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“Gene,” she whispers. She can barely say the next words. “Is this really the end?”
I can’t say anything. I can’t even nod. I can only look deep into her eyes.
We fall into each other, embracing with crushing strength. We hold tightly, as if to form a shield against the brutal and gruesome end that will surely and swiftly come.
I pull away to look into her eyes. I want to see only her, not the horrific outside.
Sissy stares uncertainly at me, then gives a shaky smile.
I return the smile. “I wish this was all a horrible nightmare. And then we wake up and everything is gone, all the buildings, all the duskers, and it’s just you and me. ”
“And we’re lying in green meadows,” Sissy says, her eyes drawing close, wet and soft and glimmering, “a rainbow over us, the sun warm and sweet in the pure blue sky. Our cottage a short walk away, beside a gentle brook. ”
“Trees, too. Fruit trees. ”
“And milk and honey and—”
“—sunshine. ” I lean forward and our lips touch with tenderness, an antidote to the violence that is to come. Regret and sadness rise up in me, and then we’re kissing hungrily, lips pressing with desperation, as if to make up for the kisses we should already have shared, as if to compress all the thousands of denied kisses from the years that now will never come.
The sun disappears, its wilting rays suddenly cut off. The world plunges into darkness.
And now the walls and floor begin to vibrate with more force. Sissy and I pull apart. The duskers—the thousands of them—have reached the Domain Building and are now slithering up its glass walls. They skid across the glass like leeches, gaining traction on one another’s smeared flesh. As they climb higher, their slimy yellow-pale bodies further darken the building’s interior.
They reach the top floor in less than a minute. Panting with exertion, rib cages jutting out of membranous skin. Mushed against the glass, they gawk at us with eyes agog, the squeak of slipping, sliding skin on glass deafening. Many are thumping their fists against the windows in an attempt to break through, even slamming their foreheads into the glass. But on the slippery wall they lack the traction necessary to deliver a sufficiently forceful blow.
Loud thumps suddenly explode from inside the Panic Room. Duskers have flown up the chute from the floors below and into the tight confines of the Panic Room. There’s no time or room for them to spin around; another flurry of bodies follow quickly behind, ramming them until more than a dozen bodies are crammed into that tight space. And still more press in from below. No wonder Ashley June booked out of there. I hear the squish of flesh, the breaking of bones. Arms, hands, faces, legs, mashed up against the glass, too packed to move even a finger. Nothing moves in there except one blinking eye.
Cold enshrouds us. Bestial wails assail us from every direction.
“Look at me, Gene. ” Sissy’s eyes are warm and steady, her fingers interlacing with mine with crushing force. “Don’t look anywhere else. Just at me. ”
Wet, squishy sounds. From under the glass floor, beneath my feet, a sea of pale bodies. Like raw fatty meat stored in clear plastic bags, their flattened faces glare at us, lips misshapen and pinched white. Oodles of saliva shine wetly between narrow creases and folds of bodies.
Metal beams groan, the shatter of glass drawing closer.
“This is it, Sissy. ” I wish I didn’t have to shout. Not now. Not to Sissy. And the only thing I want to say to her is, Forgive me for letting you down, forgive me, forgive me.
She nods before I can say more, as if she can hear the thoughts in my head, as if she understands. And her eyes suddenly seem more alive than ever, full of daring. She says something I can’t hear.
“What?” I shout.
And a small smile touches her lips, full of sadness, full of release. She leans in and shouts into my ear words never uttered to me.
“I love you. ”
Forty-nine
I DON’T WANT to die. I don’t want her to die.
I don’t want us to die.
And suddenly, I know how we live.
Fifty
I RACE OVER to the table, pulling Sissy along with me.
“Gene?”
There’s no time to explain what I’m doing. In the dark, it takes me a second to locate it on the table. There. I grab it—the hypodermic needle Ashley June left for me to use. I thrust the needle into the crook of my arm, depress the needle halfway down.
“Do you trust me, Sissy?” I say.
“What are you—”
I pull her shirt sleeve up, inject her. She doesn’t resist or flinch, only stares at me. I push the remaining fluid into her bloodstream.
