The Girl at the End of the World (10 page)

The city went on forever…the skyscrapers downtown, the freeways clogged with cars, the grid of streets, some running straight as could be for miles and miles. In the distance I could see the ocean, and I made a guess at where the Santa Monica pier was. Smoke from several fires rose into the air. And all was silent—no traffic, no jets in the sky, no distant voices or laughter, no sirens.

I nodded at the view, telling myself I’d have plenty more time to look later. Then I turned away to continue exploring the hilltop.

On the observatory’s top deck, I found a single dead man. He’d dropped to the concrete not far from the entrance to the dome, and I squatted next to the body for a moment, noticing that it had already begun to shrivel as the fungus consumed it. I thought about dragging the body off to a corner where I wouldn’t have to deal with it anymore, or possibly hefting it over the rail and to the ground so I could move it off into the bushes later, but for now I decided to just leave it be.

Downstairs, I found the cafeteria and more exhibits, also several back rooms for employees, but no more people, no more bodies.

“Just me,” I said aloud as I sat in one of the plastic chairs in the dining area with a bottle of cold milk in front of me.

The place would do, for now. I needed more of a plan for the future, but at least I would be safe here for a while. The thought of those fires burning in the city below made me nervous, as there was no one left to put them out, and it wasn’t hard to imagine them spreading, maybe even as far as the Hollywood hills and Griffith Park. Though the high ground of the observatory brought me safety from a lot of things, it also made me vulnerable with all the vegetation in the hills. Who knew what could happen? The best thing I could do was to stay vigilant and keep the motorcycle gassed up.

I drank the milk, wondering how long the power would stay on. Before long, I knew, luxuries like cold milk would be just a memory. I decided to enjoy it while I could, so I added ice cream for lunch.

After that, I found the security office and a set of keys. Soon, I had the place locked up tight, every exit door on every floor. Then it was time to head back to Pasadena for the rest of my supplies.

*****

I made three runs by the end of the day, and that was enough. On the last one, I added a trip back to Anna’s Nissan to recover anything else from Jen’s house that I didn’t want to have to replace through scavenging in the mansions on Los Feliz just below the observatory.

Each time I returned to my hilltop sanctuary, I approached the parking lot with caution, trying to spot anything that looked different from when I’d last left. I also carefully circled the outside of the observatory to look for other visitors, but there were none.

After I’d gotten my last load stowed away in the entrance hall, I went back out to the dead tourists’ motorhome. I didn’t like doing it, but I pulled the bodies out and dragged them behind the restroom at the edge of the parking lot. Then I started the Winnebago and backed it away from the curb. It took some maneuvering and quite a few failed efforts, but eventually I got the motorhome situated right at the edge of the parking lot so it completely blocked the way. Anyone coming up here in a car would have to stop and walk the rest of the way to the observatory; a motorcycle could get by, but the rider would have to slow to a crawl to get around the front of the motorhome. I wasn’t expecting anyone, of course, but I still wanted to be cautious. Facing someone on foot wouldn’t guarantee that I could best them, but I felt it would still give me the upper hand if some other survivor had to abandon his car to get to the observatory.

It’s not that I expected a fight. If there were any other survivors, I figured they’d be as thrilled to find me as I would be at being found. But at the same time I relived my memory of the man who’d attacked Debbie in Pasadena. There might still be some people messed up from the disease but not dead yet. And there might be survivors who’d been bad people before the outbreak. Being among the last humans on earth wouldn’t necessarily change their temperament. It might even make it worse. Not to mention the thoughts some men might have at finding the last female in California waiting up here for them. I thought of Rapunzel in her tower as I walked back toward the big dome with the sun setting beyond it.

The breeze had shifted since morning, and now I heard a new sound. It frightened me at first, and then it made me sad. The Los Angeles Zoo was just over the hill on the other side of Griffith Park. The animals were probably starving, and the breeze carried their cries and roars toward me. I could hear elephants and either a tiger or lion pretty distinctly, but there were other sounds, too—maybe the gorillas, or birds. It was too hard to tell.

For just a second, I imagined myself trekking to the zoo and releasing the animals so they could fend for themselves in this new wilderness. But I knew the idea was ridiculous. If I could even figure out how to do it, my kind-heartedness would get me nothing more than attacked by a hunting jaguar in a few weeks’ time. No, if the animals could get out on
their own, so be it. I couldn’t involve myself in their plight.

