The Cabin at the End of the World(24)
“We are not going to listen to this,” Eric says.
“The message is clear, and we are the messengers, or a mechanism through which the message must pass.”
Leonard breaks the line of the four and steps forward, putting himself between Eric and Andrew. He’s bigger than all the others combined and he’s bigger than the cabin itself; a conflicting, confounding size that only a child could ever equate with innate, implacable gentleness. Wen remembers being held in his arms while Daddy Andrew fought with Redmond. To her shame, she remembers feeling safe.
Wen says, “Please leave us alone, Leonard. Please go away and I’ll still be your friend.”
Leonard blinks hard and rapidly and lets out a percussive, deep breath. He starts talking and as he talks, he doesn’t look at Eric, Andrew, or Wen, despite having moved closer to them and crouching to their level.
Andrew
If Leonard again insists the four of them are regular, everyday people—as though everyday people have nothing but love in their hearts and are always reasonable and have never committed atrocities in the name of their self-proclaimed everydayness—Andrew is going to scream until he can’t scream anymore. He gets it; of course they are regular people. That message (there are regular people and there are others) is loud, clear, and received to the point where Andrew is beginning to think he may have seen or met each one of them before, with the strongest, nagging don’t-I-know-you? vibe coming from the loathsome Redmond.
Leonard says, “Your family must choose to willingly sacrifice one of your three in order to prevent the apocalypse. After you make what I know is an impossible choice, you must then kill whoever it is you choose. If you fail to make the choice or fail to follow through with the sacrifice, the world will end. The three of you will live but the rest of humanity, seven billion plus, will perish.” Leonard’s mannerless, reading-the-high-school-morning-announcements tone becomes the breathless impassioned entreaty of a zealot. “And you will only live long enough to witness the horror of the end of everything and be left to wander the devastated planet alone, permanently and cosmically alone.”
Andrew anticipated some form of unhinged, hateful, quasi-fundamentalist-Christian, cult manifesto, but he did not expect this. He is so flummoxed and terrified he has difficulty processing exactly what Leonard is saying, and the implications and permutations of possible future outcomes to be determined in part by what he and Eric say and do next are as irretrievable as the quarks of a smashed atom. Andrew briefly imagines he, Eric, and Wen holding hands and walking through a postapocalyptic landscape, specifically the blasted and burnt ruins of Cambridge and Boston: ash-gray sky, Storrow Drive’s footbridges collapsed onto soot-topped cars, steel girders curled like a dead insect’s legs, buildings and brownstones reduced to brick piles of burning rubble, the Charles River black, motionless, and choked with debris. He turns away from the image and away from Leonard, twisting his head as far as it will go, but not enough so that he can see Wen hiding behind his chair. He wants to tell her to cover her ears and ignore Leonard’s poisonous words even though he knows it would be impossible for anyone to do so.
Eric says, “Leonard, you don’t have to do this. You don’t. This, whatever this is, isn’t you. It doesn’t have to be. We haven’t done anything to deserve this.”
Leonard still won’t look directly at Andrew or Eric or Wen. His gaze is somewhere over their heads, on a secret spot of the cabin door, under their chairs, spying a shard of glass on the kitchen linoleum that managed to escape his broom, the yellow lamp lying crookedly on its side. “I agree that you haven’t done anything wrong or bad to deserve this burden. You haven’t. I can’t make that clear enough. Perhaps you are being chosen, like we were chosen, because you’re strong enough to make the decision that needs to be made to stave off the ruination of humanity. I think that’s the way to look at this, Eric.”
Despite the terror of this continuing assault and the pain and discomfort with which Eric clearly suffers, he turns his head and says to Andrew, “That’s thoughtful of them to give us the proper way to look at this.”
Andrew laughs the cynical, mocking one-note plosive of the death row inmate. Waves of love and pride for Eric surge with righteous anger and defiance, yet he knows feeling strong and emboldened isn’t enough to rid his family of the four intruders. It’s not enough to break him free from his chair.
“Please don’t kill us,” Wen whispers from behind Andrew. The quaver in her voice is the worst thing he’s ever heard, without a close second. Andrew renews his struggles against the ropes. His wrists burn as he flexes, twists, and contorts.
Leonard drops to one knee and leans forward, finally making eye contact. “We are not going to kill you, Wen, and we aren’t going to kill your parents. We aren’t. Aside from what we had to do to enter the cabin and get you to listen to what we had to say, we are not going to lay another finger on any of you. That is a promise. We’ll help make you as comfortable as you can be—but you have to stay here in the cabin with us—until you choose or the allotted time you have to choose runs out.”
“And how long is—”
Leonard speaks over Eric, “Not long, not long at all. Time is running out on the world, on us. Look, we’re not here to hurt you.”
Redmond interrupts with, “If we wanted to hurt you, we would’ve used duct tape instead of rope. Believe me.”