The End of the World As We Know It Page 4

  Leo flopped on a couch with the wine and closed his eyes. Evan tentatively took a seat, too, still holding the chips and dip. The girls soon followed, until everyone was seated around the coffee table, like they were all friends hanging out at some ski lodge, waiting for hot chocolate—rather than completely mismatched classmates trapped in a basement.

  “Teena, won’t one of your friends figure out that you’re not there anymore?” Evan put the snacks on the table and opened a bag of corn chips.

  Teena put her head in her hands and laughed. “You bring chips and dip to a party where the only thing on anyone’s mind is beer and shots, and you seriously think anyone cares if I disappear? My being gone just means they can burn the place down. My parents are going to kill me.”

  Sarabeth spoke up. “No one is going to mess up your house any more than you’d already let them.”

  “You’re lucky you’re even invited,” Teena shot back.

  “Oh, yes, thank you, Teena, for inviting us to a party so you can trap us in a bomb shelter for an entire long weekend,” Leo said sarcastically. He stood up and held the bottle of wine like a gavel. “I want payback. So I say we open this bottle of wine and try to make the most of tonight. For a toast, we’re going to clink glasses and say, ‘Fuck you, Teena.’ Corkscrew’s in here, I’m guessing?” He stopped near a glass-front cabinet holding wine glasses and various implements.

  Teena sprang up from the couch and had Leo’s arm in a tight grip within seconds. “You’re not opening that bottle,” she said gravely. “Put it back, Leo.”

  “What do you mean? If we try it and don’t like it, there are dozens more bottles to choose from. Don’t be a party pooper, Teena.” He held up the bottle with his other arm and examined the wrapping on the neck. Teena pulled at his elbow.

  “I like Leo’s idea,” Sarabeth said calmly. “I could use a drink.”

  “Not from this bottle,” Teena protested, yanking Leo’s arm with both hands.

  “I think you’ve given up your right to play sommelier,” Leo said, trying to pull his arm away from Teena.

  “Give it back!” Teena squealed.

  Evan debated whether he should step in and take the bottle from Leo. But Leo had given him free pizza at the mall. And even if he wasn’t that mad about being locked down here, Teena’s insult had stung. So what if he’d brought chips and dip? It was thoughtful.

  On the other side of the coffee table, Teena managed to wrap her hand around the bottle’s neck. Leo held on with both hands. Evan and Sarabeth watched the tug-of-war. Leo smirked as Teena strained.

  “Just give it to me!” Teena finally yelled, putting her whole body into giving the bottle a single, solid yank.

  It flew up in the air and seemed to hang, suspended, above their heads. Everyone watched as it turned three-hundred-sixty degrees in slo-mo, before beginning its long descent to the cold concrete floor. The bottle collided with the ground, and there was a huge crash. Everything shook.

  And then, an explosion ripped through the room, louder than any kind of wrath-of-God shit Evan’s stepdad preached about. Timber snapped above them, and the floor shook below them. The staircase to the cellar cracked in half, like something had unzipped it down the middle.

  Evan felt himself lift from the couch, the bag of chips still in his hand, and crash to the floor. He hit his head, hard, and felt the cool concrete under his cheek. He couldn’t move as he watched a torrent of debris from the house above come down the stairs in a tidal wave. He closed his eyes as particles of dust flew at them. From the next room he heard a symphony of wine bottles bursting.

  Evan tried to push up from the floor, but another crash rocked the room, forcing him back down. The world felt like a capsizing boat as it swayed beneath him. He kept his eyes closed as it rumbled again, less violently, then swayed gently, almost like it was trying to rock him to sleep.

  Then, nothing. Everything was still. Evan opened his eyes.

  Sarabeth was on the floor across from him, rubbing her head. Her green sweater was coated with gray dust and had a hole torn in the elbow, a large red scratch appearing in the gap. Teena was stomach-down on the floor. She lifted her head, her blond hair caked with ash. Leo was on his back at the center of the couches, staring blankly upward. Was he dead? Evan wondered. Then he saw Leo’s chest rise and fall as he took a breath.

  This reminded Evan to breathe, a cloud of dust finding its way into his lungs. He coughed, feeling aches all over his body from the fall. Next to him, Leo was sitting up, intensely staring into the sky. Evan followed Leo’s gaze upward. The others did the same.

