The Last Place on Earth (15 page)

“In the week you've been underground, there have been over a hundred human cases reported in eleven states. Isolation wards are maxed out. Some health workers are refusing to go to work. It has passed a tipping point. There's no way to contain this thing.”

“Everything was fine,” I said, trying to convince myself.

“I know this is scary, but look, the odds of this actually being tee-ought-walkie are slim.”

“The end of the world as we know it.” My voice was flat.

He forced a smile. “Would it help if I played the song on my guitar?”

“Not really.”

“A lot more people are going to get infected,” he conceded. “But it will all blow over in a couple of months. Either there will be a cure or there won't, but epidemics pass, even pandemics pass, and life goes on.”

I swallowed hard. “Unless you're dead.”

“Yeah. There's that.”

“If what you're saying is true, I can't just hang out here while Peter and my mother are in danger.”

“Peter never leaves the house. He'll be fine. And your mother's office is small—that leaves less opportunity for infection.”

“My mother just got back from a cruise.” I started to shake. “With thousands of people.”

“But no pets,” Henry said. “At this stage, that's a pretty safe place to be.”

Footsteps sounded in the corridor. A child's voice called out, “Lunch!”

Henry sprang up. “I'll figure out a way to get a message out to them. It may take a few days, but we'll find a way to keep them safe. I promise. Come on. Let's eat.”

 

Twenty-One

“I'M NOT EATING
possum stew,” I told Henry, following him into the enormous kitchen.

“It's not really possum stew. They just call it that.”

“What is it then?”

He shrugged. “Lamb, maybe?”

Remembering the depressed-looking sheep in the backyard, I shuddered.

The air was so cool that my sweat made me shiver. “Solar panels run the air-conditioning,” Henry explained. “But it only works downstairs.”

We approached the giant stove, and that was when I got my first look at Mrs. Dunkle. I was expecting meek and mild, maybe even sweet. Instead, I found myself under the glare of a wiry, sour-faced woman in army fatigues and a filthy, cherry-patterned apron. She grabbed my arm—hard—and thrust a ladle in my hand.

“Ow!”

Instead of apologizing, she said, “Where in Sam Hill have you been? You were supposed to be on duty an hour ago!”

“Who's Sam Hill?” I asked, baffled, the ladle dangling from my hand.

“It's just an expression,” Henry said. “So she doesn't have to say
hell
.”

“Work assignments are over there.” Mrs. Dunkle pointed across the room, where several whiteboards, mounted on unfinished drywall, held a colorful web of names and duties, such as
LUNCH PREP
. And
LOOKOUT
. And
SEWAGE REMOVAL
.

I was speechless. (It happens.)

“Serve!” Mrs. Dunkle yelled.

For a moment, I thought she was going to shove me. The line between her eyebrows was so deep one could only assume she had been frowning nonstop since childhood, perhaps since first recognizing the injustice of not having been given a name that began with the letter
K
. She wasn't especially large—I had a good two inches on her—but she exuded a toxic energy that felt dangerous.

Behind me, in a semi-orderly line, the little Dunklings waited with mismatched plastic bowls in their unwashed hands. They shoved one another but managed to avoid their mother's gaze.

The first kid in line—blond, square chin, first name began with a
K
—handed me his bowl. I slopped some stew inside. Hunks of meat swam in a greasy broth speckled with something greenish and something orangish. It smelled gamey.

“Not. So. Much.” Mrs. Dunkle hit the counter with her fist. “You see how many people gotta eat?”

After indulging in a brief fantasy that involved the giant stew pot and this awful woman's head, I took a few calming breaths and reminded myself that I'd be out of here soon. I filled the next Dunkling's bowl with half a ladle's worth.

“Well, you can give her more than
that
. Oh, just let me do it.” Mrs. Dunkle snatched the ladle out of my hand.

An image of my mother flashed in my head, and I gulped back a sob. If only I could know she was okay.

*   *   *

We ate lunch in an oversize room at the very front of the house, with views out to the decrepit RV, the dirt yard, assorted garbage, and the chain-link fence that separated us from the forest. Unlike most of the house, this room was finished, with slate floors, wood-paneled walls, and an enormous stone fireplace that practically begged to have a moose head mounted above it.