This got me thinking of other animals, though. I knew there were coyotes in these hills, and maybe even bobcats or mountain lions. If not in these hills, then in others, and before long the wild animals would move down into the city to take it over. There’d also be dogs and cats that would go feral now that their owners were dead and no one else was around to open a bag of kibble. Not to mention all the pets trapped inside houses, many probably starving already. Again, I knew I could do nothing for them. Freeing the thousands of dogs and cats—and hamsters and rabbits and whatever else—would be well intentioned but foolish. I was already going to have to worry about territorial German Shepherds and Chihuahuas; adding to their ranks would be asking for trouble. The downside, of course, was that there was going to be a lot more death and decay, and with that perhaps more disease.

I stood at the rail of the observation deck thinking about it as the sun slivered its way past the horizon and the flames from the still burning neighborhoods and factories in the distance grew brighter with the coming night. The city was dead, or dying. Beyond saving. And I was like the last parasite trying to suck just a little more life out of my host.

I couldn’t stay here, not for long anyway. I had my supplies and relative safety, but the security of my fortress wouldn’t last. If it wasn’t brush fires or disease brought on the breeze by all the death around me, it would be something else. Coming to the observatory hadn’t been a mistake or a waste of time or resources. It was better than staying in Jen’s house or the sporting goods store. I could gorge on ice cream and potato chips in the cafeteria, eating enough to remember what those things tasted like in the years to come when food wouldn’t be so easy to get. And the parking lot would be a good place to learn to shoot a gun and a bow; I should also practice my driving skills. If I played it right, I could come down from the hill in a month or so a much different person, someone ready to light out for parts unknown and make a new life for myself. Maybe even find a boat in the marina that would get me to Australia or New Zealand or some little island with just a few other people on it…people who’d welcome me.

Or fear me.

I shook my head and turned my back on the view. It was all too much to think about now. I headed inside to unpack my gear and get my little fortress all set up, telling myself I wouldn’t be able to hear the tragic sounds of the zoo once I was inside the building’s thick walls. In the morning, I’d start planning what to do next.

Right now, I just wanted to sleep and forget.

*****

I awoke with a start, nearly panicking.

Everything was dark.
Everything
.

I’d set up my sleeping mats and sleeping bag in an office behind the cafeteria on the lower level of the observatory. Before turning in, I’d left on the lights in the hallway outside and kept the office door open a crack. It had been just enough light to sleep by.

But now I couldn’t see anything, literally couldn’t see my hand in front of my face. How long the lights had been out, I couldn’t know, but I had the feeling it had been only a few seconds, that the sudden darkness had been the thing that woke me.

I sat up in the sleeping bag, staying perfectly still, just listening.

And then a light came on in the hallway, much dimmer than it had been when I’d gone to sleep.

Someone was in the building. Someone had to be. I could think of no other explanation.

I’d gone to sleep with my backpack beside the sleeping bag and the gun under it. Somewhere inside the pack was one of my flashlights, and now I cursed myself for not thinking ahead to have it more easily accessible. Still, the gun was reachable without much effort, and I snaked my hand outside the sleeping bag to grope for it beneath the backpack, all the while listening for the sound of footsteps or anything else in the hallway or beyond.

Crawling out of the sleeping bag, I was conscious of every noise I made, and I held my breath, tensing myself for an attack from beyond the door. None came. Soon, I was at the door, peeking out the narrow opening and hoping I wasn’t making myself visible to whoever was out there. I had yet to hear a noise and began wondering if I hadn’t just dreamed the darkness and was now simply imagining that the light in the hallway was dimmer than it had been when I went to sleep.

Finally, I found the courage to pull the door open just a little more. When I heard nothing more beyond it, I opened it all the way, poked my head out with the gun held tightly before me. After a quick glance in both directions, I let my breath out and lowered the gun.

I had my explanation. The main lights were out, but the emergency lights mounted at either end of the hallway burned dimly.

The power had gone out. After the few seconds of total darkness that had awoken me, an emergency power system had kicked in, maybe a generator or two somewhere in the building coming to life when the main source of electricity switched off.

It was still possible that someone had tampered with the observatory’s power, but I doubted it.

Going back for the flashlight and keeping the gun with me, I made a search of the lower floor and then went outside to head upstairs.

