The Girl at the End of the World (27 page)

BOOK: The Girl at the End of the World

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We had to stay off the Interstate because it was completely jammed with cars and dried out bodies, but the maps we’d found showed the back roads that got us into the mountains and eventually onto the highway that led to Big Bear Lake, the mountain resort where my family had a cabin, where my mom and Anna had headed when they left me the night I turned fifteen.

For a variety of reasons, Big Bear seemed like a better choice than going back down into the city: there would be abundant water from the lake and the sources that fed it; there were plenty of stores and homes and resorts that we could scavenge enough supplies from to last us for years; there was less likely to be another Donovan in the mountains, or any other survivors who might mean us harm. The winters would be hard, but we’d have plenty of firewood.

I didn’t say it out loud, but it was hard not to fantasize that my mom and Anna had made it, that they shared my immunity and had fought their way through all the madness of those first days of the disease to reach the cabin and set themselves up nicely. I imagined a perfect homecoming with my mom and Anna opening the door of the cabin to welcome Chad and me and Kayla, the scent of a turkey dinner wafting through the air as they took us in with hugs and tears.

But of course that didn’t happen. Big Bear was a ghost town. Deer had gotten used to wandering the streets, and they looked at us with insulted surprise when the pickup truck rolled through town, raccoons and squirrels scattering, too.

When we got to the cabin, I walked up first, knowing I’d find no one there but needing to see for myself. It felt silly knocking on the door, but I did it anyway. When there was no answer, I tried not to sigh. Giving Chad a brave smile, I walked past him to the lone black rock among all the white and gray ones that lined the walkway. The spare key my mom had hidden a long time ago still sat there in the wet earth, undisturbed for ages. I picked it up and squeezed it, knowing my mom had been the last one to touch it, telling myself it was our last little connection and making myself believe the key gave me a little of her spirit.

Chad followed me in, Kayla sleeping in his arms. The cabin smelled musty; it had been closed up for a long time and would take some airing out. It felt strange for it to be so silent and dark, so empty and cold. Summer was long gone, and autumn had already begun to grow chilly in the mountains. I knew the lights wouldn’t work, but the fireplace would. I crossed to the hearth and squatted before it while Chad laid Kayla on the couch and began unpacking a few things from our bags. Using the iron poker, I pushed aside the ashes and charred bits of wood around the grate.

“Welcome home,” Chad said behind me.

I gave him a little smile and stood up to hug him. He kissed me and then said, “
Here.”

I stepped back, and he handed me the little framed photo from my old house.

“Thanks,” I whispered and set it on the mantle, placing it between two empty candleholders. Then I took his hand and leaned into him before the hearth, letting him hold me there for a long time.

Epilogue

That was three years ago.

We spent the rest of that fall getting ready for winter, realizing pretty quickly that there were better, nicer, less drafty places for us to live. After a few days in my family’s cabin, we moved into a place with solar panels on the roof, finding a crib and baby furniture in a store in downtown Big Bear.

There were bodies to dispose of—mostly the suicides and accident victims. The people who’d died from the fungus had all been consumed, their bodies transformed by the F2 into barely recognizable lumps, but we gathered as many of those as we could and burned them in a vacant lot. They were just too unpleasant to leave lying around.

When we weren’t working at storing food and supplies and planning for our survival and taking care of Kayla, we both read as much as we could—raiding the library for books on agriculture and medicine and childcare.

The little town was really perfect for us. There were plenty of stores and houses from which we could gather clothes and tools. The lake had plenty of fish in it, and the water was fresh.

We spent the first couple of months nervously watching for signs that someone from the base had survived and wanted us back; several times, I had nightmares about helicopters coming over the mountains or crossing low over the lake. But we never saw or heard anything. And no one else has crossed the mountains to find us, drawn by the smoke from our fires or stumbling into the valley through dumb luck. There have been times when we saw smoke in the distance, but we never went to explore and so never knew if it was someone traveling through the mountains or a small, distant forest fire that the wind never pushed our way.

Kayla has grown into a sweet little girl, and I think we’ve done a good job of taking care of her—even though Chad and I spent a lot of time worrying about little illnesses that always turned out to be nothing. I think our biggest fear was that something catastrophic would happen to her and we’d be helpless to save her. Now that she’s not a baby any more, we worry less, and I’m planning on teaching her as much as I can about the world that used to be and the one she’s inheriting.

Chad and I talk about having kids of our own, but the thought makes me nervous. I can’t get out of my head the picture of Kayla’s mother bleeding to death after she’d given birth. I’m terrified of something like that happening to me, but probably more terrified of leaving Chad and another baby all alone in this very lonely world. Soon, though, it’s going to be time. The world needs repopulating, after all.

I wonder about who else is still out there, about other groups of survivors in what’s left of the cities or in small towns like we’ve settled into. They must be out there. Counting myself, there were four people with immunity in the area around Hollywood, and there had to have been more that I never knew about, and more than that in other parts of the country, other parts of the world. I wonder about Australia and the people I contacted there. And I wonder about the little islands that the breezes spared, where maybe ships’ crews settled when they knew no ports were safe. There’s not much point in wondering, though. Maybe my grandkids or great-grandkids will be able to explore the world again and find other human beings to try and put the world back together. For me, though, just getting through the day-to-day things is enough.

A few months ago, I decided to start writing my story. There are plenty of books about the old world, the world that used to be. But someday, someone’s going to want to know what happened to it and how the few of us who survived managed to get through the crisis. So here I am, writing late into the night with pens and paper while Chad and Kayla sleep upstairs. I don’t know who’ll ever read it, probably Kayla one day, but maybe someone else long from now when the world feels new again. I hope they’re happy, whoever they are, and that they’re not making the same mistakes as we did.

But mistakes are bound to happen, accidents and disasters. We keep going, though, pushing on through the night the same as this pen scratching across the paper, never quite knowing where we’re going, just always forward, forward, forward into the unknown—a little bravely, a little scared, but at least not alone.

*****

Author’s Note

Thank you for reading
The Girl at the End of the World.
I hope you enjoyed reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it. It’s a story that’s been in my head for a few years now, but it didn’t really take shape until I decided to make the heroine a teenager rather than an adult. In many ways, the book was inspired by my wife, who has been a fan of post-apocalyptic novels for a long time and who has shared with me some of her favorites. As with most of my other books, this one is set in the Los Angeles area, and this time it was particularly fun to let the city fall apart.

As an independent novelist, it’s both challenging and rewarding to get my books into the hands of readers, and I’m glad this book found its way into yours. If you enjoyed it, would you do me a favor and post a review to Amazon? There are a lot of books out there, and readers’ reviews and recommendations are some of the best ways to help a book get noticed. You can post your Amazon review
here
. I would be most grateful if you did.

I’d also love to hear from you, so feel free to get in touch through my
Facebook
page or the Contact page at my
website
.

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Thanks again for reading.
Best wishes,

Richard Levesque

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Richard Levesque was born in Canada and grew up in Southern California. By day, he teaches composition and literature—including Science Fiction—at Fullerton College, and by night he works on his novels and short stories. He joined the ranks of independent novelists in 2012 with the release of
Take Back Tomorrow
and followed that with
Strictly Analag
and the first Ace Stubble novella,
Dead Man’s Hand
.
In 2013, he published a second Ace Stubble novella,
Unfinished Business
.
When not writing or grading papers, he spends time with his wife and daughter, works on his collection of old pulp magazines, and tries to be better than a mediocre guitar player.