Page 77 of The End of the World As We Know It
Thunder groans as if the sky has only known aching. Silvia jogs, but the pack clinging to her shoulders hangs heavy with water jugs. A rolled-up sleeping bag mounts its top, while the insides hold bagged jerky, broken Pop-Tarts, bandages, the vacancy of spare ammunition, toothpaste, a toothbrush, tampons, and changes of clothing.
She swapped outfits right after gunning down the gaunt woman. Off with the jeans and T-shirt, on with a white blouse and blue checkerboard dress. That woman’s soul can tell Captain Trips a jeans-wearing stranger killed her.
Meanwhile, Silvia has become Dorothy of Oz.
Not the most practical outfit for basic survival, but at least she’ll fool Death himself for a time. A couple more costumes await in case she meets more of his crew.
When did she stop calling the virus anitand start calling the virushe? Probably after Helena. Around when the dreams began.
Lost in another puzzle?
Silvia shakes herself to full attention as another rumble jostles the sky. She can’t afford to daydream, let alone catnap. The trees stand thinner ahead—
And then bleary darkness closes around her. The air turns soupy as if she’s stepped inside a tremendous mouth and the road is one long tongue.
Someone haunts the throat behind her. She shouldn’t look back at the sound of clacking footsteps, hates herself for it, but can’t help glancing over one shoulder where smoke ripples beneath a burnt sky, vibrant as a tiger’s pelt.
And against it strideshissilhouette. He isn’t subtle in dreams. No gaunt woman, no virus. Only a figure crystallizing into the world, calling again to her as if, through his touch, she can go home.
She bolts along the road-tongue, toward what she hopes are the gray teeth of—
Daylight. Or what passes for it as the coastal storm creeps onto land. Silvia has run all the way to waking up.
“Stop,” she whispers, wishing she could suck tears back into her eyes. She can’t keep letting the dreams catch up, especially not during the day.
But she also doesn’t know how to stop them. Only to keep moving.
The road splits into a Y-shaped fork, one prong aiming at civilization, the other at the interstate.
Since two weeks ago, when Silvia last saw town, it has transformed into a hell of barbed-wire checkpoints, traffic-jammed roads, untended storefronts, and a violent stench that makes her lips peel back from her teeth in revulsion.
There aren’t any National Guardsmen prowling the checkpoint. A closer look tells Silvia they took their guns and ammo with them.
But not before punching bullet holes across the hoods and windshields of the nearest vehicles lying dormant at the checkpoint. The cars and trucks coating Main Street must be full of families, all believing they could be the lucky escapees. Like there’s anywhere safe to go. Some of them might have ducked into the woods on foot, but most would’ve wanted their vehicles for distance.
And they died in those vehicles. A black blanket drapes the chrome-clogged asphalt with TV static. Main Street has become a world for flies.
Eventually the sun will chew through car paint, and the flies and their maggoty children will chew through the bodies, and they will hunt more corpses for growing and feeding and fucking. Small birds will have their fill, and things that eat them will have theirs, too.
Silvia turns with her stomach; all she can do to keep from vomiting over her blue Dorothy dress. The storm clears its throat, urging heronward, but not this way. Its wind thrusts against her umbrella, bending its spokes until two of them snap. She tosses it to the roadside. Should’ve closed it before the storm broke it.
And she’d better find shelter before the storm breaks her as well.
On the path aiming for the interstate, the trees open their green-and-white fortress at a gravelly dip leading into a gas station. A small wooden sign readsFILL UP BEFORE YOU HEAD OUT!in sunshiny lettering. Black hoses dangle alongside four red-and-steel pumps, and behind them sits the flat-roofed station. Its broad windows face the road, but solid concrete protects its other three sides.
Silvia glances at the angry sky and then back to the station. “Okay then.”
Nearby tree limbs stroke one another, first with a lover’s gentleness, and then a lover’s ferocity. One last glance down Main Street shows a windy ripple in the insect blanket like fingertips brushing a coat of black hair.
The captain is near.
Silvia jogs along the tree line toward the gas station. Her ears catch a thin woodencrack-crackfrom the woods, and then another, almost footsteps through the underbrush. This storm might be chewing the trees. Or there might be someone here.
She reaches the gas station pumps, where dark blue graffiti asks,Who’s afraid of the big bad bug?and beneath that,ME!Unoccupied vehicles linger nearby. Doesn’t look like anyone’s inside the station, either, and the shelves have been ransacked. It should be safe so long as the storm is a one-night event.
Silvia takes another step as thatcrack-cracksound clatters among the trees. A chill runs through her—definitely footsteps.
She turns to the waving white limbs as a stocky man charges loose from the thicket. He’s in his fifties, wearing a blue button-down shirt, a farmer’s tan, and thin blond strands where he once grew a thicker head of hair. Wild eyes blaze above a gaping jaw.
