Chapter 2
They headed west, chasing after the setting sun.
Avoid major highways, avoid major cities.
Might as well avoid Johnny Law as best they could.
They had enough food to last them until the end.
Extra gas in plastic containers. Flashlights, blankets, a basin to wash clothes in if they couldn’t find a laundromat.
A small generator should it be needed. Don tried eating one of the muffins, but he couldn’t choke it down.
By the time they were on the road—their home shrinking behind them—Don was dry-eyed and clearheaded.
The reality of their situation was not lost on him.
But he wasn’t alone. Everyone in the world was going through something similar.
For perhaps the first time in history, the entirety of civilization knew the same thing: It was only a matter of time.
They left the safety of Camden, Maine, for the unknown world beyond. They passed children playing in yards, mothers holding babies as they played in sprinklers. A sign in front of one house read REPENT WHILE YOU STILL CAN! The smell of Atlantic salt water was thick as ever.
The roads were packed. People with the same idea, to get away, away. As if any distance would matter. But Rodney was a Maine native. He knew the back roads, the secret paths that wound through the trees. Others did too, but not so many.
They didn’t speak much, at least not at first, both lost in their own little worlds. Rodney had his hands at ten and two on the steering wheel, hunched forward slightly and squinting as if his glasses weren’t sitting on the dashboard in front of him.
Don, though, Don was in his head. Don was thinking about the first time they’d met.
Don was thinking about the way Rodney had appeared, as if by magic.
At a coffee shop, packed with people. Don had only found a table after watching like a hawk.
He’d waited until the people sitting at one had finished, stood up, and then swooped in to claim it for himself.
Breakfast tea with sugar and a dollop of milk. A flaky croissant that melted on his tongue. An open book with thousands of words left to read.
And then Rodney had been there, standing above the table, coffee in hand. He said, “Mind if I sit here? No other spots.”
Though irritated, Don said, “Fine, fine,” as he made room. Rodney—though Don did not know his name yet—nodded and sat.
The conversation that arose due to proximity was forced at first, awkward pleasantries coming in fits and starts.
But it smoothed out after a time, and Don was strangely enchanted by this man.
Rodney, he was called. Rodney with his slate-colored eyes, and the devastating way he could arch his eyebrow.
Don didn’t think he’d ever laughed as much before then, and by the time they were finished, Don thought he’d met someone worth knowing.
It took them almost two weeks to see each other again.
This time, for dinner, one where they were so caught up in conversation that they didn’t see the restaurant closing down around them.
They kissed once that night, a bare scrape of lips, hidden in the shadows of the parking lot.
Three days later, Rodney had spent the night.
That was forty years ago. He’d never left.
Don looked over at him now and said, “I think about you all the time.”
Rodney grunted. “I’m right here.”
“I know. But still.”
Rodney stared straight ahead. “What should we say?” He coughed, clearing his throat. “When we get there. To him.”
“Everything,” Don said, though he was careful about it. Dangerous ground, this. “We hold nothing back.”
“Right,” Rodney said gruffly.
Don said, “I think about you. Your face. Your eyes. Your mind. I’m still so in love with you.”
“I know,” Rodney said.
They took their time, stopping to get pictures of deer in the woods, of long, lonely windswept fields, knowing that no one would ever see them.
But it felt … normal. Habitual. They stood under a tall tree and looked up, marveling at how high it seemed to go.
Rodney found a patch of irises growing along a dirt road and touched their petals with his callused hands.
Little things that might have meant nothing the day before had taken on new meaning.
Those first few days, they ate outside, sitting at a park table or in lawn chairs they’d brought with them.
Looking up at the sun, the moon, the clouds, the stars.
They found others like them. Others who had packed up their entire lives, though few of them had a destination in mind.
Families in cars. People in RVs like theirs.
People in RVs much nicer than theirs. People who had quit their jobs, pulled their kids out of school, all in the name of finding some sort of meaning, an explanation.
“It’s like cancer,” one man told them both. “You look fine on the outside, but it’s a lie, one that’ll catch up to you sooner than you think.”
His partner—a young lady with frizzy hair—said, “I think we’re the cancer, and this is a way to course-correct.”
