ISBN (paper): 978-1-61213-141-2
ISBN (ebook): 978-1-61213-142-9
Release date January 24, 2013
The End of All Things
by Lissa Bryan
Ω
Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
Ω
Chapter One
“He’s still out there.”
Sam wagged his tail.
“What do you think he wants?” Carly asked Sam as she let the curtains fall closed. “Never mind. I’m not sure I want to know the answer to that question because it’s probably nothing good.”
It had been a week since the Biker Guy appeared and set up camp on the sidewalk across the street from her apartment building. He was the first healthy person she’d seen in weeks. At first she wasn’t sure. His behavior was odd enough to make her think he was one of the Infected. Why would he set up a tent across from her apartment building when there was a motel right down the street? It made no sense. He would wave at her and smile cheerfully whenever Carly peeked through the curtains. He would be reading, cleaning a gun, or cooking over the fire he had built on the sidewalk, but as soon as she looked out the window, his head would snap up and he would stare right at her, as if he had some sort of weird sixth sense about when she was looking.
He was trying to starve her out, waiting until she had to leave, and then he would . . . what? She wasn’t sure.
She had a bad feeling she was going to find out very soon. She and Sam were out of food. Carly could have tolerated the hunger a while longer, but Sam had gone over to his bowl a few times today and batted at it with his paw, and she couldn’t stand the idea of the puppy being hungry.
Carly went to the closet and got out one of her dad’s golf clubs, the closest thing she had to a weapon. She’d taken it from the trunk of his car the first time she’d gone out. She slipped a steak knife in the back pocket of her jeans, though she wasn’t sure it would be effective if someone got close. Some of the Infected had seemed impervious to pain, and the little flimsy knife didn’t seem like it would inflict much damage. She thought about the long, wickedly-sharp knives her mother had hanging on the magnetic rack in her kitchen, but there was no way Carly could go back into her parents’ apartment.
Sam pranced by the door. He thought she was going to take him out. The apartment building was built in a square around a small, grassy courtyard where Carly walked him. Those blank windows staring like sightless eyes always made her nervous. There could still be Infected inside some of the apartments, which was why she tried to keep Sam’s visits outside to the early mornings and late evenings, when it was almost dark and less likely she’d be seen. He used a pan lined with newspaper the rest of the time, but the garbage hadn’t been picked up in months, and the newspaper machine in the building’s lobby was empty.