The furniture, however, was just as bad as in the rest of the house. The “table” was a long series of plywood sheets balanced on wooden sawhorses. The chairs were the stackable white plastic kind that people in the real world only use outside.

Karessa, the oldest Dunkle girl, entered the dining room with a sleepy-looking blond twin balanced on each hip. It was hard to believe the twins were the same age since the sweet-faced little girl (who seemed to have escaped that square chin) was so tiny and delicate, far smaller than her scowling, chunky brother. With full cheeks and his father's jaw, his head was shaped like a block.

I love kids. Have I mentioned that I love kids? And they usually love me, too. So when Karessa deposited the boy on the plastic chair next to me—“This is Kentucky. Say hello to Daisy, Tuck!”—I widened my eyes and gave him a big, bright smile as if to say,
Let's be friends!

In response, he grabbed a spare spoon off the table and hurled it at my head. The motion caused his chair to topple over backward, which caused him to scream, which caused Mrs. Dunkle to say, “Now look what you done!”

And then things got worse.

Once Tuck stopped crying, and there was a moment of blessed quiet, Mrs. Dunkle ruined the moment by saying, “Where's she gonna sleep?” There were a lot of people at the table who could qualify as a random
she
, but I had a feeling she meant me.

“Girls' dorm.” Mrs. Hawking spoke without looking up. She was squinting at her stew with something like fear.

“Outta blankets,” Mrs. Dunkle said.

“We have extras,” Mrs. Hawking said.

Henry looked around, baffled. “There's a couch in the room next to mine. I thought Daisy was going to sleep there till the Wards came.”

“Your father and I never agreed to that, Henry.”

“But no one's even using it,” he protested.

“It is not
appropriate
,” his mother said, “for
your friend
to stay overnight in such close quarters.”

“Girls' dorm not good enough for your friend?” Mrs. Dunkle asked. It was the first time I had heard her sound even a little bit happy. Henry hadn't shown me anything dormlike earlier, but this was a big house. It could be anywhere.

“The girls' dorm is fine for me.”

“It's not.” Henry looked alarmed.

“Of course it is,” his mother said.

Defeated, Henry hunched over his bowl and speared a chunk of gristly meat.

I said, “Is that…”

“What?” Henry asked.

“The sheep from the backyard?”

Henry shook his head. “No, we're keeping her for her wool. This is from Costco.”

“Phew.”

“What does it matter? It's a dead sheep either way. At least if it came from the backyard, you'd know it'd had a nice life.”

“In that stinky backyard? I don't think so.” As soon as it was out of my mouth, I realized that Henry's parents were listening to our conversation. Of course they were. These were people who installed video cameras in their kitchen.

Eager to change the subject, I asked, “Where's Gwendolyn? And the rest of her family?” As many people as there were in the room, several seats remained open at the plywood table.

The Dunkle boy with the screechy voice said, “Them's too good to eat with us.”

“The Waxweilers are, um…” Henry faltered.

His mother answered for him. “The Waxweilers have expressed some concerns about food safety. As have we.” She turned her attention to Mrs. Dunkle. “Barb, I trust you rinsed the garden vegetables in the bleach solution we discussed.”

Mrs. Dunkle chewed one … two … three times. “Of course, Mrs. Hawking.”

Mr. Hawking put down his spoon and crossed his arms over his chest. Despite his stubble, he really did look like Mr. Clean. To Mr. Dunkle he said, “Kurt, as we've discussed before, the unsanitary state of the backyard troubles us. We'd like you to prioritize a cleanup effort.”

“What are the Waxweilers having for lunch?” I asked Henry.

“MREs—meals ready to eat, like you had in the bunker.”

My mouth watered at the memory of the stroganoff and lasagna, both tastily reconstituted with a splash of iodine-sterilized water.

Henry said, “The Waxweilers brought enough MREs for six months.”

“Enough to last
them
six months,” Mrs. Dunkle snarled.

