Page 217 of The End of the World As We Know It
But what the hell was I doing in the middle of the road?
How long was I out?
And where is everybody? There should still be at least alittletraffic out here, shouldn’t there? Other people fleeing cities?
He brushes the remaining road grit off his blazer and front. Notices his shirt is untucked and the top button undone. He sets all that to right and feels good. Better than good.
Alive.
All that matters.
I got out just in time.
He holds tight to his beautiful dream. Swirling lights and disembodied hands, gently scooping him up. Like a UFO. Like the Great Eagles rescuing Frodo and Sam. Taking him away from harm. Taking control from chaos.
He’d done that for himself.
Despite everything, he smiles a little.
I’m going to survive.
That’s when the earth starts to shake.
For a few years during his scattershot, bohemian childhood, he’d lived in and around California. He knows earthquakes. Something about this one feels wrong.
For starters, it goes on for too long. Three, four minutes of active tremors.
As soon as it starts, he hurries back to his car, the closest thing to shelter. When the shaking doesn’t stop, he starts to wonder if it’s his own body, maybe another symptom of his waning illness. Then he notices the power lines swaying.
Eventually, the quake comes to an end.
He gets out and looks around, dismayed by the cracks in the road.
A couple power lines lean in their foundations, shaken into drunkenness.
The air smells faintly of burning metal. Of sewage lines cracked open.
The silence is dreadful.
No. Not quite silence. A faint noise, almost like a whirring or a grinding. Worlds away. Barely perceptible let alone decipherable.
Even the clouds seem to have been affected by the quake. There’s a sort of distinguishably straight line cutting through the cloud cover, which would be weird enough, but that straight line is also now jagged in parts. Broken. He’d think the broken parts would make that path seemmorerealistic, but it doesn’t. It looks… awful.
Earth’s fever is breaking, too. He doesn’t like that sentiment one bit.
He slaps his cheeks a little—the way he sometimes did in courthouse bathrooms before big trial appearances.
“Just an earthquake,” he says. His voice sounds very strange in the flat air. “Nothing to get freaked out about.”
He heads back to the car. Checks the radio. Nothing across the dial. Only static.
Now that he’s in better shape, he should start driving again. Find somewhere safe to hole up, wait for the apocalypse to settle itself. There’s a gas station up ahead, a national park and a town beyond that.
Something stays his hand. A feeling so strong and clear he can practically hear it:No. The car stays here.
He turns the engine back off. The key chain—a leather fob, embossed with the initialsSL—sways like the power lines had swayed.
He hates this car. Hates driving it, hates the complicated transmission. Hates how noticeable it can make him feel. Hates the stupid key chain that had come with it.Not my initials, Dad.
