn’t thought I’d need to leave. Our house had always been safe. Even now, with all this horrible stuff happening on the news, happening to my parents and brothers and sister, the house had seemed like the one safe place to be, a place where I could ride out the crisis until it passed, until order was restored and people figured out what had happened.
And what to do with fifteen-year-old girls who’d been orphaned.

But not now, not any more.
I had to go.

I dumped my backpack onto my floor, spilling out my notebooks and math homework for the weekend, and threw my laptop and charger into it. My phone went into my back pocket. Glancing around, almost spinning, I couldn’t think of what else I’d need. Then I bolted for the door, stopping halfway there to open my closet and grab my heaviest coat. I hadn’t worn it since February, but when I thought of running outside in my t-shirt and shorts, embers falling all around me, I knew I’d be glad for the jacket then.

I don’t remember going down the stairs. I must have taken them three at a time, and it’s surprising I didn’t break my neck. I just remember going into the kitchen and pulling my mom’s biggest butcher knife from the wooden block that held it and sliding it into my backpack. Then I opened the utility drawer and found my mom’s little hammer and a utility knife with a retractable blade.

I slammed the drawer shut and then opened it again immediately, memory driving me as I scanned the jumbled contents. I couldn’t see what I was looking for, so I pulled the whole drawer out and let everything fall onto the kitchen floor. Seconds later, I saw the Swiss Army knife my mom had teased my dad about using, saying it was the tool he’d grab for any occasion—that and a roll of duct tape. I grabbed the knife and tossed it into the backpack and then, for good measure, opened the bottom drawer and found the half used roll of duct tape that had been there forever. Into the backpack it went, too.

From the fridge, I grabbed two bottles of water.

From the pantry, three protein bars and a jar of peanut butter.

And then I ran into the living room, looking around frantically for anything else that might be useful, expecting to hear our smoke alarms going off any second.

On the mantle was a framed photo of our family, the family that had been ours before the divorce and all the ugliness and the split visits and the new wife and half-brothers. Me with big dimples and blonde braids and Anna in braces, standing in front of Mom and Dad, big smiles on all our faces. We’d gone to the Griffith Observatory in the hills above Los Angeles for a Sunday outing, and in the photo the city spread out behind us as we stood on one of the observation decks. I remember my dad asking a tourist to take the picture, and I’d been embarrassed about posing in front of some stranger, but the smiles had been real. At least they’d seemed real. I didn’t know about the fighting and accusations yet, but a month after the picture had been taken, my dad had moved out. I kind of hated that picture, and kind of loved it, too. It had always surprised me that my mom had kept it out for everyone to see, a reminder of what had been lost.

Of course, I didn’t think any of those things now. I just grabbed the photo and stuffed it into my backpack without wondering why or what good it would do me.

I knew there was a good chance I’d never make it back to this house, this neighborhood. And that if I did come back, it would be a miracle to find the place standing or for
there to be any record of the family that had once lived here and then fallen apart.

Back in the kitchen, I pulled the spare key ring off its little hook and then yanked open the back door. Out of habit, I twisted the lock and pulled the door closed behind me. And then I ran to the driveway without looking back.

The street was in chaos. Flames shot from every window in the house across the street, and the houses on either side were burning as well. No one had done a thing about the body on the lawn. I could hear dogs barking, people shouting, and the roar of the flames. On this side of the street, several trees were already on fire, and when I looked up at our house, I could see smoke beginning to rise from the roof, maybe only from embers that had landed there, but maybe not.

The heat was terrific, and I slipped my jacket on, pulled the hood up, and ran toward Anna’s second-hand Nissan parked at the curb. She’d let me drive it up and down the driveway a few times, but I’d never actually driven a car on the street. That wasn’t going to stop me, though. I’d known when I was still inside the house that taking my bicycle would be a terrible choice. Driver’s Ed was going to start right now.

I almost started crying when I got into the car, my backpack on the passenger seat and my jacket all bunched up between me and driver’s seat. The tassel from Anna’s high school graduation dangled from the rearview mirror. Such a simple thing, but it said everything about my sister, everything she’d been and done and wanted up until yesterday. Such an innocent, stupid little thing, just hanging there. And now all her dreams and everything she’d worked for…everything. It was all up in smoke like the houses around me.

I resisted the urge to yank the tassel off the mirror. Instead, I carefully removed it and let it drop into the cup holder on the console.

“Okay, then,” I said, wiping tears away with the back of my left hand while I slid the key into the ignition with my right. The car started right away, and then I took a few seconds to think about the steps. Brake, gear, let the brake up, and then a little gas.

My fingers gripped the wheel tightly as I felt the car roll forward. I didn’t step on the gas even though I wanted to get away, as fast and as far as I could from the smoke and the flames and shouts and screams and the dead man on the lawn across the street.

But I kept my calm and just let the car roll forward for a few feet, forgetting to check the mirrors before pulling out into the street and then remembering in a panic at the last second. Of course, no one was coming. No cars, and certainly no fire engines.

A dog ran across the street right in front of the Nissan, and I punched the brakes in panic even though it was gone before I’d had time to react. If I’d been going faster, if I’d stepped on the gas the way I’d wanted to, I probably would have killed the dog, so I was glad for that.

I let the car roll on slowly past a couple more houses and then gingerly pushed on the gas. The little Nissan picked up speed, and I told myself I’d get the hang of this quickly.

Three houses down, a woman I recognized but had never spoken to was standing on her lawn, her hands over her mouth as she looked in horror at the burning houses behind me. She turned toward me as I drove past, and I saw a look of anger come over her.

I was abandoning the street, the neighborhood. I was running away. It filled her with rage, not any kind of reaction a normal person would have, but probably something you’d think if you were sick, if you had a fungal growth pressing on your brain. Her rage would likely have come out over anything, or anyone, but it came out over me driving by in my sister’s car, barely doing ten miles an hour.

