- - End of All Things, The (50 page)

She glanced up from the person she was bathing and saw Justin with Doc Cotton, carrying out yet another victim. This one was small, a little girl.
What’s her name?
Tara Something
, Carly thought. Her mother had brought her in, sobbing between coughs, and the two of them had breathed their last within an hour of each other. Carly was glad the mother never had to know what had happened to her little girl, a tiny mercy.

“Go on back to Preacher Wilson’s office,” Old Miz Marson urged. “I’ll send that man of yours back to you. He won’t rest, either, but he might if you do.”

Doc Cotton had told Carly no one knew how old Miz Marson really was. He said she’d been an old woman when he was a little boy and hadn’t seemed to change since. She was one of the few able-bodied people left.

There wasn’t any medicine left, but it hadn’t done much good, anyway. As their supply dwindled, Justin had tried to reserve it for the children, but none of it had worked. He hadn’t even hesitated to share it, though they’d both known it was probably futile. Carly wondered if this marked some sort of change in Justin, thinking with his heart instead of his coldly practical mind. 

They had done everything they could think of, but one by one, the town’s children had slipped away, burned alive from the inside out by the terrible fever. Only one was left, a little seven-year-old girl named Madison Laker. Her parents had both died a few days earlier, along with the baby her mother had been carrying. Madison was staying next door in the preacher’s house, and while Carly thought she was too young to be left alone, there was no one left to watch her.

Doc Cotton had tried to keep a log, recording the deaths, but they came too quickly, too many at once. Some were taken outside before he was informed, and afterward, no one could remember. Doc Cotton had become sick, too, but he was trying to work as long as possible before he succumbed. It wouldn’t be long, though. His eyes were bleary from fever, and he had to blink sweat out of them. As she watched, he helped lift Clayton Bierce so he could sip some water.

Carly and Justin were still immune, or so it seemed. She closed her eyes as she thought of her baby and the agonizing choice she’d made when the latest crisis had started.

She’d stood on the street and shouted at Mindy on the porch; she wouldn’t risk going closer. “You need to get out of here. Take Dagny and go. Find a safe place and hole up there until this is all over.” There had been some cans of baby formula and bottles still in their packaging in the grocery store. Carly had put them on the sidewalk and sprayed the containers with Lysol before she stepped away. It hurt, losing those sweet, precious moments when her baby lay next to her heart and nursed, but she had no choice. It was too dangerous for them to stay. Dagny might not be immune to this version of the virus.

Please
, she prayed.
Please let them have found somewhere safe
. There were so many dangers out there.

She heard a soft whine and looked down to see Sam beside her. “What are you doing?” she asked. “You know you’re not allowed in here.”

Sam whined again and used his nose to nudge something on the floor, something Carly could barely see in the low light. She bent down. 

It was Tigger. The cat’s breath came and went with a congested wheeze, and she was as limp as a rag when Carly picked her up. “Oh, no,” she whispered.

Sam whined again and shuffled on his paws.
Fix her
, he seemed to be saying. His eyes pleaded with her.

Carly laid the cat on one of the empty beds. She touched the inside of Tigger’s ear and found her burning hot with the fever.

“Oh, Sam, I’m sorry. I’ll do what I can, I promise.” Carly stroked his head gently. She dunked Tigger into the pan of cool water. The cat shivered even as heat poured off her body. Carly went to the supply box and found an eyedropper. She pried open Tigger’s mouth and used it to squirt some water down her throat. When she tasted it, she began to lick eagerly at the eyedropper and then at Carly’s fingers. Carly gave her more until the cat sagged back against the bed, sated and exhausted. Sam laid his head on the bed beside her. His ears drooped back. Carly stroked his head again and gave him a hug. There was no way she was going to tell him he couldn’t stay.

“I’ve got to go check on the others,” she told him. “But I’ll be back.”

She made her rounds through her shrinking collection of patients. Old Miz Marson was seated next to a woman’s bed, reading the Bible aloud to her. She glanced up as Carly passed and shook her head because Carly hadn’t taken her advice to rest.

The door opened, admitting a brilliant stream of light that hurt Carly’s eyes. Justin emerged from it. He was pale, and his hands trembled with exhaustion, but he kissed her warmly and then set about assisting with the sick. It was an endless cycle of illness and death, and one loss bled into another until she wasn’t sure who she was caring for at the moment. She looked down at the sweating woman on the bed and saw her mother. She was calm and lucid, which Carly hadn’t seen since the spike in her fever.

“No spiders?” Carly asked her.

“Water,” her mother whispered. Carly got a plastic cup and helped her up so she could gulp eagerly from it.

“Careful, Mom, you don’t want to make yourself sick.”

Her mother smiled at her. “You always were such a good girl, Carly. You made your father and me so proud of you.”

Carly had to swallow around the lump in her throat. “I’d hoped so. I was always afraid I’d disappointed him since I didn’t go to college and I—”

Her mother cupped her cheek with her palm. “Oh, baby, never think that. He only wanted the best for you, for you to be able to do anything you wanted.”

“I’m glad I didn’t go,” Carly said. “I’m glad I could be with you when—” She broke off, puzzled. She thought her mother had died, but that didn’t make any sense. “Where is Daddy?” She glanced around the room, but the beds to her left and right were empty. “Mom, I can’t find him!”

“Shh, it’s all right. Your father is fine. He’s happy now. You should listen to Justin. He was right, you know.”

“Carly?” She turned her head and blinked at Justin. He repeated her name, and she tried to focus her tired eyes.

“Yes?”

“Honey, are you all right?”

She looked down at the bed and saw the woman lying there wasn’t her mother, and she was dead. Carly closed her eyes, and two tears fell out onto her cheeks. She took a deep breath and collected her things.

