Page 64 of The End of the World As We Know It
Baby Angie’s fever got worse. She cried desperately and then became strangely calm, as if accepting her fate. Sandra kept talking to her. “You’re gonna be okay, baby,” she said through more tears. “You’re gonna sweat the fever out and feel much better in the morning.”
Every lie tasted sour. Every minute was torture. Baby Angie looked at her mother imploringly for a while, but Sandra could do nothing except spit lies at her in a soothing voice. A few hours later, Sandra’s beautiful baby daughter started looking around the room, as if searching for someone. As if searching for God.
She was dead the following morning.
When pain and grief pile on top of more pain and grief, sometimes the only coping mechanism left is to welcome a deep sense ofnumbness and concentrate on breathing, on surviving one more minute even if we’re not sure why we want to stay alive. That was what Sandra did. She sat on the sofa and cried until she felt separated from her body. Then she cried some more. Then she fell asleep.
The next day went by in a blur. She drank some water and tried to eat some crackers at some point, but that was it. The rest was hours that went by in a flash and minutes that stretched out forever. Her pain was a wave that crested and crested, but never broke. Her eyes hurt from crying. So did her stomach. And her grief wouldn’t stop growing, like a crescendo that builds until it’s so loud and fast that human ears can no longer hear it.
A few times, the revolver popped into her head. It was in her backpack. One bullet was all it would take. Quick and easy. Mostly painless if she did it right. But she couldn’t. She refused to give up.
At some point in the afternoon, Sandra went into her daughter’s room. A few flies circled over Baby Angie’s crib. Their buzzing was the most horrific sound Sandra had ever heard. She slammed the door shut and screamed until she felt the metallic taste of blood flooding into her mouth from her ruined throat.
In the middle of that second night, after losing her husband and her daughter in less than two days, Sandra realized she was still feeling fine. No fever. No pain other than her throat. No headache. No aches anywhere. Nothing. Her husband and daughter were dead, but she was still alive and, for the moment, healthy.
Back when the sickness started, the news had said everyone who got it died from it. Right before the TV and radio went off the air, they then said that was wrong. Some people never caught it. Less than one percent of the population could be exposed to it and not die. No one knew how immunity worked or for how long, but it seemed to be true. They were calling those on the island who didn’t catch itelegidos. The chosen ones. Sandra felt like she had been chosen, but by some cruel god curious to see how much agony one person could stand.
That was the first night there were no screams or gunshots or the sound of cars trying to outrun the nightmare that had killed almost everyone. With the electricity gone, not even the hum of the refrigerator’s motor filled the quiet inside the house. Outside, insects and the incessant song of thecoquíesfilled the night. At some point, something scratched the house’s door, but Sandra stayed on the sofa and didn’t even bother to take Miguel’s revolver out of the backpack.
When the sun came out, Sandra stepped outside to make sure the world was still there. The street was quiet and empty. Dead. The dew on the grass felt like an insult. A few birds were making a racket on the neighbor’s tree. There were some scratches on her door. Big ones.
Sandra had eaten something and then cried for a while. That was when Mercedes had shown up. Her neighbor, who was dying, had thrown a possibility at Sandra’s feet, and now that she had nothing to lose and no reason to stay in a house that had become a tomb for what she had loved the most in this life, Sandra wondered what it would be like to go.
Tell them you have hope.
Now the moment has come. All that’s left is for her to start walking. Sandra feels like she doesn’t have any hope left, but something is pushing her to go. She’s standing next to the door. Her backpack contains her clothes, two books, some food, two bottles of water, and the small revolver. It’s nothing and everything she has. On her feet are the tennis shoes Miguel got her after Baby Angie came home and she started complaining that she wanted to start walking again to lose the small pouch the baby had left behind.
She didn’t even think about packing. The backpack was more or less ready. All she did was add the food and water. With that done, there’s nothing between Sandra and the dead world except the door with the large scratches on it.
Just go.
The voice is there again. It’s strong. It feels right. It’s the only thing she has left.