When I saw her turn and start running across her lawn toward the street, an incomprehensible bellow coming from her still-open mouth, I didn’t hesitate, but punched the gas and felt the little Nissan leap. In seconds, I was beyond her reach and driving away as fast as I thought was safe. If she hadn’t come after me, I might have forgotten to look in the rearview mirror for one more glimpse of the street I’d grown up on. And as I did, I saw no trace of the good memories I had, just an angry woman standing in the middle of the street, waving a fist impotently at me as I sped away, burning houses on either side of the street behind her.

Chapter Five

I didn’t know where to go at first.

The police station, I thought.
Or a fire station. Or a hospital. Any of those places made sense, but when I pictured myself walking in and asking for help, I imagined how many others would be there wanting the same thing and decided against it.

Then I thought about my school. The last place a fifteen-year-old girl would want to go voluntarily when she didn’t have to, but somehow it also seemed a safe place at the moment. Still, the thought of the empty halls and classrooms now made me shudder.

So, for lack of anywhere better, I ended up at Jen’s.

It felt strange pulling up to the curb in a car I was driving, not being dropped off by my mom. It felt like I was some time-warped version of myself, arriving the way I would a few years in the future if everything hadn’t gone so horribly wrong.

Stranger still, though, was the way the house looked with green plastic trash bags taped up inside all the windows, almost like the house had been blasted with holes where the windows had been.

I stopped the car, careful not to hit the curb, ending up almost two feet into the street. It didn’t matter. I got out and looked around. Almost every other house nearby had the windows covered, too, some with white trash bags, some with clear plastic.

Behind me, dark columns of smoke reached into the sky. My neighborhood going up. Jen’s neighborhood was separated from mine by about a mile and a half and one major street that I doubted the fire would jump. Still, it gave me a little peace of mind to hear sirens approaching. The neighborhood might not be saved, but at least the fire could be stopped from spreading to others.

I knew not to knock on Jen’s door. No one would answer. And I wouldn’t have wanted them to. Still haunted at the thought of the hug I’d given my mom, I didn’t want to do anything to endanger Jen or her family or anyone else. But I knew they were inside, and I was out. It would stay that way, and I’d be safe here, as safe as could be anyway. And they’d be safe from me.

I gathered my jacket and backpack and locked the Nissan. My car now. And then I headed for the gate on the side of the house. I would have hopped it if I’d needed to, but it was unlocked, so I slipped into the backyard and walked around the pool the way I’d done a hundred times before, only now there was no laughter, no barbecue, no anything. Just me and the still water and the smell of smoke in the air.

Jen’s room was on the second floor, and her window looked out onto the pool. I glanced up at it now, not surprised to find it covered in the same plastic as all the other windows in the house. Calling up to her wouldn’t be a good idea—would only get the attention of her parents and brother, too. I knew her dad wouldn’t want me back here, would be afraid of what microscopic dangers I was carrying. He’d kick me out for sure, if he had the nerve to come outside. Still, I didn’t want to risk it. If I just stayed quiet, I could wait here until I figured out what else to do.

The backyard looked no different than it would have on a normal day—lounge chairs scattered around the pool, a glass-topped patio table with a folded umbrella poking through its center and padded chairs around it, the covered barbecue near a sliding glass door. I quietly pulled a chair away from the table, sat down, and began removing my things from the backpack, laying them all out on the table before me. It wasn’t much, not enough to survive on. I should have grabbed more food, I told myself, but there was no going back now. There were bound to be Red Cross centers up already; I just needed to find the nearest one and then try to figure out what I was going to do next. What do you do when you’ve turned fifteen, become an orphan, and had your house burn down all in twenty-four hours? I wondered how the Red Cross would handle that one.

The
Waverlys had an outlet in a neat little box sticking out of the lawn right near the table, so I uncoiled my laptop’s charger and plugged in, just to make sure I had 100% battery life by the time I had to leave—whenever that turned out to be. Then I logged onto Jen’s Wi-Fi and opened my Facebook. I could see from the chat icon that Jen was online; so were a couple of our friends, but I didn’t care about them right now.

Jen?
I typed.

Seconds later.
OMG! Where r u?

Ur back yard

What?

U
gonna make me type it again?

What happened?

I dont wanna go into it. I need a place to stay. Can I hang out here for now?

I think my p wont like it but I wont tell.

K

U all rite?

For now. U?

Scared.

Not sick?

No. Not yet.

K. Call me when its safe.

K

I logged off then and just looked around the yard, listening to the sound of helicopters not far away and wondering if they were part of the effort to save what was left of my neighborhood. I suppose I was in shock, as I didn’t think at all about everything I’d lost in the last few hours or the final blow to my old life that the helicopters and billowing smoke signaled. Realizing I hadn’t eaten anything yet, I unwrapped one of the energy bars and opened the peanut butter. Then I went to Google and tried to figure out what was going on.

The disease was definitely a fungus, authorities claimed.

Others claimed it was a virus.

The sites that claimed it was aliens or the wrath of God, I didn’t bother clicking on.

All the pages with theories included pictures of people dying from the growths. I’d seen it so many times by that point that it was no longer shocking. If I’d thought about my parents or brothers or Anna, I don’t think I could have handled it, but I suppose my mind had begun compartmentalizing everything, so I just didn’t go there, didn’t think about it in context with what I was reading on the computer screen.

The disease, whatever it was, had been contained within the Los Angeles area.

According to other pages, people were dying in Arizona and San Francisco.

The National Guard had been called out to the California border to enforce quarantine of the state.

People were dying in New York and Miami, Tokyo and London.

All air traffic in and out of the US had been stopped.