The low and mournful howl of a wolf filled the room. “Sam!”

She rushed over to him and knelt down to check Tigger. She wasn’t breathing. “Oh, Sam, I’m so sorry.”

He howled again, and it rattled the stained glass windows in their panes. Most of the patients were too far gone to hear it, but Old Miz Marson bowed her head when she heard it, recognizing the sound of heartbreak across species.

Sam picked up Tigger’s limp body and walked to the door, his tail dragging low. He stopped at the door and looked back at Carly, and then he was gone.

Chapter Eleven

Carly sat on the courthouse lawn and watched the church burn. Beside her, Old Miz Marson leaned against the War Memorial, smoking a Pall Mall, and on her other side was Justin. He was absently stroking Sam’s ears.

The roof of the church caved in with a roar, followed by the steeple. The bell clanged one last time as it went down.

Tom had died the night before and Cynthia, earlier that morning. They were among the last of the living. Carly had sat back and looked around at the room, still filled with the dead because Justin couldn’t carry them out as quickly as they passed. The bulldozer key could not be found, and Justin wondered aloud if it had still been in Tommy Burton’s pocket when his body was placed in the mass grave. 

Faced with a daunting task when they were both exhausted to the point of collapse, they had decided to burn the church and with it, the mass grave. Justin had collected gasoline from the cars still parked along the streets and a barrel of waste oil from the auto shop. Both were too old to be used in cars, but they were still flammable. The flames would burn long into the night.

“It ain’t fair,” Old Miz Marson said suddenly. Her voice quavered, and the hand that held the cigarette shook. “It’s just not goddamned fair. I’m
old
. I’ve smoked like a chimney since I was twelve years old, and I’ve buried two doctors who told me I’d die in a year if I didn’t quit. I’ve got more aftermarket parts than a
Playboy
model. And yet I’m still here. It ain’t right.” 

Carly put an arm around the old woman’s shoulders. She was trembling, though whether from grief or anger, Carly didn’t know. Perhaps it was a combination of both.

The town’s population stood at eight. Three, if you didn’t count the people who had brought the plague with them through the gate. Madison Laker, Old Miz Marson, and a teenage boy named Kaden Weaver were the only ones left from the town’s population. The two
young’uns
, as Miz Marston called them, were tucked into bed inside her house, both of them so shocked and bewildered that they allowed themselves to be treated like small children and put to bed after supper.

Sam let out a soft huff. He’d returned without Tigger, and Carly would never know where he had taken the cat’s body. The sadness seemed to weigh on him heavily. Carly understood the feeling. Though she hadn’t loved any of the people in this town, she knew she would have if given the time.

Miz Marson straightened. “All right, you two, go on home. You need to get some sleep. There’s nothing more to be done here. Not right now, anyway. Go on, now. Shoo.”

They obeyed as meekly as the two children had done. They walked, hand in hand, back to the Connell house. Justin went straight upstairs to take a much-needed shower. Sam jumped up on the sofa and laid his head on the arm with a sigh. Carly stroked his fur. She wished there was something she could do for him, but just like a human’s, his heart would have to heal with only time’s stingy medicine. 

One of Dagny’s tiny shirts lay on the sofa where it had been forgotten when Mindy and Stan packed. Carly lifted it to her nose, and Dagny’s sweet baby scent still clung faintly to the fabric. She sobbed, and once she’d let the first one out, she couldn’t hold back. She cried so hard her head hurt, just as her chest muscles hurt from the force of her sobs. She had to get it out of her system before Justin finished showering. She didn’t want him to see her break down.

Too late.
His hands were on her shoulders, his lips, against her cheek. He took the baby shirt from her, and she saw tears glimmer in his own eyes. “We’ll see her soon.”

“Do you think she’s forgotten us?”

“No.” His voice was firm. “It’s only been a week, Carly.”

A week?
To Carly, it felt like years.

“Come on.” He scooped her up and carried her up the stairs and into their bedroom. 

“I need a shower,” she muttered.

“After you wake up.”

“I’m all dirty.”

“We’ll change the sheets, then.” He laid her down on the bed and slipped off her shoes and jeans. She pulled her T-shirt over her head because she thought she could still smell the sickness and death clinging to it. And then her nostrils were filled with the scent of Justin’s clean flesh, and she inhaled deeply. It felt as if it were cleansing her, as well.

He tucked her hair behind her ear and traced his thumb around its curves. 

“What do we do now?” she asked.

He gave her a slight smile. “The same thing we planned to do before the sickness came. We build a home and a life for our daughter. We liked this community, so let’s rebuild it.”

She looked at him curiously. Had something changed his cynical mind about human nature? About the kind of cooperative society that could grow after a world-changing event like the Crisis? Maybe it had. They had seen the worst humanity had to offer during their journey, but in Colby, they had seen the best. She thought of Doc Cotton, working until he literally collapsed, trying to ease the sufferings of his neighbors. She thought of Tom and Cynthia, who had never said a harsh word to them while they worked to try to save the town from the Infection the travelers had brought with them. And of Old Miz Marson, whose hands were so stiff from arthritis she couldn’t nurse the sick, so she did what she could in reading the Bible to them, praying with them, and comforting them, as tireless as people a third of her age.

As Carly drifted off to sleep, she thought maybe there was something on the horizon. Something small and shining, but infinitely precious. Hope.

In the morning, they went back down to the church to see if the fire had consumed the building, like they’d hoped it would. Little was left but ashes. As they stood there on the street, Old Miz Marson came down to join them, the two kids in tow. They greeted one another and stood there quietly, watching small tendrils of smoke rise from the blackened rubble. Madison cried, and Kaden put an arm around her shoulders.

BANG, BANG! 

All of them jumped and looked at each other in puzzlement.