’Til the World Ends by Karen Duvall Ann Aguirre Julie Kagawa Page B

through the darkness. No cars passed us, no headlights pierced the blackness but our own. Ben and I didn’t speak much, just watched the quiet, primitive world scroll by through the glass. Out here, far from cities and towns and dimly lit suburbs, it truly felt as if we were the only humans left alive. The last two people on earth.
    I dozed against the window, and when I opened my eyes again, Ben was pulling into the parking lot of a small motel and shutting off the ignition. The streetlamps surrounding the lot were dead and dark but, oddly enough, a Vacancy sign flickered erratically in the window of the office.
    “We’re stopping?”
    “Just for a bit.” Ben opened the door, and a gust of rain-scented air dispersed my drowsiness a little. “It’s almost dawn. I need a couple hours of sleep, at least, or I’m going to drive us off the road. This looks safe enough.”
    It might’ve looked safe enough, but he snatched the gun off the dashboard and handed me a flashlight before walking up to the office door. I followed closely, peering over my shoulder, shining the beam into windows and dark corners. We stepped up to the porch, and my heart pounded, imagining gaunt, pale faces peering through the windows. But they remained dark and empty.
    After several moments of pounding on the office door and calling “Hello?” into the darkened interior, Ben raised the shotgun and drove the butt into the glass above the door, shattering it. Ducking inside, he emerged seconds later with a key on a wooden peg, jingling it with weary triumph. I trailed him down the walkway to a battered green door with a brass 14B on the front and watched as he unlocked the door and pushed it back. It creaked open slowly, revealing a small room with an old TV, a hideous pink-and-green armchair and a single bed.
    “Damn,” I heard him mutter, and he glanced over his shoulder at me. “Sorry, I was hoping to get one with double beds. I’ll see if they have the keys to another room—”
    “There’s no need.” Bringing up the flashlight, I brushed past him through the doorway. The room was stale and dusty, and the carpet probably hadn’t been cleaned in years, but at least there was no stench of death and blood and decay. “We’re both adults,” I said, attempting to be pragmatic and reasonable. “We can share a bed if we have to. And I...I’d feel better not sleeping alone tonight, anyway.”
    “Are you sure?”
    “Ben, I’m a doctor. You don’t have anything I haven’t seen before, trust me.”
    My voice sounded too normal, too flippant, for what was happening outside. I felt like a deflated balloon, empty and hollow. Numb. I’d seen patients with post-traumatic stress disorder, having lost a loved one or even their whole family, and wondered if maybe I was heading down that same road. If perhaps this eerie calm and sense of detachment were the beginning.
    The door clicked shut behind me, plunging the room into darkness. I whirled with the flashlight, shining the beam into Ben’s face. He flinched, turning his head, and I quickly dropped the light.
    “Sorry.”
    “It’s all right.” He looked up, and I saw that his stoic mask had slipped back into place. I shivered a little. If anyone was suffering from PTSD, it was probably Ben.
    I turned from that haunting gaze, shining the light toward the bathroom in the corner. “I’m...going to see if the water still works.”
    He didn’t say anything to that, and I retreated to the bathroom, leaving him in the dark.
    Miraculously, the water still ran, though the temperature barely got above lukewarm. I told Ben I was going to take a bath, then filled the tub halfway, sinking down into it with a sigh in the darkness. The flashlight sat upright on the sink, shining a circle of light at the ceiling, turning the room ghostly and surreal. A tiny bar of complimentary soap sat on the edge of the tub, and I scrubbed myself down furiously, as if I could wash away the horror, grief and fear