“My hero.”
“Tell him I may look like I’m old, but I can handle my own.”
“I’d tell you to stop being so ridiculous, that I couldneverbe with anyone else.”
“And he’d cry and wail and beg, but you love me too much.”
“Unless he has a scooter,” Don said. “If he has a little pink Vespa, it’s over between us.”
“Duly noted. If that’s the case, he can have you.”
“I don’t want to miss things,” Don said. “But I can feel it already, like an infection working its way through me. Apples.Apples.How stupid is that? I never gave apples a real thought in my life. And now, all I can do is wonder why I didn’t. All I can do is think about apples. What else have I missed? What else was right in front of me this entire time but I just… ignored it? Ignored it because I assumed it was always going to be there, no matter what. But they’re not because there won’t be anything left. If it was just humans going, I could accept that. I really think I could. It’s always felt like we were living on borrowed time. Not as individuals, but as a species. If it was just humans, and the plants and animals were to live, I think… I think I’d find peace in that. Knowing that one day, far, far from now, something will find an apple on a tree and eat it.” He sucked in a shaking breath, eyes burning. “But it’s not that. It’s everything. No more apples.”
Rodney wrapped a hand around his shoulders, pulling him close. Don shook as tears leaked from his eyes. “Yes,” Rodney said into Don’s hair. “But at least I won’t have to watch you eat snails.”
Don choked on a laugh as he felt Rodney grin. He pulled back slightly, turning up his face. Rodney kissed his cheeks, his chin, the tip of his nose.
“We’ll sleep here tonight,” Rodney said as they looked out the window into the rain.
“In a little while,” Don said. “Let’s just… sit here, for a bit.”
And so they did.
If they’d gone north from Iowa, they’d have entered Minnesota. They decided against it. Odds were firmly against them running into that family again, the ones who’d said they were going to try to survive in Minnesota. Don could still picture John’s andMegan’s smiles, twisted up into a rictus. She was pregnant, she’d said. John was thinking of ending things, he’d said.
So no, they didn’t go north. They continued west, crossing from Iowa into South Dakota. Fewer people here, though Don wasn’t surprised. South Dakota was a wide state that barely had anyone living in it. Vast expanses of open land as far as the eye could see. Mountains again, finally. Trees, too, so many trees. A river wound its way alongside them for hours before disappearing into the foothills.
They managed to find an open service station. A few cars in the parking lot, men drinking inside. Not quite drunk, but on their way. They wanted to talk. They wanted to ask if Rodney and Don had heard about the border with Mexico, how Mexican officials were turning Americans away. “Even the end of the world is ironic,” one of the men said, much to the amusement of his friends.
They’d gotten lucky: Not much gas was left at the station. No point in getting the underground tanks refilled, they were told. Soon, no one would be alive to need it. The men allowed Don and Rodney to fill the RV, and the extra canisters they had. When Rodney went to pay, the man behind the counter laughed at him. “What am I going to do with money?” he asked. “Not like I need it. You want granola bars? They’re blueberry. I hate blueberry. Already ate all the chocolate ones, so.”
They did not take the granola bars and thanked the men for the gas.
“Y’all be safe out there!” a man called after them, followed by hysterical laughter.
“Is it just me, or is everyone losing their minds?” Don asked when they were back in the RV.
“What do you expect them to do?” Rodney asked as the RV rumbled to life.
“Are we crazy?”
Rodney snorted. “Little late to be asking that, isn’t it?”
Don changed tack. “Do you think anyone else is doing what we’re doing?”
Rodney said, “I expect there’s many people trying to set things right.”
Thankfully, Rodney saw the girl first. Don was dozing in the seat next to him, not quite awake, not quite sleeping. He was in that hazy in-between space, the one where thoughts are sticky, muddled, translucent. The purr of the RV, the splattering remains of the storm, now a misty drizzle.
Then Rodney barked, “What the fuck?” and the RV shuddered as he slammed on the brakes.
Don’s eyes shot open, heart rabbiting in his chest. He looked around wildly. Still in the RV. Rodney in the driver’s seat. The windshield wipers going back and forth, back and forth.
“What is it?” Don asked breathlessly. “What’s happened.”
Rodney nodded. “Look.”
Don followed his gaze out the front windshield. The sun was attempting to break through the clouds, the light weak. Around them, water dripped from old-growth trees, landing on ferns and underbrush.