  All they could see—all that was left—was the night sky above.

  Teena’s house had been ripped from its foundation. More than half was completely gone. Only the kitchen and part of the upstairs remained. A keg rolled back and forth. A chunk of countertop lay on its side.

  Evan’s eyes fell on Dahlia Dovetail’s trademark elf boots, the ones he’d seen clasped against Brad Michner’s back on the way in. He followed the boots up to her legs, still wrapped tightly around Brad.

  But her top half was gone.

  Evan struggled to get to his feet, his legs like rubber bands. He took two woozy steps backward, reeling as he tasted Phat Phil’s pepperoni return to his mouth. He couldn’t tear his eyes away from Dahlia’s intestines, dangling like giant strands of spaghetti.

  He looked into the open bag of corn chips still clutched in his sweaty hands and vomited into it.

  7

  ALIENS AND OTHER PARTY FOULS

  Leo Starnick, 10:31 P.M. Saturday, Teena McAuley’s Basement

  Leo had pictured the world ending differently. He’d always figured he’d be doing something cool, like playing a guitar solo on top of a mountain somewhere, watching as everything turned to rubble. Or being a hero, carrying some hot chick away from flowing lava. Maybe diving off some cliff into the ocean as flames licked his feet. Big movie shit.

  Instead, he was in a basement, with a splotch of expensive wine on his Phat Phil’s Pizza polo shirt.

  For seven full minutes, he, Evan, Teena, and Sarabeth stood in silence, looking up through the giant gash in the ceiling at the night sky that was just hovering there, still and starry, like nothing had happened. Like they couldn’t all look left and see the half-a-body of Dahlia Dovetail or the grayed, still form of Brad Michner.

  Maybe the damage had been isolated to Teena’s house. Maybe it wasn’t an apocalypse scenario. Maybe it was a gas line explosion or a giant Midwestern earthquake.

  Still, Leo had a feeling. He breathed in, and a charred meaty scent filled his nostrils. He winced. He’d smelled burnt flesh once before, when Phat Phil had put his arm too far in the pizza oven, singeing all the hairs and causing his hand to instantly blister. This smell was stronger. And unlike Phil’s incident, there were no cries of pain. Just deafening silence.

  He looked up at the sky again, calm and quiet—everything so quiet—and realized that it had tricked him earlier. It wasn’t the same sky it had been when the night began. The twinkling stars, so innocent before, looked dulled and tainted. A deep purple light hung along the horizon, and Leo blinked, suddenly understanding. They’d landed.

  Aliens had landed. It actually happened. He couldn’t tell the others, not yet. He’d always said aliens would hit Tinley Hills, and now they had. He’d thought most of the people upstairs at the party were idiots, and that the world would be better without them, but he realized now he hadn’t meant it. He never wanted to do them real harm.

  He didn’t get how he’d been spared. How they’d been spared. Sarabeth had a minor elbow scrape, and even Teena, who fell near the glass, had sustained only the tiniest of cuts on her hand. All four of them were okay. At least, physically speaking. But what did that mean? And how long did they have before they weren’t okay?

  “Anyone up for Spin the Bottle?” Leo heard himself say. He tried to never talk just to fill up the silence, but it felt good to hear his own voice.

&nbs
p; “Is anyone hurt? I mean, down here,” Sarabeth said. Leo couldn’t help noticing how pretty her green eyes looked in the near-dark, even though they were scared and watering. He’d always had a little thing for Sarabeth, and yet she was the only girl he couldn’t nail down.

  “I’m … cold.” Teena stood up, her lips quivering and tears dripping silently from her eyes. She wiped them away with the backs of her hands. “And I want to know what happened to my house. And my friends.” She choked on a sob.

  Evan took off his jacket and draped it over Teena’s bare shoulders. Teena smiled faintly, and Evan blushed, all of which made Leo feel better about his own Sarabeth musings. Maybe that’s what male hormones told you to do in crisis mode. Made sense from a survival-of-the-species standpoint.

  Sarabeth, who’d taken a seat on the couch, spoke in a whisper. “Do you think we need to go see what happened? If anyone needs help?”

