Geoff North - How the World Ends

“You can’t be serious—there’s no room.”

“There’s all kinds of room.”

Fiona was the direct opposite of Grace in almost every respect; she was small and darker skinned. Her black hair was shaved closely to her skull, and her eyes were deep brown. They were both damned attractive, though, Louie realized. There was no missing that.

“Why are you staring at me?” Fiona shoved Roy’s face into the ground and wagged the knife at Louie. “You never seen a girl before?”

His hands were still above his head. He sank to his knees. “I’ve seen plenty… not too many recently though.”

“Smart ass, hey? What’s your name?”

“Louie. Louie Finkbiner. The guy you’re holding on the ground is Roy.”

“Does Roy have a last name?” The tall blonde asked. She had retrieved the other woman’s rifle and was waving it back and forth between the two men.

Roy grunted into the dirt. “Don’t… fucking… say it.”

Louie shrugged. Fiona stood up, but left a boot planted in the small of Roy’s back. “My last name is Benitez—Grace’s is Sutter. And it doesn’t really matter what this fucker’s name was… I’m going to call him Piggy from here on in.”

He squirmed under her boot. “Bitch.”

“No. My name is Fiona. Call me anything else and I’ll carve you open like the porker you so strongly resemble.” She ground her heel into his spine. “We clear on that, Piggy?”

Roy ceased his struggles and nodded his head.

“Where’s Odessa?” Louie asked.

“Forget you heard it,” Grace warned. “We’re not taking you there.”

Fiona held a gloved hand up. “Yeah, we are. Having a couple more working bodies could help us keep things running more smoothly.”

“This is bullshit, they can’t be trusted. We’d have to keep an eye on them all the time, and I don’t want to babysit twenty-four-seven for the next ten months.”

“Ten months?” Louie asked. “Where… what is this Odessa?”

They ignored him and Fiona whispered something in Grace’s ear. A look of terror spread over the blonde woman’s face. “You promised we wouldn’t have to do that again.” Fiona mumbled a few more words and Grace nodded resignedly.

“Answer him for fuck’s sake!” Roy yelled from the ground. “What the fuck is Odessa? Where are you taking us?”

Fiona opened a tool box at the front of the trailer and pulled a coil of rope out. She tied Roy’s wrists together behind his back. “Okay, Piggy, let’s go for a ride.” Grace had already started rearranging the collection of junk in the trailer to allow the men room. It looked as though the women had been traveling from one garage sale to the next, acquiring crap at every stop. There were toaster ovens, coffee makers, folding chairs, boxes of plates and cutlery, and stacks of magazines and books. The women conferred privately for another minute and tossed most of it out onto the ground. Louie and Roy climbed in and sat in the small space amongst what was considered the more essential items—water containers and fuel canisters, cases of light bulbs and batteries, canned food, scented candles, and stack after stack of toilet paper.

“I can come back for the rest once we have them settled in,” Grace offered.

“No way,” Fiona said. “We agreed. This was our last supply run. It’s getting too dangerous. Whatever it is out here turning people into mindless cannibals has started to spread. If all the animals can get this sickness as well—” she paused and looked back towards the mangled tool shed and the dead carcasses surrounding it, “—it’s only a matter of time before we get sick, or something like that takes us out first.” She strapped the oxygen mask back over her face.

Grace shuddered and did the same. She climbed onto the ATV and started it up. Fiona sat behind her, turned the other way with the big rifle trained on their passengers, and spoke one last time before they set off. “Besides, it might be nice having someone else to talk to during the winter. Maybe once they’re cleaned up and looking more presentable, we’ll have ourselves a couple of fuck-buddies.”

Louie and Roy perked their heads up at that as the ATV sped away.

“North?” Amanda asked. “Like where it’s all polar bears and Eskimos?”

“Hopefully not that far north,” Angela replied. “But far enough where the cold will kill any kind of… sickness we could possibly catch further south.”

Caitlan followed the Buick through the abandoned Saskatchewan town of Langenburg and turned right onto a highway marked 10 North . “We’d have to go all the way to Santa’s fricking workshop to be sure,” she mumbled. Angela gave her a stern look. “I’m not trying to scare the kids, but let’s be realistic—what does Hayden expect to accomplish by driving six or seven hundred miles straight north? Yeah, it’ll be colder, but there’s still people there, and wildlife… all kinds of wild life. If this disease travels as fast as they say it can, we won’t be safe anywhere.”

“Do you mean radiation sickness?” Michael asked. “Going north won’t help that if you’ve already been exposed, anybody knows that. Besides, once all that gunk rises up into the atmosphere, it spreads all over. Pretty soon it’ll be nuclear winter all over the planet.”

Caitlan peered into the rear-view mirror at him. “You’re a real Einstein, aren’t you?”

The boy shrugged, leaned back into the seat, and stared at the grey clouds outside his window. Angela turned up the stereo, adjusted the volume levels so it was higher in the back, and continued speaking to Caitlan alone in a lowered voice. “We agreed not to bring any of this up to them.”

“Their mother was shot before their eyes. They lost everything, just like you… just like me. The only reason they’re still alive is because they know how to survive. If you ask me, telling them we’re running away from a horde of zombies would give them a better chance to keep on surviving. We can’t keep pampering them forever.”

“We’ll have more than enough time to break it to them when we get there. We’ll have nothing but time.”

I’m looking forward to it. These last few weeks have been crazy—running around, fighting, killing. It will be nice settling in some place where it’s cold and dark. All alone. More Daddy-Daughter time.

Angela stared out the passenger side window at the same clouds that had diverted Michael’s attention. Beneath the canopy of depressing grey was a carpet of spruce trees. They spread ahead of the Audi on either side of the highway for miles. The bombs that had dropped in the cities had laid waste to everything in their murdering perimeter. Farther out, and further north, things seemed more normal—more like they used to be. The forests were still standing, the lakes still and peaceful. If the sun had the ability to shine through, there might be color in the world again, Angela thought. And then again, there might not. Michael was right. The gunk in the upper atmosphere was beginning to settle back down. Even in the gloom, Angela suspected the endless vista of trees before them was different somehow—not quite as green. The lakes not as clean.

“Hayden was right,” Caitlan said.

Angela looked at her. “What?”

“About heading north. Not only are we putting distance between us and whatever it is that happened in Brayburne, but we’re finding more we can use. It seems all the folks that lived in more populated areas are tending to stay down there… poor bastards. The further north we travel, the more things seem unchanged. All the abandoned cars we’ve found in the last few hours still have gas in the tanks. Looting hasn’t spread this far yet. As much as I detest the cold and being isolated, it was the smartest move we could make.”