On the observation deck outside the cafeteria, I decided there was no point in a trip up to the next level. The city below me was almost all in darkness. I guessed that there were some other places with generators, as a few electric lights still shone in places. Several fires continued to burn across the city, but everything else was blackness for as far as I could see.

The power was out, the electric plants having shut down now that there was no one left to run them. While I felt some relief at knowing I was still safe here in my fortress, the darkness extending to the horizon made me uneasy. The city was dying, plain and simple. It might sustain me for a while as I lived off whatever I could scavenge from houses and businesses, but it wouldn’t last forever. The gas and water would stop soon, too—no more heat, no more toilets, no more drinking from a tap. I couldn’t guess at what else I’d soon be without, and the thought made me sad: not because I’d miss the comforts of modern life, but rather because I knew I’d have to move on sooner than I’d thought necessary. I had just wanted the chance to collect myself, to use the safety of the high ground to get used to my new life.

“That’s the way it goes,” I said to the darkness and
turned back toward the building, trying not to think of what I should do next, but knowing I couldn’t
not
think about it. Sleep wouldn’t come easily again, I knew. Resigned to lying there and waiting for it, though, I went back inside, resolved to keep a flashlight handy from here on.

Chapter Eight

I kept myself busy for the next couple of weeks: making myself more comfortable in the observatory, calculating how long the cafeteria’s bottled water supply would last, and practicing my marksmanship and archery in the parking lot. Books on camping and outdoor survival from the sporting goods store showed me how to pick a good spot for a latrine and how to dig one. And the houses in the neighborhoods next to Griffith Park provided me with the supplies I hadn’t thought to gather in the first days of my new life.

Going into the homes was a bit unnerving at first, as I warily crept in and surveyed the rooms for any sign of living occupants. I got more used to it after the first couple of days—though I still forced myself to focus before each entry. It would not do to become complacent. At first, I considered the dead when I went in, looking them over and wondering about their lives and deaths. After a while, though, it got to where I would just pass the bodies without thinking about them, like they were part of the abandoned furniture or no different from the houseplants that had been left behind.

It was worse when there were pets in the house. The starving cats would tear out of the doors the second I cracked them open, just like Jen’s cat had done. But the dogs were a bit tougher, torn between defending their territories and getting out to find something to eat. Usually, they only tried staring me down for a few seconds before deciding I wasn’t worth the trouble. I doubted any of the dogs had ever had a gun pointed at them, but they all managed to figure it was something formidable and backed down after a bit of barking, slinking past me and out of the houses—much to my relief.

I didn’t find much that was worth my time in any of the houses. I did raid a couple of people’s libraries, carting a small stack of books back to the observatory and setting up a lounge chair on one of the observation decks. There, I worked out an absurd imitation of the California Dream: lying in the sun with a book and a million dollar view as the days wore on around me. All that was missing were the servants and the millions of people in the distance going about their daily grinds.

The generators at the observatory had died by that point, and I was surprised when I walked into one hillside mansion to find the power still on, a big chandelier still shining its light on the expensive furniture. At first, I didn’t get it, but when I walked outside again, I noticed solar panels on the roof, which also explained the few sources of light I could make out when I looked down at the city at night.

On the ride back up to the observatory, I toyed with the idea of moving down the hill and using the solar house as my home base instead of what I’d come to think of as my hilltop fortress. Before I was halfway up the winding road, though, I’d decided against it; I knew nothing about solar technology, what it took to maintain it. For all I knew, it would last for years, and then again it might crash in another day. I was fine where I was. If I needed electricity for some reason, it was an easy trip down the hill to access it—at least for now.

That afternoon, before cracking open the copy of
To Kill a Mockingbird
I’d been reading, I stood at the concrete wall of the observation deck and tried to find the solar powered house with my binoculars. They were pretty high end, and I could see a lot of detail as I scanned the area. After a couple of minutes, I gave up; there was too much in the way for me to spot the house or even be sure of the exact area it was in.

I set the binoculars on the wall and looked out at the city. Some fires still burned, but nothing else seemed to have changed. It was like I had a panoramic photo of Los Angeles to stare at every day.

And then I snatched the binoculars up again, almost knocking them off the wall before getting a grip.

