Larry winced a little at the image. “I don’t think I’ll have to wait all that long, but yes, if that’s the way you want to see it, that’s exactly what I’m going to do. Frankly speaking, I don’t think there are enough drugs in that backpack to cure me; your dad either, for that matter; but that’s only my opinion; frank and uninformed. If things were different… if my gun hadn’t caught in that gate and if my arm were whole and my wife and two sons were still alive, then there might still be some fight in me. But then given all that, there’s no reason to suppose I’d be sitting
here
, is there?”
Shane wiped his face and frowned. “What do you mean?”
“I mean, I think I gave up on life when I lost my faith in God. If not then, it was surely the minute I put a bullet in my dead son’s brain. After that… Jan, Mark, this whole long day… I’ve been more or less a dead man walking, looking for a place where I could lie down and die. Last night by the fire, I agreed to come with you because I knew I’d find that place along the way.”
Larry looked around the room and nodded, as if satisfied. “It’s not exactly paradise, but it looks all right by candlelight.” His eyes found Shane again. “And more importantly,
I
get to choose it. Not something by the name of Wormwood.”
“But what about
me
?” Shane pleaded, his tears spilling openly now. “How am I going to get back home without you? I can’t drive the motorbike!”
Larry smiled. “Sure you can. There’s not much to it, and like I said, you’re a smart kid. You’ll figure it out, and it will go much faster without me. I’m not saying it’ll be easy, but with some luck you’ll make it. And to that end, the best thing you can do for yourself is get a good night’s sleep.” He looked at Melinda. “I’d imagine there’s some food around here as well as water?”
Slowly, as if hypnotized by this drama, she nodded.
“I can’t imagine that she and I will have much use for it, so why don’t you go ahead and patch up my arm as best you can with those cotton balls and nylon stockings, dole me out a few more pills… and while you’re doing that Melinda can get the food and water. We’ll have a last meal together then she and I can sit up and watch over you while you sleep. Get to know one another.”
Larry grinned, tears streaming helplessly down his face.
“Who knows? Maybe after you’re gone, she and I will decide to run away together.”
19
When Shane awoke, half the candles had burned out and the rest were drowning, little more than blackened wicks floating in a last spoonful of paraffin. There were no windows or skylights within the office, but something inside him seemed to know that the sun would soon be rising.
He sat up and rubbed his face.
“Morning,” Larry said, looking worse for the night, red lines of infection spreading up and down his arm. Melinda was snoring softly against the floor, her respirations slow and labored.
“What time is it?” Shane asked, his mouth dry and thirsty.
“Time for you to think about leaving,” Larry answered.
20
Shane retrieved the shotgun from beneath the checkout counter and gazed at the silhouettes moving sluggishly against the faint blue dawn. He guessed that they’d picked up a few more since yesterday; three or four, maybe as many as half a dozen, but there was no indication they knew he was there. They were just milling about, wanting in.
Melinda moved beside him. “C’mon,” she whispered, “I’ll show you another way.”
He followed her through a dark maze of children’s and then women’s apparel to a fire exit next to the fitting rooms. He couldn’t see what was on the other side of it, but neither could they see in, so there was no reason to suppose any sort of crowd had gathered around it. It would not be remembered as an entrance, so in all likelihood that made it as good as a blank wall. Beyond would be a short skirt of walkway, and then the parking lot… as flat and as frightening as the end of the earth.
As far as his preparations went, it
was
the end. Beyond that, he imagined a motorcycle propped patiently against an apple tree, a house and a street he had once called home… but these things, he realized, might well be illusions, far and forever beyond his reach.
He checked his guns one last time and adjusted his backpack. There was an extra box of shotgun shells tucked in amongst the bottles and syringes, a dusty box that had fallen beneath the display case in Sporting Goods. Shane (thinking of the magazine rack) had gotten down on his hands and knees with the axe and out they’d come, like an unexpected bonus. A secret toy surprise. And as luck would have it, they fit the shotgun.
Now he looked at the dull metal face of the door.
EMERGENCY EXIT ONLY. ALARM WILL SOUND.
“Good luck,” Melinda said, though without much enthusiasm. She looked like she wanted to get back to Larry. To the dark promise he was holding for her.
Shane hesitated. Though he and Larry had already said their goodbyes, it seemed wrong to just leave like this, knowing what would happen once she got back to the office.
“Tell Larry… tell him I’ll always remember him.”
It seemed so little, such a useless thing to say, yet Melinda seemed oddly touched by it, as if its real worth went beyond words. “I’ll tell him,” she promised, then did something even more unexpected: she kissed him on the check.