The man snorted but did not speak.
She ignored him. “Think about it. What happens when the body senses an invading force? It does everything it can to stop it. Maybe this is just the universe’s way of deciding we’re an infection that needs to be stopped.
” She smiled a terrible smile. “It’s almost the same, really. All that radiation we’ll feel.”
She began to cry. The man apologized, and led her away back to their own camp.
Don said, “I used to think about it more.”
“What?” Rodney asked, staring off into the encroaching darkness.
“Dying. I used to think about it all the time. Now, not so much. Isn’t that funny?”
Rodney looked at him.
Don stared back.
When they laughed, it was a quiet thing.
It was in Vermont that they met the family.
Driving along a two-lane highway, Patsy Cline on the radio, the sky outside thick with clouds.
Don was dozing slightly, head against the window.
Then the RV began to rattle around them, and Rodney cursed.
Don shot up, mind hazy, his first clear thought that the end had come sooner than anyone had expected.
The steering wheel jerked left, then right, and they came to a stop at an angle, the RV groaning around them.
“What happened?” Don asked, heart thudding in his chest.
“Flat tire,” Rodney said, slapping the steering wheel. “Of all the—You all right?”
“Startled me, is all. You?”
Rodney laughed, a mixture of relief and annoyance. “Yeah, I’m fine.” He flexed his hands against the steering wheel. “Always something, isn’t it?”
“Well, get off the road. Don’t want to be blocking it when more people come.”
He did as he was told. Carefully, he pulled the limping RV off to the side onto a little dirt pullout. After switching the RV off, Rodney clambered out, muttering under his breath. Don followed and found Rodney glaring at the left rear tire.
“Picked up a nail,” he said. “See it?”
Don did. Near the top, in the middle. The tire itself wasn’t in too bad condition—some tread left—but the nail was firmly embedded, air hissing out around it. “The spare?”
“Checked it before I bought it. Not a donut, so we should be fine. Jack is brand new.”
“I’ll help.”
“I know you will. Come on. Let’s get it done. Already losing daylight.”
It took them the better part of an hour.
Only a few cars drove by, no one stopping to offer assistance, not that Rodney would have accepted it.
He was a proud man, for better or worse.
Always wanting to do things his own way.
Don loved that about him, for the most part; there were times when he’d had to put his foot down, and Rodney usually listened.
He was, after all, the voice of reason. Rodney had told him that many times over the years.
By the time they’d finished, both were sore and sweaty. Cranky too, until Don reminded Rodney that in the grand scheme of things, it didn’t matter. In due time, the audacity of a flat tire wouldn’t be something to concern themselves with. None of us will be here.
It should have frightened him, that thought. It did, but nowhere near to the extent he thought it would. Perhaps that would come later, in the days ahead as time grew shorter. But here, now, in a forest so green it looked plastic, it was a faraway thing, the end.
But that was a lie. Don knew as well as anyone that time did not stop for pretty things in nature. To distract himself, he said, “No one can change a tire like you. I’m impressed.”
Rodney chuckled, a slight, breathy sound. That was followed by laughter, bright and loud. Don joined in, and the two hung on to each other, laughing, laughing.
It was how the family found them, laughing and hugging and living.
They pulled away, but only just, Rodney’s hand in Don’s. The minivan parked right behind the RV, and a middle-aged man hung his head out the driver’s-side window. “You folks okay?”
Rodney—ever the protector—squeezed Don’s hand in a silent warning. He said, “We’re good. Just had some nail trouble.”
Three other faces stared out at them from the minivan. A woman in the passenger seat. Two children—a boy and girl—leaning between the front seats. The woman said something to the man, and he nodded along. The minivan turned off. The man stepped out.
He was short, with black hair, and looked like a dad on vacation: button-down shirt tucked into khaki cargo shorts.
He had on Birkenstocks with white socks that rose halfway up his calves.
He stretched, arms above his head, as the other doors to the minivan opened, kids spilling out.
The man was smiling, a wide, brittle thing as if the edges of his lips were being pulled up by strings.
Not warm, but not frostbitten, either. Just … odd.