I’d seen something move down in the city. Not just the movement of a tree swaying in the breeze or the shadow cast by a passing cloud. Something more deliberate than that. Something manmade.

It took me a few seconds to orient my vision with the binoculars and pinpoint the area where the movement had been, lifting the binoculars to my eyes and then pulling them away again as I checked and double-checked the area. It had been several miles away, the details lost in the haze of the smoky air, but I would have sworn there’d been a vehicle moving through an intersection.

“What the hell?” I whispered, desperately scanning left and right to find the trail of the thing I’d seen.

And then, faintly, I picked up the sound of an engine almost lost on the breeze, but there nonetheless. Faint and far away and probably growing more distant.

The desperation that overcame me then was stronger than anything I’d felt for a week or more. I wanted to shout and call out, wave my arms like people used to do in shipwreck movies when a freighter would show up on the horizon. We’d read
Lord of the Flies
in school, and I kicked myself now for not having thought of setting up a signal fire for just such an occasion.

Turning impotently, I started a frantic search of the observation deck for something, anything to get the attention of whoever was down there in the city I’d thought of as dead or dying for days now. Of course, there was nothing. I could have run into the building and found the gun and fired it, but it would be impossible for someone down below to connect the distant gunshot with the Griffith Observatory. I wished for a flare gun, but even that wouldn’t have driven someone’s gaze up here.

“Damn it!” I shouted and kicked over the lounge chair.

Then I turned back to the wall and picked up the binoculars again, my cheeks wet as I held the lenses to my eyes. I think I scanned the city for at least an hour before giving up. The sound of the engine had long faded to nothing.

I didn’t feel like reading after that. I didn’t feel like anything—not eating or even sleeping. I just wanted to be turned off, wanted to forget everything that had ever been and not think about anything that was to come.

Inside the observatory, I took one of my flashlights and went into the planetarium, moving through the dark with my beam of light before randomly choosing a seat along one of the aisles. They were soft and reclined almost all the way back. Visitors used to crowd in here several times a day to watch the laser show on the rounded ceiling. Since moving in, I’d considered using the planetarium as my bedroom; the seats were more comfortable than the mat and sleeping bag I used in the office behind the cafeteria. I’d decided against it though, feeling a little wary about being too comfortable when I slept. I told myself it was because I needed to stay vigilant, but really I think I worried that I might wake up and, for a fraction of a second, forget where I was. It wouldn’t do to wake up and think I was home again, like Dorothy after Oz, only to find that it hadn’t been a dream after all.

Now I didn’t care about that. I just lay back, shining the light up at the ceiling for a few seconds before turning it off and letting the total blackness of the planetarium swallow me up. If there were ghosts of ushers or scientists or James Dean in that place, they would have heard me crying in the dark for a long time.

*****

Before going to sleep that night, I put three powerful battery-operated lanterns along the wall of the observation deck and let them blaze into the night. It wasn’t as good as a signal fire, but it was something, and I remember sleeping decently, even hopefully.

The next day, though, brought a little perspective to the situation, and I took the lanterns down; their batteries had died, but I didn’t even want them glinting in the sun. With the new day, I realized it might have been a good thing that I hadn’t been able to get the attention of whoever had been driving through the city. That there actually had been someone, I was sure of. No hallucinations here. Not yet anyway. What I was unsure of, though, was how trustworthy any other survivors might be.

In my heart, I wanted to believe that anyone who found me would be a good person. Odds were that it would be an adult, someone ready and willing to help out a teenager in trouble. But what if it wasn’t? What if I’d gotten that person’s attention and it had put me into the middle of a bigger nightmare than the one I was living now? What if I’d run into someone like Jack from
Lord of the Flies
? It was tough to imagine, and I didn’t really want to believe it, but I had to acknowledge that it was possible. No, I finally told myself, it was better that it worked out the way it had—with me aware of someone else in the city and them clueless about me. I had the upper hand this way. Any meeting would be on my terms, my decision, my timetable. I regretted those lanterns now and hoped no one had seen them or thought anything of them.

I ate in the cafeteria and then gathered a few things before heading out. I’d learned how to siphon gas from the Winnebago’s tank to keep the motorcycle going, and now I hopped on with a backpack full of supplies. Kicking the engine to life, I rode across the grass, the parking lot, around the motorhome, and then down the hill. Within a few minutes, I was navigating around dead cars and dead people to work my way back to the solar powered house from the day before. It hadn’t taken me long to learn how to get around the area, practically having memorized all the macabre obstacles in the streets and thinking no more of them than I would have considered stop signs or railroad crossings.