Sandra looks at her watch, a small Seiko Miguel got her for Christmas. It’s 8:40 a.m. She has enough time, but not enough to waste. She opens the door and stands there for a moment. She wants to run back in and say goodbye to her husband, to kiss her baby daughter one last time. Then she thinks about flies crawling over Baby Angie’s face and she shuts the door.
None of this is fair. She doesn’t deserve this. None of them do.
Sandra wipes the tears off with her T-shirt and starts walking toward the beach, toward hope. She doesn’t look at Mercedes’s house as she walks by, but she mumbles a prayer for her friend’s soul.
The first mile or so is good, comfortable. The sun is out. Sandra feels tired, but she knows it’s from bad nutrition and lack of sleep, not from the sickness. She keeps her eyes on the road as she walks. She ignores the bodies on the sidewalk and gives a wide berth to the ones on the street.Don’t look. Don’t look. Don’t look.Sandra takes quick glances at some of the bodies despite the voice. Every single one is a shock. Every single body on the ground or in a car is someone’s son or daughter, someone’s significant other or best friend or sibling. Someone’s parent or caregiver. Every untimely death is devastating, and it’s impossible not to feel sadness and anger about each of them.
The birds are having a feast. They sound angry when Sandra walks by. The vultures beat their large, dark wings and make sounds that let her know she’s not welcome to share their banquet. One of them comes at her aggressively and then goes back to eating. It’s enough to make Sandra take off her backpack, look for the revolver, take it out of its leather holster, and put it in her jeans so she can get to it faster.
The bodies are everywhere. Some of them are old, but some are fresh. Some are missing limbs or have strange wounds that resemble shark bites. The bite marks make Sandra think about the noises she heard last night and the weird scratches on her door. The strangelysweet stench of death permeates everything. She can’t be out here at night. She must make it to the damn boat. The hope boat.
Sandra walks a little faster. The metal of the gun is strangely cool. It feels like a small reassurance against the soft flesh of her belly.
Baby Angie.
Sandra touches her empty stomach, right next to the gun, and the tears come again. She rubs the wetness out of her eyes and tries to think about the future, but the present is too big and loud to ignore and the recent past is a demon howling in her soul, an endless cacophony of wailing voices trapped inside her that beat against her skull at all times. Sandra looks up at the clouds. The sky is perfectly blue, like it doesn’t care about what goes on underneath it. A gentle breeze blows. A nearby tree sways. Sandra looks at it, begging it to take away some of her pain. The tree sways again in response, but her pain remains untouched, slicing to her core as she walks.
Sandra looks at the road ahead. Maybe her future is at the end of that road, where the sand meets the ocean. But first she must get there.
Sandra walks and walks. The tennis shoes are good. Nothing hurts, nothing rubs her the wrong way. She walks past rotting bodies, and scorched or abandoned cars. She walks past broken and forgotten things—pieces of a radio, a brown shoe, a kitchen knife, an open briefcase with some papers still inside it, a bicycle tire, a toothbrush, a book for children with a small bear wearing a blue tutu on the cover. She walks past houses that are full of dead people. Some have their doors open. Scavengers were common the first few days. She wonders how many of those houses have little beds and cradles with—
No. Sandra shuts that thought down immediately. No good will come of it. But the things we try to silence inside ourselves are usually the ones that scream the loudest, and Sandra can’t help but think of millions of cradles across the world, all of them with dead, bloated babies inside. All of them covered with flies and, soon after, full ofsquirming maggots feasting on the flesh of those who were supposed to be the future, those who were the apple of someone’s eye, those who made the world better just by being in it, with their big smiles and little hands and pure hearts.
Baby Angie. Tired and broken, Sandra lets the memories flood in. Baby Angie playing. Baby Angie giggling. Baby Angie squeezing handfuls of mashed potatoes, her dirty little face full of glee. Baby Angie splashing in the tub. Each memory is a gem covered in thorns that fills her heart while ripping it apart.