“Self-sufficiency is our number one priority,” Mrs. Hawking announced. “Our hope, of course, is to return to our old lives. But if this truly is tee-ought-walkie, we need to be prepared to live off the land. Grow our own food, make our own clothes, provide our own energy.”

“But this meat is from Costco, right?” Henry asked.

“I certainly hope so,” his mother muttered.

Then, as if she knew we were talking about her, Mrs. Waxweiler appeared in the doorway. Her blond bubble hair was now flat, but she still wore flowered capris, which were a nice break from all that camo and khaki.

She wasn't there for the greasy stew; that much was clear. Instead, she made her way straight to me just as Tuck slid off his plastic chair and crawled under the table.

Mrs. Waxweiler slid into the vacant chair and popped on her fake smile. “Daisy! Thank goodness you made it through quarantine! You need to tell me what is going on at school.”

Fake or not, the smile filled me with relief. Mrs. Waxweiler cared about me! And she cared about the world outside of here—the people beyond the compound. After the nasty reception I had gotten from the Hawkings and Dunkles, her concern brought a lump to my throat.

“There were a lot of people out sick,” I said. “But I don't think it was anything serious. More like a nasty cold.”

“No, no, no.” She waved her hand in the air. “We've been getting updates about the plague. I'm tired of hearing about it. No—I need to know about your schoolwork. Homework, too. And tests. Gwendolyn said you take most of the same classes.”

On the other side of the table, one of the middle Dunkle boys screamed and kicked Tuck, who had just bitten his leg. Tuck wailed. His mother ignored him.

I blinked at Mrs. Waxweiler, disoriented. I hadn't thought much about schoolwork since being trapped underground, when having enough air to breathe took priority over my overdue English essay. But if Mrs. Waxweiler thought schoolwork still mattered, things couldn't be as bad as Henry had said.

“So you think this is just temporary,” I said, my anxiety easing for the first time since Henry had disappeared. “You think we'll be going back to school.”

She sighed and ran a hand through her flat hair. “It's a long shot that things will go back to the way they were. Twenty percent, maybe? Twenty-five? But those odds are still higher than the chances of admission to an Ivy League school. The way I see it, the high schools will close down no matter what, even if it's just for a couple of months. Everyone is going to fall behind. But if my children make a big academic push while we're up here, they're going to be way ahead of the game when we get back.”

“Ain't gonna be nothing left to go back to,” Mr. Dunkle called from down the table. He was chewing with his mouth open and smiling, elbows on the table, fork pointed our way.

Mrs. Dunkle nodded her agreement. “Population was gettin' too big anyway. Too much traffic. Prices too high. All those foreigners comin' in—no room left for Americans.”

Ignoring Mr. Dunkle, Mrs. Waxweiler stood up and tapped the table. “Come visit us this afternoon, Daisy? Our suite is upstairs, last door on the left.”

Too shocked to say anything, I simply nodded.

 

Twenty-Two

I WASN'T ON
the
LUNCH CLEANUP
list, but I helped clear the table anyway because my mother raised me to be helpful in the kitchen. (Ha! Kidding. My mother raised me to make microwave popcorn.)

The whiteboard had me down for
GARDNING
for the afternoon, along with Kadence and someone named Martin. Hey, that wasn't so bad. I like plants! I even planted an herb garden in my backyard last spring. It was really satisfying until I discovered that no one in my family ate herbs, probably because they are not a natural companion to Hot Pockets.

Anyway, I was so relieved to have been passed over for
CHICKENS + RABITS CLEAN OUT COOP
+
HUTCH
that I almost didn't care what I did. According to one whiteboard, when I was done in the garden, I'd help with dinner prep, and after that I was free.

Henry, on the other hand, was supposed to spend the afternoon hunting, then he had patrol duty from nine o'clock until midnight. I had a little chunk of time between lunch and my gardening shift, so Henry took me upstairs to get my bedding.

“You're really going hunting?” I asked.

In the room set aside for the Ward family, he opened a big cardboard box and pulled out a pillow, sheet, and blanket. “Not sure. I've got some pressure in my face, right behind the eyes. Might be coming down with a sinus infection.”