“Remember me too, even if it’s just a little.”
She smiled and for the first time she was beautiful.
He tucked the image away like a snapshot and carried it out the door with him.
21
Larry looked grim beneath the fading flicker of the last two candles, as if the disease had strengthened its hold on him since Shane had slipped away. He looked nervous, as if he wasn’t entirely sure he’d made the right decision.
He looked up at Melinda. “Did he get away all right?”
She nodded. “I watched him as long as I could. He made it out of the parking lot and over the fence.” A small, secret smile knit itself out of the shadows on her face. “He looked back while he was on the top of the fence and waved to me.”
Larry chuckled softly, closing his eyes to better see it. Slowly, as the image left him, his humor faded.
“Will you keep your promise to me?” Her voice was scared, uncertain, as if something fundamental had changed in him while she was away; the return of his faith, perhaps, or simply an unwillingness to part with his last few bullets.
“I’ll keep my promise,” he answered, trying to sit up a little straighter. “Are you ready?”
She nodded and moved across the room, getting down on her hands and knees beside him.
“What about a note?” he wondered, his palms damp, procrastinating now. “Isn’t there something you’d like to leave behind?”
She told him that Shane had taken it with him.
“All right,” he said wearily, lifting the revolver and cracking open the cylinder. There were no empty spaces inside; no room left for hope or second chances.
“Will you hold me?” she asked, her voice doubtful.
Larry nodded and she crawled up next to him, like a lover. “I almost forgot,” she said, looking into his eyes. “Shane told me to tell you something. He said that he wouldn’t forget you.”
Larry accepted this with a grateful nod, all that seemed left in him now.
Melinda reached up and kissed him as she had Shane, then took the barrel of the gun and put it between her eyes. A small and helpless shiver passed through her.
“Thank-you,” she whispered and Larry squeezed the trigger.
Her body jumped and then relaxed.
On the desk above, one of the last two candles hissed and then guttered out.
22
A deep and tomblike silence hung over Riverview Court as Shane chased his shadow westward along the back wall. The trailer park felt spent inside, played out, with nothing left to grace its days except the gentle progression of decay, the past slowly dissolving to cinderblock and bone.
The barred gate that he and Larry had stopped at was standing open now, though what that meant he wasn’t sure. Perhaps someone inside had survived the epidemic: a last soul who had waited out his chance and then slipped away like a thief.
Someone like himself.
He passed without stopping, pausing only as he reached the far corner. The orchard lay, cool and rustling, across a final gap. He peeked around the corner and saw a dead man, 40 or 50 yards away but wandering about in persistent circles, as if he’d lost something of vague importance in the dry grass and weeds.
Watching him, something in Shane seemed to lock up and a small voice inside his head urged him to turn back. Back to Larry and Melinda and the darkened cavern of the store. To simply end it,
now
, before another day’s atrocities began to heap themselves upon his shoulders. In that despairing moment the future seemed too dark, too heavy to bear.
The dead man turned, his bloody bathrobe billowing in the morning breeze.
And the next minute Shane was running. Not looking back or to either side… but to the cool and rustling trees.
For better or worse, it was as much of the future as he allowed himself to see.
23
Larry pushed Melinda’s body aside and felt along the edge of the desktop, reaching for the narrow drawer above the kneehole when he failed to find what he wanted, which was a pencil and paper.
Unlike Melinda, he felt a need to keep his dying thoughts close to him, spelled out as eloquently as he could manage before the last candle sputtered out, leaving him with nothing but darkness and a loaded revolver.
There was a pencil tray in the front of the drawer which yielded a well-chewed stub, but the paper to write upon was harder to come by. Deeper in the drawer, he supposed, or used as toilet tissue when the real thing became as extinct as the dodo.
No matter
, he thought, taking his arm back and reaching for his wallet. Surely it would contain a scrap — a business card or an old receipt — with enough blank space on the back to make his farewells to the world.
Instead, he found a heavy fold of paper tucked beneath the underside of his wallet. Curious, he tugged it free and held it up to the light.
To Whom It May Concern,
The salutation conjured an image of a city in smoking ruins, and a man gazing out over the destruction from the driver’s seat of his Impala.
Their first stop the previous day, at the overlook atop the ridge.
Larry had stuffed the note in his pocket to keep Shane from reading it, not bothering to read it himself. He unfolded the page and found himself face to face with God.
Lamentations, Chapter 3.
It was a quotation which Larry knew; one he had learned quite recently, in fact, due to its inclusion of the word “wormwood”; which had, of late, taken on some greater significance. In his studies he had found it a slippery word, one with uncertain or multiple meanings.
That, perhaps, had changed.