Page 135 of The End of the World As We Know It
She checked the rearview and saw the Corvid crest the arroyo’s low bank, signaled by its billowing black smoke. It caught up in mere seconds and hung on the Chevette’s dented rear bumper, as close and dark as a shadow.
It was the same gray desertscape ahead accented with mesquite, saguaro, and greasewood, except in the distance she noticed a dark seam running parallel to the horizon. Elise had no idea it was a railroad track until Ruby sat up in her seat and pointed.
“Train,” she said.
THEN
Elise had lost track of the days. She thought it was July 4, but couldn’t be certain. Not that it mattered. There’d be no celebratory fireworks or parades along Main Street. Not in El Centro. Not anywhere.
Jason had died during the night while Elise slept in the armchair in their living room. She’d stirred awake to the familiar smell of his sickness, but a new silence. No coughing. No sneezing or wheezing. No crying, pleading, or wailing her name. She’d risen from the armchair and walked into the bedroom to find him upright against the pillows, but very dead. His eyes were closed, but his mouth was open, showing his teeth. He’d always shown his teeth, no matter his mood. He had a good smile for someone who smoked two packs of Marlboros a day.
Elise felt no sorrow. She’d been through that process when it became apparent that Jason was going to die—when his cold-like symptoms had rapidly progressed to body-racking chills and respiratory weakness. His lungs had sounded like they were drowning in phlegm. His throat was puffed up and tight and looked difficult to breathe through. It reminded Elise of the cuff Doc Gomes inflated around her biceps when he checked her blood pressure. Instead of sorrow, Elise had felt only a quiet but stirring relief. She had not been to church since she was a little girl, but she lowered her head and spoke aloud the only prayer she could remember: “Our Father, who art in Heaven, hallowed by thy name…” Afterward, she lifted the damp, puke-stained sheet up over Jason’s face and removed the Hardballer from the nightstand on his side of the bed.
“I’m going to Nebraska, Jason, and you can’t stop me.”
They’d met in the summer of 1988. She’d been twenty-three at the time and hope was a ripe apple in her soul. Jason had been working at Big Wheel Auto, six three in his engineer boots, with prison ink on his hands and arms and a scar along his jaw. Elise had rolled her old man’s Monte Carlo T-top into Jason’s bay and locked onto his smile.
“That’s a lot of car for a little girl.”
“I can handle it.” Her smile wasn’t as pretty as his, but her eyes were deep enough to swim in. “I race first Sunday of every month at the Redline.”
“Right. I heard about you. Morey Sorensen’s kid.”
“Yes I am.”
“He still out at Chino?”
“For now. Got his parole hearing next month.”
Jason nodded. He plucked a bandanna from the back pocket of his Levi’s and wiped it across his throat, and Elise just about fell in love with him right there and then.
She’d had lofty ambitions, like any young person in a dead-end town, but all she really wanted was to be a woman who made decisions based on her own needs, and who didn’t live in fear of her father.Elise knew from the beginning that Jason would not advance these aspirations. He looked like the hero of a Springsteen song, but in every other way he bled darker. Elise fell for him just the same, and instead of drawing Jason into her world, she was drawn into his.
He ran with Hector Drogan, a man with eight crooked fingers and two crooked thumbs, who dealt mainly in stolen goods, but went wherever a crooked buck could be made. This included street drugs, chiefly cocaine. Every two weeks, Jason muled three kilos of a cocaine/creatine mix over the state line, from Yuma to El Centro, where Heck further cut the product before introducing it to the streets. (Heck had also started smoking up several grams weekly—a practice that Elise opined could only end badly for him.) Elise had accompanied Jason on occasion. Doing something so illicit—so goddamnbad—excited her in a way she couldn’t explain. It was like reconciling with a twin sister she’d distanced herself from for so long. There was one hour of interstate between the two cities, but Elise glowed every minute of the way. If she could pour her adrenaline into a jar, it would bubble and fizz.
One time, on the return journey, Jason had pulled off I-8 and rolled into a rinky-dink gas station with two fifties-era pumps and a longhorn skull over the door. There was plenty of gas in the tank—Jason always made sure he refueled before a trip—so Elise couldn’t think why they’d stopped.
“Whatcha doin’, hon?”
“Get your ass behind the wheel,” Jason said, showing those teeth. He reached across her and removed the Hardballer from the glove compartment. “And keep the engine running.”
“Jase—”
He opened his door and stepped out. Elise did what she was told. She slid behind the wheel of Jason’s Ford Bronco and kept the engine running. Jason entered the store, leveled his Hardballer at the clerk, and hustled out twenty seconds later with three cartons of Marlboros tucked under his arm and two hundred and ten dollars in his leftfist. “Go! Let’s fuckin’go!” he shouted at Elise, jumping in on the passenger side. Again, Elise did what she was told. She floored it and the Bronco pulled out of the forecourt with its straight six howling.
Some do-gooder—parked in a scrub lot next to the gas station—had witnessed the whole thing and decided to give chase. He drove with one hand on the wheel of his Dodge pickup and the other hanging out the open window, taking shots at the Bronco’s rear end with a small-caliber revolver. Elise took a dirt road into the desert and drove like she did at the Redline, keeping smooth but tight lines and drifting through the corners. They lost the do-gooder when he spun out and hit a ditch. Five miles on—a safe enough distance—Elise left the road and parked behind a large sandstone boulder. She was so amped, so goddamnhot, that she dragged Jason onto the backseat and screwed him senseless.
“You’re the baddest motherfucker I know,” he’d said to her afterward, and those words had sent a delicious, unexplainable thrill through her.
It was not the life she wanted, though. After the blood-thumping high that came with being lawless, she would invariably crash and spend weeks wrestling feelings of guilt and confusion. On countless occasions, she’d implored Jason to leave town with her. They could go anywhere, from Malibu to Maine, a fresh start, just the two of them.
“Someday, baby,” Jason would reply, or something similar, but only if he was in a good mood. More frequently, he would snarl and walk away, or flat-out ignore her, just sit there smoking his cigarette while flipping through theTV Guide. And there were times when they had tried talking it through, only to spiral into miserable altercations that ran deep into the night.
At some point, Elise realized she’d become as afraid of Jason as she was of her old man (although Jason, to his credit, had never laid a hand on her). In consideration of her needs, which were every bit as valid as the needs of those around her, she had started to researchapartment prices in Los Angeles and San Diego, believing it was just a matter of time before Jason returned home to find a Dear John letter on the kitchen table.
Then the world changed. Quickly. Irrevocably. The major news networks downplayed the seriousness of Captain Trips to begin with. CNN reported that it was a “particularly pesky” (and Russian) influenza virus that would mainly affect the very old and the very young. Peter Jennings assuredABC World News Tonightviewers that a vaccine had been developed and would soon be widely available.
The pretense didn’t last long. Itcouldn’t, partly because people died faster than the rate at which even the most well-meaning misinformation could spread, but mostly because, within weeks, therewasno news. America was off-air.