  “Probably.” Leo stood and smoothed down his polo shirt, like he was making a delivery. It wasn’t that he wanted to see any more destruction, but he wanted to know if he was right. “Not to be sexist, but I’ll go first, and Evan should be on the other side of you two.” He gestured to Sarabeth and Teena.

  Sarabeth unfolded herself and stood behind Leo. “I’m okay with that,” she said, sounding surprised by her own admission. Teena fell into place behind her, followed by Evan. This leader shit was new, scary territory.

  “The stairs are messed up,” Leo said, picking up a flashlight that had fallen from one of the shelves to the floor. The chasm between the top stair and the kitchen floor was almost four feet wide. The drop down was only about ten feet, but the basement beneath was a dangerous mess of broken glass and debris from upstairs.

  “Teena, you should take off your shoes. You can’t walk up the stairs in those.” Leo pointed at Teena’s sky-high boots.

  Teena scowled at him. “And go barefoot? I’ll keep the shoes on.”

  “Fine,” he said. They’d all fought enough. “Everyone, hold onto the shoulder of the person in front of you. Let’s go.” At the top, he could just cover the gap, even if it felt like his groin was going to rip in half as his legs stretched across the opening.

  “One small step for mankind,” he muttered, grabbing onto the destroyed countertop and pulling his other leg across. Once on solid-ish ground, he anchored one arm to the counter and reached for Sarabeth with his other one.

  Sarabeth clutched Leo’s arm, making every movement a slow, cautious one. Leo didn’t mind as she grasped his arm tightly, allowing him to bear some of her weight. She exhaled as she landed behind him, keeping a hand on his shoulder as she watched the others nervously.

  Teena came next, a look of determination on her face as she clung to Evan with her left hand. The splintered stairs weren’t exactly sturdy, and Teena’s boots weren’t helping. Leo scooted forward and stretched his arm further.

  Teena locked her right hand around Leo’s arm, then stepped without looking. A splintered board cracked under her foot, wood dropping into the chasm. She yelped as she started to fall, but Evan and Leo both had good grips on her arms, and she floated above the hole.

  Panic registered on Evan’s face as he looked down to the floor, his eyes landing on a huge pane of broken glass that must have been from one of the kitchen cabinets.

  “Don’t look down,” Evan said, his voice a croak.

  “I wasn’t looking down,” Teena snapped back, suddenly taking a peek at the sharp-edged debris below.

  “It’s going to be fine,” Evan told Teena, cautiously taking her by the waist and lifting her so that Leo could get a better grip under her arms. Leo tugged backward, and he and Teena crashed to the kitchen floor, just inches from Dahlia’s innards. Teena gagged, putting her hand over her mouth and nose, and scrambled to her feet.

  Evan crossed easily. “Everyone okay?” he asked, looking right at Teena, who nodded.

  Sarabeth dropped her hand from Leo’s shoulder and sighed, like a suspenseful movie scene had just ended. “I think so,” she said. Leo shot Evan a thumbs-up. The four of them were now standing in a circle, relief bopping around between them like an invisible hacky sack.

  But the relief was temporary. Leo stepped away from the circle to see what surrounded them. What he saw looked like when he delivered an everything pie, took a left turn too fast, and sent all the toppings to the middle of the pizza. They weren’t standing in the kitchen. They were standing in an epicenter of destruction. The only light came from the moon above, but it was bright enough to see more than anyone wanted to.

  Charred furniture lay everywhere, like a fire had crackled quick and hot but never quite caught. Beyond Dahlia and Brad were more bodies, some of them still intact, others rendered unrecognizable. Guts spilled out into a rainbow puddle of condiments from the toppled fridge. Muscles and tendons coated the floor like the road kill on LaGrange that didn’t get picked up for several days. Leo tasted his puke as he swallowed it down.

  The people Leo recognized were the worst to see. Nathalie Oliverio’s face was still pretty, even though her hair had burned off and her arm was detached and lying across her body. Karen Walsh had a gruesome, openmouthed smile, and her stomach was ripped open.

  “Ohmygodohmygodohmygodohmygod,” Teena spewed, the pace of her words matching Leo’s own heartbeat. “They’re all dead. Everyone is dead. Why did this happen?”