When I got to the solar house, I went in and made myself at home, setting the backpack on the bar at the end of the kitchen and pulling up a stool. I’d only brought a few things: my phone, my laptop, and the satellite Internet system I’d taken from the sporting goods store, still in its box. I found a cold soda in the fridge and then opened the box, pulling out plastic-wrapped components and pages of instructions. It was confusing, but I read through it all and began connecting parts together with the cables inside the box.

As I worked, I had only real goal: to try and check in with the Australian TV station again to see if the disease had hit that continent as hard as it had hit everywhere else, or if they’d been at least partly spared thanks to being one of the last places the spores had reached. If things didn’t look safe there, I’d try New Zealand, and after that I’d search for smaller islands. Somewhere,
somewhere
, there had to be people who’d been spared, groups of people, people who could still make a go of it and move on into the future. I wanted to find them.

And if I did, it would be off to a library or bookstore for me. Just as I’d learned to ride the motorcycle, I told myself I was going to learn to sail. Every day as I looked out at the city from the observatory’s deck, my eyes eventually went to the strip of ocean at the horizon. I thought of the email I’d gotten from the Australian and looked at the water, knowing there’d be good-sized boats just waiting for me. I didn’t know a thing about boats, but I knew kids younger than me had sailed solo around the world. All I needed was to teach myself what to do and how to do it. It would be dangerous, I was sure, but I was up for it. As I’d been thinking since getting to the observatory: LA couldn’t take care of me forever.

But all my big plans for overseas communication fell flat when I got to the section in the satellite instructions on setting up an account. You couldn’t just transfer data from the satellite; you had to have everything set up beforehand. In the old world, a wealthy camper would have established an account and then gone off into the middle of nowhere, hooked up the equipment, and then been charged a ridiculous amount of money per byte downloaded. I had no doubt that I could have set up an account with a dead person’s credit card, but I needed the internet up and running to be able to set it up. And that wasn’t going to happen without the satellite account in place beforehand.

I could have kicked myself for not thinking to try this when I’d first found the equipment, when the phone systems and everything else the Internet ran on was still functioning. But it was too late now.

I slammed my fist down on the countertop and then threw the half-full can of soda at the wall, screaming as soda sprayed across the kitchen.

“Damn it!” I cried. “How could I have been so stupid?”

I almost picked up the laptop to slam it down, too, but somehow stopped myself. There might still be something I could do, something I hadn’t figured out yet. Destroying the computer and then finding out I still needed it would just be one more reason to hate myself, one more mistake I’d regret. So far I’d been lucky: none of the mistakes I’d made had gotten me into serious trouble. One of these days, though, I knew my luck was going to run out. Why help the bad luck along by doing stupid things?

So instead of throwing a bigger tantrum, I took a few deep breaths and began re-packing my backpack.

Call it old training, but I felt bad about the mess I’d made with the soda. The kitchen looked awful now, so instead of leaving I grabbed a sponge from beside the sink and wet it, taking a quick minute to wipe most of the splatter from the tiles and cupboard doors. Then, more old training, I rinsed the sponge, turning on the hot water the way I’d always done, just automatically.

In a few seconds, it was running warm, and then hot. I hadn’t had running water at the observatory in days, and forget about anything warm. The water heater in this house must have run off of solar power like everything else. While no new water was likely flowing into the pipes, there was still water in the tank. I dropped the sponge and went to find the bathroom.

Minutes later, the room was steaming, and I was having my first hot shower since the crisis had begun. On the bathroom counter, I’d found a dock and plugged my phone in; now my music blasted into the bathroom as I washed my hair and conditioned it and then just stood under the shower, letting the water pour over me. It felt luxurious, indulgent. The nicest thing I’d done for myself in…forever, it seemed. The moment I felt the water begin cooling, I turned it off, not wanting to ruin the memory of hot water on my skin. With the faucet off, I just stood for a moment, listening to the sound of the last bit of water dripping from the showerhead. Such a simple sound, one I’d never thought needed appreciating before. But I hadn’t heard it for a while now, and I doubted I’d hear it again for a long time, if ever.