  “Who else is dead? Where’s Cameron?” Sarabeth’s quavering voice layered on top of Teena’s continued freak-out. She grasped her upper arms, her fingers digging into her skin so deeply Leo was afraid she’d draw blood.

  “What did this?” Evan said, adding to the chorus of panic. He looked around at the destruction with wide, fearful eyes. “This is the end of days, isn’t it? On the one night I lied to get out of Bible study?” He looked up at the sky, like he half expected to see God glaring down like an angry detention monitor.

  The cacophony grew and grew, the whos and whats and whys and hows and whens of the deaths piling up in the air like dirt filling in an open grave.

  This is what it’s like to be buried alive, Leo thought. Then, three words pressed against his lips, and didn’t ask permission to come out.

  “It was aliens,” he blurted.

  Everyone shut up. Three faces turned on him, like he’d just said something more insane than Evan had. Seriously? They believed in God murdering the shit out of a party full of people, but not in angry life from other planets?

  “Little men from outer space? Sure.” Teena rolled her eyes as if his comment had pressed her reset button. “Great. Everyone’s dead and you’re batshit crazy. Why aliens? Why not a nuclear spill?”

  “Teena, the nearest nuclear power plant is in the Quad Cities,” Leo said, drawing himself up to his full height as he closed the gap between them. “You’ve gotta believe me.”

  Teena backed away from him, sidestepping an arm on the floor still sheathed in an Ermer Elephants letterman jacket sleeve. “Um, could you not get so close to me?”

  Whatever. Teena would never say he was right about anything. But Evan was still staring at him weirdly, too, as if trying to decide whether Leo would turn into the devil to claim Evan’s soul. Maybe it had been too soon to break out his theory.

  Leo made his way a little farther into the debris. Dave Brandt had died mid-keg stand, his flabby stomach exposed. His entire lower body had twisted so his ass crack, peeking out from his Levi’s, was on his front.

  “It’s like his middle name was Dignity,” Leo said in a reverent tone, directing the comment at Evan.

  Evan’s terror-mask face faded as he chuckled lightly, then looked ashamed for doing so.

  “I thought maybe it was too soon,” Leo said, trying to ease Evan’s guilt. “But then I figured, it’s always going to be too soon. They’re dead, we’re alive. Savor the little things, right?”

  He looked at Sarabeth last. He hated the idea of her thinking he was a lunatic. In string ensemble, she gave him shit, and he kind of liked it. B
ut this was different. Her wide eyes searched his, and he felt hopeful. His ally at last.

  “What do you think we should do?” she asked, surprising him.

  “You believe me?” He tried not to look too ecstatic.

  She shook her head and, with a laugh, said, “About the aliens? No way.”

  She shrugged, her gemlike eyes glittering above the flashlight’s beam. “But at least you saying something as crazy as aliens shut up the horrible thoughts in my brain. I guess I find you mysteriously reassuring.”

  Mysteriously reassuring. Leo liked the sound of that. His mind wandered, again, to a place where they were alone. You are so fucked-up, man, he scolded himself. But Sarabeth was right in one respect: If nothing else, he knew how to calm people down.

  He pulled out the bag of weed he’d bought earlier at Shitty Arcade. It was hardly of the quality you wanted to smoke at the end of the world, but it would have to do. He packed some into the bowl he always kept in his jeans pocket and held it aloft.

  “Everyone, calm down. I think we all deserve a little something to numb the effects of this evening.” He held his lighter to the pot and inhaled, feeling the knot in his stomach start to loosen. He exhaled, slowly. “And then Teena’s going to show us her daddy’s gun collection.”

  You’re thinking it’s odd—maybe even a little psychotic—that these four people can be victims of a totally heinous attack and yet still be cracking jokes and checking each other out. But until you’re in their shoes, try not to form an opinion about them.

  Fear works in mysterious ways. Nervous joke-cracking, awkward flirting, even some irritated arguments are not out of the norm, especially when you’re a high school student and not a world leader or a decorated general. Without some hyperactive hormones to remind them there are pleasures to being alive, Leo, Sarabeth, Evan, and Teena might never even have tried to leave the basement. And then our story would end here while the four of them clustered in a corner, silent and cowering, trying to survive off Napa Valley wines and jars of olives.